It is not enough to present a great many objects to the soul; they must be presented with order: for then we remember what we have seen, and we begin to imagine what we shall see; our mind congratulates itself on its own extent and penetration: but in a work where there is no order, the mind, every moment, finds that order, into which it wishes to put things, quite embroiled. The series which the author has formed, and that which we make to ourselves, clash together; the mind retains nothing, foresees nothing: it is mortified by the confusion of its ideas, by the ignorance in which it remains; it is in vain fatigued, and can enjoy no pleasure: on which account, when the design is not to express or shew confusion, they always put a sort of order in confusion itself: thus painters make a group of their figures; thus those who paint battles, place, upon the most conspicuous place of the picture, those objects which the eye ought to distinguish, and what is disordered and confused in the most remote and least obvious place.