varied illustration of the great law of the relations of parts—the key of the mystery of beauty and fitness. This law can be studied in crystals, in plants, animals, architecture; but in none of these so perfectly as in the highest part (or head) of the human being, and in him only at the age when he has arrived at his full growth.
This law is, briefly, that in any form whatsoever a pillar, a building, a plant, a face, a gown, a pitcher, a vase, a pot, an axe, any two parts must stand to one another in the same relations that the larger of these stands to the whole.
The beholder does not know all this perhaps, any more than the infant musician knows that he selects the octave or the fifth. It is only because the law was illustrated a thousand times by thousands of unconscious workers and artists that it was at last appreciated and received its formula. It can be traced in the proportions of a horse's head, limbs, hindquarters. But the higher forms of life give, of course, a fuller illustration of it than do any of the lower.
And the impulse of the child is, to begin with the form that illustrates it most completely—the adult human.
Strange to say, this adult form is not at all like his own.
