 A careful reading suggests that Hume neither separates the fine arts from the other arts nor places sympathy at the center of aesthetic response. From the start, he recognizes multiple reasons for approbation. He hypothesizes a general but not universal connection between artificial and natural forms and the appearance of utility (T, 195). He offers examples of basic design in painting (T, 364–65) and of “unharmonious” literature (EPM, 224). Poetry has an obvious formal element. Reading begins with impressions of dark shapes arranged in lines on white pages. Readers silently associate the printed text with aural ideas (the voice of a human speaker). Through imaginative association, literary forms have expressive human characters that elicit sympathetic pleasure and pain. Yet a reader who is not engaged by the subject matter may still find value in the “style and ingenuity of the composition” (T, 98). Because Hume does not operate with assumptions about the uniqueness of fine art, his theory cuts across the distinction between fine art and rhetoric. Good design and eloquence are beautiful and desirable in all artifacts and speech, not merely in fine art (E).