Ethose of THE PLEASURE OF IMITATION IS PROPORTIONATE TO THE DIS TANCE WHICH, IN EVERY ART OR IMITATIVE MODE, AND IN MODEL FROM THOSE OF THE IMAGE. IT has been before remarked, that the more there is in an art or its works to occasion pleasure to the senses, the less will there be to give pleasure to the mind; and it has been shown, in the previous chapter, that the effect of illusion depending more especially on the moral power of imitation and on our own co-operation, the mind is less active in proportion as imitation approaches more nearly to identity, and the image is limited to the repetition of reality. The subsequent chapter will bring to the support of this position a fact hitherto but little taken notice of, namely, the comparative scale of rank that general opinion assigns to the different arts, by reason of the enjoyments they procure. however, the thing is of itself proved by the mere analysis of the manner in which the mind enjoys the works of imitation. But Two sorts of operations necessarily form part of L the kind of labour without which the mind, remaining inert, experiences no pleasure; for, with respect to imitation, to be active, is to enjoy. The first of those operations (already spoken of in Chap. i.) is that by which the mind judges concerning the resemblances that the arts present to it. Every such resemblance carries with it the idea of a model and of an image. The judgment that the mind forms between those two things, results from the juxtaposition it brings them into the one with the other, and consequently from the act of comparing. Since the mind de- \ rives pleasure from imitation, proof is afforded that it delights in making comparisons. not neces Что We have already seen that the mind finds no pleasure in that surreptitious imitation which,s being no other than a repetition of the thing to be mitated, re-becomes, as it were, the thing itself; and it appears to us that the true reason of that want of pleasure is the state of inactivity in which the mind continues, unmoved by every, so deemed, work of imitation which gives no exercise to the faculty of comparison. As a consequence of this observation, or rather indisputable fact, it must be true that every work of art, even without falling into material identity, but only conceived in its spirit, and executed in such a manner as not quite to reproduce the idea of the absolute reality of a particular model, presenting but few relations to be combined, and but Combanın slight distances to be brought together, will little exercise its faculty of comparing and procure the least possible amount of pleasure. * Since it is the having a great number of relations to combine, and appositions to effect, that gives the greatest activity to that faculty of the mind which enjoys resemblances by the comparisons it draws, it is certain that it will receive the greatest amount of pleasure from that work or that kind of imitation which shall afford to the art and to the mind, occasion to institute the greatest number of parallels and on points the most widely removed That pleasure, or, if it be preferred, that labour of comparison, arises, in the enjoyment that every art furnishes to the mind, not only from the distance which separates the elements of the model from those of the image, but also from the multitude of appositions they involve. Now it is certain that in every imitative mode, according as either the matter of the image or the technical means of imitation partake more or less of the nature of the model, there will be a less or greater amount of diversities to embrace, of subjects for I beg to refer the reader, who may find any difficulty in the above, to what Locke says concerning comparison in book ., chap. 25, of the "Essay Concerning Human Understanding." It is to designate that operation by which the mind brings together and sets by one another the things to be compared, that I have employed the word apposition.-Transl. comparison or exercise, and consequently of pleasure for the mind. The second operation that enters into its labours, as a principle of the pleasure it receives from imitation, is that, the secret of which has been already laid open in the preceding chapter on illusion. I speak of that action, so wholly peculiar to the imagination, in which, exalted by the perfection and beauty of the image, incomplete though its resemblance must necessarily be, (as previously shown,) the mind finds itself as it were compelled consummate the effect, either by supplying what imitation has been obliged to omit, or seconding, by a sympathetic admiration, the fictious power of the art, so that we become instruments for providing, at one time, thoughts to bodies, at another, a body and colour to what exists only in idea. It is to this co-operation or to its effects that are applied all those metaphorical phrases serving to express the action by which we say we are raised beyond ourselves, transported into the presence of objects that have no existence, by which we assist at scenes that we do not see, turn around what is only on a flat surface, see what is motionless move, and in short, overleap on all sides the boundaries within which art has confined its image. Those two operations which procure to the mind the true pleasure of imitation and also explain the cause of it, consist then on our side, the Combo one in bringing the image to, and setting it by its which constitutes its model. The distance betwee ple constituting the essence of imitation, accord- proneness to seek in the extreme after an ap- The investigation of the abstract nature of imitation, or in other words of the principle generating its effects, lays us under the necessity of verifying its consequences that we may be assured of its soundness, that is, may see whether cause and effect correspond. Now, pleasure being the definitive effect of imitation, we have been led to recognise comparison as the active means by which it is procured; but comparison necessarily requiring apposition, the idea of apposition compels |