138 APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



CCLXXXVII 



Scientific observation tell us that living birds form 

 a group or class of animals, through which a certain 

 form of skeleton runs ; and that this kind of skeleton 

 differs in certain well-defined characters from that of 

 mammals. On the other hand, if anyone utterly 

 ignorant of osteology, but endowed with the artistic 

 sense of form, were set before a bird skeleton and a 

 mammalian skeleton, he would at once see that the 

 two were similar and yet different. Very likely he 

 would be unable to give clear expression to his just 

 sense of the differences and resemblances ; perhaps 

 he would make great mistakes in detail if he tried. 

 Nevertheless, he would be able to draw from memory 

 a couple of sketches, in which all the salient points of 

 likeness and unlikeness would be reproduced with 

 sufficient accuracy. The mere osteologist, however 

 accurately he might put the resemblances and 

 differences into words, if he lacked the artistic 

 visualising faculty, might be hopelessly incompetent 

 to perform any such feat ; lost in details, it might not 

 even occur to him that it was possible ; or, still more 

 probably, the habit of looking for differences might 

 impair the perception of resemblances. 



Under these circumstances, the artist might be 

 led to higher and broader views, and thus be more 

 useful to the progress of science than the osteo- 

 logical expert. Not that the former attains the 

 higher truth by a different method ; for the way of 

 reaching truth is one and indivisible. Whether he 

 knows it or not, the artist has made a generalization 

 from two sets of facts, which is perfectly scientific 

 in form ; and trastworthy so far as it rests upon the 

 direct perception of similarities and dissimilarities. 

 The only peculiarity of the artistic application of 

 scientific method lies in the artist's power of visual- 

 izing the result of his mental processes, of embodying 

 the facts of resemblance in a visible "type," and of 

 showing the manner in which the differences may 



