This law of degrees, pushed a little farther, amounts to detachment and
separation, and gives birth to contrast and comparison. This is one
aspect in which the law manifests itself in the individual. The chairs
and the pictures must come out from the wall before we can see them. The
tree must detach itself from the landscape, either by form or color,
before it becomes cognizable to us. There must be irregularity and
contrast. Our bodily senses relate us to things on this principle; they
require something brought out and disencumbered from the mass. The eye
cannot see where there is no shade, nor the hand feel where there is
no inequality of surface, nor the palate taste where there is no
predominance of flavor, nor the ear hear where there is no silence.
Montaigne has the following pertinent passage, which also comes
under this law:--"Whoever shall suppose a pack-thread equally strong
throughout, it is utterly impossible it should break; for where will you
have the breaking to begin? And that it should break altogether is not
in Nature."
The palpableness and availableness of an object are in proportion as it
is separated from its environments. We use water as a motive power by
detaching a part from the whole and placing ourselves in the way of its
tendency to unite again. All force and all motion are originated on
this principle. It is by gravity that we walk and move and overcome
resistance, and, in short, perform all mechanical action; yet the
condition is that we destroy the settled equilibrium of things for the
moment, and avail ourselves of the impulse that restores it again.
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