AESTHETICS The impression produced in this way may be called ‘the dynamical sublime’ But the same impression may be produced by calm meditation on the immensity of space and time while contemplating the starry sky at night This impression of sublimity (which Schopenhauer, borrowing Kant’s unhelpful term, calls ‘the mathematical sublime’) can be produced also by voluminous closed spaces such as the dome of St Peter’s in Rome and by monuments of great age such as the pyramids In each case the sense arises from the contrast between our own smallness and insignificance as individuals and a vastness that is the creation of ourselves as pure knowing subjects The sublime is, as it were, the upper bound of the beautiful Its lower bound is what Schopenhauer calls ‘the charming’ Whereas what is sublime makes an object of contemplation out of what is hostile to the will, the charming turns an object of contemplation into something that attracts the will Schopenhauer gives as instances sculptures of ‘naked figures, whose position, drapery, and general treatment are calculated to excite the passions of the beholder’ and, less convincingly, Dutch still lifes of ‘oysters, herrings, crabs, bread and butter, beer, wine, and so forth’ Such artefacts nullify the aesthetic purposes, and are altogether to be condemned (WWI 208) There are two elements in every encounter with beauty: a will-less knowing subject, and an object which is the Idea known In contemplation of natural beauty and of architecture, the pleasure is principally in the purity and painlessness of the knowing, because the Ideas encountered are low-grade manifestations of will But when we contemplate human beings (through the medium of tragedy, for example) the pleasure is rather in the Ideas contemplated, which are varied, rich, and significant On the basis of this distinction, Schopenhauer proceeds to grade the fine arts Lowest in the scale comes architecture, which brings out low-grade Ideas such as gravity, rigidity, and light: The beauty of a building lies in the obvious adaptation of every part to the stability of the whole, to which the position, size and form of every part have so necessary a relation that if it were possible to remove some part, the whole would inevitably collapse For only by each part bearing as much as it conveniently can, and each being supported exactly where it ought to be and to exactly the necessary extent, does this play of opposition, this conflict between rigidity and gravity, that 256