ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 115 



curves and twists of spirals, cycloids, and circles innumerable, are 

 all the patterns of things, the letters, the copy-book. Tlie clay 

 and the potters' tools are pen, ink, and paper. The lines of least 

 resistance are partly in the hand of the potter, indeed, as Mr. 

 Holmes has shown ; they are partly in the muscles of the eye, as Mr. 

 Hartt has said ; but further back than all this is the force of usage 

 and inheritance. 



If we hang a hat intentionally on a peg eleven- times, the twelfth 

 time it will hang itself up. This is the universal and beneficent 

 law of the passage of painful voluntariness into semi-automa- 

 tism which follows the frequent repetition of any act whatsoever. 

 We are pleased with certain muscular movements which have been 

 oft repeated. There is no doubt, therefore, that the eye accustomed 

 to certain outlines, the brain accustomed to certain consecutive 

 impressions, are pleased with that which has become semi-automatic 

 and habitual. We know that such tendencies are strengthened by 

 inheritance, for we have here the application of a universal law 

 of heredity. 



Dr. Frank Baker said that Hartt seemed in some respects to ig- 

 nore certain physiological laws in discussing the movements of the 

 eye, and to have too little considered inventive geniuses. The 

 source of art must be sought for in the brain that controls the eye ; 

 in the association of nerve cells that prompt the movement of mus- 

 cles. Taste may follow and accept suggestions from natural forms, 

 but art is not imitative, for, having its source in invention, it gives 

 something nature does not. 



Mr. Frank H. Gushing said that Hartt apparently did not try 

 to ascertain what the eye might develop, but having certain forms 

 at hand reasoned therefrom. The speaker had found in his studies 

 of ceramic art in the southwest that decoration in basketry had 

 long preceded that of pottery, and that the resulting forms might 

 be generally attributed to adventition, and taste might have its 

 principal source in the environment. 



Eighty-Eighth Regular Meeting, January 6, 1884. 



Major J. W. Powell, President, in the Chair. 



The Secretary of the Council made the following announcements : 



The election of Dr. J. H. Yarnall, as an active member of 



