[Footnote 85: "Irritating" as I shall use the word has no hedonic or algedonic significance.] THE ÆSTHETICS OF REPEATED SPACE FORMS BY ELEANOR HARRIS ROWLAND Part I The object of this paper is to discover some of the sources of our pleasure in repeated space forms, and the laws which govern this repetition. The repetition of an object, and its regular recurrence subject to certain possible variations, is one of the basal principles of art, and of architecture in particular. It is necessary at the outset to define our use of the word _repetition_ more exactly, for there are obviously different meanings of the word, which may lead to confusion. 1. The term repetition may be applied to the existence of any two objects similar to each other, whether they are near together or widely sundered. Our pleasure in such a repetition would be merely that of re-seeing and recognizing the two as counterparts of each other. This kind of repetition I call _conceptual_, for it requires only that the memory-picture of the object be held in mind and the two recognized as similar when met again. This is not the kind of repetition which I have in mind, and I shall never use the word in this sense during the discussion. 2. In any one work of art there may be some feature repeated, some motif which is taken up and carried out in different ways throughout the whole, and these features we recognize as having an orderly relation to one another in the unity. This might be termed repetition of _content_, and be applied to the recurrence of some type of decoration over a window or a peculiar arch taken up in various ways throughout a cathedral. I do not use the word in this sense, but limit it still further. 3. By _repetition_ is meant during this discussion the regular recurrence of an object, and an equally regular recurrence of intervals. The repeated object must come at uniform intervals, and this restricts us to the consideration of that repetition alone which consists of recurrence at regular intervals of some object more or less beautiful in itself, and the description of the nature of our æsthetic feeling in experiencing such a series. Although this discussion is divided into the two divisions of _experiments_ and _analysis_ of architectural examples, and the experiments are described first, the investigation was not carried out separately in this order. The two went along together, the art-analysis suggesting experiments, and the experiments in turn throwing light on the analysis. The two parts of the discussion are kept separate merely for the convenience of the reader, and in the experimental discussion all allusions to the art-illustrations are excluded in order to avoid confusion. In reality the two went hand in hand, but the connection between the experiments and art-analysis will be reserved for the latter half of the paper.