A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful Chapter Summary & Analysis - Part V Summary

Part V Summary and Analysis

Section I: Words affect us in very different ways from natural objects but nonetheless excite passions and therefore should be discussed in this inquiry.

Section II: The power of words, especially poetry, is their ability to affect the mind by causing it to think of the ideas or objects for which those words, by custom, stand. Thus, uttering the word "horse" will evoke the idea of a horse, while uttering a more abstract word like "virtue" will in turn evoke a long string of simpler associations and objects, as there is no thing in the world directly referred to by "virtue."

Section III: Children, being so malleable, are sometimes provided words and given associations before anything related to the words are even experienced. Thus, something pleasant is "good" and painful is "bad" without specific encounters with good and bad things or circumstances.

Section IV: Some words evoke a picture in...
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