LAWS 
 
 GOVERNING ITS DEVELOPMENT; 
 
 WITH SUGGESTIONS OX 
 
 EELATIVE TO THE ATTAINMENT OF BEAUTY. 
 
 JOSEPH HANDS, M.R.C.S., &o., &o., 
 
 Author of " Neio Views of Matter, Life, and Motion," " Will-Ability and 
 
 Fascination," " Homceupatlnj and other Healing Processes contrasted with 
 
 Allopathy," " A Dissertation on Diet* and Digestion," &c r <&c. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PUBLISHED BY E. W. ALLEN, 4, AVE MARIA LANE, E.G. 
 And may be had of all Booksellers.
 
 TO 
 
 WOMAN, 
 
 THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OF 
 
 ATTKACT1VE CKEATIONS, THIS 
 BOOK IS DEDICATED.
 
 APHORISMS. 
 
 (1.) Nature in preference to imitative Art. 
 
 (2.) The outline of Beauty is accomplished by serpentine 
 curves. Hogarth. 
 
 (3.) In life, as in Art, the beautiful can only be unfolded 
 through curvilinear delineations. Bulwer. 
 
 (4.) Form, proportion, fitness, congruity, and quality, with 
 modifying and appropriate colouring, including 
 position, with easy and graceful movements, are 
 the chief attributes of Beauty. 
 
 (5.) The first intent of Nature is that all her primeval 
 creations should produce faultless forms, especially 
 in outline and adaptation. 
 
 (6.) Art of the highest order is at last only a copy of Nature. 
 
 (7.) Seek after the things ttat are correct, and those pro- 
 ductions which promote pleasure in others, these 
 pursuits being always beautiful, because they lead 
 to true happiness, out of which grows perfection, 
 whether of thought or deed. 
 
 2017257
 
 LITEEARY NOTICES ON "NEW VIEWS 
 OF MATTER, &c. 
 
 We have been favoured with a perusal of a portion of 
 Mr. Hands' Work on "MATTER, &c.," and can speak of it as a 
 most able and interesting contribution to scientific literature. 
 The Modern Physician. May, 1879. 
 
 Mr. Hands' Essays on Matter, Motion, Life, and Resis- 
 tance, &c., are replete with instruction and original con- 
 ceptions of a very striking character. Human Nature. 
 June 20th, 1879. 
 
 Mr. Hands, of Hammersmith, author of some very interest- 
 ing works, has now adopted the plan originated by Dickens and 
 Thackeray, whose books were brought out in monthly instal- 
 ments. Mr. Hands' views are most original, and illustrated 
 by facts ; his language stimulates the mental taste, like that of 
 Robert Burton and Dr. Johnson, and pleases whilst instructing 
 the reader. The Sussex Daily News. June 18th, 1879. 
 
 Mr. Hands has issued the second (July) part of his " New 
 Views of Matter, Life, Motion, and Resistance." In many 
 respects, this thoughtful and industrious author has trodden 
 paths which are also explored by Dr Babbitt, in his great 
 work on " Light." 
 
 These writers are pioneers in new fields of scientific 
 research, and, as such, a duty falls to their lot which cannot 
 be attributed to a selfish motive. Mr. Hands is a true author, 
 and gives to his readers profound original thought, at a popu- 
 lar price, his single object apparently being the education of 
 the public mind in all its multitudinous forms. The 
 and Daylrf.nl:- July 25, 1879.
 
 BEAUTY, 
 
 AND ITS ATTAINABILITY. 
 
 (1.) BEAUTY (Fr. beauttf}. In the Fine Arts this quality 
 is proclaimed to be that result of all the various perfections 
 whereof an object is susceptible, which please the senses, 
 and more particularly the perceptive faculties. With the 
 painter and sculptor, Nature, refined by selecting from the 
 most perfect of the species, is the index and guide ; but, as 
 regards the architect, the creative ability of Nature herself 
 is the model of imitation. 
 
 The primary source of all beauty in the Arts is form ; on 
 that alone must the artist depend if he would produce a 
 work capable of pleasing. There is no doubt that in paiuting 
 colour is the handmaid that decks the work with many 
 charms ; but they are all Subordinate to that great effect 
 which form unaided by all accessories is capable of pro- 
 ducing on the mind. 
 
 As form is constituted by lines, it seems more than pro- 
 bable that an inquiry into their nature might lead the artist 
 to the invention of beautiful configurations, and it was this 
 feeling which led Hogarth to place so much to the account 
 of the serpentine line. But in the Arts generally the prin- 
 ciples are infinitely more extended ; for lines which, from 
 their propriety in one art, are strikingly beautiful, become 
 absolutely absurd as sources of beauty in others. Hence 
 we arrive at one general conclusion : that in all of them fitness 
 for the purpose, and proportion to effect the object, are the
 
 6 BEAUTY. 
 
 surest guides to beauty of outline, and thence naturally to 
 beauty of form. If this be so, no general laws, save those 
 depending on fitness and proportion, can be laid down ; and 
 perhaps it would not be a difficult task to trace to them all 
 those associations which seem to be connected with the 
 subject in its effect on the mind. 
 
 (2.) Beauty has been proclaimed by some authors to be 
 '* those qualities appertaining to visible objects in consequence 
 of which their forms and colours are agreeable to the human 
 mind." 
 
 (3.) The term beauty was originally applied to things per- 
 ceptible to the sight ; but by an easy transition it has been 
 extended to existences discernible by the hearing, as where 
 we speak of beautiful music, or beautiful voice, &c. 
 
 (4.) The proneness to transfer words from one object of 
 sense to another does not, however, explain why the word 
 beaut;/ should be extended only to agreeable sounds, and not 
 pleasing tastes and odours. But the epithet beautiful 
 should no doubt, in strict parlance, never be applied to the 
 perception of any senses except those of seeing and hearing ; 
 yet it is often extended to the results of some intellectual 
 processes, as beautiful poem, metaphor, language, me- 
 chanism, &c. When the word beauty is thus employed it 
 is merely a vague term of praise, and is then synonymous 
 with admirable. 
 
 (5.) All incongruous or unsuitable combinations are con- 
 trary to the beauty of things. 
 
 (6.) The most beautiful propo?iion in a man, as regards 
 height, is five feet ten inches ; if taller, he will have a dispro- 
 portionate back and legs ; the chest must be wide, ovt/l, 
 and fully expanded ; he should be muscular, but not obese. 
 The lady ought to be five feet six inches in stature, 
 with graceful, falling shoulders; and she should be 
 embonpoint, or plump, not fat, but teeming with agility. 
 Her figure, in outline, must be everywhere oval except the 
 nose, which should be nearly shaight, and in length one- 
 third of the face, terminating superiorly at the commence- 
 ment of the forehead, the latter projecting slightly over the 
 root of the nasal organ, not in a line with it, like the noses
 
 NATURE, NOT ART. 7 
 
 represented in the Greek gods, which makes the face porcine 
 in character, and anything but beautiful as regards the 
 human countenance. It has been observed that we often 
 have certain comely features accompanied with a bad nose, 
 bnt no one ever saw a natural perfect nasal feature without 
 its being accompanied, when in health, by beautiful facial 
 lineaments. 
 
 (7.) The reason why we are pleased by the perception of 
 congruity or fitness in the general structure of an animate 
 body, and of its several component parts, and charmed by 
 the appearance of ease and grace in the movements of animals, 
 with their general activity, vigour, energy, and health, is 
 that we are gratified by the absence of all suffering, as we 
 are pained by its presence. Thus all those objects which 
 suggest the idea of suffering discomfort and decay are in 
 this sense devoid of beauty. The elephant and hippopotamus, 
 which are heavy and cumbrous in their shape and appear to 
 drag their limbs with difficulty and effort, suggest none of 
 those impressions of joy and satisfaction as in the animal 
 exulting in its agility, which are recognizable in the un- 
 shackled movements of the horse, antelope, or stag. Further, 
 all deformity in animals is inconsistent with beauty, 
 and is ugly in proportion as the shape of the limb or body 
 deviates from the true standard form, and is unfitted for the 
 purposes for which it was naturally intended. 
 
 (8.) Before proceeding further in this essay, I would 
 solicit my readers always to bear in mind that I intend in 
 my illustrations as regards the laws developing beauty 
 to display the effects worked out in the economy of Nature, 
 rather than those resulting from the efforts of Art, which 
 latter, though it be of the highest order, is but a copy 
 Nature being the archetype or original. 
 
 (9.) In all ages the contemplative and far-seeing philoso- 
 pher has looked upon Art productions as mere reflections of 
 Nature, and I would further point out that each copy or 
 design is fashioned with her materials ; and when action or 
 motion is a result, the operative energy is displayed through 
 the agency of her imponderable principles, as where heat is 
 employed to call forth an expansile vapour, which is elimi-
 
 8 BEAUTY. 
 
 nated through the agency of the oxygen of the atmospherp 
 uniting with the carbon of the fuel, calling forth electricity 
 and steam, which, acting on the engine constructed of 
 metals and wood, &c. is thrown into motion, whereby is 
 effected certain mechanical operations. 
 
 (10.) The thinking principle of man has mostly an irre- 
 pressible inclination to search after the origin of effects, and 
 an innate feeling to revere, when discovered, the real and 
 even the supposed causes, rather than the consequences or 
 results. Being fervidly endowed with this aspiration myself, 
 I shall endeavour whilst proceeding with this treatise to 
 create a like disposition in my readers. 
 
 (11.) The appreciation of every entity, whether organic 
 or inorganic, with the elements that cause them to act and 
 re-act on each other, must depend upon our being endowed 
 with a certain series of senses, the extent of which cannot in 
 the present state of knowledge be enumerated. Our fore- 
 fathers limited them to five, but five thousand would not 
 embrace all the distinct and particular points through which 
 the soul, by means of the nervous system, receives intclli - 
 gence of the presence, properties, and principles belonging to 
 the existences by which the inner-man is surrounded, and to 
 all of which it may be said to form a centre. 
 
 (12.) Could man's faculties in times gone by have 
 grasped or understood more of the mechanism and operations 
 of the world's system, so as to have enabled him readily to 
 trace the means working out certain ends in mundane econo- 
 mies, he would never have regarded the eye and ear as the 
 chief seats of those senses which appreciate the fitness of 
 parts in making up a whole, which by general agreement has 
 been termed beauty, or that result of all the various per- 
 fections whereof an object is susceptible, and which excite 
 forth pleasing sensations, as we become acted upon by the 
 presentation of particular things or their emanations to our 
 notice. To attribute to the eye or ear any capability, beyond 
 the mere fact of being the channels through which the mind 
 receives some of its intelligence, or becomes acquainted with 
 the perfections or imperfections of the varied objects that 
 operate on the sensorium, and through it on the inner-man,
 
 TJNDULATORY IMAGES. 9 
 
 would be, relative to the ear, to commit as marked an error 
 as that of the ignorant listener to a song or concerto, who 
 should attribute to the vocal chords of the windpipe, or the 
 sound-board of an instrument, that feeling of music which, 
 animating or stimulating the organs of Melody, belong only 
 to the auditor and performer. 
 
 Again, no one would ascribe to the eye the passion of 
 love, because by its means, through the supposed agency of 
 light, we were led to notice the form that gave rise to the 
 adoration; nor could we assume it to be the seat of affection, 
 because through its glance we are attracted to imbibe the 
 pulsatory influence emanating from the phrenological develop- 
 ment of the organ of Attachment. The eye and the ear, then, 
 are merely the passive servants of the brain, and are well 
 adapted for their separate offices, by being the means of con- 
 ducting certain special undulations or properties of matter to 
 the great sensorium. We may, perhaps, regard the organ 
 of vision in the light of a living optical instrument, trans- 
 mitting some, and only some, of the effects of luminous 
 undulations ; to attribute more would be to suppose that the 
 telescope and microscope could see, because through their 
 aid we were enabled to detect objects that would otherwise 
 escape our ability to recognise. 
 
 (13.) All animate and inanimate bodies are known to be 
 continually giving off undulatory characteristic images of 
 themselves, which effigies are endowed with certain qualities 
 appertaining to the substances from which they emanated, 
 and it is by and through these vibratory images that we 
 become cognizant of the presence and properties of the 
 materials making up the known objective world. When, 
 therefore, the different kinds of pulsations from dissimilar 
 substances pass into the brain, they cause the fibrous threads 
 of the organs adapted for their reception and consequent 
 appreciation also to vibrate and throw back other waves to 
 meet these pulsatory images, "action and reaction always 
 being opposite and equal." It is these iconographic (image- 
 written) effigies that engrave themselves on certain sensitive 
 surfaces which have been erroneously termed photographic 
 (light-written) pictures. But luminous rays only hasten the
 
 10 BEAUTY. 
 
 process, or give intensity to the undulations that are always 
 escaping out or from bodies, since these portraitures of 
 things can be effected in the dark, and even in the absence of 
 the atmospheric actin, or chemical ray, as where produced in 
 vacuo. 
 
 The ideas, touching these image impressions, will be more 
 readily comprehended by observing the effects of a given 
 note evoked from the horn, &c , adjacent to a number of 
 musical instruments, each of which will be found to respond, 
 echo-like, a similar sound or its harmonic ; and every indi- 
 vidual chord of the stringed apparatus that is in unison 
 with the note so produced will be found, if examined, to be 
 in a state of tremor, which may be readily detected by attach- 
 ing to certain parts of them small riders made of pie*. 
 paper. On the contrary, those strings not in concord with 
 the created tone in question will remain quiescent. Even a 
 noise produced in the neighbourhood of things capable of 
 melodious vibration (as near an orchestra filled with instru- 
 ments) will have this misshapen resonance, thrown into the 
 pulsatory form and number making up a musical note ; and 
 thus modelled, so to speak, will be projected forth from tho 
 strings and cavities of the different apparatus above alluded 
 to. I would here remark that every perfect melodious tone, 
 as well as being made up of a certain number of undulations 
 in a given time, assumes a distinct ellipsoid or serpentine 
 curve, each crescent differing- in length and width according 
 to the note formed and ejected from musical instruments. :ts 
 shown in Chladni's experiments. 
 
 (14.) In the brain of the embryo whether appertaining 
 to the Indian squaw or the civilized European lie, like 
 the plant in the seed and the oak in the acorn, all those 
 cerebral germinal fibres that are afterwards to form the 
 phrenological developments which shall serve to associate 
 the sensorium with surrounding objects and their varying 
 influences. In the progress of time, then, the mind must be 
 taught, through the agency of these brain filaments, to appre- 
 ciate all that is beautiful in Nature, whether belonging to 
 the imponderable clomeiits, or gravitating matter Mid its 
 emanating properties. Thus the seusorium of the infant may
 
 EDUCATION OF THE P.RAIN ORGANS. 11 
 
 be presumed to possess the radicals that are to form, through 
 encompassing contingencies, the man. It has been truthfully 
 stated " that no past influences ever parish," so that each 
 circumstance that has ever transpired is indelibly stamped 
 upon every surrounding object, and must serve as a series of 
 acting agents throughout all time. This being the case, it 
 follows that the present order of things has been, and still 
 is, influenced by all that has ever been unfolded in every 
 age during the world's existence. ( See {l Impressions left on 
 Things," in my essays on " Matter.") 
 
 (15.) Within the skull-cap of man then, as before noticed, 
 lie the conducting filaments, by means of which he can 
 become associated with all the properties and appliances of 
 the entities which surround him, whether belonging to the 
 earliest or later periods of time. It was through the un- 
 folding of these cerebral nerve-loops that the phrenological 
 organs of the brain became developed ; and through their 
 subsequent education emanated the sciences, and the instru- 
 ments by means of which they were displayed. These 
 sciences and their application originated from the wish or 
 feeling that always existed in man, who constantly thirsted 
 after the knowledge whereby he might read and become 
 acquainted with the natural productions and abilities of the 
 animate and inanimate worlds that surround him. 
 
 (16.) A SPECIAL CEREBRAL ORGANIZATION is NECESSARY 
 TO THE PERCEPTION OP THE FITNESS AND BEAUTY RESIDENT 
 IN THINGS. The indifference manifested by many of our 
 fellow beings to excellence in the objects surrounding 
 them is the result of a deficiency in the development 
 and after-education of the brain organs. Thus we 
 sometimes meet with certain persons who cannot match 
 or arrange colours, so as to make them harmonise ; 
 and others there are who fail even to recognise them at 
 all, so that the charms created in most persons by the varied 
 living hues that adorn the flowers of the field and our 
 garden parterres can give no pleasure to colour-blind indi- 
 viduals. This want of impressionability as regards tinted 
 objects is owing to the inaction or deficiency ot the organ 
 of Colour. It has sometimes been noticed that certain
 
 12 BEAUTY. 
 
 persons have reached the age of maturity without even 
 knowing, much more fcelinc/, what was meant by tints and 
 pigments. Such was the case with Dr. Dalton and his brother, 
 who were both " colour blind." Many other examples 
 might be quoted from the pages of history. Now, the eyes 
 of these individuals readily detected the other characteristics 
 of objects, though tinted surfaces however gorgeous their 
 hues failed to impress them. The child and the savage 
 wheu gaudy colours are presented to them feel delight and 
 exhibit happy emotions while handling different tinted 
 things ; but as the organization, especially the intellectual 
 faculties, unfold and become subjected to education by sur- 
 rounding circumstances, the senses of other organs wake up, 
 and now the developement of Form is chiefly acted upon, 
 and the tints, which at first arrested the attention, are 
 henceforward regarded in a secondary light, and are now 
 principally recognised as merely adorning many of the 
 objects that encircle us. 
 
 (17.) Exercise quickens and enlarges the organs of the 
 sensorium, and pre-disposes them to be readily aroused into 
 action, and under this repeated excitement they grow and 
 gradually enlarge like as do the muscles of the body. It is 
 the continued employment of the intellectual brain develop- 
 ments that produces the accomplished master and the 
 erudite philosopher. 
 
 (18.) PRACTICAL EDUCATION. In most instances this process 
 is necessary to effect a just discrimination of the beautiful 
 in objects and their relative connections; and be it observed 
 that I include in this education the effects that all things and 
 their accompanying qualities, with the imponderable elements, 
 produce, as they act on us in our walk through life, whilst 
 obtaining the knowledge that is the result of experience, 
 which is never acquired whilst shut up within the walls of 
 colleges, as now constituted, or by perusing the pages of 
 printed and written books. 
 
 (10.) Direct oral education with correct experimental 
 training is essentially necessary to the creation or formation 
 of a well-developed head and its accompanying beautiful 
 
 features.
 
 THINGS RATHER THAN THEIR DESCRIPTIONS. 13 
 
 (20.) In the earliest ages of the world, there must have 
 existed a desire to interchange the sensations and ideas that 
 pervaded the different races of men ; and in order that they 
 might describe their perceptions to each other, with the im- 
 pressions these gave rise to, language sprang up, to image 
 or represent which certain symbols, called hieroglyphics, and 
 then letters were agreed upon, and subsequently other 
 characters were fashioned, designated numbers. Out of these 
 grew the description of the arts and calculations as regards 
 the different sciences. 
 
 (21.) We learn that in the dark ages a profound respect, 
 nay, veneration, was paid to the few who could decipher these 
 significative marks or indications, and thus the unlettered and 
 even the literary individuals of those times were led to 
 regard and become attracted by the shadowed image, to the 
 neglect of the substance, until the feeling grew into a kind 
 of mania, whereby the masters became inoculated, and at 
 last teachers and taught attached more interest to the signs 
 than the things they served to delineate or explain. It may 
 still be discerned that a vast deal of this feeling remains in 
 our present schools and universities; and most scholars even 
 now are led frequently to neglect the object described, whilst 
 contemplating the tools or helps and their usages, which at 
 best can only assist us to instruct ourselves, or to aid the 
 comprehension of others. The acquirement of languages, 
 then, with the knowledge of figures and tact in the use of 
 instruments, should have bestowed upon them no more than 
 their just or practical value, and ought only to be regarded 
 in the light of certain means enabling the intellect to grasp 
 things, rather than their descriptive representations. 
 
 (22.) It is a well-known fact that most, if not all, of the 
 useful, grand, and beautiful discoveries that have ever been 
 made in the arts and mechanical sciences, and even in natural 
 philosophy, were brought to light by individuals unskilled in 
 mathematics, and unlearned in dead and foreign dialects. 
 
 It would appear that the slavery undergone, whilst young, 
 in acquiring the different lingual modes, whether ancient or 
 modern, of expressing merely in dissimilar sounds the same 
 things, prevents the natural enlargement of the various
 
 14 
 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 innate perceptive portions of the brain, by exercising one 
 faculty (the phrenological organ of Memory) to the neglect 
 of the others, which proceeding cramps all natural genius, 
 and prevents the proper development of the body generally, 
 for nearly all persons of genius, whether men or women, 
 were and are handsome and well-proportioned. 
 
 In confirmation that the man of genius springs from the 
 ranks, I quote the following : 
 
 (a.) Michael Angelo Buonarotti was the son of a poor 
 citizen of Florence, who parted with him to a common stone- 
 mason for 1 8 florins. He finally became a sculptor, painter, 
 architect, and poet. 
 
 (b.) Sir Thomas Laurence was the son of a i oor man of 
 Bristol, and received very little education, but was a self- 
 taught scholar. 
 
