14 THE HUMAN BODY. 



a flower, the plumage and flight of a bird, the stately tread 

 of some huge mammal, but nothing impresses us so much 

 as the human form. It is not from sympathy with beings 

 of our own species that we find them more beautiful; the 

 judgment that we pronounce upon their beauty is not due 

 to the inclination of one sex to the other; this sympathy and 

 this inclination are common to most of the superior animals, 

 but man alone appreciates the difference between individuals 

 as between species; it belongs to him only to class them 

 according to their merits, and to distinguish perfection from 

 deformity ; he alone possesses the sentiment of the beautiful, 

 that faculty which permits him to admire the Creator in his 

 works, and givqs him the right to place himself in the first 

 rank of animated beings. 



The plastic arts receive their most elevated inspirations 

 from the human form, and it is to the efforts of painters 

 and sculptors to reproduce it in its perfection that we owe 

 the treasures of our museums. It is often said of these 

 master-pieces that they are the ideal of beauty, but we are not 

 to understand from that something superior to nature itself. 

 The artist may appreciate the relative beauty of the models 

 which offer themselves to his eyes, but in ceasing to follow 

 nature and in endeavouring to become her superior, he could 

 only bring forth an imaginary product, a monstrosity. Ana- 

 tomy, should be his first study; if he forgets its precepts he 

 becomes incorrect, like the musician who offends against the 

 laws of harmony. The ideal is not therefore a forin more 

 perfect, it is the perfection of the natural form itself which the 

 arlist strives to attain, either by drawing inspiration from a 

 single model, or by uniting in a single figure all the details which 

 he has borrowed from different individuals. Far from seeking 

 to surpass nature he feels that his hand is powerless to render 

 completely the impression which his practised eye receives. 



Within certain limits he may nevertheless exaggerate or 

 weaken some detail of form, and that too without ceasing to 

 imitate nature, who shows him in this manner how he may 

 embody the character and the physiognomy. The painter 

 and the sculptor therefore may rightly allow themselves a 

 certain latitude in lines and proportions; it is a poetical 



