illumination would be perhaps increased, and its import, practical,
religious, and cosmic, would surely be a little plainer; but where
would be the sublimity of the spectacle? Irretrievably lost: and lost
because the form of the object would no longer tantalize us with its
sheer multiplicity, and with the consequent overpowering sense of
suspense and awe.

In a word, the infinity which moves us is the sense of multiplicity
in uniformity. Accordingly things which have enough multiplicity,
as the lights of a city seen across water, have an effect similar to
that of the stars, if less intense; whereas a star, if alone, because the
multiplicity is lacking, makes a wholly different impression. The
single star is tender, beautiful, and mild; we can compare it to the
humblest and sweetest of things:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye,
Fair as _a star when only one
Is shining in the sky._

It is, not only in fact but in nature, an attendant on the moon,
associated with the moon, if we may be so prosaic here, not only
by contiguity but also by similarity.

Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-regioned star
Or vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky.

The same poet can say elsewhere of a passionate lover:

He arose
Ethereal, flushed, and like a throbbing star,
Amid the sapphire heaven's deep repose.

How opposite is all this from the cold glitter, the cruel and
mysterious sublimity of the stars when they are many! With these
we have no Sapphic associations; they make us think rather of
Kant who could hit on nothing else to compare with his categorical
imperative, perhaps because he found in both the same baffling
incomprehensibility and the same fierce actuality. Such ultimate
feelings are sensations of physical tension.

_Defects of pure multiplicity._

Sec. 26. This long analysis will be a sufficient illustration of the
power of multiplicity in uniformity; we may now proceed to point
out the limitations inherent in this form. The most obvious one is
that of monotony; a file of soldiers or an iron railing is impressive
in its way, but cannot long entertain us, nor hold us with that depth
of developing interest, with which we might study a crowd or a
forest of trees.

The tendency of monotony is double, and in two directions
deadens our pleasure. When the repeated impressions are acute,
and cannot be forgotten in their endless repetition, their monotony
be