After looking for some time at the sun, two black spots, the impression which it leaves, seem to dance before our eyes.

Thus are two ideas as opposite as can be imagined reconciled in the extremes of both; and both, in spite of their opposite nature, brought to concur in producing the sublime.

And this is not the only instance wherein the opposite extremes operate equally in favor of the sublime, which in all things abhors mediocrity.
SECTION XV.
LIGHT IN BUILDING.
As the management of light is a matter of importance in architecture, it is worth inquiring, how far this remark is applicable to building.

I think, then, that all edifices calculated to produce an idea of the sublime, ought rather to be dark and gloomy, and this for two reasons; the first is, that darkness itself on other occasions is known by experience to have a greater effect on the passions than light.

The second is, that to make an object very striking, we should make it as different as possible from the objects with which we have been immediately conversant; when therefore you enter a building, you cannot pass into a greater light than you had in the open air; to go into one some few degrees less luminous, can make only a trifling change; but to make the transition thoroughly striking, you ought to pass from the greatest light, to as much darkness as is consistent with the uses of architecture.