 (c.) Telford, the great engineer, was the offspring of a 
 shepherd, and was apprenticed to a common stone-mason. 
 He, like Locke, knew nothing of mathematics, and used to 
 say that figures were of no use in engineering and practical 
 science. 
 
 (d.) Rossini, the grand originator of modern music, was a 
 barber's boy. 
 
 (e.) Faraday, the greatest chemical and electrical experi- 
 menter of any age, was originally a poor shop-boy. 
 
 (f.) Trevethick, a common Cornish miner, was the inventor 
 of the locomotive railway engine. 
 
 (g.) James Watt, the great steam-engine improver, was 
 the son of a very humble tradesman in needy circumstances 
 
 (k.) Hume, the great historian and essayist, was the 
 offspring of very poor parents ; his mother kept a 
 crockery stall, at times upset by way of diversion by 
 Lord Panmure. 
 
 (i-) .ZEsop, the prince of fabulists, was an Athenian slave. 
 
 (/.) Milton was the son of an innkeeper, and was said to 
 be, like Oliver Goldsmith, a great dunce at his first school. 
 
 (&). Butler and Burns, both celebrated poets, were the 
 sons of small farmers ; the former died in absolute want. 
 
 (7.) Alexander Pope was the son of a linen-draper, and, 
 like Burns, was a sell- taught scholar.
 
 GENIUS EMANATES FROM THE RANKS. 15 
 
 (m.) Canova, Antonio, one of the greatest of modern 
 sculptors, became an ambassador, and was then created a 
 marquis. He was a native of a small village in the Venetian 
 States, and was originally a poor destitute boy. 
 
 (/z.) Claude Lorraine, the great painter, was apprenticed 
 to a pastry-cook Nature was the constant object of his 
 study, and the result of his observations he transferred to 
 the canvas with unrivalled felicity. 
 
 (0.) Morland, George, the greatest natural artist of his day, 
 was the son of a necessitous and indifferent painter ; he 
 would never look at anyone's pictures, and always copied 
 his beautiful objects from Nature. 
 
 (p.) Opie, John, when young, was a self-taught school- 
 master, but afterwards became a celebrated painter ; he 
 was the son of a common carpenter, living near Truro, and 
 worked in a saw-pit. 
 
 (q.) Shakspere, William, the glory of the drama, was 
 the son of a woolstapler. All the teaching he received was 
 at the village-school. He afterwards became a prompter's 
 call boy at a theatre, and then an indifferent actor, and finally 
 the greatest dramatist of any age. 
 
 (r.) Linnaeus, the great botanist, was apprenticed to a 
 shoemaker ; at 19 he was sent tr> school, and was there called 
 a dunce and blockhead ; at 21 he was almost ignorant of 
 everything except the knowledge of plants. 
 
 (s.) Stephenson, the great engineer and improver of the 
 locomotive engine and railway carriage, was the son 
 of a collier, and worked in the pit with the other 
 labourers. 
 
 (.) Moore, Thomas, the celebrated Irish poet, was the son 
 of a humble grocer, and the grandson of a weaver. 
 
 (M.) Newton, Sir Isaac, was the son of a little farmer, 
 residing at Colsterworth, in Lincolnshire ; he was said to 
 be a very idle boy, and when at school was considered 
 a great dunce. He matured his minor plans under his 
 mother's hedges, and in the apothecary's garret at 
 Grantham. 
 
 Most of the mighty works of the world have been 
 accomplished by poor men.
 
 16 BEAUTY. 
 
 (v.) Sir William Herschel came to England, when a youth, 
 from Germany, as a street musician ; unable to buy a 
 telescope, he made one for himself. 
 
 (w.) " Rare Ben Jonson " worked trowel in hand as a 
 bricklayer. 
 
 (x.) The great Napoleon Bonaparte was the son of a poor 
 man. 
 
 (23.) Further, as regards the subject of education, it is 
 worthy of notice that through biographical researches it 
 will be found that all the original thinkers and inventors 
 among those bred up at academies acquired, during their 
 earlier studies, the appellation of dullards or blockheads as 
 regards scholastic acquirements ; such were Milton, Newton, 
 Sheridan, Goldsmith, Linnaeus, Gall, Byron, Scott, and a 
 hundred others, who were all observed to make little progress, 
 when young, in the acquirement of languages and figures 
 The cause of this mental condition is very evident. These 
 individuals were, at this period of their lives, busily engaged 
 in lending themselves to the poetry of the acting and living 
 world; and, being possessed by their own thoughts or impres- 
 sions as regards the varied objects that then surrounded them, 
 they could not suffer their youthful feelings to be shackled 
 by the dry dissertations and writings bound up in ancient 
 tomes. No ; they boy-like were attracted to abandon 
 themselves to the influence of unfolding realities always to 
 be found transpiring throughout the huge book of Nature, 
 which ever lies open to all who have organizations and 
 sympathies wherewith to read it, and these youths followed 
 the dictates of their then inclinations, rather than the study 
 of representations and learned descriptions bound up in 
 musty volumes. But when the season arrived, and they 
 became struck with the use of these resources as a 
 means that might assist them to display their own great 
 abilities and ideas, they then gras; ed these tools and 
 appliances employed in college discipline, and by application 
 as regards their usage they created a distance between 
 them and their then companions that defied all competition. 
 
 (24.) Ton HIM, iiiK DEVELOPMENT OF THE DIFFERENT 
 ORGANS OF THE BRAIN The nerves of the animal system
 
 OVER DEVELOPED BRAIN ORGANS. 17 
 
 (like the wires connected with a galvanic battery when in 
 action) influence and preside over the economy of the body, 
 causing the changes that take place in its every tissue. It 
 has often been demonstrated (by casts and measurement of 
 the head) that the continued or excessive exercise of any 
 one organ of the sensorium quickens and enlarges that 
 development, and must in a measure preclude the necessary 
 or required (as far as health is concerned) employment of 
 the other portions of the brain that act on distinct viscera, 
 or certain membranes ; hence often arise, first disorder, then 
 disease, followed by deformity of certain parts of the body ; 
 whilst, on the contrary, where the organs of the sensorium 
 are equally balanced, each individual viscus and tissue 
 receives that proportionate quantity of nervous excitement 
 necessary for their economy, which condition^ when assisted 
 by surrounding congenial circumstances, produces a healthy 
 frame, accompanied by beauty of bodily features, because 
 each part will act in harmony with the others, and thus 
 tend towards natural perfection. 
 
 (25.) As RKGARDSTHEOVER-DEVKLOPMENT OF PARTICULAR 
 
 PARTS OF THE BRAIN. The most unfortunate incident that 
 can ensue as regards any individual is to have a phreno- 
 logical organ that may be too large or active in relation to 
 the influencing operation of others. It will always be found 
 that such a person so endowed becomes the slave of this 
 overgrown development, to the non-use or only partial 
 employment of other parts of the brain. Such characters 
 come under that class designated " one idead beings." Thus 
 a person having a large organ of Order is always, if a woman, 
 arranging and cleaning her ornaments, or adjusting the 
 house utensils and attending to the domestic circumstances. 
 If a man, lie will generally be employed in correcting the 
 productions of others, but never brings forth anything of 
 his own This corrective propensity often leads to the 
 failing designated " officiousness ;" such are frequently 
 found employing themselves in arranging the trifles found 
 displaced in hi& house or the domains of others. Again, 
 people who have the organ of Memory large may grow into 
 great compilers or literary imitators, but they seldom, if 
 
 B
 
 18 BEAUTY. 
 
 ever, become authors of anything new, either in poetry 
 prose, music, or painting, &c. ; nor do they display any 
 ingenuity in mechanical constructions. Be it further recog- 
 nised that this retentive capacity belonging to certain 
 individuals is the result of two circumstances : either it 
 exists as a natural propensity, from over-development of this 
 portion of the brain, or has been acquired by particular 
 habits, as close and extensive study, or fioin scholastic 
 tuition. Be it also noticed that where the organ of Memory 
 is overcharged or taxed by too much attention to the per- 
 formances of others, there will be no periods set aside for 
 the exercise of innate native talent. As only one portion of 
 the sensorium can be exercised positively at a time, of course 
 the continued tasking of a certain organ precludes the 
 appliance of the rest, which habitude often robs us of that 
 health we might otherwise have reaped by bringing into 
 action many organs in succession, by yielding to the prompt- 
 ings of our varied natural propensities. 
 
 It has frequently been noticed that ardent poets, painters, 
 and musicians endowed with great sensitiveness generally 
 die young. This event ensues from the circumstance of 
 keeping certain parts of the body too immediately under the 
 influence of one particular brain organ. It may b3 here 
 noticed that the above characters are mostly found to bo 
 unacquainted with erudite natural phenomena and general 
 practical knowledge On the contrary, the hunter after 
 occurring facts, and the reflecting philosopher who make 
 the arts and sciences and the arcana of Nature an occupation 
 and a life study live to an advanced age, because they 
 employ in succession each organ of the sensorium, thus 
 bringing, in its turn, each viscus and tissue of the body, 
 directly and indirectly, under the dominant sway of each 
 cerebral development. 
 
 (26.) EDUCATIONAL ANNOTATIONS. Individuals with 
 large organn of Memory, who apply themselves almost 
 exclusively to mere book learning, whether at school or 
 elsewhere, often become a kind of walking encyclopaedia, 
 and may frequently wuke up the wonder of the crowd by 
 retailing out here and there portions of their mental
 
 GENIUS FROM THE RANKS. 19 
 
 crammings, but they will never engage the attention of the 
 individual engaged in practical science, or the man of genius. 
 
 Hud Michael Angelo Buonarotti been bred up amid the 
 forms and trammels of a college, the world would never 
 have been astonished by the magnificence of St. Peter's at 
 Rome, nor those wonderful pictures and marbles that were 
 the works of his hands, guided by his mind and head. 
 
 If Rossini had been so unfortunate as to have spent his 
 youth amid the dull formulae of academic routine, where 
 nothing practical can be obtained, either tending to the 
 acquirement of demonstrative facts or the development of 
 useful knowledge by experiment, he would never have 
 founded the modern school of music, which has so often 
 entranced the world with melodies that have frequently made 
 the human frame tremble with delight. 
 
 The same may be said of Newton and his discoveries ; and 
 a like tale can be told of ten thousand other characters 
 whose productions have enlightened and tended to civilize the 
 world at large. 
 
 In addition, it has often been noticed that clever 
 sensitive pupils who are kept closely to book-learning die 
 young, by engendering disease, from too much excitement of 
 particular portions of their delicate brains. It has also been 
 observed that the youth found apt during his first lessons, 
 and a good classic or mathematician in his adolescence, is in 
 after-life seldom celebrated for anything else, and is rarely 
 ever heard of beyond his own circle, or far from the 
 walls that environed the institute wherein he received his 
 tuition. 
 
 It has been often suggested by the reflective that we begin 
 our book instruction of youth at too early a period, and at the 
 wrong end of the ladder that leads to the acquirement of 
 knowledge, dictating from its summit, rather than from 
 the rounds which conduct from its base. Should we not 
 orally make the youth familiar, step by step, with simple 
 things and facts, and then demonstrate their associations, and 
 then afterwards set him down to written descriptions and 
 annotations? Teachers forgetfully presume that, because 
 they know and understand a subject, their pupils ought 
 
 B2
 
 20 BEAUTY. 
 
 readily to apprehend and comprehend it too ; forgetful of the 
 troublesome path through which they themselves had toiled 
 to obtain perspecuity and capacity. 
 
 Again, instructors too often Lse sight of the vast labour 
 undergone by themselves before arriving at the corridor 
 leading to the temple of knowledge, where preceptors, when 
 authors, sit down to write books; and yet tutors begin 
 instruction by opening these very volumes to teach there- 
 from the scholar whose foot has scarcely touched the first 
 step of the stairs by which he is to climb to the chamber of 
 understanding. Masters seldom reflect, whilst educating, 
 that the young learner is without their erudition v, 
 gives them the abilities they possess. In addition, scholastic 
 tutors too often forget that the pupil is minus the experience 
 through which intelligence dawned on themselves Therefore 
 it behoves preceptors to recollect, whilst educating, that the 
 books they offer to the youthful learners were compiled in 
 the light, on the hill-top, and that the stripling is still in the 
 dark valley, not yet catching the illuminating rays that 
 would enable him to understand whilst reading. No wonder 
 that the novice finds his books tiresomely dull. lie lias 
 nothing in his mind wherewith to associate their contents, 
 and discerns in them no relation in regard to his young 
 ideas, which at this period of his life arc few and simple, and, 
 from want of organic brain developments and knowledge, 
 the tomes in question appear to him incomprehensible. 
 Therefore, whilst learning by rote, or without understand- 
 ing, his sympathies are not attracted by the contents of 
 the works placed before him, and he therefore soon forgets 
 the set task, and becomes disgusted whilst studying that 
 which he cannot understand. 
 
 No youth should ever be called upon to commit to memory 
 that which he does not comprehend at the time of being 
 taught ; for the so-called knowledge thus acquired is as 
 useless to him as would be an artisan's implements in the 
 hands of an uninitiated individual. 
 
 (27.) THK IMPRESSIONABLE CAPACITY OF THE SBxin COM- 
 I'AKi::). Teachers or instructors have always recognise I 
 that girls and women, under like experiences, excel boys
 
 CAPACITY OF THE SEXES COMPARED. 21 
 
 and men as regards their aptness in receiving instruction ; 
 but they are not, as a rule, superior in regard to their 
 reasoning ability, because the reflective organs are larger in 
 the male than in the female, by reason that the latter exercises 
 the feelings more than, the thinking faculties The fore- 
 going statement, as regards the female, is particularly 
 demonstrated whilst teaching girls to dance and sing, or play 
 on the pianoforte, and also during the learning of the living 
 languages, &c., &c. 
 
 Again, the ready imitative ability of ladies is especially 
 manifested whilst pourtraying life character as witnessed at 
 our theatres. In continuation, the female apprehensiv.eness 
 is especially experienced where the preceptor works with (as 
 in the Harniltonian system) or solicits, rather than commands, 
 the fair pupil's attention to her studies. Now there must be 
 a reason for this female ability, which will be found to 
 depend upon her ready impressionability, or competency of 
 imbibing through her sensitive capacity the qualities of 
 things and bearing of the circumstances that may surround 
 her person. 
 
 How often have I, with millions of others, witnessed the 
 female aptness as regards her intuitive capability of reading 
 or predicting the future through the " foreshadowing of 
 corning events ! " How frequently have I heard different 
 men (after becoming acquainted with a particular character 
 or having experienced a certain circumstance) exclaim, "Had I 
 obeyed that lady's suggestion, or followed my wife's advice, 
 and acted as she prompted, I should have avoided that 
 person, and escaped this consequence! " I would here ask 
 how the female is thus rendered capable of coming to her 
 conclusions ? If we interrogate her, the answer will be, 
 " 1 do not know, but I feel that, in the unfolding of a 
 certain incident, such and such circumstances will follow 
 as a result " The prognostic ability belonging to animals 
 has received the vague appellation of instinct ; but whether 
 this capacity belongs to the human race or the creatures of 
 the woods and plains, it is a like faculty, arid springs 
 from a like source, viz., perception or prevoyance of future 
 occurrences by the feelings.
 
 22 
 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 Socrates in his remarks states that " women feel and men 
 think," but the female can cogitate and -reason well when 
 taught by experience, like the man, to think for herself. 
 
 Further, it may be truly assumed that it is through 
 certain sensibilities that impressionable human beings 
 become endowed with the capacity of acquiring knowledge. 
 Now this being the case, and the woman having tenfold 
 more sensibility than the man, she of course, through the 
 plasticity of her composition, will receive instruction, both 
 naturally and artificially, more readily than he can. This 
 capacity would be continually demonstrated if women were 
 bettar comprehended, and their capabilities called forth by 
 certain modes of practical and verbal education, which 
 method both sexes are at present sadly in want of; and 
 especially would this be the result if we allowed women to 
 reap the same experiences that men go through, which 
 would be readily accomplished if they associated more together 
 in their earlier studies and later amusements and occupations. 
 Moreover, ladies ought to be admitted into our public schools, 
 as they are in Germany and other parts of the world. If 
 this mode of proceeding was adopted, it would be found that 
 after a few generations (for habits, propensities, and 
 capabilities descend from the mother to the child) women 
 would then grace the Senate as orators, adorn the galleries 
 of Art as operatives, and finally become as fitting expounders 
 in the halls of Science as the learned philosophers that now 
 teach therein. It is customary with men to proclaim that 
 women are inapt, because they do not readily comprehend 
 many of the subjects presented to them. But how, I would 
 ask, should their condition be otherwise ? They, the fairer 
 portion of humanity, have not reaped the advantages that 
 men have. For instance, whilst he roves at large, she is pent 
 up at home, employed either in trifling away life in the 
 drawing room, &c., or continually engaged with domestic 
 concerns, and of course lacks that great stimulator of the 
 capacity experience. 
 
 The condition in question may further be illustrated by 
 comparing the youthful town sharper with the country 
 plough-boy. Neither, perhaps, can read or write,
 
 DEPORTMENT OF THE SEXES COMPARED. 23 
 
 but the one has been knocked about by circumstances, 
 and the reaction that has taken place in attending to these 
 impressions from without has sharpened his intellect, or 
 wits as they are commonly termed, and he, in his station, is 
 called intelligent, whilst the peasant lad, who, under the 
 same circumstances, would have become equally acute or 
 capable, has never had his nervous system roused into action, 
 and of course he is still found to be the crude ore ; but had 
 the refiner experience, been applied to his frame, he, the 
 clown, would have shone like the city youth, and have 
 reflected back the light thrown upon him, as does the metal 
 mirror after going through the hands of the polisher. 
 
 (28.) THE SEXES COMPARED AS REGARDS MANNERS AND 
 DEPORTMENT. It may be often recognised that the youth of 
 eighteen is graceless in his movements, or slouching in his 
 gait, and, on entering a room in which visitors are assembled, 
 he frequently comports himself,, so awkwardly that, but for 
 his habiliments and other contingencies, he might be taken 
 for the son of a peasant rather than the offspring of a 
 gentleman. What a contrast to the young lady, his sister, 
 who counts fourteen summers ! She glides into the apartment 
 occupied by the company with the ease and grace of her 
 mother, modest confidence mantling her whole frame. 
 Further, let us watch the brother and sister aa they tread 
 the mazy dance. He has undergone ten times her tuition 
 in learning his steps and moving through the tortuous race, 
 yet the youth is seen to disport himself, as regards time and 
 movement, as brusquely, in a degree, as the boy on the 
 village green, now too slow, and anon too vehemently ; 
 whilst the young lady appears to glide over the ground like 
 a sylph or child of Terpsichore., gracefully abandoning 
 herself to the " bounding measure," calling forth admiration 
 in her every movement. Again, as regards the gyratory 
 waltz ; the youth, whilst treading this disportrnent, puts one 
 in mind of the tyro taking his earlier lessons, whilst the 
 maiden glides round the room, seeming to scarcely touch 
 the floor, more like a spirit that has escaped the cloying 
 weight of ponderable matter than a being possessing 
 gravity. Note also the character of the two sexes undei
 
 24 BEAUTY. 
 
 education. Boys are generally found impatient and 
 sometimes rude during tuition, and often very dull as 
 regards comprehension, and, what is remarkable, very 
 seldom grateful to their teachers. How different is the 
 bearing of young ladies ! They are mostly the impersona- 
 tion of diffidence combined with modesty; they listen 
 with gentle attention to each outpouring from their 
 instructors, repaying back in atfection those who kindly 
 and encouragingly educate them. 
 
 (29.) In continuation, I do not intend to hold that woman 
 can surpass, or even equal, man in some of his bolder flights 
 in designing, enhancing, amending, or adding to certain 
 things that may cross his path. He, it must be acknowledged 
 at present, often soars into regions where she would grow 
 giddy and fall short of the daring required to accomplish 
 the feat. But how few among the sons of men are there 
 that can claim the title of " genius ! " To deserve this appel- 
 lation, he must either discover, invent, or improve that 
 which has been devised or fabricated by someone else. 
 
 Again, if we examine this so-called genius closely, he will 
 be found to possess the sensibility of the woman, added to 
 the stern energies of the man. In fact, it was the, impres- 
 sionability of his system that gave him the capacity to 
 imbibe the essences or qualities pervading the things that 
 encompassed him, as he dived deeply into, or ..^.floated over, 
 the stream of events, and anon soared poet like, as it were 
 into space, to become the companion, for the time IK- ing, 
 of the lilerated intellectual spirits appertaining to the sages 
 of bygone eras. 
 
