180 THE LAW OF THE FORCE. 



growing metamorphosis of age, they were also attend- 

 ant upon fuller experience and a greater insight into his 

 science. Thus his study of the Nautilus, and numerous 

 shell-forms, inclined him to adopt the logarithmic spiral"' 

 as a teleological chart in nature's beautiful designs. 

 As Newton, from the geometric forms, made out the 

 law of the force, Goodsir conceived it probable that 

 " the logarithmic spiral would be found to be the law 

 at work in the increase of organic bodies." Then his 

 consortings with D. E. Hay,t who rested his aesthetic 

 lines on harmonic angles led to his more careful com- 

 parison of the skeleton with the human form ; and this 

 new inquiry elicited the belief that the measure- 

 ments of limbs and regions are based on aliquot parts of 

 an angle. The harmonic angles had their day, and 

 vanished before the light of fresh observation — multi- 

 plied and re-multiplied to meet the requirements of a 

 new ideality. 



Apparently dissatisfied with the ancient mytho- 

 logical doctrines that placed a globe on the head of 

 Atlas, and the beautiful analogies in the same direction 

 advanced by Cicero (De Natura Deorum), and finding 

 " the cellular theory " and others that he had helped to 

 build up insufficient, he sought another foundation to 

 the organic architecture, and discovered, as he be- 



* Sir John Leslie was the first to indicate the organic aspect of the logarith- 

 mic spiral which he observed, — " exactly resembles the general form and the 

 elegant septa of the Nautilus. " (Geometrical Analysis and Geometry of Curve 

 Lines. Edinburgh, 1821, p. 438.) 



f Vide " The Geometric Beauty of the Human Figure defined" by D. R. 

 Bay, F.R.S.E., published by Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh, 1851. 



