272 THE FACT OF BEAUTY 



sons. Thus an ellipse with its axes in the proportion 5 : 3 

 has been recorded as very pleasing since 300 b.c. ; it is the 

 golden or divine section ; it leads on to the mystic pentagram. 

 But why it is more pleasing than other ellipses, or than a 

 rectangle, who can tell us ? The eye registers certain forms 

 with pleasure; there are lines that flow and shapes that sing. 

 The approximate logarithmic spirals, so common throughout 

 organic nature, for instance in horns and cones, in shells 

 and buds, are peculiarly pleasing. 



Perhaps this depends in part on racial education. For 

 racially we were brought up in the country, and grew up 

 more appreciative of rounded surfaces than of sharp corners. 

 When we get beyond the domain of the inorganic, Nature 

 is on the whole a world of curves. We were .brought up 

 on curves. Perhaps certain dominant associations of very 

 early origin linked curves and pleasure together. Even our 

 photographic plate — our retina — is a beautiful curved sur- 

 face, and this may have something to do with our dislike 

 of the angular. 



Among organisms we like best those with flowing lines, 

 which repeat one another rhythmically; which conspire, as 

 Lessing said, to one effect; which are readily summed up; 

 which compose. We are apt to be less pleased with asym- 

 metrical animals (like snails), top-heavy animals (like horn- 

 bills), disproportionately lanky animals (like ostriches), not 

 that any of these are to be artistically apologised for. We 

 are least inclined to admire creatures whose architectural 

 plan is difficult to grasp, which are distracting conundrums, 

 or those which are too prolonged and monotonous in their 

 repetition (like millipedes), or those which startle our per- 

 ceptual conventionalities (like the Indian Ocean fish which 

 has a window right through it). But our point is simply 