 (30.) DIGRESSIVE OBSERVATIONS. In the pristine state 
 of the human race, when men's dwellings were situated in 
 crude and wild countries, they chiefly employed them- 
 in attending to their immediate or necessitous wants, and 
 being as yet unaware, for lack of education or experience, that 
 there existed any other requisites or appliances wherewith 
 to increase their pleasures (ignorant also how much these 
 would multiply their paii 1, and looked 
 
 perhaps no further But as time rolled onwards, certain 
 changes were unfolded, and men became conscious of fresh
 
 EVENTS WORK CHANGES IN MEN. 25 
 
 inclinations and appetites, which were developed from 
 expanding circumstances, combined with certain innovations 
 springing into action from the intercourse entered into 
 between adjacent countries. In the course of time these new 
 feelings at last engendered discontent, and there arose a 
 desire in the minds of some of the community to change 
 their hen condition; and now the one urging the other 
 forwards, they sought either in their own country or 
 abroad the means whereby they might satisfy their recently 
 acquired appetites After a time these said impressions 
 began to engender acquisitive desires, which finally led to 
 disagreements, followed by wars, instituted in order to 
 obtain the means whereby to satisfy these new inclinations. 
 But observe the sequence. Hostilities ceasing, and the conqueror 
 having obtained dominion over his opponents, he proceeded 
 to make vassals or slaves of the vanquished, in order that he 
 might indulge in idleness and luxury, whereby, in one 
 sense, he degraded himself by becoming dependent on 
 others for that knowledge and help which self -employment, 
 combined with industry, would have afforded him, added to 
 which would have been that particular pleasure only felt 
 whilst contemplating our own handiwork the source of so 
 much gratifying thought and enduring action, with conse- 
 quent health, followed by the gratifying evidence that 
 " employment is merely another name for happiness." 
 
 (31.) As the tide of events changed, and man began 
 again to labour for himself or the public welfare, he became 
 possessed with a greater interest in the result of his efforts, 
 and, thus incited, he sought to establish a kind of freedom 
 in thinking as well as acting, and at times, when reposing 
 from his avocations, he was induced to exercise more 
 strenuously his reflective faculties. This action after a time 
 woke up certain hitherto dormant brain developments, the 
 operation of wh ich stimulated him to follow the bent of his 
 awakening discernments, and urged him onwards to institute 
 various experiments or researches that tended finally to open 
 up the path through which he might pass whilst seeking 
 after the causes of the many beautiful effects resulting from 
 the processes continually in operation throughout the varied
 
 26 BEAUTY. 
 
 and ever - changing economies surrounding him. Thus 
 employed, man lent himself more and more to Nature's 
 exciting influences, which wrought changes in him. These 
 innovations he communicated to his companions, in whom 
 they begot other mental ideas. By means of these prompt- 
 ings, the human race discovered, and afterwards enjoyed, a 
 thousand connected beauties and charms belonging to the 
 great world, of whose existence they, in their former state, 
 were ignorant. In fact, they were incapable of observing 
 them until their brains became in a fit condition to receive 
 such impressions. 
 
 (32.) It was from the truthful contemplation of the 
 beauties in Nature that sprung up the varied happy results 
 brought out in the arts and sciences ; but be it observed 
 that, with all our vast knowledge, we are incapable of 
 comprehending how any one effect is developed in the 
 natural world. All that we can determine is that they do 
 transpire. It should be remembered that every result in 
 Nature is the consequent of thousands of accessory and 
 connected causes the one depending on the other ; but too 
 often, whilst recognising the proximate producers of certain 
 events, or the last links in the chain of antecedents, \ve deem 
 that we have grasped a knowledge of the whole occasioners 
 of the performance, whereas it is evident to the reasoning 
 philosopher that, had any one link given way in the unfold- 
 ing of the series making up the coil of causation, the 
 ultimate issues witnessed would not have been manifested. 
 Be it further recognised that no opening has yet been 
 discovered nor is there a shadow of a prospect that there 
 ever will be one through which we may hope to gaze, to 
 afford us a ground even for conjecture, much more to render 
 us satisfied, after what mode Nature effects any of her 
 economies. How different with the productions of Art ! 
 Only pass behind the scenes or lift the curtain, and the 
 process or stratagem is immediately discovered and under- 
 stood. 
 
 (3;5.) It may be truly concluded, as before observed in my 
 work on " Matter," that all the fabricated devices of man 
 display their operative effects by or through Nature's
 
 COSTUME. 27 
 
 imponderable spirituous elements, acting on gravitating 
 matter. To her capabilities, then, we must ascribe the 
 original source of all the effective motor productions, 
 whether artificial or natural, that surround us. 
 
 These postulates being granted, we should, I think, descend 
 from the pedestal, erected for the gratification of pride, upon 
 which either our own presumption or the silly usages of 
 society have placed us. The time is not far distant when we 
 shall cease to be attracted by the crowns of kings, the 
 coronets of peers, or swayed by the doctorial caps of colleges, 
 and the wigs worn in our courts of law, together with the 
 gowns or robes assumed to distinguish from the crowd 
 certain individuals in office. All these indicative devices 
 only serve, as do jewels, ornaments, and dress* to create the 
 derisive smile of the reflective philosopher, who prefers to 
 reap distinction through his knowledge of the glorious pro- 
 ducts that surround him, which originate from the ever- 
 acting principles discoverable in Nature's laboratory, Let 
 us, then, in the future avoid all this foolish " circumstantial 
 pomp," and hereafter be admired for disdaining these ridicu- 
 lous badges (of barbarian origin) which are at present made 
 
 * NOTE. Costume or style of vestment. Of all the enslaving customs or 
 practices appertaining to the human race that of fashionable habiliment is 
 the worst. In times gone by, the folly of bedizening the person in certain 
 ridiculous attire, which originated among barbarians and savages, was 
 carried to a very great extreme, both as regards the woman and the man ; 
 but during the last century it was so derided by the Press (especially in the 
 Spectator, wherein it was stated that the tailor, not knowledge or tact, made 
 the man) that the masculine public began tc assume the useful instead of a 
 preposterous garb ; but at the present period ornamental raiment only 
 obtains with females and men in office, as soldiers, judges, the heads of civil 
 institutions, and also in colleges, and at times in the Senate. The Americans, 
 as regards the male attire, have very wisely abolished from the educational 
 and legal establishments all the insignificant parade of personal decoration. 
 I am tempted to prophesy that there is a time coming when the female part 
 of humanity will hold a position where she will share and occupy with men 
 all public offices, and exercise the practice of the learned professions, and, as 
 far as her strength will allow, the mechanical occupations ; but when this 
 period arrives, she will have abandoned the deforming and frivolous folly of 
 dress and jewellery for the wisdom and capability of address. Then, instead 
 of being man's slave, she will be his equal and adviser, and still rema n his 
 loving companion .
 
 28 BEAUTY. 
 
 use of but to distinguish office. Thus disentangled, we shall 
 in a degree be better able to perceive that genius and 
 science have but fettered or attached our mechanical apparatus 
 to the motor energies appertaining to never-resting Nature. 
 Having arrived at this conclusion, we shall cease to claim the 
 ability of originating the causes that effect the working of the 
 different constructions that are made use of in our niotory 
 appliances. 
 
 For example, we cannot, by the nicest arrangement of the 
 parts making up the steam engine, excite in it self-motion. 
 To call forth motivity there must be employed the elastic 
 cogency exhibited through the agency of an expansile vapour ; 
 and the effective sway of this latter body must be regarded 
 in a secondary light, because it owes its chief motile energy 
 to the evolution of heat and electricity liberated through the 
 union of the carbon of the coal with the oxygen of the air, 
 which latter result could not have ensued had there been no 
 magnetic affinity between this gas and the carbonaceous body 
 in question. 
 
 Again, to a magnetic operation, or polar state of matter, 
 so to speak, is every kind of motion due, whether appertain- 
 ing to organic or inorganic entities. For instance, as regards 
 animals, if we prevent them from consuming, or rather 
 creating, carbon out of unparticled matter, either in their 
 skins, lungs, or bronchiae (gills), we arrest their capacity of 
 liberating heat and electricity, and of course prevent any 
 further functional action or movement in their organs and 
 tissues. 
 
 (34.) As REGARDS TIME. Most persons are acquainted 
 with the fact that the measure of time, for the business of 
 life, is divided into parts, and can readily be distinguished 
 and read off (without understanding the action oi' the 
 apparatus denoting it) by persons in general through means 
 of the hands situated on the faces of watches and clocks. 
 Now the ariiticer, or a person instructed by him, is supposed 
 to be capable of making us aware by what law or process 
 the time-keepers in question work out the beautiful results 
 discerned so readily by most individuals. But philosophy 
 incites us to look further, and urges us to trace the cause of
 
 AS REGARDS TIME. 29 
 
 the motor operation in these chronometric apparatus to 
 sources not evident to the unreflective multitude, such as 
 referring, for instance, the action of the balance wheel in the 
 watch to a property of matter vaguely termed elasticity (see 
 this article in my work on " Matter "), residing in the main- 
 spring; and further, ascribing the oscillations of the pen- 
 dulum of the clock to an energy exerted on its suspended 
 weights by the earth, and ambiguously termed attraction. 
 But we are tempted to trace the cause of these phenomena to 
 another source, and shall consider the horary performance, 
 as governed by the natural divisions or multiples of the 
 transit of that vast time-keeper, the earth, which, through 
 a magnetic phenomenon, is the primary agent of the recog- 
 nised motion taking place in horologes ; for could means be 
 found to arrest the oscillatory and rotary movements, with 
 the undulatory serpentine orbital course of the earth, the 
 works of the watch and clock would become stilled for ever, 
 no more to warn us of the lapse of the sleepless hours of 
 existence. 
 
 The time-keeping implements now in use cannot be put 
 in motion, so as to determine the sub-division of periods, by 
 different agents ; but their action must be attributed to one 
 sole derivative, which would be made evident to our senses 
 could we remove the various screens that intercept us from 
 tracing causes up to their fountain head. 
 
 (35.) It has often been demonstrated that a body in motion 
 becomes electro-magnetic, which condition is increased 
 according to the rapidity of the movements ; it has also been 
 shown that this motile body, on approaching another object, 
 excites in it electro-magnetic phenomena by induction. 
 This being the case, it follows that our globe, from its very 
 vehement and varied motivity, must always be in an electro- 
 magnetic state, which condition must endow all the loose 
 materials that crowd its surface with a like property, only, of 
 course, the intensity of the earth's electricity, from being 
 spread over so vast a surface, cannot be readily detected by 
 the apparatus at present in use for the appreciating the 
 presence of this fluid as it sweeps diamagnetically from 
 east to west, or in the opposite direction to that of the polar
 
 30 BEAUTY. 
 
 magnetic element that flows from north to south, which can 
 be so readily demonstrated by a pendant oblong loadstone or 
 the mariner's compass. 
 
 (36.) Time may be considered in an abstract sense as a 
 real thing external to ourselves, which would have an 
 existence and a measure, both of which would remain, though 
 those who now speculate on the conception were annihilated ; 
 and, whatever may be the essence of time as an entity, it is a 
 reality to man, cognisable by a natural organic faculty 
 through which ho observes its lapse. 
 
 Some persons who possess a large phrenological organ of 
 Time have often been called walking chronometers. These 
 individuals can always keep their time appointments, and 
 are frequently found capable of announcing the hours of 
 the day, without looking at a timepiece, and can proclaim 
 those of the night when they themselves are enwrapped in 
 darkness. I was many years ago acquainted with a medical 
 student (Mr. R. Long) who became endowed with this 
 organic ability, and he was usually called by his fellow-pupils 
 the "living clock," and sometimes the "night repeater." 
 The earth is known to oscillate on its axis in exact periods. 
 These vibrations are the result of one of Nature's magnetic 
 laws, and are developed in all bodies when they are disen- 
 tangled from obstructions, and free to move. 
 
 Time, so important to man, has often been stated to be 
 without a definition, and a second, a day, or a year, &c., have 
 been considered as independent of other circumstances. We 
 now know, however, that a second measured by the swing of a 
 pendulum is identical with that motion, and the movement 
 itself is a mere deflection or bending of the combined motions 
 of the earth. We also know that all other times are idenlirnl 
 with the relative motion of the system in which we are involved. 
 
 If a delicately suspended pendulum be placed between the 
 positive and negative poles of two loadstones, it will be 
 found to vibrate alternately and continually between the 
 points of the magnets. Again, if a plate of copper, to which is 
 attached a wire, be buried under the native soil, and a sheet 
 of zinc, similarly armed, be deposited at a distance, also 
 beneath the original ground ; then if the attached wires of
 
 THE LAPSE OF TIME. 31 
 
 both the separated plates be applied to the pendulum of 
 a properly -constructed clock, it, the clock, will be observed to 
 keep time with the sun's course over the earth. Further, a 
 single galvanic battery would be found capable of keeping in 
 correct play, by means of connecting wires, all the clocks of 
 the largest city in the known world. 
 
 Mr. Bain's electrical clock was an instrument which could 
 be set in movement by the otherwise insensible currents of 
 the magnetic principle circulating in the superficial strata of 
 the earth. If we connect the zinc pole or end of De Leu's 
 battery with one of the gold leaves (in the instrument where 
 the leaves are made to slide from each other) and the silver 
 end with the other gold leaf, they attract each other, and, 
 having thus by contact annihilated their opposite electrical 
 states, they separate for a second, and then again attract and 
 disunite as before, forming a perpetual motion that will keep 
 in action for years. A small clapper may be kept constantly 
 vibrating in this way between two bells. (Daniel's "Chemical 
 Philosophy," p. 193.) 
 
 In the tropics, the hour of the day may be known by the 
 direction of the needle, as well as the oscillations of the 
 barometer. (Huntboldt's " Cosmos," p. 170.) 
 
 Many other things will record the hours of the day, 
 especially certain flowers. Were our senses equal to the 
 task, we might read the lapse of time upon everything 
 that has a being, whether animate or inanimate. 
 
 Professor Wheatstone constructed an instrument that he 
 called a polar clock, which marks with great accuracv the time 
 of day. This instrument is far more useful than the sun-dial, 
 since it is not necessary that the sky should be cloudless 
 ( Chambers' s Papers, vol iv.,p. 18.) 
 
 (37.) The wisest of men are no further advanced in regard 
 to a knowledge of the processes by or through which Nature 
 accomplishes her results than the simplest peasant, who 
 toils from youth to age in the same circumscribed nook. 
 The only difference between the philosopher and an ignoramus 
 is that the latter has become acquainted only with his tens 
 of facts, and perhaps deems his knowledge to be great, 
 whilst the former is familiar with his thousands of sequents,
 
 32 BEAUTY. 
 
 and he exclaims of himself that he has cognizance of 
 nothing. Both parties may be advancing, during the period 
 of their existence, along the same line, or climbing the same 
 heights, only the scholar has progressed higher in his upward 
 path than the general observer, so that his views have become 
 more extended, and the objects opened up to his inspection 
 are greatly multiplied, convincing him that the longer and 
 higher he climbs the more will they increase in number. 
 He, the philosopher, will also become conscious that his 
 capabilities to understand the workings of Nature become 
 inefficient from the increased plurality of their proportions 
 and connections, and the many new phases they unfold, so 
 that he is constrained, like the Greek sage, to exclaim, " All 
 that I know is that I have no knowledge of anything." 
 
 Could we wake up into mortal being, after having been 
 entombed for a thousand years, we should, as will then our 
 spirits, find discovered and in use many new and demonstrable 
 energies (or rather variations of the same elemental appli 
 ances) quite as effective, as regards capabilities, as those 
 now produced through our present knowledge and use of 
 electricity, magnetism, steam, &c. 
 
 (38.) How few, amid the aggregate that crowd our busy 
 localities, are ever led to inquire or examine into the economy 
 exercised by any one of the ever-acting principles that per- 
 vade the world's natural system ; and there are fewer still 
 who strenuously seek to comprehend after what mode Nature 
 urges her imponderable elements onwards to accomplish the 
 vast and mighty processes continually in action within and 
 without the gravitating materials making up the globe we 
 inhabit. 
 
 The busy work-a-day world little dreams that if any of the 
 many qualities, and especially if one of the imponderable 
 elements pertaining to the earth's constituents, were with- 
 drawn from the materials now composing it, they (the 
 materials) would have no being or exigence reeogni/able by 
 our senses and feelings, and of course the entities that now 
 arrest the attention would elude our perceptive faculties, 
 since every individual thing, and even the vast universe 
 itself, would become a nullity.
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF BEAUTY. 33 
 
 For instance, by abstracting from substantive ttings 
 their ever-motive innate heat, or by deducting from them 
 their continually undulating magnetic and diamagnetic or 
 electric elements, where would be their now distinctive 
 character? As far as the capability of our present condition 
 is concerned, the all we now contemplate would then become 
 a nothingness, since each substantive entity must lose its 
 form, colour, hardness, and extension, &c., and thus chaos 
 would reign supreme, and Nature and her works would be 
 annihilated. 
 
 (59.) In returning to our original therne, I would remark 
 that the requisites constituting beauty, though often alluded 
 to by annotators regarding this subject, have seldom, if 
 ever, been truly denned ; nor have the causes that direct or 
 preside over perfect development been correctly discussed. 
 Further, the modes and means through which we appreciate 
 the beautiful, appertaining to surrounding objects, have 
 seldom been thought of, much more those causes that disturb 
 or interfere with the accomplishment of Nature's first 
 purpose in the unfolding of her works. 
 
 Beauty must be developed through certain definite propor- 
 tions, with their accompanying qualities, that admit, though 
 at present unknown to us, of measurement in the one, and 
 calculation in the other. Had we the requisite knowledge 
 and necessary means whereby to define the proportionate 
 quantity and properties belonging to each object, we should 
 all agree as to what ought to be the symmetrical form and 
 disposition of everything presented to us, as at present we 
 do when determining an amount by the employment of 
 numerals. Thus, everyone arrives at the conclusion that 
 two multiplied by two produces four as a result ; any other 
 numbers or proportions of numerals combined either fall 
 short or exceed the amount in question, and fail in expres- 
 sing the truth. Again, had we been always more sensible of 
 our deficiencies, and decided in our reasonings, that a juster 
 estimate of the properties and forms of Nature's productions 
 was necessary to our correctly appreciating things, and 
 made exactness the chief object in our pursuit of knowledge, 
 and, failing in this capability, have confessed our ignorance 
 
 C
 
 34 
 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 and incapacity of grasping the subject under discussion. we 
 should not have dictated so many absurd and whimsical 
 definitions of the essentials constituting beauty, as we find 
 detailed in books analyzing this theme. 
 
 (40.) Beauty, I think, might be defined as the perfection of 
 Nature's intent, where all the parts and bearings of an 
 object are in keeping, and only equal to the harmony of the 
 whole. The term beautiful, as before observed, may perhaps 
 be applied consistently to everything that can incite within 
 us the feeling of pleasure, and is attached with propriety, 
 not only to substances, but to their elements and emanations, 
 for it is by or through their iconographic (image-writing) 
 undulations that the forms and properties, &c., &c., of the 
 bodies surrounding us are made evident to our senses. 
 
 (41.) Some observers and discriminators were aware that 
 it was through especial sensibilities and innate promptings 
 that certain persons were rendered capable of taking 
 cognizance of the fitness of things, and they designated this 
 refinement of feeling by the word taste', by which term they 
 summed up the whole comprehension of perfection, making 
 an easy task in this their definition of the quality iu 
 question, forgetting that no one can have a full sense of the 
 whole or total of an object unless he understands thoroughly 
 the parts composing its aggregate or tout 'nxi'mhl-; as well as 
 the mode and manner in which the components work in 
 association or are adapted the one to the other. The taste 
 of the moderns, and the sapirjitiu of the Romans (by which 
 they signified quickness and correctness of judgment 
 generally), with Shaftesbury's definition of it, as the sense by 
 which we appreciate manners, morals, governments, witli 
 ingenuity and beauty, spring from a vast number of faculties, 
 all resident in the great sensor ium, and in fact constitute and 
 qualify its organization. Some have assigned the origin of 
 taste to the imagination, which, like the term peculiar, is one 
 of those words of which too many exist in language, invented 
 by orators and authors to hide their ignorance. We are 
 often led to deviso tinniiianing epithots, technicalities, and 
 sentences to fill up what would otherwise ba a gap, or 
 interrupted sequenca, and bahiud the shadow of these we
 
 IMAGINATION. 35 
 
 creep, to conceal rather than avow that much of our 
 supposed knowledge is merely assumption or pretence 
 
 What is imagination ? It has been attempted to define 
 its signification by other empty and senseless worda or 
 phrases, such as conceit, fancy, ideal, pictures, images in the 
 mind, all of which mean anything, something, everything, 
 and nothing. Tt should be remembered that whatever can 
 produce thought, feeling, or action must be an entity and a 
 reality. The very word, imagination^ explains its import. 
 It i-^ iconography, or image-making, to produce which we 
 require an original whereby to form a model, so that all we 
 can conceive or depict to ourselves are merely copies of what 
 at one time has been or is still in existence. The pictures 
 or representations of everything as before noted which 
 has ever been positively exhibited to us, inducing sympathetic 
 feelings, are no doubt for ever engraved or iconographed on 
 or in the sensorium ; and it may be readily conceived that 
 when an object meets the view, or any circumstance takes 
 place recalling the senses, or rather the soul, to foregone 
 influences, the portions of the brain whereon these impres- 
 sions were stamped are thrown into a kind of tremor, and in 
 this way wake up in our spirit's memory the written effects 
 produced on the brain by our past experiences from the 
 things and even the passions and deeds that we have been 
 associated with during life. 
 
