Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/94

 of form an æsthetic value by reason of associated feelings and ideas. This second great factor in visual form has received a fair amount of attention, and it does not call for more than a hasty reference here.

—So far as forms are strictly non-imitative, and not determined by any needs of fitness to some recognized practical end, the associated factor must reside in certain comparatively abstract qualities. These are in the main resolvable into two classes—those æsthetic aspects which depend on association with touch and movement, and those which involve an idea of human skill.

If tactual and muscular experiences (other than those of the ocular muscles) are organically embodied into our customary visual perceptions, we shall be prepared to find that the pleasurable side of visual form embraces elements drawn from this region. In truth, all the valued features of form may be said to involve such extraneous experiences. The superior importance of the vertical and horizontal directions, the specially restful character of the horizontal, and the aspiring aspect of the vertical, the voluptuous nature of the curve as opposed to the severity of the straight line, point to the deeper and fuller experiences of movement, muscular exertion, and repose, which we obtain apart from the eye. Even the value of bilateral symmetry for the eye may owe something to that well-marked rhythmic contrast of right and left, which the movements of the tactual organ yield to us. Again, it is easy to see that the various charm of distance, the wooing character of the remote and retiring, and the stimulating aspect of the near and prominent (reflected in a degree in the different effects of convex and concave surface), and the sublime suggestions of great height, all draw their material from experiences of the greater motor organs. So, too, our larger muscular experiences, with their new feeling of resistance and distinct sense of force, furnish elements to our appreciation of fragile grace appearing to ask for support, and of all stability of form. Lastly, the residue of tactile experience (alone or in combination with muscular sense) are traceable plainly enough in the charm of smooth and rounded surface, of that characteristic quality of sculpture which Mr. Ruskin has well called its "bossiness."

The second class of æsthetically valuable suggestions in the visual perception of form are those of human skill. Man is a constructive animal, and his habits of construction lead him, as Mr. Grant Allen has observed, in the essay already spoken of, to view all forms in nature, as well as in art, in relation to the degree of skill needed to produce them. Thus a perfectly straight line, even in nature,