SCIENCE AND FINE ART. 25 



of the skater still closer to those of a flying, soaring being than 

 those of the swimmer ? More pleasing to me is Herr Exner's re- 

 mark, which I have also made myself, that under especially 

 favorable bodily conditions we occasionally have in dreams the 

 inspiring illusion of soaring and flying. Thus 



..." in each soul is born the pleasure 



Of yearning onward, upward, and away, 

 When o'er our heads, lost in the vaulted azure, 



The lark sends down his flickering lay; 

 When over crags and piny highlands 



The poising eagle slowly soars, 

 And over plains and lakes and islands 



The crane sails by to other shores." 



Who would not ever and ever again with Faust strive to reach 

 the setting sun and to see the still world in eternal twilight at 

 his feet ? But what we should be glad to do, we are glad to hear 

 of in song and to see in pictures before our eyes. The longing 

 to rise in the ether, to travel in the sky, and similar visions, 

 still come to the help of the old delusion of mankind concerning 

 the heavenly abode of the blessed away up in the starry canopy, 

 to which Giordano Bruno put an end; but not so completely 

 but that we sometimes fail to realize how terrible a journey in 

 endless, airless, frigid space would be to us, in which even a swift, 

 steadily flying eagle could only after long years light upon a 

 planet of doubtful habitability. 



What, now, can art do for science in return for so many and 

 various services ? Aside from external matters, like the represen- 

 tation of natural objects, it does not offer much of a different 

 character from the reaction of the painter's experience in the 

 mixing and combination of colors, on the doctrine of colors, an 

 effect which is indeed not comparable with that of the retroac- 

 tion of music on acoustics. The ancients had a canon of the pro- 

 portions of the human body, attributed to Polycletes, which, how- 

 ever, as Herr Merkel has lately charged * applied, to the disad- 

 vantage of many an ancient work of art, only to the grown figure ; 

 a deficiency which Gottfried Schadow first systematically reme- 

 died. This theory has lately become the foundation of a very 

 promising branch of anthropology anthropometry in its applica- 

 tion to the races of men. 



If we extend our idea of art so as to include artistic thought 

 and creation, there will not then be wanting relations and tran- 

 sitions between artist and naturalist, how far soever their paths 

 may diverge. Yet it is not certain that an artistic conception of 

 its problems would redound wholly to the good of natural sci- 



* Deutsche Piundschau, 1888, vol. lvi, p. 414. 