 If we had the ability to form a perfect being possessing 
 every natural requisite, and had we likewise the capability to 
 place him so that he could never be influenced by objects 
 or their operative influences, where would be his imagination 
 or conceptions ? The brain of such an individual must be, 
 as regards fancy, a dull void, and he himself unconscious 
 even of his own existence. Where is the imagination of the 
 young infant, and the helpless idiot? If they have any 
 capability of imagery, all persons must agree that it can 
 play a very faint part as rejards the nervous system. The 
 being to whom pertains this so-called imagination must 
 have been educated by events, and be possessed of distinct 
 organic senses, or he will be as unimaginative as regards each 
 object or subject for which his organization is not, through 
 
 c2
 
 36 
 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 circumstances, adapted, as the clods or stones that may 
 support his steps as he wends his way through life. 
 
 (42.) Some individuals have attributed the feeling of the 
 6ense of beauty to the pleasure that is generated within us 
 on beholding certain objects. This, no doubt, is true, but it 
 must not be forgotten that much depends on our competency 
 of receiving impressions. The things that delight one 
 person may excite pain in another, and be indifferent to a third 
 party, which disparities of feeling arise from the state, 
 quality, and capacity of each individual phrenological 
 organization. Further, sometimes certain pleasing impres- 
 sions which have been enhanced by association may, when 
 recalled in after times, become painful, because the indivi- 
 duals with whom we once enjoyed them have passed away, 
 no longer to share, through sympathy, the feelings generated 
 by their rehearsal. Again, the appreciative enjoyment of 
 particular objects depends upon the condition we may be in 
 at the time of their presentation. For instance, those things 
 or elements which might create gratification when in health 
 will, under disorder or disease, produce uneasiness and even 
 distressing pain. 
 
 Thus the light that had so often afforded us gladness and 
 luxury, during sanity, by assisting us to contemplate some 
 beautiful existence, will, in particular maladies, produce a 
 contrary result, as in certain affections of the eye (or rather 
 a portion of brain situated behind the organs of vision) ; for 
 during ophthalmic inflammation the luminosity that gave 
 pleasure, because it enabled the gam- to appreciate beautiful 
 objects or friends, now calls forth pain and even terrible 
 anguish. So, likewise, in inflammation of the brain, its 
 natural economy becomes perverted, and this viscus which, 
 before the vascular irritation, was so capable of reaping 
 pleasure as it listened to some happy voice or delight giving 
 melody, now shrinks with terror from the sound. This 
 alteration of function under the invasion of the above-named 
 attack probably results from intense or heightened impres- 
 sionability of the organisation, and thus the undulatory 
 elements,that in health might only cause the nervous fibril las of 
 the brain to pulsate gently, may, when pervaded by disorder,
 
 NATURE'S PRIMARY CAPACITY. 37 
 
 make them tremble irregularly, or with too vehement 
 rapidity, and not at all in harmonious unison with the 
 vibrations emanating from the body that called forth the 
 sensation. This state or disposition of things may be 
 comprehended very readily by regarding the torture (so 
 well depicted in the musician's countenance painted by 
 Hogarth) induced in nn individual possessing a large organ 
 of Tune whilst listening to an instrument played upon by a 
 performer, whose taste may extend to anything else save the 
 sense of melody. 
 
 (43.) To follow out our subject analytically, it may be 
 necessary to define and point out some of the causes that 
 tend to the development of beauty. It will be likewise 
 needful to seek after and define some of the causes which 
 frequently mar or obstruct so many of Nature's efforts, or at 
 least interrupt the progress of the first intention as regards 
 her productions. 
 
 (44.^ Situated within a healthy or perfect vegetable 
 seed, or rather enclosed in its fertilized embryo s lies one of 
 Nature's inbred rudimental living existences, constituting a 
 central point of energy, the result of certain previous 
 agencies. Now this cogent point d'aj'pui owes its origin to 
 two other nuclei of quickening- sway, the one springing from 
 an ovule or germ-cell, the other resulting from a sperm 
 vesicle by the union of the two, and the after-cell multiplica- 
 tion originates the compound ovule that hereafter is to be 
 the parent or source of the future phanerogamous or 
 flowering plant, which, in a measure, is the case with the 
 cryptogamic or blossomless vegetation. An almost like 
 economy ensues as regards the animal kingdom. 
 
 It may be presumed, then, that Nature endows or gives to 
 every species of seed a certain primary capacity, which, 
 all things being equal aud in accord, will carry out her 
 intent, namely, that of producing a complete offspring, after 
 its kind, of a definite and proportionate form, with its 
 accompanying attributes, which shall become a perfect 
 plant or animal 
 
 (45.) If we examine the different leaves of a vegetable, it 
 will be discovered that some are dissimilarly shaped or
 
 38 BF.AUTY. 
 
 developed, compared with the rest. I do not mean as to size, 
 but an innate sense (possessed by certain individuals or 
 connoisseurs of the purposes of Nature) will direct us, in 
 selecting one from a series, which in appearance approaches 
 the nearest to excellency or that form best adapted for 
 correctly displaying the features and contour of the entire or 
 perfected plant on which the leaf grew. The same feelings 
 will dictate the appropriate shape and dimensions of a flower 
 or tree in the aggregate, by comparing many of the same 
 family, the one with the other. These observations equally 
 apply to the animal creation, and there have existed 
 individual organizations so excellent and transcendent which 
 gave the possessor the capacity of grouping or combining the 
 separate beauties belonging to different persons, or things 
 (that is, to interchange the objectionable feature or part of 
 one individual existence for the more perfect portion of 
 another) into one beautiful collectedness or total. Such 
 characters were Phidias and Praxiteles. It was this ability 
 of copying and uniting separate perfect parts, so as to make 
 up a consummate whole, that led us to worship the 
 productions of some of the Greek artificers. 
 
 (46.) The agents that excite into action the central rudi- 
 ment or germ belonging to the seed of plants and the ova 
 of animals lie external to the one and the other. And be 
 it known that, without the influencing sway exhibited by 
 these outlying co-workers of Nature, none of the vivifying 
 results observed to be developed in these local nests, so to 
 speak, would ever have taken place, for the central point 
 alluded to in section 44 apparently possesses no innate ability 
 to perform any operation by iteelf, or if it be capable of 
 this economy it lies dormant until aroused into a quickening 
 state by agencies external to it, like the suspended piece of 
 steel that becomes thrown into motion by the presence and 
 approach of the loadstone. In fact, we may correctly s'ate 
 that all the processes taking place throughout the workings 
 of Nature are the resulting efforts of a vast series of actions 
 and reactions. If the capacity of self-development were 
 resident within the seed-germs of plants and the sperm-cells of 
 animals they would be entirely independent of all accessory
 
 FXTERNAL AGENTS. 39 
 
 agents, and it would follow as a sequence that locality and 
 surrounding influences would be of little import. Further, 
 if this ability of unfoldraent was innate or independent of 
 external agents, each germ ought, when liberated from its 
 original source, to grow and fulfil its functions under most 
 temperatures, equally in the water as upon land, buried deep 
 in the soil as when near its surface, whether suspended in 
 the air or resting on the barren rock. 
 
 Besides, experience teaches us that all living as well as 
 inanimate existences exercise their economy from being in- 
 fluenced by certain imponderable uudulatory elements, as 
 well as gravitating materials, some of which may often be 
 situated at a great distance from the bodies acted upon, 
 though they may be as for away as the planetary system that 
 is associated with the earth and even the star-suns that 
 govern their destined motions. It should be remembered 
 that remoteness or approximation makes no difference in the 
 quantity of action that one body can exert over another. It 
 is the intensity or degree of operation that varies as bodies 
 approach each other. Thus, when a ball is in motion its 
 weight and the earth's attraction for it remain the same, 
 however near or distant it be, or slow or rapid its course. 
 
 (47.) It is an operation from without that governs the 
 natural progressive economy of each animal and plant, 
 causing them to appropriate, at the different stages of their 
 existence, the elements which are to develope their varied 
 changes. The first evident effect occasioned by external 
 stimulation in the gem mule or embryo of the plant is germi- 
 nation, which is induced by the inciting action of a certain 
 degree of heat and moisture, which operations are parti- 
 cularly aided by the chemical or actinic rays situated in the 
 atmosphere. 
 
 A further external adjuvant is the action of the oxygen of 
 the air upon the starch found in all seed. This operation 
 gives rise to a kind of eremacausis or combustion, bringing 
 into operation heat and electricity ; this latter element induces 
 a determinate elliptic motion which is observed to be set up in 
 and among the molecules composing the nucleal heart or 
 centre-point of the germ, which compels it to commence and
 
 40 BEAUTY. 
 
 then exercise its necessitated functions. During this stage 
 the rudimental gemmule, or soft internal hud of the seed, 
 begins to imbibe its first tangible food, which is contained 
 in the now saccherined (sugar-sweetened) cotyledons or seed 
 lobes that embrace it. Be it also noticed that this early 
 pabulum lies external to the embryonic centre-point, but its 
 presence serves as one of the excitanis to cause the germ to 
 partake of the aliment which is so necessary for urging 
 onwards its growth, and thus gives it the ability to shoot 
 forth. The further progress of the plant awaits other 
 influences of a different character. Thus, when the slender 
 plumule or embryonic bud is pushed outwards, and begins 
 to open its leaves, it requires light, which, unlike actin, one 
 of the elements of the atmosphere, would have checked 
 germination. The plumule also needs the presence in the 
 soil of certain salts, and sometimes organic animal matter 
 is necessary (as in the Venus Fly-trap tribe) that was not 
 required before, but without which presence the further 
 advancement of the foliage would have been impaired, if 
 not arrested. These latter agents produce greater changes 
 in the appearance of the vegetation that clothes the 
 landscape than is generally supposed. Besides the in- 
 fluences alluded to above, the operation of which comes from 
 without, and that experience has proved are necessary to the 
 early development of the vegetable kingdom, there are others 
 less easily detected, though far more numerous, in fact so 
 multiplied that calculation could not reach them, since all 
 bodies and elements, near or far, throughout the universe 
 influence each other, one acting with more intensity than 
 another, either because it lies mo e adjacent, or from having 
 greater ability, by association or affinity, to excite into 
 activity the inherent elements and properties which pre- 
 dispose each entity to display its natural gradations. A 
 change even in position, and especially of place, effects a 
 modification in the growing herb. Again, an alteration in 
 the economy of one substance will induce in another, upon 
 which it is exerting its sway, a corresponding deviation of 
 action. Thus we often see the same kind of vegetables in 
 one locality (produced from the same seed) more healthy and
 
 ACTION BY PRESENCE. 41 
 
 assuming a finer or more beautiful form than they do in 
 another situation, though in the same kind of mould, and the 
 distance between the groups may only be a few feet. These 
 variations occur independently of soil, moisture, air, or light; 
 and the like diffeiences occur in aerial plants, which have 
 been noticed to change in character, by altering their 
 situation, as when placing them over diverse parts of a given 
 piece of land. Again, plants also vary as they grow near a 
 certain rock, or some particular tree, &c., &c The foregoing- 
 facts have likewise been verified by experiments on vegeta- 
 tion cultivated in pots, or tubs, &c. 
 
 The presence* of particular salts, &c., in the soil, produces 
 like effects, though not in any way imbibed or absorbed by 
 the vegetation, for in their absence products particularly 
 expected do not ensue or result. There are likewise electrical 
 and magnetic actions continually going on, ever varying in 
 intensity, which continually play their part in and among 
 
 * Action by presence is frequently seen in the laboratory. For instance, a 
 piece of spongy platinum placed near a gaseous mixture of oxygen and 
 hydrogen causes them to unite chemically, to form water. Further, if we 
 place various portions of fulminating compounds in different parts of a room, 
 and explode only one of them by percussion, the other parcels, though 
 untouched or jarred by the stroke, will, through a kind of [sj'inpathy, detonate, 
 either simultaneously or after a period ; but neither of these divisions would 
 have flashed off if the blow had been applied to any other body save one of 
 the allotments in question. Fermentation is at present little understood. 
 Putrid emanations when even at a long distance away, give rise to other fer- 
 menls. By the operation of the principle of action by presence, one sub- 
 stance maj' so operate upon another as to develope in it certain latent 
 abilities and properties. Thus, a few drops of diluted sulphuric acid boiled 
 with starch set in operation an action which decomposes any quantity of 
 starch, and causes the decomposed elements to re-arrange themselves in a 
 new and different manner under the form of dextrine, and finally of cane 
 sugar. At the expiration of this process the acid may be removed unaltered 
 in quality or quantity. Another acid would not have answered the same 
 purpose. This law of action by presence holds good with regard to the 
 operation of homoeopathic remedies. If the infinitesimal atoms of 
 homoeopathic medicines are brought into contact with tissues with 
 which they have no relations or affinities, no special effects are observed ; 
 but when these molecules are made to bear upon disordered parts with which 
 they are in homoeopathic rapport (association) we witness effects as wonderful 
 as those of the magnet in vivifying unlimited numbers of the atoms of 
 umnagnetized steel. There must then be a relation between the diseased, 
 part and the remedy. (" Marcij" vol. i., p. 142.)
 
 42 BEAUTY. 
 
 organic and inorganic bodies. The foregoing facts lead to 
 the peremptory conclusion that the above results take place 
 from the undulatory qualifying influences which are always 
 emanating from surrounding objects. These pulsatory con- 
 trolling qualities must produce or excite forth changes in the 
 materials upon which they impinge. 
 
 (48.) It is now known that nearly every latitude and longi- 
 tude of ocean holds its special indwellers, whose economy is 
 adapted to their surroundings. The like bearings may be 
 observed to obtain among the land habitants. It has also 
 been experienced that different regions of the earth pro 
 a particular vegetation and fauna (local animals). Thus the 
 indwellers upon the savannahs and pampas of the Xew. with 
 the habitants belonging to the plains and deserts of the Old 
 World, differ from each other, and these again exhibit a dis- 
 similarity to those of the mountain ranges bounding each 
 district. So also is it with man ; for it may be discerned that 
 the dwellers in one locality are more beautiful, and their pro- 
 portions more equal and in keeping than those of an. thor. 
 though the distance between the two parties may be only a 
 few miles. This difference of character is remarkably 
 apparent in the aspect of the mountaineers of each separate 
 country, who in strength, height, comeliness, and ener^ 
 excel those residing in the volleys, as seer, amonu the 
 ::ian, Circassian, and Afghan races, &c. 
 
 (49.) Food effects strange alterations in the human form. 
 having an ability not only to excite into action, but 
 change individual propensities. t have known persons to 
 become irritable and combative if they partook of much 
 animal nutriment, especially when the sustenance was beef. 
 The properly well-fed adult and child display an exterior 
 very different to those whose aliment lias bcc;i scanty, or not 
 accordant with their occupation, locality, and organization, as 
 witnessed in the gigantic fish-eating Palagoniun 
 trasted with the squalid Tartar, and particularly the 
 diminutive descendants of thus:- Irish who, during and after 
 the rebellion, lived on common wild herbs, and even grass. 
 These latter individuals, who before the revolution were 
 comely and handsome, are now, especially those found in
 
 INFLUENCE OF OUH SURROUNDINGS. 43 
 
 Antrim, degenerated even to the alteration of the shape of 
 their limbs, and the advancement forwards ape-like of the 
 bones of the face. 
 
 Vegetarians in general, who are surrounded by certain 
 congenial circumstances, are mostly healthy, full-grown in 
 stature, and more industrious than flesh-feeding individuals. 
 
 (50.) The things and persons with whom we come into 
 relation have a vast deal more dominion over us than we 
 generally dream of in our reasonings. No being can be 
 comely and healthy who is exposed fr a lengthened period 
 to circumstances that may render him unhappy. All those 
 individuals, and they were of every rank and denomination, 
 who visited Mr. R. Owen's Institution at Lanark (see his 
 "Universal Revolutions") used to ask him where he 
 obtained so many extraordinarily beautiful children, and 
 his reply was that he did not select, but gathered them 
 indiscriminately; and he pointed out to his interrogators 
 that it was the happy circumstances wherewith he encom- 
 passed them which produced the felicitous effects they 
 witnessed, and thus he proved by practice that we do not 
 form ourselves, but are made in the greater part the beings 
 we become by the surroundings to which we have been 
 exposed The Greeks and Romans were well aware of the 
 above facts ; and when the matrons were enceinte (pregnant) 
 they exposed them to those incidents that wore most con- 
 genial to their feelings, or rather surrounded them with 
 those objects that might give rise to a taste for the elegant, 
 graceful, and lovely, well knowing that on such treatment 
 chiefly depended the symmetry, refinement, and disposition 
 of their offspring. 
 
 The foregoing facts and experiments point out some of 
 the causes which, acting or operating on a given individual, 
 may produce a beautiful form, and even a benign tempera- 
 ment, but, if treated after another mode, can mar Nature's 
 intended proportions as regards lineament. 
 
 (31.) The action by presence of bodies one upon another 
 was known, as regards animals, to the ancients, for we read 
 that Jacob made variegated rods, and placed them before the 
 sheep and gosts of Laban, in order to alter their exterior
 
 44 BEAUTY. 
 
 character. Jockeys attest to similar effects being produced 
 on horses. Many naturalists state that similar phenomena 
 take place with various other animals. The llyla, or .tree- 
 fro;:, like the Iguana (a species of lizard), 'changes its hues in 
 accordance with the colours of surroundings objects. The 
 Cephalopoda are incited to vary their tints and to harmonise 
 them with that of the surface on which they may rest, and, 
 like the Chameleon, possess an arrangement of pigment- 
 cells, which enable them to effect an alteration in their hii:->. 
 Fish always put on the tinctured shades of the river's bed 
 upon which they sojourn. Birds in the emblazoned stains of 
 their plumage will often resemble the foliage amid which 
 they exercise their economy ; and if removed to a new 
 country they lose their original complexions, and also alter 
 some of their habits, adapting themselves to their novel 
 contingencies. Plants and flowers are also modified in shape 
 and liveried dyes, by being subjected to the influence of 
 certain spectra. 
 
 We may proceed still further in this investigation of 
 action by presence and could recite facts where the form 
 and even whole limbs have varied in appearance and shape 
 through the influence of external agents. Thus the nrcvi, or 
 mother' s-marks, are very familiar examples. T was once 
 acquainted with the wife of an officer (Lieut. Gaffrick) who 
 became much disturbed in her system from observing, when 
 pregnant, a man (John Workman, of Berkeley) who had 
 lost his left hand with part of the fore arm, and from this 
 circumstance the lady in question gave birth to an infant 
 minus this member. Dr. J. Blundel has, or had, in his pos- 
 session a foetus (child in the womb) like a triad, the 
 consequent of the mother's fright from this reptile. Dr. B. 
 was also possessed of another pTcparation of a kitten with a 
 parrot's head. The mother-rat, during her pregnancy, had 
 bitten by this bird. I could quote hundreds of similar 
 incidents, but the above will sullirc- for illustration 
 
 'p-rnal Aymtx mid their modifying ///'rc/.v " ///. w<j work. 
 " Neir \iursof Maft.-r." p. 378.) 
 
 (52.) PKIIMSI T.NCY OF TIIK IMFEB88XOK8 MADB OK LlVIKO 
 KS. These stamped or imnirfd efl'-rt^ 17-0 often
 
 PERMANENCY OF CERTAIN AGENTS. 45 
 
 observed to be very durable, both as regards vegetables and 
 animals For instance, with respect to our own species. 
 The offspring of somo white women, after their second 
 marriage, have put on some of their characters of the first 
 husband, who was a black, though. the after spouse belonged 
 to their own species as regards colour. This sequent very 
 frequently occurs with respect to the brute-tribe. Thus 
 a mare, whose first colt was begotten by a male of the 
 zebra race, will ever after give birth to streaked foals, though 
 the sires of her future progeny belonged to the same equine 
 family as herself. Many of the issue of animals have par- 
 taken of the character tf those of their own species with 
 whom they have been associated while carrying their young. 
 This fac'~, as before stated, was particularly noticed in regard 
 to the human race by both Greeks and Romans in their 
 observations on the children of their matrons. Mr. Fraser 
 of Findraick, in Scotland, related to me that he was in pos- 
 session of a perfect black mare, whose issue was very unlike 
 herself or its sire, for the latter was piebald (black and 
 white;, while the colt exactly resembled the chestnut gelding 
 which was her companion in the field. Birds hatched by 
 other than their own species often have some of the tinted 
 plumage of the foster rather than the real parents, and, what 
 is still more striking, become possessed of some of the pro- 
 pensities of the nurse-bird that incubated them. 
 
 (53.) During gestation the foatus receives most of its 
 modifying impressions immediately from the parent, or 
 mediately through influences received or imbibed during this 
 period by the mother, which qualifying agents tend to in- 
 troduce new conditions in the early formation of the embryo, 
 and there stamp impressions on its nervous system which 
 in t 1 e future come out in the temperament. Af'er birth the 
 excitants from without become more positive or intense by 
 their direct operation on the impressionable sensorium of the 
 individual in question, modifying not only the frame, but 
 waking into more positive action the all -governing soul. 
 
