Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/213



If any one were to say that the scenery of the Nile Valley from Cairo to Assuân is monotonous, I wonder what would be the proper reply to him. For that matter, indeed, one may well wonder what is the proper reply to anybody who says that anything is monotonous. What is monotony? Is it a quality of the object perceived or of the percipient subject? Is it in the seer or in the seen? If we endeavour to assign an objective origin to it we soon find ourselves in the cleft-stick of the alternative conclusions either that all is monotony or that nothing is monotonous. The waking life of the eye, for instance, is simply an endless succession of visual perceptions; and what monotony could be more