8 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of form an aesthetic value by reason of associated feelings and ideas. 

 This second great factor in visual form has received a fair amount of 

 attention, and it does not call for more than a hasty reference here. 



C. Associated Factor. So far as forms are strictly non-imitative, 

 and not determined by any needs of fitness to some recognized practi- 

 cal end, the associated factor must reside in certain comparatively ab- 

 stract qualities. These are in the main resolvable into two classes 

 those aesthetic aspects which dej)end on association with touch and 

 movement, and those which involve an idea of human skill.* 



If tactual and muscular experiences (other than those of the ocular 

 muscles) are organically embodied into our customary visual percep- 

 tions, we shall be prepared to find that the pleasurable side of visual 

 form embraces elements drawn from this region. In truth, all the 

 valued features of form may be said to involve such extraneous experi- 

 ences. The superior importance of the vertical and horizontal direc- 

 tions, the specially restful character of the horizontal, and the aspiring 

 aspect of the vertical, the voluptuous nature of the curve as opposed 

 to the severity of the straight line, point to the deeper and fuller 

 experiences of movement, muscular exertion, and repose, which we 

 obtain apart from the eye. Even the value of bilateral symmetry for 

 the eye may owe something to that well-marked rhythmic contrast of 

 right and left, which the movements of the tactual organ yield to us. 

 Again, it is easy to see that the various charm of distance, the wooing 

 character of the remote and retiring, and the stimulating aspect of the 

 near and prominent (reflected in a degree in the different effects of 

 convex and concave surface), and the sublime suggestions of great 

 height, all draw their material from experiences of the greater motor 

 organs. So, too, our larger muscular experiences, with their new feel- 

 ing of resistance and distinct sense of force, furnish elements to our 

 appreciation of fragile grace appearing to ask for support, and of all 

 stability of form. Lastly, the residue of tactile experience (alone or 

 in combination with muscular sense) are traceable plainly enough in 

 the charm of smooth and rounded surface, of that characteristic quality 

 of sculpture which Mr. Ruskin has well called its " bossiness." f 



The second class of aesthetically valuable suggestions in the visual 

 perception of form are those of human skill. Man is a constructive 

 animal, and his habits of construction lead him, as Mr. Grant Allen 

 has observed, in the essay already spoken of, to view all forms in 

 nature, as well as in art, in relation to the degree of skill needed to 

 produce them. J Thus a perfectly straight line, even in nature, irre- 



* A third class of such general and abstract associations might be constituted by the 

 symbolic aspects or the moral and religious suggestions of form (as that of moral recti- 

 tude, infinity, etc.), but these are too vague and uncertain to require notice here. 



f Herder calls sculpture the art of touch in contradistinction to painting, the art of sight. 



\ This idea of skill will, in the case of the useful arts, take the form of an intuition 

 of a nice adjustment of means to ends, and so become a component element in the sense 

 of fitness. 



