78o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



together with the adaptations of animals in other directions, has re- 

 ceived in recent years much merited attention, chiefly in behalf of 

 development theories. But, whether these remarkable adaptations of 

 animals to peculiar food and surroundings be the result of variation 

 and development, or of special creation, they are equally wonderful. 



THE PLEASURE OF YISUAL FORM. 



By JAMES SULLY. 



I. 



IT is often said that the j)leasure of form as contrasted with that 

 of color is an intellectual pleasure arising from the perception of 

 relations (unity in variety, proportion, etc.). In a sense this is true, 

 for, as I hope to show in the course of this essay, the appreciation 

 of form as compared with the enjoyment of color is saturated, so to 

 speak, with the more refined sort of intellectual activity. But the 

 fact that certain varieties of the arts of form, more especially outline 

 drawing, dispense with the pleasure of color, and even with that of 

 light and shade, suggests that the pleasure of visual form includes a 

 sensuous element as well 3,8 an intellectual. It will be my special aim 

 in this paper to bring out this somewhat neglected factor in visual 

 gratification, and to indicate, so far as it is possible, its importance 

 among the several factors, which together compose what we call 

 beauty of form. 



In pursuing this inquiry, it will be best to disregard the sensuous 

 enjoyment of light and shade. For our present purpose, differences 

 of light and shade are merely means of appreciating form. Again, 

 it will be advisable to include all varieties of form as determined by 

 the three dimensions of space. It is true that beauty of form, so far 

 as it rests on purely visual feelings, is largely that of surface relations 

 or of space in two dimensions. Yet it will be found to be practically 

 impossible to treat of this apart from that other kind of beauty of 

 form which embraces the charm of distance and perspective, and the 

 characteristic attractiveness of solid shapes. As to the order of treat- 

 ment, I shall set out with the elements of pleasure which are obvi- 

 ously direct — that is, arise from the activity of the visual organ — and 

 trace the process of building up a more complex intellectual gratifica- 

 tion on these. After that I shall pass to the indirect or associated 

 elements of enjoyment. The simplest kind of visual appreciation of 

 form is that of linear relations. For reasons to be spoken of pres- 

 ently, a straight line is the natural element of visible form, and the 

 development of the visual perception of form (regarded as indepen- 

 dent of that of the tactual) proceeds by a kind of synthesis of linear 



