86 Additional Notes. 



of another, and hence the beauty of the pyramidal outline in land- 

 scape-painting; where one side of the picture may be said in some 

 measure to balance the other. So universally does repetition contri- 

 bute to our pleasure in the fine arts, that beauty itself has been de- 

 fined by -some writers to consist in a due combination of uniformity 

 and variety: Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XXII. 2. 1. 



Where these repetitions of form, and reiterations of colour, are 

 produced in a picture or a natural landscape, in an agreeable quan- 

 tity, it is termed simplicity, or unity of character; where the repetition 

 principally is seen in the disposition or locality of the divisions, it is 

 called symmetry, proportion, or grouping the separate parts; where 

 this repetition is most conspicuous in the forms of visible objects, it is 

 called regularity or uniformity; and where it affects the colouring 

 principally, the artists call it breadth of colour. 



There is nevertheless, an excess of the repetition of the same or 

 similar ideas, which ceases to please, and must therefore be excluded 

 from compositions of Taste in painted landscapes, or in ornamented 

 gardens; which is then called formality, monotony, or insipidity. 

 Why the excitation of ideas should give additional pleasure by the 

 facility and distinctness of their production for a certain time, and 

 then cease to give additional pleasure; and gradually to give less plea- 

 sure than that, which attends simple exertion of them; is another 

 curious metaphysical problem, and deserves investigation. 



In our waking hours a perpetual voluntary exertion, of which we 

 are unconscious, attends all our new trains of ideas, whether those of 

 imagination or of perception; which by comparing them with our 

 former experience preserves the consistency of the former, by reject- 

 ing such as are incongruous; and adds to the credibility of the latter, 

 by their analogy to objects of our previous knowledge: and this ex- 

 ertion is attended with pleasurable sensation. After very frequent 

 repetition these trains of ideas do not excite the exertion of this in- 

 tuitive analogy, and in consequence are not attended with additional 

 pleasure to that simply of perception; and by continued repetition 

 they at length lose even the pleasure simply of perception, and thence 

 finally cease to be excited; whence one cause of the torpor of old age, 

 and of death, as spoken of in Additional Note, No. VII. 3. of this work. 



