58. A few paragraphs only, can be devoted to a second division
of our subject that here presents itself. To pursue in detail the
laws of effect, as applying to the larger features of composition,
would carry us beyond our limits. But we may briefly indicate a
further aspect of the general principle hitherto traced out, and
hint a few of its wider applications.

59. Thus far, then, we have considered only those causes of
force in language which depend upon economy of the mental _energies:_
we have now to glance at those which depend upon economy of the
mental _sensibilities._ Questionable though this division may be
as a psychological one, it will yet serve roughly to indicate the
remaining field of investigation. It will suggest that besides
considering the extent to which any faculty or group of faculties
is tasked in receiving a form of words and realizing its contained
idea, we have to consider the state in which this faculty or group
of faculties is left; and how the reception of subsequent sentences
and images will be influenced by that state. Without going at length
into so wide a topic as the exercise of faculties and its reactive
effects, it will be sufficient here to call to mind that every
faculty (when in a state of normal activity) is most capable at
the outset; and that the change in its condition, which ends in
what we term exhaustion, begins simultaneously with its exercise.
This generalization, with which we are all familiar in our bodily
experiences, and which our daily language recognizes as true of
the mind as a whole, is equally true of each mental power, from
the simplest of the senses to the most complex of the sentiments.
If we hold a flower to the nose for long, we become insensible to
its scent. We say of a very brilliant flash of lightning that it