H LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



walking and hard climbing, not only the percepts of form which were 

 associated with extension of the arms or position of the grasping hand, 

 but also percepts of shapes and spaces which are associated, perhaps 

 quite unconsciously, with a cramped and stooping posture or with a 

 fine freedom of movement, because the emotion felt on beholding the 

 shapes, and recalled in connection with them, is the same as that re- 

 ceived through the particular muscular attitude which they recall.* 

 When any such percept comes to the mind, the associated muscular 

 motion is recalled, sometimes indeed so vividly that the motion itself 

 is automatically reproduced, — for instance, the wide-spread arms of 

 a man describing a vast open landscape. And the sensations neces- 

 sarily accompanying this actual motion or muscular tension intensify 

 the emotion coming from the percept. There are, of course, a great 

 many percepts which are not themselves capable of direct motor ex- 

 pression, but under these circumstances the necessity for some expres- 

 sion finds vent in movements or muscular tensions, the emotional 

 concomitant of which is similar to the emotional state which is being 

 expressed. Contempt, for instance, may be expressed by a wry face 

 which more directly represents the perception of a bad odor. A man 

 looking at a picture of a row of columns in perspective may say, with 

 appropriate gestures, "They grow smaller and smaller and smaller." 

 He perceives the spatial sequence in the picture through the temporal 

 sequence of the shifting of his own attention, and this he expresses by 

 a temporal sequence of words and movements. 



In their associational appeal to emotion, the senses of hearing, 

 taste, and smell are powerful. Although they are at a disadvan- 

 tage in comparison with the sense of sight in the amount of direct 

 information regarding an observed object which they can furnish to the 

 mind, still, and it may be for this very reason, the emotional effect of 

 sounds and particularly of odors is frequently very striking. The smell 

 of a certain flower may recall infallibly a certain emotion and perhaps 

 a certain place, because the smell stirs in the mind few other memories 

 on which the attention may fall. These simpler impressions are by 

 no means to be neglected by the designer. The scent of flowers, the 

 song of birds, the humming of bees, although they do not intrude them- 



* The well-known theory of Lipps as interpreted by d'Udine, in L'Art et le Geste. 



