Sublime Is An Experience That Exceeds Ordinary Human Scale
March 15, 2025โข464 words
"Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt" ~ Immanuel Kant
"Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything, will really do." ~ Aldous Huxley
"What can be more excellent than prayer; what is more profitable to our life; what sweeter to our souls; what more sublime, in the course of our whole life, than the practice of prayer!" ~ Saint Augustine
"The law of simplicity and naรฏvetรฉ applies to all fine art, for it is compatible with what is most sublime." ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
There exists a power that exists beyond the ordinary, a force that provokes both fear and awe deep in the heart of humans.
It is the sublime.
It is not terror, which fills us with Strong feelings of dislike, and fear, nor beauty, which comforts and is pleasant. The sublime is other, a power that overwhelms, dominates, and subjugates all before it.
Mountains which touch lightly the skies, seas which rumble and toss ruthlessly, infiniteness of the universe beyond human mind, these are but hints of the sublime. Before them, we get a glimpse of our true proportions, a fleeting speck against nature's power. Yet, we are drawn to it, by the unfamiliar or supernatural pull of our own inadequacy.
Sublime is in the highest peaks of art, where truth is revealed in forms too powerful to be ignored. It is in unselfish acts that are beyond words that convulse the very foundations of thought. It is the greatness of grandeur that cannot be imitated, the kind of power that creates history itself.
Yet to experience the sublime is to stand on the edge of a tremendous void. It is joy and terror, a coming face to face with something beyond control, beyond reason. War and conflict and understanding that you are completely overwhelmed and surrounded by the enemy and knowing full understanding, you have met your fate, you have humbly asked the creator to accept you; you are about to die for your National cause.
It brings us face to face not only with the vastness of the world and a minute understanding of God's presence and power but with the limits of our own self. And, in that moment of awe, we see a glimpse of truth that few of us dare face, that the greatest power lies not in that which is understood, but that which remains beyond understanding.