ARE SCIENCE AND ART ANTAGONISTIC ? 361 



The art most compromised in modern times is sculpture. Victor 

 Cousin said, before M. Renan, that there could be no " modern sculpt- 

 ure" with the manners of our days. Admitting that sculpture is 

 declining, the progress of science has had nothing to do with produc- 

 ing this condition. On the other hand, ancient sculpture lived by sci- 

 ence. The ancient artists were more learned in the technics of their 

 art than modem artists. In the renascence, Leonardo da Vinci and 

 Michael Angelo were great scientific geniuses. Instead of killing 

 sculpture, it is modern science which will finally be capable of rejuve- 

 nating it. Nothing, for example, has been of more value to art than 

 the investigations of such men as Darwin upon the expression of the 

 emotions. Ruskin has written that the sculptor can not be allowed to 

 lack the knowledge or neglect the expression of anatomical detail ; 

 but that which is the end to the anatomist is for the sculptor the 

 means. Detail is to him not simply a matter of curiosity or a subject 

 of investigation, but the final element of expression and grace. The 

 change of manners has not produced and will not produce the disap- 

 pearance of statuary. We may not have another Venus of Milo or 

 Hermes of Praxiteles. But no one can assert that the sculptor may 

 not become capable of embodying in stone ideas and poetic emotions 

 which the Greeks, with all the plastic perfection they attained, could 

 not translate or even conceive. Praxiteles could not have imagined 

 Michael Angelo's " Night " or " Aurora," any more than Michael An- 

 gelo could have executed some of the works of Praxiteles. 



Painting enjoys a still greater promise of vitality and advance- 

 ment. Color is eternal. No Newton, with his explanations of the 

 aerial arch of the rainbow, will be able to break it up or to do away 

 with it. The sense of color has even grown since antiquity. The 

 Greeks were w^ithout words to describe a considerable number of 

 colors which we distinguish ; and their artists had certainly not as 

 fine perceptions of color as Titian or Delacroix. Mankind seems to 

 have been all the time growing more sensible to the language of 

 tints, and to all the plays of light. Here, certainly, is an open road 

 for art. 



The language of sounds is likewise inexhaustible. The idea of 

 melody responds to a particular mental and moral condition of man 

 which changes from age to age ; it will, therefore, change and make 

 new advances with man himself. A class of musicians like Chopin, 

 Schumann, and Berlioz have expressed feelings congenial to our epoch, 

 and corresponding with a condition of the nervous system which Han- 

 del, Bach, and Haydn could hardly have understood. Mr. Spencer 

 has shown that music is a development of accent made by the voice 

 under the influence of passion. The variations of tone, the modula- 

 tions natural to the human voice, grow refined as the nervous organi- 

 zation becomes more delicate. Musical melody following the varia- 

 tions of human accents is capable of taking on as many shades as 



