ecome after a year or two stale and flat, and that the new
opinions seem fresh and vivid.

A treatise is indeed required from some trained psychologist on the
conditions under which our nervous system shows itself intolerant of
repeated sensations and emotions. The fact is obviously connected with
the purely physiological causes which produce giddiness, tickling,
sea-sickness, etc. But many things that are 'natural,' that is to say,
which we have constantly experienced during any considerable part of the
ages during which our nervous organisation was being developed,
apparently do not so affect us. Our heartbeats, the taste of water, the
rising and setting of the sun, or, in the case of a child, milk, or the
presence of its mother, or of its brothers, do not seem to become, in
sound health, distressingly monotonous. But 'artificial' things, however
pleasant at first--a tune on the piano, the pattern of a garment, the
greeting of an acquaintance--are likely to become unbearable if often
exactly repeated. A newspaper is an artificial thing in this sense, and
one of the arts of the newspaper-writer consists in presenting his
views with that kind of repetition which, like the phrases of a fugue,
constantly approaches, but never oversteps the limit of monotony.
Advertisers again are now discovering that it pays to vary the monotony
with which a poster appeals to the eye by printing in different colours
those copies which are to hang near each other, or still better, by
representing varied incidents in the career of 'Sunny Jim' or 'Sunlight
Sue.'

A candidate is also an artificial thing. If he lives and works in his
constituency, the daily vision of an otherwise admirable business man
seated in a first-class carriage on the 8.47 A.M. train in the same
attitude and reading the same newspaper may produce a slight and
unrecognised feeling of discomfort among his constituents, although it
would cause no such feeling in the wife whose relation to him is
'natural.' For the same reason when his election comes on, although he
may declare himself to be the 'old member standing on the old platform,'
he should be careful to avoid monotony by slightly varying his portrait,
the form of his address, and the details of his declaration of political
faith.

Another fact, closely connected with our intolerance of repeated
emotional adjustment, is the desire for privacy, sufficiently marked to
approach the character of a specific instinct, a