Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/439

No. 4.] Greeks help knitting up their æsthetic preferences with the kind of bodies they happened to have had, and with these curves which thus everywhere expressed and suggested such various excellences? I surmise if the limbs and bodies of the Greek maidens had been as crooked and gnarled as those of Rip Van Winkle's dwarfs that specimens of just such sublime crookedness would have to-day occupied the pedestals of the Louvre and the Vatican in place of the symmetrical types now found there. The Greeks were the Greeks and their curves were the beautiful. Why the Greeks were the Greeks and why they had these curves I take to be biology's secret rather than Mr. Ruskin's. Mr. Bain's ratio comes from heightened and increased volume of intellectual associations due to education; the uneducated do not exhibit the ratio.

The mechanism by which our aesthetic associations are knit up, and of what ultimate material, we have yet to consider. We have indicated what of this material is not directly seated in the visual organs. Our theory does not preclude aesthetic nerves and sensations in any of the organs of sight; but they are comparatively unimportant if there, and a matter for detailed investigation. We now pass to hearing.

Unlike color, certain sensations of sound are invariably disagreeable within reasonable conditions for the same person. A like constant agreeableness is doubtful. But first let us examine the disagreeableness. In these few lines I cannot mention the many facts and theories offered in explanation of this matter. They all have value. In general they have demonstrated close mathematical relationship between disagreeable tone combinations and 'beats.' I wish now to extend this relationship to one of 'frequency of occurrence,' and thence to 'use' and 'habit,' and to the influence of such morphologically upon the distribution of specific nerves In the ear. We know there is a direct relationship between use and growth. In experience, tones of certain pitch occur more frequently than those of other pitch. Our vocal apparatus has so developed that we make far more tones of a definite range of pitch than of other tones. This gives as between the different tones