 The size and quality of our phrenological developments 
 depend, as before noticed, very much upon the things and 
 circumstances we have been surrounded by, for these govern-
 
 46 BEAUTY. 
 
 ing divisions of the brain can be enlarged or diminished, like 
 the muscles of the body, accordingly as they are excited into 
 action or are allowed to lie passive from the non-use of them. 
 These alterations in the individual organs of thesensorium have 
 been proved by experiment, as where a cast has been taken 
 of the head both before and after a certain course of educa- 
 tion or training, and further by adopting the same plan of 
 modelling the cranium after the exercise or non-employment 
 of a given propensity. Everyone is aware of the fact that 
 a broken limb shrinks or withers, not from the accident, but 
 from desuetude of the muscles ; and, vice versa, our ex- 
 tremities enlarge and acquire aptitude by the exercise of 
 them. Further, tin re are other consequents resulting from 
 the employment or non-exercise of the different intellectual 
 developments we possess. Thus, phrenologists have collected 
 through observation a number of valuable facts demon- 
 strating that accordingly as the different organs of the cerebra- 
 tion are exercised, and consequently enlarged and rendered 
 proficient, so will be the shape and proportions of the body. 
 When we reflect that all the functions of the system are 
 carried on or excited into action under the influence of the 
 nervous system, these results will appear self-evideat. Time, 
 in unfolding his cycles, lias through external agents generated 
 mighty changes in the series of the a.'.imal kingdom, as may 
 be gleaned from the remains of those leviathan and other 
 fossils which we find embedded in the leaves of the eaith 
 and preserved in its strata like ancient gems in their setting, 
 provoking both wonder and admiration. 
 
 (54.) Having so far endeavoured to trace some of tin- 
 causes whence result the properties and forms, and conse- 
 quently the beauties, of living Nature, I will proceed to 
 show how, through her efforts, are developed the effects 
 which produce many of those pleasurable feelings that 
 spring up within us, through the medium of our senses, 
 whilst contemplating her more perfect productions and their 
 resulting economy. It would appear that each animate 
 body, and even its individual parts, when they are healthy 
 and proportionate, have an ability to create in us pleasure, 
 and it can likewise be demonstrated that every inanimate
 
 INFLUENCE OF MUSIC UPON MEMORY. 47 
 
 entity, when in keeping with its surroundings, has a 
 capacity to charm. These attributes can be appreciated and 
 enjoyed by every individual who may be possessed of the 
 necessary developed organization, and an adequate know- 
 ledge of the uses and adaptations of the things that may 
 encompass him. Our distaste to or disgust for certain things 
 and their belongings often proceed from a want of able 
 perception or just cognisance of their individual appro- 
 priateness and association, which capabilities, when 
 acquired, change our opinions and often our sensations as 
 we regard or are exposed to certain objects. Again, many 
 people are induced to notice particular existences or their 
 properties from reminiscences, since the presented subjects 
 abstractedly or alone may possess no captivation whatever 
 for them. Thus we often perceive an individual attracted 
 towards the instrument upon which some person is per- 
 forming, because in bygone times in the grave or gay 
 moments of his past life some friend or esteemed com- 
 panion used to play upon it. The musician perhaps is 
 executing an enchanting air of a most recent date, yet its 
 composition or novelty excites no appreciation or pleasure 
 in the approaching listener, who breaks in upon the feelings 
 that are making the player's or minstrel's heart throb with 
 delight, by a request that the performer will play some 
 simple or familiar air, perhaps hackneyed and old, which 
 entreaty, when complied with, wakes into action neither his 
 organs of Ideality nor Melody ; but calls up before him a 
 certain scene or occurrence with which he was once con- 
 nected. Yes ; the chord or organ of Memory may be struck, 
 as regards a particular object, and the performance of the 
 solicited strain carries him back to a certain person through 
 whom he first heard and, hearing, perhaps loved not the 
 music, but the being who had drawn to it, by association, 
 his attention. Persons thus invited, by circumstances, to 
 notice passing events are often thought to have a liking, or 
 taste, as it is called, for a certain thing, when in reality it is 
 association or common curiosity that has prompted them to 
 offer their observations or pay attention to a given subject. 
 Another class of individuals frequently deceive the general
 
 48 BEADTt. 
 
 world as to their capabilities of appreciation by pretending 
 to have a fondness for, or to possess a knowledge of, a given 
 subject, and whose remarks or praises are often very 
 tiresome, and mostly such individuals are so dull or insipid 
 as to be unable to recognise that the proficient or apt 
 observer sees through the thin veil that is assumed to hide 
 their empty pretensions 
 
 This last character is a perfect contrast to those benevolent 
 beings who, often most innocent of all comprehension of the 
 topics in question, yet pleasingly lend their sympathies in 
 order not to disappoint the feelings of the performer and 
 exhibitor of things, or tenderer of new propositions A 
 familar instance of association as regards musical perform- 
 ances is witnessed now and then in regard to the Scotchman 
 who has sojourned for some time at a distance from the 
 country where he had lived, when the bagpipe's shrill, droning, 
 discordant, music-murdering tones strike upon his ear, at 
 the sound of which he may be observed to start beyond the 
 ability of self-control, delight apparently bursting from his 
 whole system, but not caused by the sweet harmony, for that 
 you cannot elicit from this semitoned instrument, nor will it 
 be from the composition, for that may be, and generally is, most 
 barbarous. No ; remembrance is roused into action, and his 
 feelings have carried him to his native hills again, amid the 
 occurrences that first excited his youthful heart to the 
 reminiscence of its earliest pulses of pleasure. In the con- 
 nections or belongings, then, often lie the source of pleasure, 
 and not in the immediate object presented. 
 
 Illustrative of the above I quote the following : - 
 A Highland regiment that was quartered abroad was 
 joined by a detachment of another corps, which possessed a 
 remarkably apt piper. This performer, to please the men, 
 played every evening a favourite Hootch air, '* Lochaber nae 
 rnair." In a lew days so many of the soldiers were affected 
 that a great number of them became ill. From his cir- 
 cumstance the leading officer was obliged to order off the 
 detachment and discard the piper. After a time the men 
 recovered their spirits, and were enabled to resume their 
 duty.
 
 THE OUTLINE CONSTITUTING BEAUTY. 49 
 
 (55 ) In examining more closely wherein lies the beauty 
 of the varied living existences that invite us to inspect and 
 afterward sad mire the beautiful products of Nature, especially 
 those creations in which she has been allowed to fully act 
 up to her pristine purpose, we shall find that she observes 
 but few perceptible governing laws ; and it may also be 
 detected during this cause-seeking introspection that sur- 
 rounding circumstances often, as before observed, make her 
 true, and it may be false, to herself, and hence often spring 
 those traits in her productions which please or offend our 
 perceptive faculties. Tiie mineral ingredients sometimes 
 found among the constituents making up an organized body, 
 though still possessing some of the original attributes they 
 had when found in the plant that pervaded them when 
 forming an ingredient of the soil, have appertaining to them 
 an ability of altering the living system of which they may 
 form a part. This unusual diversity, sometimes recognised 
 in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, is at periods con- 
 jectured to be the result of a new law that is producing the 
 variety, whereas it is only a modification effected by the 
 presence of the inorganic body within or near the living 
 creature or herb. 
 
 (56.) Of all the outlines presented to our phrenological 
 organs of Form, the most pleasing are those that assume 
 the elliptical, oval, or spiral contour, which profiles may be 
 appropriately designated Nature's intended types of develop- 
 ment. It has been fully demonstrated that the elements 
 of electricity and magnetism assume these outlines as they 
 undulate over, round, or through the different bodies with 
 which they may come in contact. It may be further stated 
 that these controlling elements govern mediately or imme- 
 diately all gravitating materials. In fact, it is the impon- 
 derable elements, pervading every medium, that effect each 
 process developed around us, and not ponderable matter, 
 which latti-r is wholly subservient to these subtile elements, 
 and merely serve as so many fulcra or levers, by and 
 through which Nature's imponderables are enabled to accom- 
 plish her purposes, whilst unfolding the processes, and even 
 perhaps the events taking place throughout the universe 
 
 D
 
 50 BEAUTY. 
 
 As regards living existences, the foregoing subtile principles 
 may be said, by their influence, to shape all the lineaments 
 and likewise govern every economy appertaining to them. 
 Oersted discovered and demonstrated that the galvanic fluid, 
 also the magnetic and electric currents, observe a gyratory or 
 spiral course around the bodies they traverse. There can be 
 little doubt, then, that the ever-flowing magnetism of the 
 earth causes or orginates (as it permeates the living struc- 
 tions situated in the soil), the ellipsoid and gyratory motions 
 that take place in the distribution of the circulating fluids 
 that flow through the growing stems and cells of vegetables. 
 It is to this ellipsoidal motive action that the vesicles of 
 plants owe their ovoid form. To these curvilinear and 
 spiral laws of motion, exercised by the imponderables 
 in question, must be ascribed the source of the oval 
 outline that pervades the aspects of living existences 
 which constitute one of the chief features of their 
 beauty. (See "Elliptic Motion," in my work on 
 " Matter" p. 323.) 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF NATURAL ELLIPSOIDAL MOTIVITY. 
 (a.) Fluids when advancing on plane or inclined surfaces 
 exhibit a tendency to flow in the half oval or serpentine 
 direction, as witnessed where streamlets carve their channels 
 in the soft mud or yielding sand, and again may be recog- 
 nised in the windings of a river's course through a country. 
 This serpentine route is traced out from the innate undu- 
 latory law that governs the motions of ail bodies when freed 
 from the obstructions that may hold in check their natural 
 motive propensity. 
 
 (/>.) All hurricanes pursue an undulatory, spiral, or cork- 
 screw-like course, and are of an electrical origin. These 
 tempests or whirlstorms are seen to pass in a determined 
 direction, and generally advance along a lengthened curved 
 axis from the equator to the poles. A ship, the Cliurlcx 
 llnddle, once scudded for five days before the wind, and 
 sailed round the vortex of the storm, keeping the wind 
 always in the quarter opposite to that in which she was 
 scudding. During the earthquake at Japan. December, 
 1854, the Russian frigate, f >''/'/". in h:i.l fan-hour
 
 ELLIPSOIDAL MOTIVITY. 
 
 51 
 
 swung entirely round by the eddies and whirlpools 43 times, 
 twisting her chains up into knots. 
 
 (c.) Dr. Franklin relates that he saw a whirlwind which 
 began by taking up dust in the form of a cone or sugar- 
 loaf, with the apex pointing downwards, and soon afterwards 
 grew to the height of oOft., being 20 or 30 feet in diameter. 
 It advanced in a direction contrary to the wind, and although 
 the rotatory motion of the column was very rapid, its onward 
 progress was slow, so as to allow a man to keep pace with 
 it ; after progressing for three-quarters of a mile it entered 
 a wood, where it twisted, large trees with surprising 
 energy. These were carried upwards in spiral lines, together 
 with boughs and leaves, which from their height appeared 
 reduced to the size of flies. In the earthquakes of Peru, 
 according to Hurnboldt, the circling rotatory commotions 
 are the most dangerous. Walls were observed to be twisted, 
 but not thrown down ; rows of trees were turned from their 
 previous parallel direction ; fields covered with different kinds 
 of plants were displaced in the great earthquake of Riobomba, 
 1797, and in that of Calabria, in 1783. The phenomena of 
 the inversion or displacement of fields and pieces of land, 
 by which one is made to occupy the place of another, is 
 connected with the translatory motion or penetration of 
 separate terrestial strata. " \Vhen," continues Humboldt, " I 
 made a plan of the ruined town of Riobomba one particular 
 spot was pointed out to me where all the furniture of a 
 house had been found under the ruins of another. In some 
 cases it was necessary to appeal to the Audiencia, or Council 
 of Justice, to decide upon the contentions that arose regard- 
 ing the proprietor ship of objects that had been removed to a 
 distance.'' 
 
 (d.) When liquids are set at liberty, so that they can 
 escape from certain receptacles without obstruction, they 
 assume the spiral shape, as witnessed in the corkscrew 
 column formed by the water liberated through a tube 
 appertaining to a vessel containing a fluid. 
 
 Again, liquids, when expanding by the process of solidifi- 
 cation, would appear to exert their energy after an 
 elliptical or ovoid form, as perceived on examining the oval 
 
 D 2
 
 52 
 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 apertures made in soft metals when bursting by freezing 
 their contained water. 
 
 (e.) Bodies preserve their shape and likewise become more 
 sonorous after percussion, when oval, than of any other 
 configuration. They also do not expand so unequally on the 
 application of caloric, nor are they so liable to crack or burst 
 on the application of heat. This form ought to be attended 
 to in casting bells and making musical instruments, and 
 then we should have more perfect melodious tones produced, 
 especially when playing en wind instruments. 
 
 (/.) The motions of animals, whilst obeying their inbred 
 natural impulses, partake of the crescent ic character, as seen 
 with the serpent tribe and in the recreative flight of birds 
 through the air, the sportive gliding of fish along the 
 meandering river, and particularly the attractive postures 
 and elegant carriage of the body displayed by the feline 
 race in their joyous gambols. The same curve is described 
 or developed in part by the so-called instinctive movements 
 of the separate members, as the arms, legs, and wings of 
 locomotive creatures. This bow-like outline whilst walking 
 is scarcely perceptible, from the short portion of the 
 ellipsoidal segment made by the foot, but may be readily 
 discerned when following a man (where the effort must be 
 greatly increased to preserve the equilibrium) with a wooden 
 support, and observing the ovoid segments made with it in 
 the snow as he progresses. The different steps performed in 
 dancing pourtray the same disposition ; and the nearer 
 approach to the ovate sweep, the more graceful will be the 
 achievement. 
 
 Round bodies in rolling over a plane do not describe 
 circles, but ellipsoidal curves, the axis (unlike a wheel 
 turning on a pivot or fixed spindle) being now removed 
 from the centre to the ground. Thus the nail situated in 
 the tire of the running carriage wheel forms a series of 
 lengthened ovals in the air as it progresses. The inclina- 
 tion of ponderable aerial and fluid matter to undulate and 
 describe serpentine curves is again witnessed in the wind- 
 impelled waves of the lake and ocean, and likewise in the 
 whirls of 'lust driven by the brrr/e over a smooth plane,
 
 CURVILINEAR DEVELOPMENT. 53 
 
 and may also be observed in the curvilinear outline extend- 
 ing, almost to any distance, along the lax rope when the 
 elevated hand that holds one of its extremities is suddenly 
 depressed. This last undulatory motion is governed, it 
 would appear, by an electrical action, as demonstrated when 
 smacking a whip, and so intense is the energy that portions 
 of the flax-formed cord will fly off at each report. It is the 
 electricity delivered from the terminating string at the end 
 of the thong that gives the pain or shock to the animal 
 when struck. The electric fluid in question can be demon- 
 strated by applying a piece of fine wire, which serves as a 
 good conductor, to the end of the whip. By these means 
 we can elicit sparks at each report the lash produces, as 
 witnessed when the feat is performed in the dark. (See 
 article <l Sound," in my ivork on ll Matter.") 
 
 (g.) When bubbles of phosphorated hydrogen burst forth 
 with a slight report into the air from the fluid in which they 
 were generated, the white circlets they at first form 
 gradually become oval- These elliptical loops can be 
 imitated. Thus, if we stretch an elastic membrane across 
 the base of a funnel that has been filled with white smoke, 
 on tapping lightly the applied tissue the confined murky 
 air will escape from the apex or pipe of the cone in oval 
 cinctures, although the aperture through which the smoke 
 was ejected be perfectly round, or even square, showing that 
 these rings are elastic, like undulating musical tones, 
 which pulsations, when produced out of tune, are observed 
 to be puckered, as shown in Chaldni's experiments ; but if 
 the intonations flow freely for some distance, their corrugated 
 waves, that at first set the teeth on edge, obey, after a time, 
 the common law of bodies in motion, and assume the proper 
 ellipsoidal curve, and if these originally discordant notes are 
 heard at some distance they impinge on the ear, or rather 
 the organ of Melody, as perfect tones. The smoke of the 
 recently extinguished taper, as it floats through the still air, 
 is seen to describe wavy ellipses. 
 
 (A.) Animals and vegetables and their individual parts 
 during development and growth progress in a curvilineal 
 direction, and consequently give rise to oval or ellipsoidal
 
 54 BEAUTY. 
 
 and spiral productions, us recognised in the ceilings of 
 tendrils, and also the whirls formed by leaves, &c., like- 
 wise in the shape of the organs and cells making up living 
 animal structures ; and, again, in the outline described by 
 the shape of seeds, eggs, fruit, blood -globules, and the eyes 
 of locomotive creatures. 
 
 This economy would appear to be the result of, and 
 effected by, that spiral or conical law of motion, impressed 
 upon the never-resting imponderable principles of Nature, 
 which, in acting on gravitating matter, seem to exert their 
 energies in a conchoidal or incurved course. Thus galvanism, 
 electricity, magnetism, and sound, when passing along con- 
 ductors (like the nervo-magnetic fluid from the brain of 
 animals, which traverses their nerve-cords) do not permeate 
 them in a right line, but gyrate around their surfaces, and 
 are applied to the wires, &c., that carry them, after the 
 manner of two corkscrews rotating reverse ways, which have 
 been threaded by a rod, as proved by Oersted and Faraday. 
 It should be remembered that we cannot have a positive 
 stream of these all-effecting imponderable elements pass 
 round or along a circuit without calling into active being a 
 negative reactionary current, the latter undulating or winding 
 around the conductor in one direction, progressing from 
 north to south, and the other convoluting the wire or cord 
 in a contrary course, as if proceeding from south to north 
 (See " Attraction and Repulsion," also "' Action and 
 Re-action," in mi/ essay on " Matter") 
 
 (z.) If a wire be twisted or coiled after the manner of a 
 corkscrew, so as to form a hollow spiral or helix, it will be 
 found under that form to represent a magnet, one end of the 
 coil being north, the other extremity having a south pole, and, 
 if free to move, it will naturally arraugo itself in the magnetic 
 meridian under the influence of the earth's magnetism. The 
 poles of this artificial helix are attracted by the unlike poles 
 of an ordinary magnet. Further, this hollow spiral will be 
 found to impart magnetism to soft iron or steel by induction. 
 Again, two such bodies attract or repel each othor by their 
 different poles or extremities, like two separate magnets. 
 Indeed, an ordinary magnet, or elongated loadstone, may be
 
 ELECTRO-POLAR ACTION. 55 
 
 viewed as a body having' a number of helical chains of mole- 
 cules in a state of permanent atomic polarity. 
 
 C57.) The foregoing facts would lead us to assume that the 
 spiral arrangement of the leaves and tendrils of plants is the 
 result of an electro-polar or magnetic action. Now as all 
 substances by induction (which phenomenon ensues with more 
 or less intensity between all bodies, according to their 
 proximity or remoteness) may be rendered polar-magnetic or 
 electro-diamagnetic, so the earth and the various materials on 
 its surface can give this quality to growing plants, thus 
 affording them the capacity of continually transmitting streams 
 of electro-magnetism up and down them ; the ascending 
 current being often of one character in the day, from the 
 effects of the clouds, evaporation, light, and thermo-electricity ; 
 and another kind by night, from the radiation of heat and 
 consequent refrigeration in fact, varying with changing 
 circumstances. Thus M. de Saussure observed that, during 
 summer and winter, by night as well as by day, when the 
 atmosphere is free from clouds, the electricity of the air is 
 positive ; and Mr. Read (Phil. Trans., 1794) showed that out 
 of 404 observations made in one year, the air was positively 
 electrical in '241 and negative in 156 ; also that the electricity 
 was insensible in seven experiments only. " In fogs, and at 
 the commencement of falls of snow," observes Humboldt in 
 his " Cosmos," " I have seen, through a long series of 
 observations, the previously positive electricity rapidly pass 
 into the negative condition, both on the plains of the colder 
 zones, and in the Paramas (mountainous districts covered 
 with stunted trees) of the Cordilleras, at elevations from 
 11,000 to 16,000 feet." 
 
 Slate-grey clouds are charged (according to Peltier's 
 experiments at Paris) with negative, and white, red, and 
 orange coloured clouds with positive electricity. 
 
 But to resume ; it has been recognized in the growth of 
 vegetables that there is a point of energy "from which one 
 part of the herb shoots upwards into the electrical air, 
 and another portion proceeds downwards into the 
 magnetic earth. (See " Vegetable Motion," in my essay 
 on "Matter.")
 
 56 
 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 Now as we demonstrate in the laboratory that negative and 
 positive electricity are convertible, the one into the other, may 
 we not conjecture that a like change can be effected, as 
 occasion may require, in the processes of Nature ? I appre- 
 hend as much, and shall surmise, without, I hope, incurring 
 the risk of being deemed too conjectural, that that portion 
 of the plant where the stem and root join may be like the 
 centre of a changeable magnet, so to speak, serving in this 
 way as a living turning-point where elementary electricity can 
 become negative or positive, as circumstances may need, or 
 serve as a changeable centre around which the more intense 
 electrical undulations can become changed into a less energetic 
 vibratory fluid, which may be equally effective as the former, 
 when acting on living structures. I might here remind the 
 reader that the ever-flowing magnetism of the earth is 
 continually passing up through the roots (the filaments of 
 which are continuous with the descending woody tubes of the 
 trunk) to escape or emanate from the apices of the leaves and 
 their underpile, from which latter locality the great process 
 of vegetable evaporation takes place during summer, but in 
 the winter season the upward flow of the earth's electro- 
 magnetism is discharged from the apices of the twigs (after 
 the manner of frictional electricity when discharged into and 
 out of an electrical machine), and the returning current is 
 received from the air by the same ligneous points, and, 
 descending to that part of the plant where the root joins the 
 stem, it may undergo a change as regards polarity, and then 
 traverse the oppositely electrical or magnetic state of the 
 earth. I might here observe that all plants and their seeds arc 
 found, when tested by Rutter's magnetoscope, to be oppositely 
 electrical at their adverse extremities. 
 
