more frequently at this time because the iron constructions of the later period give more occasion than stone structures for its exhibition. The change of material has, according to Anton Kallmann's expression, produced a changed statics of feeling.[1] In the Eiffel Tower mechanical beauty is in conflict with plastic want of beauty, and in this reveals itself for the first time to many who would not otherwise have had occasion to perceive its effect. The new Forth Bridge is certainly not without it. Yet there is no question that even in stone buildings, besides many traditions and conventional tastes, the pleasure in definite forms, in the gentle swelling and tapering of Doric pillars upward, their expansion into the echinus and abacus, and in the profile of the architectural members, depends on mechanical beauty, as well as on the absence from the agreeable impression they make of the repulsive, which the senseless ornamentation of vulgar styles inflicts upon the refined taste.
Mechanical beauty plays a part even in the forms of organic nature, to the degree that much that is repulsive to the untutored eye delights the educated eye and fills it with admiration. That it is which the anatomist is pleased to discern in the structure of the bones, particularly of the joints; which on other grounds than its contradiction of the way the ancients painted death, makes a death-dance appear repulsive to him; which Benvenuto Cellini, to his credit, comprehended in a skeleton; and which, if only our understanding was adequate, every organized form would illustrate to us even in the aquarium and under the microscope. Even in the building up of the plant structure. Dr. Schwendener has demonstrated an economical adaptation of parts, characteristic of the organization, of which we can discern something in the sight of a broadly rooted oak pushing its massive head up toward air and light.
Mechanical beauty comes into consideration in the contemplation of animal forms, particularly of beasts of prey. A greyhound and a bull-dog, a thoroughbred race-horse and a brewer's draft-horse, a South Down and a merino sheep, an Algau Mountain steer and a Dutch milch-cow, are all handsome, though some among them, like the bull-dog and the Percheron horse, may appear ugly to a stranger; for in all of them the type of the species is modified for some adaptation.
Although science can not, as we have seen, inspire art in its departing life, nor communicate a new impulse to it, it can still afford it an inestimable service of another kind, by increasing its insight and improving its technical means, teaching it useful rules, and guarding it against errors. We are not thinking here
- ↑ Kunstbestrebungen der Gegenwart. Berlin, 1842, p. 71.
