The ideas of _pain_, _sickness_, and _death_, fill the mind with strong emotions of horror; but _life_ and _health_, though they put us in a capacity of being affected with pleasure, make no such impression by the simple enjoyment.

The passions therefore which are conversant about the preservation of the individual turn chiefly on _pain_ and _danger_, and they are the most powerful of all the passions.
SECTION VII.
OF THE SUBLIME.
Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the _sublime_; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.

I say the strongest emotion, because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure.

Without all doubt, the torments which we may be made to suffer are much greater in their effect on the body and mind, than any pleasures which the most learned voluptuary could suggest, or than the liveliest imagination, and the most sound and exquisitely sensible body, could enjoy.

Nay, I am in great doubt whether any man could be found, who would earn a life of the most perfect satisfaction at the price of ending it in the torments, which justice inflicted in a few hours on the late unfortunate regicide in France.