 It is no doubt owing to the economy of trees and shrubs 
 receiving and discharging electricity and magnetism (and in 
 this way rendering the atmosphere less capable of stimulating 
 the animal energies) that certain persons feel so oppressed 
 on entering a wood, or even when approaching large trees, a 
 result especially recognisable in the summer season, at which 
 period an astonishing amount of evaporation takes place 
 from the stomata (the oval orifices in the covering of plants
 
 ECONOMY OF ELECTRO-MAGNETISM. 57 
 
 and cuticle of air-breathing animals) situated on the under 
 surface of leaves. This process must induce great electrical 
 excitement, causing an upward flow through the vegetable 
 world of the negative moisture of the earth, and a down- 
 ward current, of course vastly less in quantity, of a descending- 
 positive sap, whose contained nutriment is abstracted or 
 elected by the oppositely polar state of the growing tissues 
 of plants. There is no doubt that it is from an electrical 
 action, set up in the buds (displaying one of the economies 
 belonging to Nature's cycles), that causes the upward flow of 
 the earth's moisture in spring-time, after the vegetable 
 winter sleep, which resembles the periodical repose witnessed 
 as regards the plants of tropical climates. 
 
 (58.) It has often been observed that certain individuals 
 lose their health and comely looks whilst living in woody 
 districts, and regain them subsequently by dwelling in the 
 open plain, where they can uninterruptedly obtain the 
 exhilarating stimulus of the earth's magnetism, so necessary 
 to their well-being. It may here be remarked that the 
 mountaineer boasts of a heightened stature and robust health, 
 although he may be surrounded by trees ; but habit, the 
 magnetic rocks, and his lofty position give him the advantage 
 of each passing breeze, which is continually changing the 
 atmosphere, thus bringing to him a constant supply of fresh 
 air, that increases his digestive and nutritive abilities, like- 
 wise affording him a ready source from whence to draw the 
 electro-magnetic elements he may require for his system's 
 welfare. 
 
 Further, the moisture he is subjected to has recently 
 descended from the clouds, and thus is often loaded with 
 positive electricit}', whilst the vapour of the valley, which 
 frequently arises from stagnant waters, relaxes the fibres of 
 the lowlauder, because it has given to the herbage of the 
 soil the greater portion of its invigorating electric stimulus. 
 
 (59.) Most plants become greatly stunted in their growth 
 and often perish altogether when transplanted from the open 
 garden or field into the grove; and they likewise cease to 
 thrive, or become sickly in character, when even located near 
 a single large tree, not from the absence of light, but from
 
 58 BKAUTY. 
 
 being deprived of their full or necessary supply, either in 
 quantity or quality, of the magnetism of the earth or the 
 electricity of the air, most oi which have passed up and 
 down the adjacent shrubs or loftier tree-stem. Sir R. 
 Phillips states that an electroscope, if placed in a wood, 
 becomes inactive, but when located in the open ground it 
 then exhibits electrical action. " The conducting trees and 
 their leaves," he observes, " operate so as to interfere with 
 the action of the atmospheric electricity.' 5 
 
 I might here note that certain persons who have for some 
 time been daily under the operation, for a few minutes, of 
 galvanic or magnetic processes (for particular maladies) often 
 speak of their effects as acting upon or exhilarating theui 
 like wine, and remark, when they leave off the diurnal 
 application of either of these processes, that they experience 
 a sense of depression, especially towards the period or hour 
 at which they have been accustomed to undergo their 
 stimulating operation. 
 
 (60.) It has often been remarked by particular individuals 
 that, when they stand on bad conductors of electricity or 
 magnetism, as asphalte or oil-cloth, they experience 
 a rapid diminution of the temperature of their bodies. 
 Again, there are other persons, who, when stationed on the 
 carpet of the room, or apparelled in worsted or silk 
 stockings, suffer from cold feet, which discomfort is removed 
 when located on a wooden or stone flooring, and also when 
 wearing cotton or flaxen hose. Xo doubt these results 
 sometimes occur owing to certain conditions of their animal 
 economy, but chiefly from being, in a degree, cut off from 
 the earth's magnetism, which, when permeating the system 
 freely, enables them to bring into activity the usual or 
 necessary quantity or intensity of their bodily heat. It 
 should be remembered that woollen clothing only .SITYC > to 
 sustain the caloric naturally called into action by the animal 
 economy, and does not in any way tend to produce warmth. 
 (See article, " IJeat," in my work on " Matter,"" p. 140.) 
 
 Again, alterations in the electrical state of the air, &c., 
 are greatly concerned in the economy oi the temperature of 
 animals and the growth of vegetables, wliich last result may
 
 ELECTRICITY PERMEATING VEGETABLE GROWTH. 59 
 
 be witnessed where certain flowers close and others unfold 
 on the approach of a storm. Moreover, in highly elec- 
 trical states of the atmosphere, young shoots of various 
 plants have been observed to elongate with extraordinary 
 rapidity. Duhamel once saw a young stalk of barley grow 
 six inches, and a vine shoot almost two feet, during three 
 days of very electrical weather. 
 
 (61.) From the foregoing facts I am constrained to con- 
 clude that it is chiefly through the agency, as before sug- 
 gested, of the atmospheric electricity and the earth's 
 magnetism, that animals and vegetables are enabled to per- 
 form their different functions, and I am also incited to 
 ascribe the gyratory motion, as previously noted, of fluids 
 when passing along or escaping from tubes, and the spiral 
 curve effected during the growth of vegetation, to the same 
 source, which disposition is noticed in some of the tissues of 
 animals, and particularly observable relative to the delicate 
 tendrils of most plants. May it not be presumed that 
 accordingly as these shoots are influenced by negative or 
 positive currents of magnetism or electricity, so must follow 
 their gyratory direction ? Or can we ascribe the curvatory 
 extension produced to an innate ability of the plant, which 
 enables it to fleet the positive undulations of electricity, which 
 revolve in one direction, instead of the negative, which turns 
 or observes an opposite course ? Or is it that the plant, by 
 means of its life- principle, can change the gyratory pro- 
 pensity of these currents at the moment of their presentation, 
 as economy may require ? In either case, or from whatever 
 cause the disposition may spring, it is universal, and can 
 be demonstrated in most vegetable structures. 
 
 (a.) In the moss Funaria hygrometrica the setae or bristles 
 of the stems are quite straight when young, but assume the 
 spiral structure as they increase in age. In these seise the 
 spire turns in two directions ; thus, from the base to about 
 two-thirds up the stem, it goes from right to left ; it 
 afterwards becomes quite straight, and then progresses in 
 the opposite direction, from left to right. When the capsules 
 seed vessels) are ripe, if the upper part of the spiral be 
 touched, especially with moisture, the capsule commences
 
 60 BEAUTY. 
 
 turning from right to left, but if the lower part only be 
 touched or moistened it turns from left to right. 
 
 (6.) In coiling stems it would appear as if a tendency to 
 turn to one side was constantly operating, in conjunction 
 with the upright growth, so that a corkscrew form is pro- 
 duced. The turn is usually in the contrary direction to that 
 in which the sun appears to move, as is the case with com- 
 mon bindweed, passion-flower, and dodder, &c., but some- 
 times it progresses with the sun, or from left to right, as 
 does the hop. Almost all flowering plants exhibit a tendency 
 to a spiral growth in their stems. 
 
 (c.) The regular arrangement of leaves on the branches of 
 trees is in a spiral course. Thus, in the smooth-trunked 
 species, as the cherry-tree, the bark is more easily torn off 
 in a winding than in any other direction. In trees having 
 few branches, such as the fir, it is not uncommon to see the 
 same tendency manifested by spiral fissures in the wood, 
 when the bark has been for some time removed. The direction 
 of this kind of twist seems to be as constant in straight stems 
 as those which manifest it by coiling. For instance, the 
 common and the edible chestnut have been observed always to 
 twist in contrary ways. 
 
 (d.} The young foliage, as the leaf buds, is perceived to 
 be arranged around a common centre or axis. When the 
 bud lengthens, the insertions of the leaves which were at 
 first close together, are separated by the lengthening of the 
 stem which bears them, and then they assume a spiral or 
 corkscrew-like arrangement round it. 
 
 (e.) The spiral adjustment of the leaves on the stems of 
 plants has in some way been made a matter of mathematical 
 investigation by Brown and Schimper ; and it is found that 
 this arrangement is possessed of certain fixed mathematical 
 properties, and this attribute extends to the bracts, sepels, 
 petals, and scales of the fruit, &c. 
 
 (/.) The cells of plants are ovoid, and within them \ve 
 find deposits presenting the form of a more or less regular 
 spiral fibre, winding within the cell from end to end, and 
 this may present itself alike in cells of the ordinary shape, 
 or in fusiform cells (constituting the proper spiral vessels) or
 
 GYRATORY MOTION OF VEGETABLE FLUIDS. 
 
 61 
 
 in cells that have coalesced into continuous tubes or ducts. 
 This spiral fibre is very completely generated in some 
 instances when the cell-wall itself has not acquired any 
 greater tenacity than that of mucus, and it is very easily 
 dissolved. Such spiral fibres spring out from the external 
 coats of many seeds when they are moistened. The inherent 
 ability of curvalion in plants mostly results in the produc- 
 tion of a spire. Mandl demonstrated that all tegmentary 
 appendages of animals tend to the spiral form, as the scales, 
 feathers, hair, &c., and many of the internal organs are 
 subject to the same law. Goethe, in his essay on the spiral 
 tendency of vegetation, points out that plants and branches 
 with their leaves do, when injured, put on a spiral character 
 to protect themselves. 
 
 ((J.) The sap of plants is seen to be in a rotatory motion, 
 describing a gyratory course as it ascends and descends on 
 the sides of the cells. Araici states that in the chara plant 
 there is a rotatory motion in the fluid of each cell. It may 
 be described as a revolving movement round the inside of 
 each vesicle, ascending on one side and descending on the 
 other, and, what is remarkable, the ascending current is uni- 
 formly on that side of each cell which is most remote from 
 the axis of growth, and consequently the descending current 
 is on the side nearest the axis. These phenomena belong to 
 all plants, only we cannot detect them. The spores (the pro- 
 ductive substance of fiowerless plants) of the confervas (river 
 weeds 1 , when they escape from the tubes of the parent, 
 perform rapid movements from place to place in the water 
 after a gyratory manner, until they fix themselves in the 
 earth. 
 
 (/i.) Kercher, 200 years ago, refers the molions of the sun- 
 flower and the closing of cpnvolvuli to diamagnetism, and 
 the directions of the spiral formed by twining plants to the 
 polar magnetism of the earth. 
 
 (62.) Animals during growth resemble plants in the forma- 
 tion of their structure. A gyratory motion is recognised in 
 the movements of the embryo, and, later, in the flow of the 
 fluids through the system ; and with some of the viscera a 
 circumvolutory action, accompanied with an undulatory or
 
 62 
 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 serpentine inotivity, is readily discerned during life, and 
 often for a long time after death, as seen relative to the 
 vermicular motion of the intestines, &c. 
 
 (a.) In the interior of each primitive nerve is a central 
 coiled thread, surrounded by fat or medullary matter, and 
 thus it becomes insulated from the surrounding tissues. 
 
 (If.) The first movement of the planorbis (univalve 
 mollusk) is one of rotation upon its axis, but as development 
 proceeds, and the ciliary vibrations are strengthened, the 
 embryo begins to travel in an elliptical curve around the 
 interior of the egg, its two movements (to compare small 
 things with great) resembling those of the planets in the 
 solar system. 
 
 (c.) The stomach partially rotates whilst in action ; hence 
 in some animals, especially belonging to the bovine race, we 
 find hair balls; and again the owl disgorges pellets, which are 
 formed of the debris of the indigestible parts of the animals 
 they have captured for their food. 
 
 (d.) The eggs of birds, according to Owen, as they pass 
 down the ova duct, rotate on their axis and take a spiral 
 course as they descend. 
 
 (63.) It would appear, almost to a demonstration from 
 some of the foregoing facts, that all vegetation of every kind 
 is traversed, as before suggested, by electro-magnetic 
 currents, which streams, it may be presumed, excite a 
 tendency in plants to assume a spiral growth. That vege- 
 tation is pervaded by electrical currents is evidenced from 
 their capability of decomposing bodies. Thus many plants 
 must be in a diiferent electrical condition during the night 
 to what they are in the day, for it is known that at the 
 former period they exhale carbonic acid, whilst by day they 
 throw off oxygen, &c. 
 
 (t>4.) As REGARDS THE SPIRAL CURRENTS ov ELECTRO- 
 MAGNKTIS.M THAT TRAVERSE PLANTS. This economy may 
 be demonstrated by drawing on the surface of certain 
 branching trees linos commencing at the point from 
 whence issues the first limb of the trunk, or first leaf of a 
 stem, and continuing upwards, in a curved direction, to the 
 attachment of the next off-shoot, and thus progressing
 
 CURVILINEAR NODES. 63 
 
 through the bases of the succeeding boughs or foliage, we 
 shall delineate round the tree or herb a serpentine outline. 
 Now, on tracing downwards from the uppermost limb of 
 these trees a similar curvilinear streak, commencing at the 
 opposite surface of the tree's trunk, we shall, by the adapta- 
 tion of it to the former ascending line, describe a number of 
 oval segments on the exterior of the tree, thus constituting 
 a series of ovoid ellipses, which gyratory loops the tree 
 may be said to thread, as does the vibrating- string of a 
 musical instrument, the undulatory negative and positive 
 waves formed by the matter of sound when in motion and 
 travelling contrary ways creating in their course bellying 
 waves intersected by nodes. (See diagram p. 20, in my 
 work on " Matter") 
 
 Now, as each tree and herbaceous stalk is continually 
 traversed up and down by encircling diverse currents of 
 negative and positive electro-magnetism, may not these 
 streams, as they intersect each other at particular points, be 
 capable of establishing certain nodes resembling those 
 created on the sounding string, and may not these become 
 so many centre-points of energy, which, stimulating par- 
 ticular spots situated on the growing tree or stalk, incite 
 forth buds which are afterwards to form limbs, leaves, or 
 flowers, as Nature may direct ? 
 
 I entertain the idea that an economy like the above may 
 be very possible ; at all events, the foregoing hypothesis 
 may serve to draw the attention of physiologists to this, as 
 yet, unexplained natural ordination. (See " Vegetable 
 Electro-Magnetism" in my work on " Matter," p. 1 88.) 
 
 But to resume. The curvilinear character so distinguish- 
 able in the outline of natural things, creating their chief 
 feature of beauty, has been particularly noticed by many 
 individuals, and among them we may mention Hogarth, 
 who, without knowing the cause, recognised that the 
 delight experienced when contemplating objects sprang 
 from their contour acting on our senses, which he attempted 
 to portray by painting on the pallet his celebrated serpentine 
 line of beauty, represented in his portrait. Lavater (p. 
 29) describes that he was possessed by a similar feeling to
 
 64 BEAUTY. 
 
 Hogarth when he stated that he knew nothing which could 
 give more pleasure to an accurate observer than a distinct 
 and perfectly arched eye-brow. 
 
 It would appear from the foregoing that the curvilinear 
 law of natural motion, be it slow or vehement, governs 
 every process in Nature ; pervading alike the rotating 
 molecules of heavy solid bodies, as it does the floating 
 vapour- vesicles making up a filmy cloud ; directing the 
 constituents that enter into the formation of the animal 
 after the same manner, as it presides over those distributed 
 throughout the vegetable kingdom ; attending on the 
 development of the pendant dew-drop equally as it does the 
 creation of the leaf and flower bud, from which this watei - 
 jewel may hang ; assisting in the construction of the 
 elliptical cells that form the tissues of plants and animals, 
 as it does in giving outline to the various living existences 
 that beautify the face of the earth, or inhabit its waters. 
 And, finally, its laws are known by astronomers to extend 
 into the heavens, directing the course of each starry orb 
 that begems the dome underneath which we are all pro- 
 gressing into eternity. 
 
 (65.) ADMIRATION. This impression springs chiefly from 
 a sense of the Beautiful. We are often arrested by the 
 feelings that objects engender in us. and become fascinated 
 whilst regarding their belongings. Thus colours, when in 
 keeping and of sufficient intensity, excite our admiration, 
 but disappointment takes place when they are incomplete 
 or altered by any cause, as where a flower has passed its 
 zenith and is fading away. Again, the child, as before 
 observed, is more pleased or excited than the adult by 
 beautiful and brilliant tints, from the early development of 
 the organ of Colour, which is now uublunted by use or 
 satiety, and its sensitiveness at this period of life does not 
 change readily from one thing to another, like the inoic 
 educated brain of maturer years, that lends itself so readily 
 to different influences. For instance, where there 
 defective or offensive spot in a coloured landscape painting, 
 the magic of its general eflei t instantly vanishes, hecause Un- 
 detected blemish has interrupted the repose or pleasure
 
 COLOURS. 65 
 
 imbibed at first from the beauty that the other parts of the 
 picture excited in the organs of the sensorium. The same 
 result ensues among the educated when a harsh voice is 
 heard in a chorus, or a false note from the orchestra. 
 Again, the charm of an actor's intonations forms but a small 
 portion of the pleasure we receive from the representation 
 of a beautiful drama, for if there be a single flaw in his 
 enunciation, so as to offend the ear, it will completely 
 destroy the effect of the most skilful acting in a comedy, and 
 spoil all the sublimity and pathos of the finest tragedy. 
 
 (65.) COLOURS have an attribute by themselves of creating 
 pleasure within us, independent of their quality of adorn- 
 ment, for an object may yield gratification on its own account, 
 apart from its hue. It is often the addition of some tint 
 to an existence that leads certain persons to refer the charm 
 to its tinge, because particular hues exert a great sway over 
 their organ of Colour, causing them not to perceive that the 
 tinted body itself or its qualities can afford pleasure. Thus a 
 rose is the same flower in the dark as when exposed to light, 
 and its odour affords gratification apart from its beautiful 
 hue, which we forget whilst inhaling its perfume. 
 
 All substances, nay, every element, through their inherent 
 qualities, can excite forth pleasing sensations, but we never 
 positively lend ourselves distinctly but to one at a time, 
 though when many relative properties are presented at any 
 given period to our senses, so rapid is the succession of their 
 effects that they often appear as the result but of one, which 
 result is frequently attributed to the most prominent, or that 
 which our feelings, from education or organisation, is for the 
 greater part in relation with ; and in this way those objects 
 that in themselves combine the greatest number of parts and 
 qualities attract the attention ; most especially when they are 
 in keeping, or harmonise the one with the other. Were the 
 most beautiful tinted article broken, we should forget its 
 colour, &c., in the disappointment created by contemplating 
 its loss of form. A person may like a thing for its shape 
 and uses, but be disturbed by its colours or the incongruity 
 of their arrangement ; alter these, either to suit the object or 
 the contemplator's election of tint, and a fresh charm is given 
 
 E
 
 66 BEAUTY. 
 
 to it, the addition enhancing the pleasure created in him 
 through his perceptive faculties. Colours, when regarded 
 alone, induce in some individuals great delight, but when 
 applied falsely to things, the effect produced disturbs certain 
 spectators ; hence pigments should be well associated with 
 each other, and adapted to the object they were meant to 
 adorn, or the felicity that might be reaped in regarding 
 either separately is destroyed. We mostly like to contem- 
 plate a compound object, as a whole, rather than in divided 
 parts. Many things that delight our receptive senses, when 
 connected and well appointed, may have no charm if pre- 
 sented piecemeal, from the absence of that quality which 
 association lends or gives them. 
 
 (66.) FORM. Shape has been considered by most 
 individuals as the chief feature portraying the beauty of 
 things. It is true that in outline lies one of the most 
 eminent attractions belonging to the objects that arrest our 
 attention : but the reason of this frequently is that, in bodies 
 possessing perfect forms, we find certain qualities or associa- 
 tions which will be absent when the shape is immature, or at 
 variance with certain established rules, and especially when 
 contrary to Nature's design or intent. 
 
 (a. i Form is only one out of the many adjuvants that 
 administer to and gratify our senses. For instance, the 
 finest proportioned and perfected flower, of the same species, 
 exhales the sweetest or most pleasing scent, and it will be 
 endowed with the richest tints, because it is mature, and in a 
 healthy state. Again, in proportion as the undulations of 
 musical sounds approach the elliptic or oval form, the greater 
 are their sway to awaken our pleasure, when under the in- 
 fluence of their effects. So it is with the human figure when 
 true in its symmetry. This quality betokens purity of 
 body, since sickness or disproportion of any kind mar our 
 ideas of perfection, because it must interfere with the 
 healthy strength which is so necessary to constitute freedom 
 of motion and grace of altitude. 
 
