THE FINE ARTS. 3 
in which it is performed; for man can effect a representation in space and 
time only by the motion of his own body. The arts which represent in 
space alone, those of design, make use either of geometric or of organic 
forms. 
Geometric forms may certainly be the object of art properly so called, 
since they may be elaborated according to the rules of art, and thus are 
produced utensils, vessels, dwellings, and places of assembly. This branch 
of the fine arts is called Tectonics, and its highest grade of development 
Architectonics ; its peculiar character results from adaptedness to a purpose 
combined with artistic representation. But those arts which have to do 
with organic forms, are essentially imitative and are based on studies of 
nature. They are: 1, Plastics or Sculpture, by which the forms themselves 
are presented corporeally; and, 2, Design or Graphics, which present on a 
surface, by the use of light and shade, a semblance of corporeal forms. 
The aid of color may be resorted to in both these arts; but in plastics its 
use becomes less advantageous as there is an endeavor to imitate nature, and 
under such circumstances the want of actual life makes itself so much the 
more sensibly and unpleasantly felt. This too is the reason of the unfavora- 
ble and almost repulsive effect produced on most persons by a collection of 
wax figures. When color is combined with graphics, it raises this art to 
the dignity of Painting. As sound arises from vibrations of the air, so 
color, according to Euler, is produced by vibrations of the luminous ether, 
and consequently has in its effects and laws a strong resemblance to sound. 
While sculpture exhibits all organic forms with the utmost completeness, 
leaving nothing undefined, painting contents itself with the effects of light 
and mere appearance; but on the other hand it can make use of a far 
greater number of forms than sculpture, which in this respect is tolerably 
limited. Bas-relief forms a connecting link between sculpture and painting. 
The ancients treat it more in the manner of sculpture, the moderns more in 
that of painting. 
The pursuit and practice of art is either national or individual, according 
as it results from the mental activity of an entire people or of a single 
person, and is characterized by the peculiar habits and idiosyncrasy of such 
people or person. ‘This character we call séyle ; and as there is an Egyptian 
or Grecian style, so too there is a style of Phidias or Praxiteles when the 
idiosyncrasy of the individual artist is powerful enough to characterize his 
entire productions. J/anner, on the contrary, is a vicious intermixture of 
the personal with the artistic, arising either from habit or from a morbid 
tendency of the feelings, in consequence of which the form, without regard 
to the requirements of the subject, is constantly modified in a similar 
manner. 
Art stands everywhere in a special connexion with religious life, with 
the ideas entertained of the Deity ; inasmuch as religion opens to mankind 
a spiritual world which, although it does not appear externally, yet requires 
an external representation, which is found for it under one shape or another 
in art; and a religion is found to be artistic and plastic in proportion as its 
ideas are susceptible of representation in the forms of the organic world. | 
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