Passados 250 anos, alguma das explicações que o Burke apresenta pra alegações até bem naturais (como a de que a idéia da escuridão está diretamente relacionada ao sublime) rendem uma leitura divertida. Em dado momento, ele tenta atribuir parte do efeito que o escuro pode produzir em nós à dor física:
It may be worth while to examine, (sic) how darkness can operate in such a manner as to cause pain. It is observable, that still as we recede from the light, nature has so contrived it, that the pupil is enlarged by the retiring of the iris, in proportion to our recess. Now instead of declining from it but a little, suppose that we withdraw entirely from the light; it is reasonable to think, that the contraction of the radial fibres of the iris is proportionably greater; and that this part may by great darkness come to be so contracted, as to strain the nerves that compose it beyond their natural tone; and by this means to produce a painful sensation.Mas meu trecho preferido diz respeito à doçura. Burke parece convencido de que substâncias doces devem sua sensação agradável ao paladar à forma arredondada do retículo cristalino dos grãos de açúcar, que assim poderiam deslizar languidamente sobre as papilas da língua. Vejam:
Suppose that to this water or oil were added a certain quantity of a specific salt, which had a power of putting the nervous papillae of the tongue into a gentle vibratory motion; as suppose sugar dissolved in it. The smoothness of the oil, and the vibratory power of the salt, cause the sense we call sweetness. In all sweet bodies, sugar, or a substance very little different from sugar, is constantly found; every species of salt examined by the microscope has its own distinct, regular, invariable form. That of nitre is a pointed oblong; that of sea salt an exact cube; that of sugar a perfect globe. If you have tried how smooth globular bodies, as the marbles with which boys amuse themselves, have affected the touch when they are rolled backward and forward and over one another, you will easily conceive how sweetness, which consists in a salt of such nature, affects the taste; for a single globe, (though somewhat pleasant to the feeling) yet by the regularity of its form, and the somewhat too sudden deviation of its parts from a right line, it is nothing near so pleasant to the touch as several globes, where the hand gently rises to one and falls to another; and this pleasure is greatly increased if the globes are in motion, and sliding over one another; for this soft variety prevents that weariness, which the uniform disposition of the several globes would otherwise produce.
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