 (b.) It is the belongings to and emanations from the 
 finely developed head that are recollected and cherished, and 
 not the outline that describes its contour that may merely
 
 FORM. 67 
 
 serve as a remembrancer ; but we often attribute to the 
 exterior of the memento the cause of our immediate feelings, 
 and forget that it is chiefly the associations that this form 
 serves to recall. From this head, or rather from its contents, 
 we perhaps received the knowledge that furnished us with 
 the ability of placing ourselves in safety from many ills, and 
 also rendered us independent of the assistance of others. 
 Under the influencing emanations from its many organs it 
 was that we at times drank so deeply of happiness, and 
 acquired that directing dominion which was in turn to create 
 perception and felicity as regards our companions. In fact, 
 the brain with its capabilities is the jewel that attracts and 
 pleases, and not the skull's form, that being only the casket 
 in which the fascinating gems are preserved. 
 
 (c.) Burke, in his work on the " Sublime and Beautiful," 
 states that " The form of the antelope, the swan, or the 
 tiger is considered beautiful, because we take a satisfaction 
 in contemplating the movements which these forms are 
 admirably fitted to produce; but the shape of the pig's nose 
 is not considered beautiful, because we fly with disgust from 
 the filthy purposes for which that animal employs it. So 
 also we call the outward form of the arms and neck, and 
 graceful, oval, falling shoulders, &c., of the human figure 
 beautiful, when their shape is suited to their respective uses, 
 but no one finds any beauty in the external appearance of the 
 human stomach or liver." It was unfortunate, as regards 
 
 " O 
 
 Mr. Burke, that he did not perceive that the feeling of 
 disgust he mentions sprang from ignorance, or want of 
 knowledge, relative to usage. The form is one thing, and 
 the employment of the object another. The hand is often 
 engaged in very filthy occupations, but this does not detract 
 from the beauty of its shape or outline. The stomach or 
 liver in its natural or raw state, at Mr. Burke's dinner table, 
 would not be in keeping, but very appropriately situated in 
 the human body or the anatomical theatre. Disgust would 
 in the latter case be changed into admiration, and even 
 wonder, whilst occupied in the pursuit of their natural 
 economy or uses Had Mr. B. reflected that the slightest 
 alteration in the form, colour, and consequently the functions 
 
 E 2
 
 68 BEAUTY. 
 
 of these viscera might become the cause of suffering, or even 
 the death of the being he held dear; and could he by physio- 
 logical inquiries have acquired the knowledge of a remedy, 
 through whose curative agency he might, when these organs 
 were out of order, restore them to a state of health, he would 
 have been pervaded with delight, instead of being revolted by 
 their appearance in discovering (as could a clairvoyant, who 
 can see these organs when teeming with healthy life, or, on 
 the contrary, suffering from disorder or disease) that when 
 free from maladies they assumed a certain hue, and under a 
 healthy and natural form they achieved salutary results 
 The distaste in question would have melted away by his 
 discovering that it is only under disease, or when not in 
 a natural condition, that these viscera become disgusting. 
 The apt physiologist is never pervaded with repugnance 
 when examining these visceral organs if they be in their 
 proper places. No; his senses are chiefly occupied in re- 
 garding their natural uses and economy. Again, the pig's 
 snout, like the elephant's trunk, would have filled Mr. 
 Burke with wonder and admiration had he known one 
 thousandth part of its structural appliances, and its 
 capable adaptation to the animal's necessitous wants; and 
 further, if cooked and placed on the dinner table, when 
 his organ of Gustativeness was in action, he would, supposing 
 he had an election for such a dainty, have exclaimed " How 
 beautiful !" Our appreciation of the beautiful depends upon 
 organization, and the education the soul has received by 
 means of the phrenological developments belonging to the 
 brain, and also the training these latter organs have gone 
 through ; so that an object which may be disgusting under 
 ignorance becomes delightful when contemplated by those 
 who understand and remember its office and suitableness or 
 adaptability. When true to herself there is nothing dis- 
 tasteful in Nature, but the pretence to a knowledge of 
 her true economy is very revolting. 
 
 The duck is a more filthy feeder than Mr. Burke's pig, and 
 strikes the ignorant as they watch this animal partaking of 
 its sustenance out of the gutter, with great aversion; but 
 the physiologist, whilst meditating on the bird's occupation.
 
 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROLOGY. 69 
 
 looks beyond the ditch and its contents, for he knows that 
 this water-fowl has an apparatus which will reject that which 
 is foreign to its sustenance, and that the food it takes from 
 the drain will pass into the system as clear as a dew-drop, and 
 as untainted as the fruit that may overhang' the puddled trench, 
 
 (67.) ASTRONOMY. Of all that can create wonder and fill 
 us with the sublime, nothing can surpass in beauty the grand 
 and mighty all influencing spheres that roll and re-roll, 
 millions of miles every minute, in endless orbits through a 
 vast universe, whose only boundary is unimaginable space. 
 Who, that can lend himself to the study or rather veneration 
 of these moving worlds of light, is not lost in the poet's 
 dream of unutterable thoughts, and at the time pervaded by 
 an insatiable thirst to know, as his imagination floats him on 
 to their surface, the ideas and sympathies that must possess 
 the superior living beings, with their innate economies, that 
 dwell on the superficies of these ceaseless cycle-describing 
 luminaries ? But I must descend again to mother earth, in 
 order to make a few observations on those who have attempted 
 to teach us the laws governing the starry systems that 
 everywhere surround and influence the planet we inhabit. 
 
 (68.) MATHEMATICS. This science, which investigates 
 the consequences that are deducible from any given or 
 admitted relations between magnitudes or numbers, is usually 
 divided into pure and mixed. 
 
 (.) The Hindoos, or those that made use of the Sanscrit 
 language, were the first people that used cycles and epochs, 
 upwards of 40,000 years ago, and were followed by the 
 Chinese, and subsequently the Persians and Egyptians. 
 
 The worshippers of Om- Aum or Biahma well understood 
 astronomy, and calculated truly the times of revolution and 
 the distances of the planetary and solar systems, and all 
 these without the knowledge or rather of the appliance of 
 our numerals and geometry, or the Logarithms of Steifel, 
 the Differential Calculus of Leibnitz, or the Fluxions of 
 Newton. 
 
 (b.) ASTROLOGY. This science or knowledge of the stars 
 was the parent of astronomy, and had its birth in Hindostan. 
 It is still made use of by very many learned men to foretell
 
 70 
 
 natural events and the destiny of man. There can be little 
 doubt that much which is found in judicial astrology is 
 worthy of notice, or so many wise men both in ancient and 
 modern times would not have laboured in this field of 
 inquiry. It is more than probable that in coming time, 
 as we advance in knowledge, all doubts as regards the 
 proficiency of astrology will melt away, and the fate or 
 future of things be made as evidently true to the senses 
 and experience of the yet unborn as are the past and 
 present general occurrences to the now living. The souls 
 of the clairvoyants in ancient times could foretell or prog- 
 nosticate events and the destiny of individual persons. It 
 has been my experience, and that of a host of others, that 
 the indwelling spirit of the clairvoyants of the present day 
 can effect the same contingencies. I would then suggest 
 that that which is true of clairvoyance may be equally 
 veracious as regards astrology. 
 
 (c.) THE HEAVENLY CANOPY. The apparatus and science 
 of mathematics that help us in our celestial observations and 
 calculations should be forgotten whilst lending our feelings 
 to the economy of the spheres of heaven, ns they dazzle our 
 senses and work upon our organ of Wonder. But too 
 frequently most persons have no idea of the sublimity of the 
 starry firmament above and around us. 
 
 (d.) The astronomers are often pervaded, like some musical 
 performers, with too much of the appreciation of the 
 mechanical rather than of the things their apparatus enable 
 them to exhibit, because perhaps they can comprehend the 
 one, whilst the systems their instruments help them to 
 display and mathematically examine, can never be positively 
 conceived. 
 
 (e.) The star-gazer, as yet, has only employed his imple- 
 ments in reading a very s;n:iM portion of the siijx-rn;:! 
 universe that surrounds and acts on the earth we inhabit. 
 Of the fixed stars, as they are i-ly c:dhd. he knows 
 
 but little, and, . ds the p'aiK't.iry syMciiis these 
 
 illimitable orbs govern, he can recognise nothing. 
 
 (/.) The srar-suns, with the one lighting up our globe, are 
 all revolving around other luminaries, each of which in
 
 PAINTING AND SCULPTURE. 71 
 
 comparison with the one governing our day as far exceeds it 
 as does the sun, in size and brightness, surpass the glow- 
 worm and its luculent lamp, which adorns the bank that 
 bounds the country lane. 
 
 (69.) PAINTING. The artist who practises depiction, after 
 all that has been said and sung relative to his productions, is 
 at best but an imperfect copyist, which he should not lose 
 sight of when starting back from his easel, after contem- 
 plating what he calls the creations of his own brain. The 
 painter must never forget that all his productions are but 
 attempted resemblances, especially as regards Nature's pro- 
 ductions. When the limner can give odours and changing 
 tints to the plants he may be delineating, and endow the 
 animals he would portray with living qualities, and make 
 the canvas yield some of the innate existences that appertain 
 to natural productions, then, and not till then, may he with 
 pride exult in his efforts to imitate the beautiful living loveli- 
 ness that his educated abilities flattered him. he could 
 represent. 
 
 (70.) SCULPTURE. On beholding a beautiful chiselled 
 figure, it mostly wakes up in the imagination the qualities of 
 the living object, of which the marble is a mere superficial 
 representative. There is no attractive beauty in the petrous 
 material in question, beyond the properties of pure carbonate 
 of lime. It is not the stone that fills us with admiration, 
 but the lovely being it serves to represent, whose living 
 endowments would seem to pervade the figure which enchants 
 us as we gaze. The contour that bounds the sculptured 
 image calls forth perhaps in the mind a form full of breath- 
 ing life. This entrancement leads us to imagine that, if the 
 exquisite attitude and feeling the semblance portrays were to 
 change, the resigned posture and expression would be suc- 
 ceeded by others more graceful and attractive. But the 
 cold marble before us contains no heart that can pulsate in 
 unison with our own. There is no blood-stream that can 
 tint the white cheek, or redden the blanched lip. From or 
 through its eyes never will emanate those varied soul 
 expressions that Nature's original could give forth, neither 
 beaming with friendship nor worshipping with love. The
 
 72 BEAUTY. 
 
 arm receives no sensible impression from the touch ; and that 
 hand which, if living, could tell us so much by its pressure, 
 remains senseless in our grasp. Beauty's self, fresh 
 chiselled from a Phidias' hand, must have existed as a 
 mockery when compared with the ideal being that occupied 
 his brain, and of which the marble was a projected image. 
 Praxiteles, with his followers, received their impressions 
 from without, and caught from the contemplation of the 
 ballerini or dancing girls and the naked slaves, &c., a beauty 
 here and another there, and all these the ability of their 
 intellects combined together in one unbroken whole, and in 
 this way they dazzled our senses by seizing hold of Nature's 
 intent, feeling at the same time that under a perfect form 
 must reside all the other attributes producing superior 
 excellence. 
 
 (71.) EACH LINEAMENT OF THE BODY HAS ITS ATTRACTIVE 
 CHARM. Every feature appertaining to the animal creation 
 is, when healthy and proportionate, beautiful. It then 
 follows that dress of every kind serves but to curtain the 
 loveliness of the associated parts that make up the human 
 form. This fact has often been annotated upon by the 
 intelligent travellers who have had the opportunity of 
 visiting some of the valleys situated in the interior of 
 Abyssinia, where the natives pass their lives in a perfect 
 state of nudity, and where, according to certain tourists, 
 innocence and modesty reign supreme. In civilized Europe, 
 the face, when the head is covered and the hands gloved, is 
 the only portion of the human form that is allowed to 
 engage the appreciative feelings. But be it known that, on 
 examining the naked living figure, it would be found that 
 many an individual, whether man or woman, who has a 
 very indifferent or plain face, may yet possess a beautiful, 
 attractive back, chest, shoulders, or waist (as regards the 
 latter feature, of course, I allude to those who have never 
 worn, for fashion's sake, belts, corsets, or stays, that so dis- 
 tort and even disease the human form), and likewise graceful 
 outlined limbs and well-developed feet, which latter are 
 never met with where these members have been cramped or 
 shackled with boots and shoes. Reflection, after examina-
 
 ARCHITECTURE. 73 
 
 tioii, will teach us that any of those parts of the human 
 frame, at present hidden by drapery, would draw the 
 admiring attention, equally with the face. Of course, I except 
 the expression and language of the eyes ; but these qualita- 
 tive emanations issue from the spirit or mind, and pass by 
 means of the brain, through the organs of vision, anciently 
 designated the windows of the soul, and are not perceived 
 when the eyes are veiled by their lids. 
 
 We do not admire the faces of animals, the glance of 
 their intelligent eyes being excepted, more than the other 
 parts of their bodies, and we ridicule the draping or 
 ornamentation of domestic creatures, because, instead of 
 embellishing, we disfigure, and prevent their freedom of 
 movement. The same result ensues with the human race. 
 No kind of apparel or trinkets, such as chains, bracelets, 
 and especially earrings, can adorn the person. As regards 
 the latter decorations, these serve but to attract the attention 
 from, rather than to, the beautiful external auditory organs. 
 Be it remembered that the wearing of ear-appendages 
 originated with the savages of the wilds, and is quite as 
 disfiguring to a person of natural taste as are the lip and 
 nose ornaments of certain untamed barbarians. Decorative 
 personal productions may serve to bedizen the jeweller's shop, 
 but cannot beautify a living form, whether animal or 
 vegetable. 
 
 Lady Wortley Montague, after visiting the bagnio or 
 Turkish bathing-house, observes, page 141 : " I was here 
 convinced of the truth of a reflection I have often made : 
 that if it were the fashion to go naked the face would be 
 hardly observed. I perceived that the ladies of the most 
 delicate skins and finest shapes had the greatest share of my 
 admiration, though their faces were sometimes much less 
 beautiful than those of their companions." 
 
 (72.) ARCHITECTURE. The science of building originated, 
 at first, to suit the earlier wants of man, and afterwards to 
 serve for a defence or to gratify ambition, but its most 
 glorious combinations were effected to captivate his venera- 
 tive feelings. There was originally a period when the 
 human race dwelt in caves and shady forests, while others
 
 74 BEAUTY. 
 
 fashioned habitable places with mud on the banks of rivers, 
 or constructed sheds' of wood in sylvan glades or bosky 
 dells ; but, as knowledge increased, they fabricated tents 
 and dwelt on plains in order that they might there feed 
 their flocks. Subsequently man blessed these latter places 
 of abode for the comfort they afforded, and also because 
 they enabled him to indulge his natural propensity for com- 
 parionship. Now, as time progressed, and his reflective 
 faculties increased in action, he bethought himself that to 
 save repetition of labour, and to render his abode perma- 
 nent, he would fashion his dwelling of stone, which afforded 
 means of enlargement, both for convenience as well as 
 security. These advantages he pointed out to other indi- 
 viduals, who copied these structures for their own accommo- 
 dation and protection. When man forsook his earlier 
 places of devotion, situated in mountain caves or amid the 
 forest shades, he gave up the impressive scenes of Nature to 
 worship under the covered productions of Art, substituting, 
 as regards the woods, pillars of stone in imitation of the 
 stems of the trees, and a roof of masonry for the starlit 
 canopy that domed the grove, exchanging the white light of 
 the sun for the pale yellow flume of the lamp, partaking of the 
 fetid breathings of an enclosed congregation in place of 
 inhaling the refreshing breeze that had passed over the land- 
 scape, perfumed by the scents of flowers, instead of the 
 noisome odours of incense. 
 
 (73.) No building, however elegant or gorgeous, could 
 possibly ornament any natural scene, except by contrast. 
 The prospect or landscape adorns the house or turretted 
 domain, and not these latter the surrounding locality. A 
 ship bestows no beauty on the sea, though the sailor ^through 
 associations and from its affording him the means of 
 voyaging in safety over its world of waters) thinks hi.s vessel 
 ornaments the ocean. Again, changing circumstances and 
 certain emanating qualities enhance the beauty of living 
 Nature ; but, however ihe seasons may alter the landscape, 
 nothing, except the varying light and weather, can modify 
 or change the appearance of a building. Having ouce 
 scanned its proportions and general semblance, we know
 
 ART A COPY OF NATURE. 75 
 
 that it will always preserve the same monotonous set features. 
 Spring will never cause it to vary its character, nor summer 
 adorn it with any kind of verdure. We do not become 
 attached to the dwelling as we do to living things, but to its 
 associations. Beneath its roof we first drunk in a mother's 
 love, and felt a father's protection. To it, the domicile, we 
 have often returned from the cold, selfish world, therein to 
 reap parental greetings that bring to the senses pleasure, 
 and to the soul's innate feelings felicitous gratification. 
 
 In continuation, the uses and beauties of buildings are 
 merely copies of Nature's productions, and were first sug- 
 gested through contemplating her works. Thus, the roof 
 shelters us from the storm and heat of the sun, like the 
 vaulted cave and the leaf-bearing branch of the tree. The 
 pillars that support this roof do but imitate the sterns of 
 the pine, and originated the columns of the portico of a 
 temple, which finally became one of the most splendid 
 features of architectural art. As tree-stems were wider in 
 diameter at the bottom than at their summit, so the carved 
 supporting pillars diminished in calibre as they rose from 
 the base upwards. The capital of a column took its origin 
 through observing the heads of the taller plants ; and the 
 Corinthian adornment of the pillar's summit sprung, 
 according to Callimachus, a Greek, from the accidental 
 contemplation of the acanthus-leaf, which surrounded a 
 basket covered with a tile. The pillar-shafts of the Indian 
 and Egyptian temples are many of them crowned or embel- 
 lished with lotus blossoms, in memory, perhaps, of the 
 sacredness and luxurious shade afforded by one kind of lotus, 
 and the sweet food yielded by another species, but especially 
 to remind them of the beautiful liliaceous flower that rose 
 up out of the water by day and opened its leaves like a 
 lover his arms to welcome the god of day, and then at 
 night closed them again, burying itself in the lake, as if in 
 the tears it hud shed at his departure. The snow on the 
 branches of trees and the edges of banks suggested the coping 
 stones and the scroll work of an. edifice. The Gothic or 
 Saracenic building perceptibly originated from the rude 
 adaptation of the tree boughs appertaining to the forest
 
 76 BEAUTY. 
 
 chase into a festal arcade, and the bands about its cleft 
 pillars still indicate the green withes that tied them 
 together. The ribs of the roof are beautifully portrayed, 
 resembling the natural avenues of the forest. The Persian 
 united in the slender pillar-shafts and capitals of his 
 architecture the stem and head of the palm. Further, as 
 regards certain buildings, we soon discover where man 
 departs from Nature by the varied anyles that everywhere 
 meet the eye, to disturb the sense that elects smoothness of 
 outline, thus breaking in upon the pleasure we feel wlnlst 
 regarding the ellipsoidal curve. The chief feature that 
 would beautify the exterior proportions of a building is 
 entirely neglected by forming them in squares rather than 
 the graceful oval. This mode of procedure sprung into 
 usage in early times, first, from the want of knowing how 
 to turn an arch ; secondly, and chiefly, from the facility 
 experienced in effecting their architectural results. Angles 
 and squares are incompatible with freedom of motion and 
 growth, and seldom exist naturally. 
 
 The outlines of a cube-form crystal are fashioned of 
 ellipsoidal corpuscles, and consequently what appears to us 
 an edge must tend to the oval, and not an angle It is well 
 known that every one experiences more pleasure whilst 
 feeling an ovate, rather than a square or angular object, and 
 those that have been accustomed to dwell in an oval room 
 become sometimes uneasy when located in a four-sided 
 apartment , because the former is a copy of Nature's economy, 
 and is readily appreciated by the curved cerebral filaments. 
 of which the phrenological organs are made up, whilst the 
 square chamber is only tolerated from artificial education, 
 custom, or habit. The phrenological organ of Form is con- 
 stituted of curvilinear fibres, which latter of course can 
 pulsate in perfect unison with the undulations from oval, but 
 not angular const ructions. 
 
 (74.) When the inhabitants of India, and subsequently 
 those of Egypt, gave up their tents and commenced to ascend 
 out of barbarism, they began to fashion their temples, &e., 
 of stone, after the crude ideas of the then existing circum- 
 stances, and, as the square and oblong materials offered the
 
 THE ALHAMBRA OF GRENADA. 77 
 
 simplest means for constructing edifices, they adopted their 
 use. The Greeks and Romans, in their earlier existence, 
 copied the angular productions of the Hindoos and Egyptians, 
 and this characteristic was not departed from until the time 
 of the Tarquins. when the arch (borrowed from the Etruscan 
 domes) was first made use of to relieve the heaviness and 
 open state of their temples and palaces, and this obtained 
 up to the period of Augustus, who introduced into Rome 
 marble, and with it slavery. These structures were protected 
 from the seasons only by coverings of clay and straw. To 
 the two features of the dome and arch we owe the dawn of 
 the light and graceful Gothic, or rather Saracenic (for the 
 Goths had no share in it), that arose simultaneously 
 throughout the civilized world. The structural artist now 
 particularly exercised his abilities to imitate in his buildings 
 the beauties of living Nature, as he had before done in his 
 sculptured statues. The blue expanse above called forth the 
 idea of the cupola, and the rainbow that spanned the sky 
 suggested the arch, or, to descend to things more tangible, 
 the bell-shaped blossom incited the construction of the one, 
 and the curving tendril the other. The architect now 
 imitated the flowers of one plant, the leaves of another, and 
 the fruit of a third, to ornament his productions, and he 
 worked up in stone the loveliness that surrounded him. 
 Whoever felt the pleasurable, luxurious dreams, when looking 
 at Greek and Roman buildings, which possess him whilst 
 contemplating the compositions or groupings of the Arabian 
 artificers in Spain ? We abandon ourselves, and, as it would 
 seem, please every sense when viewing the Alhambra of 
 Grenada. Its hall of the Abencerrages makes the other 
 parts pale before the wonderful effects of its colours, as seen 
 in its gorgeous stalactite roof, which is decorated with the 
 usual tints of gold, blue, and red. The details of the 
 Moorish or Saracenic embellishments, with their fantastic 
 forms, produce the most seductive charms, for the embroidery 
 of Nature is transposed to these architectural productions. 
 In fact, the variety and profusion with which they (the 
 Saracens) used their ornaments gave their masses the appear- 
 ance of a congeries of paintings and incrustation of foliage,
 
 78 BEAUTY. 
 
 and nothing can be more splendid and brilliant than the 
 effects that resulted from their combinations. 
 
