The idea goes back to the ancient treatise On the Sublime attributed to Longinus. Edmund Burke (1757) linked it to terror and infinity; Kant (1790) held that before the immeasurable or overpowering, the mind discovers in itself a power of reason greater than nature. The sublime is a close neighbour of Otto’s numinous.
Sublime
The experience of something so vast or powerful that it overwhelms the senses and lifts the mind.