The only thing necessary for the continuance of evil is for a good man to do nothing. - Edmund Burke

Both the Sublime and the Beautiful induce a state of submission that is often combined with the possibility of getting lost. They disorientate and undermine purpose. In one of several erotic sections in the Enquiry Burke describes the experience of looking at a beautiful woman’s body: it is, he writes, like a ‘deceitful maze, through which the unsteady eye glides giddily, without knowing where to fix, or whither it is carried’.

All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.

Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit.