reacquired; and this time must be long in proportion as the waste
has been great.



ii Explanation of Climax, Antithesis, and Anticlimax.

61. Keeping in mind these general truths, we shall be in
a condition to understand certain causes of effect in composition
now to be considered. Every perception received, and every conception
realized, entailing some amount of waste--or, as Liebig would say,
some change of matter in the brain; and the efficiency of the
faculties subject to this waste being thereby temporarily, though
often but momentarily, diminished; the resulting partial inability
must affect the acts of perception and conception that immediately
succeed. And hence we may expect that the vividness with which
images are realized will, in many cases, depend on the order of
their presentation: even when one order is as convenient to the
understanding as the other.

62. There are sundry facts which alike illustrate this, and are
explained by it. Climax is one of them. The marked effect obtained
by placing last the most striking of any series of images, and the
weakness--often the ludicrous weakness--produced by reversing this
arrangement, depends on the general law indicated. As immediately
after looking at the sun we cannot perceive the light of a fire,
while by looking at the fire first and the sun afterwards we
can perceive both; so, after receiving a brilliant, or weighty,
or terrible thought, we cannot appreciate a less brilliant, less
weighty, or less terrible one, while, by reversing the order, we