easure in the fine arts,
that beauty itself has been defined by some writers to consist in a due
combination of uniformity and variety. See Sect. XVI. 6.

III. 1. Man is termed by Aristotle an imitative animal; this propensity to
imitation not only appears in the actions of children, but in all the
customs and fashions of the world: many thousands tread in the beaten paths
of others, for one who traverses regions of his own discovery. The origin
of this propensity of imitation has not, that I recollect, been deduced
from any known principle; when any action presents itself to the view of a
child, as of whetting a knife, or threading a needle, the parts of this
action in respect of time, motion, figure, is imitated by a part of the
retina of his eye; to perform this action therefore with his hands is
easier to him than to invent any new action, because it consists in
repeating with another set of fibres, viz. with the moving muscles, what he
had just performed by some parts of the retina; just as in dancing we
transfer the times of motion from the actions of the auditory nerves to the
muscles of the limbs. Imitation therefore consists of repetition, which we
have shewn above to be the easiest kind of animal action, and which we
perpetually fall into, when we possess an accumulation of sensorial power,
which is not otherwise called into exertion.

It has been shewn, that our ideas are configurations of the organs of
sense, produced originally in consequence of the stimulus of external
bodies. And that these ideas, or configurations of the organs of sense,
referable in some property a correspondent property of external matter; as
the parts of the senses of light and of touch, which are excited into
action, resemble in figure the figure of the stimulating body; and probably
also the colour, and the quantity of density, which they perceive. As
explained in Sect. XIV. 2. 2. Hence it appears, that our perceptions
themselves are copies, that is, imitations of some properties of external
matter; and the propensity to imitation is thus interwoven with our
existence, as it is produced by the stimuli of external bodies, and is
afterwards repeated by our volitions and sensations, and thus constitutes
all the operations of our minds.

2. Imitations resolve themselves into four kinds, voluntary, sensitive,
irritative, and associate. The voluntary imitations are, when we imitate
deliberately the actions of others, either by mimicry, a