And this branch rises, as naturally as the other two branches, from terror, the common stock of everything that is sublime.

The idea of power, at first view, seems of the class of those indifferent ones, which may equally belong to pain or to pleasure.

But in reality, the affection arising from the idea of vast power is extremely remote from that neutral character.

For first, we must remember[15] that the idea of pain, in its highest degree, is much stronger than the highest degree of pleasure; and that it preserves the same superiority through all the subordinate gradations.

From hence it is, that where the chances for equal degrees of suffering or enjoyment are in any sort equal, the idea of the suffering must always be prevalent.