 In the loveliness of embellishment we find the details 
 beautifully executed, and the forms extremely fascinating. 
 The mode of piercing the domes for light, which t'r>ey prac- 
 tised by means of star-like openings, is attended with a 
 magical effect. How strange that nrm should have left the 
 elaborate and sense-delighting Gothic or Moorish archi- 
 tecture of the thirteenth century to return to the heavy 
 Greek, that at best is only adapted to their own sunny isles, 
 domed by a sky whose colour throws "a purple charm" 
 over their structures, which are perfectly unfitted for more 
 sombre climates, and especially inappropriate to tlie gloomy 
 locality of England. No doubt this revival took place from 
 certain persons having visited Italy, who, being dazzled by 
 its sun-lit mountains, enchanting campagna or country, and 
 its beautiful marbled delineations of the human form, and 
 experiencing that it was the dwelling-place of poesy and 
 song, they became intoxicated with pleasure ; and, their per- 
 ceptive faculties being thus fascinated; they believed that 
 everything appertaining to this happy land possessed a 
 charm of its own, and under these circumstances was intro- 
 duced a second time into modern Europe this style of 
 building. Through the foregoing inoculation so to speak 
 this heavy mode of architectuie began to be adopted, and 
 then became fashionable, a circumstance to which so many 
 bend, who forget that there is no fashion in beauty : the pro- 
 portions and laws that make up and govern this quality can 
 never alter, and where men depart from Nature's structural 
 economy they are sure to mar all their productions. 
 Most persons feel within themselves more pleasure whilst 
 contemplating the so-called Gothic architecture than they do 
 that which preceded its birth, because worked up among its 
 structures are many of those natural forms that gladden 
 the senses and wake up the memory to surrounding living 
 felicities Though many individuals arc pervaded by these 
 convictions, few there are that have the moral courage to 
 avow and hold by them against the sway of prevailing 
 custom ; and they are too often driven to forget the pleasures
 
 ODOURS. 79 
 
 they have in past times imbibed, whilst bowing to the 
 dictates of certain prescribed rules laid down by particular 
 individuals as laws which, to break through, would be to gain 
 the name of a modern barbarian. There is not one man in 
 twenty thousand Bulwer says fifty thousand who has any 
 opinion of his own; each individual among the "'motley 
 crowd" serves only like the rock to echo back the obser- 
 vations which too often may be termed the whims of 
 others. 
 
 Those things which give the greatest pleasure, and are 
 appreciated alone by our natural feelings, or taken up by the 
 free and unprejudiced, are always the nearest to approach 
 perfection, and are consequently the most beautiful. M oliere, 
 when he wished to know if his play was true to Nature, read 
 it to his cook, whom lie knew was not wedded to common custom 
 or fashion; and when the composition delighted her he felt 
 certain it was correct, and would please the world. Every 
 experienced author knows that the "gods" in the gallery of a 
 theatre damn or elect a new play, and it is through their 
 feelings and expressions that the author learns the success or 
 rejection of his composition. 
 
 (75.) ODOURS. The quality of Beauty belongs, and may 
 be applied, to any pleasing and perfect production of Nature. 
 Thus this appellation rnay be correctly used in regard to 
 substances which give pleasure to the nervous fibrillae that 
 appreciate the odour and taste of things. 
 
 (a.) It should be remembered as regards odours that what 
 is agreeable or pleasant to one person may be offensive, nay, 
 pernicious, to another. The fibres of the olfactory organ, 
 which takes cognizance of effluvia, may be likened to those 
 appertaining to the cerebral development that estimates 
 melodious tones, and like them pulsate or vibrate in answer 
 to the application of the undulatory waves constituting 
 odoriferous exhalations. 
 
 (b.) The pleasure experienced from artificial scents 
 frequently depends upon association, and sometimes educa- 
 tion. Thus, an individual mny have had one of the fibres or 
 nerve-loops of his organ of Odour (which is situated at the 
 base of the brain) called into action by a particular friend, or
 
 80 BEAUTY. 
 
 in some locality that has been associated with certain pleasure- 
 giving circumstances, which memory recalls on the applica- 
 tion of a given perfume. 
 
 (c.) Natural odours may be said to be of two kinds, viz., 
 pleasing or disagreeable to the sense that takes cognizance of 
 them, or they may be detrimental or salubrious as regards 
 the system generally. 
 
 (d.) To enjoy the aroma given off from plants, we must be 
 in a state of health, or the fibres of the organ that appreciates 
 odours will vibrate irregularly, or not in unison with the 
 fragrant undulatory stimulus, and thus, instead of producing 
 pleasure, they will create uneasiness and even pain, as is the 
 case with the fibrillse making up the organ of Melody when 
 acted upon by musical tones under disease, as during in- 
 flammation, &c. (See Essay on " Sound" in my work on 
 " Matter."} 
 
 (e.) Certain fragrances may be pleasing to A, but not to B, 
 because A possesses particular fibres, in the cerebral organ 
 which take cognizance of scents, that can freely vibrate in 
 appreciative union with individual odours, which B fails to 
 distinguish, because these special filaments appertaining to 
 B's brain lie dormant, or are insensible to the applications in 
 question. 
 
 (/".) It should be remembered that certains persons, from 
 want of development or by reason of malformation, and 
 sometimes during certain disorders, can neither taste nor 
 smell. 
 
 (y.) Odorous exhalations are material, and capable of an 
 undulatory action, like sound, and can pass through certain 
 substances, like the pulsatory magnetic emanations from the 
 loadstone, which are capable of permeating all bodies. That 
 odours, when confined, escape through the walls of particular 
 receptacles is evidenced by the fact that some animals, like 
 clairvoyants, can detect their existence often at a great 
 distance. 
 
 (h.) Some of the fibres making up the organ that appre- 
 ciates aromas are entirely quiescent ; but be it known that 
 these dormant filaments are susceptible of education, for the 
 person that was originally incapable of detecting a certain
 
 ODOURS. 81 
 
 fragrance, after having his attention drawn to it, can by its 
 frequent presentation or use readily appreciate a particular 
 odour. This fact is also often exemplified whilst educating 
 animals, for the pig and other creatures have been taught 
 to recognise the exhalations escaping from game, &c., like 
 the pointer dog. But it must not be forgotten that habit 
 often renders us insensible to certain emanations, as exem- 
 plified in the store-keeper, who is often unconscious of the 
 effluvia pervading his own shop. Socrates observes that " all 
 things lose by too familiar view or use." 
 
 (z.) The mucous membrane of the nose, in which termi- 
 nate the olfactory nerves, is full of or covered with vibratile 
 or oscillating fibrillae, over which the undulatory odours 
 from bodies pass to the organ that appreciates aromas. 
 
 (/.) The Delphinidae, or that division of the cetacea 
 which includes the dolphins and poi poises, have no olfactory 
 nerves, but the BalaBnidacor proper whales do possess nerves 
 of smell, though very small, and the Manatidae or herbiverous 
 whales possess them of the usual character. ($ee Article 
 " Smell and Taste" in my work on " Matter.")
 
 82 BEAUTY. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 (1 ) The pleasure imbibed when beholding the beautiful 
 or perfect depends on truthful excitement. Therefore an 
 efficient organization is necessary to appreciate, and education 
 to give aptitude, out of which grows refinement of taste. 
 
 (2.) Beauty of form enables the possessors to mix grace 
 with their movements. As regards the creatures of the 
 wilds, we are gratified by the recognition that a particular 
 configuration is suited to the wants of the animal, and that 
 certain desired effects or motions are produced with ease, and 
 little effort. It is on this principle that we admire the 
 beauty of the human form, every part of which, when in 
 health, is perfectly fitted for its intended purposes, and thus 
 we laud the motions of a horse, a stag, or cat, as being made 
 without any apparent effort or difficulty, and as the result 
 of an ability which accomplishes its end with the least 
 possible expense of exertion. Hence health and perfect 
 freedom from the least decay is necessary to perfect the 
 beauty of living existences. 
 
 (3.) All incongruous combinations in animate beings are 
 contrary to beauty. For example, the lovely pink and white 
 complexion, which suits the delicacy and weakness of the 
 female form and character, is less becoming to a man than 
 the dark red and brown which characterize tho sunburnt 
 cheeks of a person accustomed to rural labours, to athletic 
 exercises, to field sports, and to a military or naval life. 
 
 (4 ) The middle or intermediate form in the different 
 species of animals is the most beautiful, that is to say, it is 
 that abstract shape at which the painter or sculptor arrives 
 by rejecting all faulty extremes ; hence he takes us a type 
 that from which the varieties of individuals diverge in 
 different directions; in a word, the artist elects Nature's 
 primary intent as regards the medium size in living existences.
 
 QUALITY AND HEALTH. 8d 
 
 (5.) QUALITY is a component belonging to Beauty. Thus 
 the woman must be plastic, and this yield-ability must be 
 just blushingly apparent; the man should be full of strength 
 and capable of protecting, as he leans towards or over her 
 all-attractive form. 
 
 (6.) As it is with the general shape of the human race 
 and their limbs and features, so it is with the particular 
 stages of life. Thus, though the type of youth and age 
 differ exceedingly, there is a common figure in childhood and 
 in age, which is the more perfect t as it is remote from all 
 peculiarities, but we abstractedly admire children for what 
 they are to be, and old men for what they have been, and 
 we ought benevolently to lean towards both 
 
 (7.) Fatigue or satiety destroys the enjoyment of the 
 Beautiful. Brown, in his Natural Philosophy, observes 
 " That the writings we admired on first reading them 
 fatigue and disappoint us when we peruse them too often, and 
 the author appears to be almost trite and of little value, even 
 in his most original images. Again, in travelling over a 
 flat country, amid unvaried scenery, how weary we become! 
 Like passing through a long avenue of trees all day, we 
 might as well be blind for the time." 
 
 (8.) We must be of a certain age and in health, also in a 
 happy mood and free from weariness, to appreciate the 
 Beautiful ; for the loveliest face and form would wake up in 
 us no sympathy, as far as perfection obtains, if we were very 
 tired or indisposed by any kind of malady. 
 
 (9.) A beautiful ballet when perfect in all its parts is a 
 picture, drawn from life, of the manners, dresses, ceremonies, 
 and customs of all nations. "The Greeks," says Athenaeus, 
 " had brought their dance to such perfection in the art of 
 imitating the passions, that the most eminent sculptors 
 studied and designed from the attributes of the public 
 dancers. And to this study they owed," he says, "undoubtedly 
 some of the transcendent beauties of their works." 
 
 (10.) VEGETABLE BEAUTY. Professor Buckland, speak- 
 ing of the coal-plants found in the mines of Bohemia, says, 
 " The most elaborate imitations of living foliage upon the 
 painted ceilings of Italian palaces bear no comparison with
 
 84 BEAUTY. 
 
 the beauteous profusion of extinct vegetable forms with 
 which the galleries are overhung. The roof is covered as 
 with a canopy of gorgeous tapestry, enriched with festoons 
 of most graceful foliage flung in wild irregular profusion 
 over every portion of its surface. The effect is heightened 
 by the contrast of the coal-black colour of these vegetables 
 \vilh the light ground-work of the rock to which they are 
 attached. The spectator feels as if transported by enchant- 
 ment into the forests of another world ; he beholds trees and 
 ferns of a character now unknown presented to his senses, 
 almost in the beauty and vigour of their primeval life, their 
 scaly stems and bending branches, with their delicate foliage, 
 are all spread forth before him, little impaired by the lapse 
 of countless ages, and bearing faithful records of extinct 
 systems of vegetation, which began and terminated in times 
 of which these relics are the infallible historians." 
 
 (11.) Beauty of attitude and grace of carriage are inti- 
 mately connected with the maintenance and equipoise of the 
 body. No attitude can be beautiful in which the idea of 
 rest is not conveyed by that permanence and security which 
 result from a perfectly felt balance. Grace of carriage 
 requires not only a complete freedom of motion, but also 
 firmness of step, arising from a constant bearing of the 
 centre of gravity over the base of support. It includes ease 
 and security. And in both, whether it be motion becoming 
 fixed as attitude, or attitudes presenting themselves in the 
 shifting flow of motion, beauty and grace reveal themselves 
 in self-command and freedom made manifest by self-control. 
 In short, look at the body in any position or attitude relating 
 to the incidental or casual forms arising out of the free and 
 unconstrained movements of man, healthy in frame and un- 
 shackled by conventional usages, and the truth will force 
 itself on your conviction. Pass in review the ponderous 
 strength of the Uercules, the agile Mercury, the graceful 
 ease of the Antinous, tlie reclining Hyssus, all the animated 
 forms of the frieze of the Parthenon, whatever Greek art 
 has signalized or modern genius realised ; witness the sports 
 of children, or go to the wild denizens of the forest, and 
 proof will no longer be needed that grace and beauty are
 
 EXTERNAL AGENTS. 85 
 
 inherent in the human body, as the fit instrument of human 
 freedom, and the translucent medium, as it were, of man's 
 spiritual being. (Green's " Vital Dynamics" p. 60.) 
 
 (12.) BEAUTY OF FOKM MOSTLY ACCOMPANIES PERSONS OF 
 GENIUS. This was exemplified in Augustus Caesar, Titus 
 Vespasianus, Philip le Bel of France, Edward the Fourth of 
 England, Alcibiades of Athens, Ismael, one of the sophi of 
 Persia ; these were all high and great spirits, and the 
 most beautiful men of their times. (Lord Bacon). To these 
 may be added Newton, Napier, and James Crichton, &c., &c. 
 
 (13.) EFFECTS OF EXTERNAL AGENTS, ESPECIALLY THAT 
 OF FORM. The structure of the room in which we sleep, sit, 
 or write has much to do with our happiness, especially when 
 the apartment is oval Do we not breathe freer, sleep sweeter, 
 entertain sublimer thoughts, and feel more felicitous, in 
 a room of fine proportions, animated with light, than when 
 within the dungeon walls? The human spirit can by necessity 
 become accustomed to disproportions, but health and 
 harmony demand everything congenial with internal prin- 
 ciples. The truth is that Nature acts anatomically upon and 
 moulds the body, by presenting to it its manifold structural 
 beauties and embellishments. The ovoid fonn of our globe, 
 the anatomical characteristics of the vegetable and animal 
 world, and the symmetrical beauty of the human form are 
 the modes and means by which Nature acts on our fellow 
 beings. 
 
 (14.) Lady W. Montague, when describing Fatima, the 
 Turkish empress, remarks that " The surprising harmony of 
 features ! that charming result of the whole ! that exact pro- 
 portion of body ! the lovely bloom of complexion, unsullied 
 by art ! the unutterable enchantment of her smile ! But, oh ! 
 her eyes, large and black, with all the soft languishment of 
 the blue, every turn of her features discovering some new 
 graces." 
 
 (15.) Nothing is beautiful that is misplaced. (Burke.) 
 
 (16.) Age is not adapted to imbibe, through sympathy, the 
 Beautiful. In fact, many things that excite forth feeling 
 when young cease to do so when old ; thus tickling cannot 
 produce mirth when cross, angry, or very aged.
 
 86 
 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 (17.) A man to the female taste is more beautiful than 
 the loveliest woman, because he has certain masculine 
 attributes that excite her appreciative qualities 
 
 (18.) The somnambule and mesmeric patient, when 
 dreaming, develope most fascinating beauties when in motion 
 and repose, never witnessed in any other state of life. 
 
 (19.) Beauty and intellect are mostly combined. Thus 
 Ninon de 1'Enclos, the most beautiful woman of her age, 
 was full of probity, understanding, and possessed by every 
 freedom of thought; thus beauty of form appertains- to per- 
 fection of brain and mind, ( Voltaire, v. I, p. 11.) 
 
 (20.) EI.KGANCE, among the trench, as with the ancient 
 Romans, is confined to sculpture, painting, eloquence, and 
 still more to poetry ; it does not precisely mean the same 
 thing as grace. The word grace applies particularly to 
 motion. (Voltaire v. 1, p. 423.) 
 
 (21.) Taste would be better understood by calling it appre- 
 ciation ; it is an appetite, and may well be designated taste 
 or feeling, since it is by feeling we appreciate everything. 
 
 (22.) We must be happy to estimate Beauty. " I am very 
 miserable, and therefore have not time to acquire taste," said 
 a man during conversation. (I'altuirt;, v.'2,2). 523.) 
 
 (24.) " With regard to the Grecian profile, relative to the 
 famous descent of the forehead to the nose in one continued 
 right line, can any person, having a sense of truth and 
 .Nature, suppose this natural and true? I will never pro- 
 nounce that any such living profile can be found ; or were it- 
 possible to find such a person, he must be most blockishly 
 stupid. This countenance is, in fact, merely imaginary, and 
 only betokening the vapid and unimpassioned countenance of 
 a stupid individual. 
 
 "The eye is perfect marble, as are the eyebrows and the 
 whole profile. The cavity between the under lip and the chin, 
 with the arching of the chin itself, notwithstanding apparent 
 beauty, are stone, or at least extremely inanimate. Depraved 
 is the taste which can call this contour graceful, and therefore 
 it must be far from majestic. 1 should never wish anyone to 
 possess a countenance so cold, insipid, stony, unimpassioned, 
 or so perfectly like a Greek statue." (Lavater, p.
 
 WOMAN AND EDUCATION. 87 
 
 (24.) The great portrayers of beauty as before observed 
 were mostly extremely handsome and intellectually bright. 
 Thus Leonardo da Vinci was a genius from a boy ; he knew 
 all sciences, and was a sculptor, painter, astronomer, and 
 the handsomest man of his day. Raffaello D'Urbino, the 
 son of a poor painter, was pronounced to be the most 
 elegant and comely personage of his time. 
 
 (25.) Relative to dress. Swift states that "a fop is a peg 
 whereon to hang a suit of clothes." 
 
 (26.) The costumed man has been justly denned as " an 
 animal ashamed of his own body." 
 
 (27.) What inanities as regards portraits ! Can a man 
 paint a soul upon canvas ? And yet the artist talks of his 
 expression ! (Bentley.) 
 
 (28 ) " BEAUTY, thou art twice blest ; thou blessest the 
 gazer and the possessor, often at once the effect and cause 
 of goodness. A sweet disposition, a loving soul, an 
 affectionate nature will speak through the eyes, the lips, the 
 brow, and become the cause of Beauty. On the other hand, 
 they who have the gift that commands love, a key that opens 
 all minds, are ordinarily inclined to look with happy eyes 
 upon the world at large, to be cheerful and serene, to hope 
 and confide. There is more wisdom than common people 
 dream of in our admiration of a fair face." (Bulwer's 
 " Alice," p. 36.) 
 
 (29.1 But who can describe or portray beauty ? Let any 
 one look at the finest attempts to achieve this impossibility 
 by the old masters, and then let him compare them with the 
 faces he has seen, and may behold every day as he walks the 
 peopled earth. 
 
 (30.) All clever and talented men, especially those blest 
 with genius, always proclaimed that they inherited their 
 abilities from having had beautiful or sensitive mothers. 
 
 (31.) Had women been educated like men, not so much 
 through book-learning as by being mixed up with trans- 
 piring circumstances and occurring events, they would 
 have given birth to a very superior offspring to that now 
 brought forth ; for then the mother, during gestation, would 
 have influenced by induction or investiture the foetus (child
 
 88 BEAUTY. 
 
 in the womb), through her practical experiences and mental 
 excitements ; for during 1 the period of gestation or pregnancy 
 she would have mingled with occurring transactions, by 
 means of which, from her aptness in acquiring knowledge, 
 she would have occupied most of the seats of office and 
 emolument. Under these moral contingencies or incidents, 
 we should have had, everywhere amongst civilized nations, 
 glorious peace, for there would then have been no devasta- 
 ting wars, because the gentler sex would, under this self- 
 education, have taught us to rule through love, as practised 
 by the Jews, and not by means of punishment, or murderous 
 strife, but by returning " good for evil," and giving a " kiss 
 for a blow," and, thus circumstanced, man would have been 
 happy, and also woman's more respectful, loving, and 
 worshipping companion, from his then greater dependent 
 reliance on her innate or inborn natural superior abilities. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 E RBA T A. 
 
 Page 60, line 8. For "orginates," read "originates." 
 
 lines 8 and 9. For " structions," read " ttraetalM."
 
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