 Addison distinguishes two classes of pleasures of the imagination: primary pleasures, which derive from images of objects currently present to sight; and secondary pleasures, which derive from images of objects currently absent from sight and so called up before the mind in some other way. He then divides primary pleasures into three classes: those proceeding from the sight of what is great (or sublime); those proceeding from the sight of what is novel; and those proceeding from the sight of what is beautiful. A great object is one so large as to strain the imagination’s capacity to render it: its apprehension flings the mind into a “pleasing astonishment” and a “delightful stillness and amazement” (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412). A novel object is one new or strange to their viewer; its apprehension “fills the soul with an agreeable surprise” and “gratifies its curiosity” (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412). A beautiful object is either an object of sexual attraction or one possessing a “gaiety or variety of colors” or “a symmetry or proportion of parts” (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412); the apprehension of beautiful objects strikes the mind with a “secret [i.e., inexplicable] satisfaction and complacency” (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412).