ON THE RELATION OF NATURAL SCIENCE TO ART. 667 
breeds, is greatly influenced by mechanical beauty. The greyhound 
and the bulldog, the full-bred race horse and the brewer’s dray horse, 
the Southdown and the Merino sheep, the Alpine cattle and the Dutch 
mileh cow, all are beautiful in their kind, even though a bulldog or a 
Percheron may appear ugly to the uninitiated, because in each the type 
of the species has been modified to the utmost degree of fitness. 
Though science is unable, as we have seen, to check the occasional 
decline of art and inspire it with fresh vigor, yet it renders invaluable 
services of a different kind to artists by increasing their insight, im- 
proving their technical means, teaching them useful rules, and preserv- 
ing them from mistakes. I do not allude to anything so primitive as 
the manufacture of colors or the technique of casting in bronze; the 
less So, as curiously enough our modern colors are less durable than 
those of entirely unscientific ages, and the unsurpassed thinness of the 
vasting of Greek bronzes is regarded as a proof of their authenticity. 
Nor does it seem necessary to recall the notorious advantages of this 
kind for which art is indebted to science. Linear perspective was in- 
vented by Leonardo and Diirer—artists themselves. It was followed 
by the laws of reflection—unknown to ancient painters, as would ap- 
pear from the Pompeian frescoes of Narcissus—and by the geometrical 
construction of shadows. The rainbow, which had better not be at- 
tempted at all, has been sinned against cruelly and persistently by 
artists, in spite of optics. Staties furnished the rules of equilibrium 
so essential to sculptors. Aérial perspective, again, owes its develop- 
ment to painters chiefly of northern climates. 
But to this fundamental stock of knowledge the progress of science 
has added various new and important acquisitions, which philosophers, 
some of first-rate ability, have endeavored to place within the reach of 
artists. The great masters of bygone ages were taught by instinet to 
combine the right colors, as women of taste, according to John Miiller, 
always know how to blend the right shades in their dress; and Oriental 
carpet weavers have not been behindhand with them in that respect. 
But the reason why they unconsciously succeed was not revealed till 
the elder Darwins, Goethe, Purkinye, John Miiller, and others called 
into existence a subjective physiology of the sense of sight. A mem- 
ber of this academy, Prof. von Briicke, in his “‘ Physiology of Colors” * 
and “Fragments from the Theory of the Fine Arts in relation to Indus- 
trial Art,”+ treats these subjects with such intimate knowledge as could 
only be obtained by one who enjoyed the rare advantage of combining 
physiological learning with an artistic education acquired in his father’s 
studio. In France Chevreul pursued similar aims. Even Prof. von 
Helmholtz, in his popular lectures, has devoted his profound knowledge 
of physiological opties to the service of art, which already owes him 
important revelations on the nature of musical harmony. Amongst 
*2d edition, Leipzig, 1887. 
t Leipzig, 1877. 
