y the emphatic emergence of an interesting object, gives
the effect of the picturesque; but when it comes with no
compensation, it gives us the feeling of ugliness and imperfection
-- the defect which symmetry avoids. This kind of symmetry is
accordingly in itself a negative merit, but often the condition of the
greatest of all merits, -- the permanent power to please. It
contributes to that completeness which delights without
stimulating, and to which our jaded senses return gladly, after all
sorts of extravagances, as to a kind of domestic peace. The
inwardness and solidity of this quiet beauty comes from the
intrinsic character of the pleasure which makes it up. It is no
adventitious charm; but the eye in its continual passage over the
object finds always the same response, the same adequacy; and the
very process of perception is made delightful by the object's fitness
to be perceived. The parts, thus coalescing, form a single object,
the unity and simplicity of which are based upon the rhythm and
correspondence of its elements.

Symmetry is here what metaphysicians call a principle of
individuation. By the emphasis which it lays upon the recurring
elements, it cuts up the field into determinate units; all that lies
between the beats is one interval, one individual. If there were no
recurrent impressions, no corresponding points, the field of
perception would remain a fluid continuum, without defined and
recognizable divisions. The outlines of most things are
symmetrical because we choose what symmetrical lines we find to
be the boundaries of objects. Their symmetry is the condition of
their unity, and their unity of their individuality and separate
existence.

Experience, to be sure, can teach us to regard unsymmetrical
objects as wholes, because their elements move and change
together in nature; but this is a principle of individuation, _a
posteriori,_ founded on the association of recognized elements.
These elements, to be recognized and seen to go together and form
one thing, must first be somehow discriminated; and the symmetry,
either of their parts, or of their position as wholes, may enable us
to fix their boundaries and to observe their number. The category
of unity, which we are so constantly imposing upon nature and its
parts, has symmetry, then, for one of its instruments, for one of its
bases of application.

If symmetry, then, is a principle of individuation and helps us to
distinguish objects, we