REVIEWS. 
297 
Certainly, if there are any such, reasoning would be thrown away upon them, 
What they would need would be to study the elementary laws of physics 
with care and patience for a few years, after which no reasoning would be 
wanted. But no one acquainted with the ways of paradoxists would think 
of recommending such a course to Mr. Jordan himself. 
PHYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS.* 
T HE object of this work is to 11 elucidate physiologically the nature of our 
aesthetic feelings,” to relegate the emotional to a purely physical 
origin, and to explain our conceptions of beauty relatively to pleasurable 
and painful feelings — the natural result of the action of an organism which 
is u a highly complex, but not absolutely perfect self-regulating machine ” — 
“ possessing the mysterious attributes of consciousness.” The author, a man 
of much culture, writing in an admirable style, dedicates his book to u the 
greatest of living philosophers, Herbert Spencer ” (by permission). In- 
fluenced by the tone and fashion of his master, Mr. Allen, a most enthu- 
siastic disciple, fortunately writes clearly and nervously, and is often good 
enough to place the somewhat involved language of the great philosopher 
in plain and comprehensible English. He looks upon Herbert Spencer as 
Tait regards Sir William Thomson, and like him adds polish and facility of < 
style to his 11 great one.” Well instructed in the dominant physiology of 
the day, perfectly au fait with the modern development of the theory of 
the conservation of energy, and no mean student of art, the author has 
produced a book which is most readable and instructive ; and doubtless as 
entertaining to the school to which he belongs as it is exasperating to those 
who think that there is inspiration in art and in the idea of beauty. As 
Herbert Spencer believes that in the> progressing course of human modifi- 
cation under natural selection, sin will cease to be — so it follows from Air. 
Allen that as years roll on, and a kind of art-pangenesis prevails and over- 
comes, the idea of the beautiful will become more fully evolved and 
poetry, the drama, painting and sculpture will transcend modern description. 
Following up the same evolutionary notion, we must be impressed that 
ugly women will cease to be, and that by the time that the globe and the 
universe are to disappear in the Tyndallian azure, physical, moral, intel- 
lectual, and sesthetical perfection will have been arrived at. Et puis f 
The author, wishing to examine the aesthetic feelings, and believing 
them to be intermediate between the bodily senses and the higher emotions, 
connects them with a physiological law of pleasure and pain. The feelings 
aroused in man by the beautiful in nature and human art are his subject 
matter, and he insists on their bearing a definite relation to pleasure and 
pain, and then of course to physical nervous change. : Pain he decides to 
arise from severance, disruption, and disintegration of absolute nerve tissue ; 
and pleasure to be 11 the concomitant of the healthy action of any or all of 
the organs or members supplied with different cerebro- spinal nerves to an 
* “ Physiological .Esthetics.” By George Allen, B.A. 8vo. London 
Henry S. King & Co. 1877. 
NEW SERIES, VOL. I. NO. III. 
X 
