Edmund Burke A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
Darkness
It is Mr. Locke’s opinion, that darkness is not naturally an idea of terror; and that, though an excessive light is painful to the sense, that the greatest excess of darkness is in no ways troublesome.
…having once associated the ideas of ghosts and goblins with that of darkness; night ever after becomes painful and horrible to the imagination.
We have considered darkness as a cause of the sublime; and we have all along considered darkness as a cause of the sublime; and we have all along considered the sublime as depending on some modification of pain or terror…
…an association of a more general natural, an association which takes in all mankind may make darkness terrible; for in utter darkness, it is impossible to know in what degree of safety we stand…
As to the association of ghosts and goblins; surely it is more natural to think, that darkness being originally an idea of terror, was chosen as a fit scene for such terrible representations, than that such representations have made darkness terrible.
…the effect of an idea so universally terrible in all times, and in all countries, as darkness, could possibly have been owing to a set of idle stories…
Why Darkness is Terrible
Such a tension it seems there certainly is, whilst we are involved in darkness; for in such a state whilst the eye remains open, there is a continual nisus to receive light; this is manifest from the flashes, and luminous appearances which often seem in these circumstances to play before it; and which can be nothing but the effect of spasms, produced by its own efforts in pursuits of its object…
Some who allow darkness to be a cause of the sublime, would infer from the dilation of the pupil, that a relaxation may be productive of the sublime as well as a convulsion…
…I believe any one will finds if he opens his eyes and makes an effort to see in a dark place, that a very perceivable pain ensues.
It may perhaps be objected to this theory of the mechanical effect of darkness, that the ill effects of darkness or blackness seem rather mental than corporeal; and I own it is true, that they do so; and so do all those that depend on the affections of the finer parts of our system.
Blackness is but a partial darkness; and therefore it derives some of its powers from being mixed and surrounded with coloured bodies. In its own nature, it cannot be considered as a colour.
