SCIENCE AND FINE ART. 757 



more frequently at this time because the iron constructions of 

 the later period give more occasion than stone structures for its 

 exhibition. The change of material has, according to Anton 

 Kallmann's expression, produced a changed statics of feeling.* 

 In the Eiffel Tower mechanical beauty is in conflict with plastic 

 want of beauty, and in this reveals itself for the first time to 

 many who would not otherwise have had occasion to perceive its 

 effect. The new Forth Bridge is certainly not without it. Yet 

 there is no question that even in stone buildings, besides many 

 traditions and conventional tastes, the pleasure in definite forms, 

 in the gentle swelling and tapering of Doric pillars upward, their 

 expansion into the echinus and abacus, and in the profile of the 

 architectural members, depends on mechanical beauty, as well as 

 on the absence from the agreeable impression they make of the 

 repulsive, which the senseless ornamentation of vulgar styles in- 

 flicts upon the refined taste. 



Mechanical beauty plays a part even in the forms of organic 

 nature, to the degree that much that is repulsive to the untutored 

 eye delights the educated eye and fills it with admiration. That 

 it is which the anatomist is pleased to discern in the structure of 

 the bones, particularly of the joints ; which on other grounds than 

 its contradiction of the way the ancients painted death, makes a 

 death-dance appear repulsive to him; which Benvenuto Cellini, 

 to his credit, comprehended in a skeleton ; and which, if only our 

 understanding was adequate, every organized form would illus- 

 trate to us even in the aquarium and under the microscope. 

 Even in the building up of the plant structure. Dr. Schwendener 

 has demonstrated an economical adaptation of parts, characteristic 

 of the organization, of which we can discern something in the 

 sight of a broadly rooted oak pushing its massive head up toward 

 air and light. 



Mechanical beauty comes into consideration in the contempla- 

 tion of animal forms, particularly of beasts of prey. A greyhound 

 and a bull-dog, a thoroughbred race-horse and a brewer's draft- 

 horse, a South Down and a merino sheep, an Algau Mountain 

 steer and a Dutch milch-cow, are all handsome, though some 

 among them, like the bull-dog and the Percheron horse, may 

 appear ugly to a stranger ; for in all of them the type of the 

 species is modified for some adaptation. 



Although science can not, as we have seen, inspire art in its 

 departing life, nor communicate a new impulse to it, it can still 

 afford it an inestimable service of another kind, by increasing its 

 insight and improving its technical means, teaching it useful 

 rules, and guarding it against errors. We are not thinking here 



* Kunstbestrebungen der Gegenwart. Berlin, 1842, p. 71. 



