736 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Just imagine, if you can, the condition and position of the organs 

 in this case. Let it be all right to the point where the horse joins the 

 man ; the excretions of the man, with his mass of intestines and other 

 organs of digestion and secretion, must pass through the chest of the 

 horse, filled with this creature's lungs and heart and great blood-vessels, 

 involving another set of digestive and excretory organs, another form 

 of skeleton, with the muscles, limbs, and skin of the horse. The man 

 must eat for the horse, as his is the only mouth, which would necessi- 

 tate a diet repugnant even to the most fanatic vegetarian. We natu- 

 rally inquire if he must also breathe for the horse ; there must be double 

 lungs, double heart, double stomach, double intestines, double body, six 

 limbs, long tail, hoofs and hands — a monster considerably worse than 

 the single-bodied but six-limbed art-angels above alluded to. If we ac- 

 cept Hercules and Achilles, we can not accept the Centaur Chiron, their 

 instructor. 



Among other monsters created by the ancients and adopted by the 

 moderns is Pan, the chief of the rural deities, with his attendant Fauns 

 and Satyrs, having the head, arms, and body of a man, and the hairy- 

 lower limbs and hoofs of a goat. How they managed to walk erect on 

 such feet, and preserve their center of gravity where it ought to be, to 

 say nothing of the incompatibility of the human pelvis and the hircine 

 legs in bones and muscles, is a puzzle for the physiologist. The fact 

 that the theologic devil is usually represented very much like the god 

 Pan, with all his inconsistencies and impossibilities, shows at once the 

 origin and the absurdity of the idea ; to his extreme ugliness, exciting 

 a panic fear, is doubtless due the selection of his figure to represent 

 the theologic spirit of evil, upon whose existence and domain many a 

 spiritual panic has rested. 



Neptune, the god of the seas, was represented in an immense shell 

 drawn by impossible sea-horses, and surrounded by equally impossible 

 Tritons, half man and half dolphin, and Nereids, half woman and half 

 fish. 



There is a large class of ancient artistic conceptions, freely copied 

 by the moderns, not anatomically monstrous, but physically and physio- 

 logically impossible — such as Atlas supporting the globe on his shoul- 

 ders; caryatides, female figures used by architects to support roofs and 

 heavy weights ; and other similar conceptions, painful to look at if we 

 apply the tests of reason and common sense. I would say here that, 

 in mere ornamentation, conventional representations suggestive of the 

 intended image may be legitimately and artistically used with good 

 efi'ect; but if they are contrary to nature, whether on a candlestick or 

 a church tower, they must belong to the lowe7' spheres of art ; and no 

 metaphysical subtilty, no assumption of sesthetic culture, no aspirations 

 after an imaginary and impossible ideal, ought, in this nineteenth cen- 

 tury, to raise them to the highest position in art. 



As the so-called ideals of the ancients must have had some things in 



