 But Burke’s chief innovation consists neither in his conception of the imagination, nor in the extent of his materialism, but in his theory of the perfections of taste. It will be recalled that Addison posits three such perfections—sublimity (or greatness), novelty, and beauty—though he offers no explanation as to why there should be just these three. Burke argues, briefly, that novelty is too superficial and ubiquitous to keep rightful company with sublimity and beauty (Burke 1757 [1990, 29]). And he argues, at length, that sublimity keeps rightful and exclusive company with beauty on the grounds that it stands to one great class of human passions as beauty stands to the other (Burke 1757 [1990, 30–50]). According to Burke’s account of the passions—which owes much to Hume’s—most all passions answer either to the ends of society or to the ends of self-preservation (Burke 1757 [1990, 35–36]). Moreover, all societal passions “turn” on pleasure, that is, each has either pleasure or its felt absence as a constituent (Burke 1757 [1990, 37]). The societal passion of love has pleasure as a constituent, for example, while the societal passion of grief has the felt absence of pleasure as a constituent (Burke 1757 [1990, 34–35, 39]). All self-preservative passions, by contrast, “turn” on pain, that is, each has either pain or its felt absence of pain as a constituent (Burke 1757 [1990, 37]). The self-preservative passion of simple terror has pain as a constituent, for example, while the self-preservative passion of astonishment—a passion which arises when pain threatens though from a relatively safe distance, and which combines feelings of sobriety, awe, and “tranquility shadowed with horror”—has the felt absence of pain as a constituent (Burke 1757 [1990, 32, 36–37, 53]). Thus there are both desirable and undesirable societal passions and desirable and undesirable self-preservative passions. The beautiful is that which excites the desirable societal passion of love, the sublime that which excites the desirable self-preservative passion of astonishment (Burke 1757 [1990, 36–37, 39, 53]). The objective foundations of beauty and sublimity turn out to be largely opposing: whereas the beautiful tends to the small, the smooth, the various, the delicate, the clear, and the bright, the sublime tends to the great, the uniform, the powerful, the obscure, and the somber. Hence Burke concludes that: