culty increases with the subtileness of the curvature.[1] The æsthetic effect of curves, as of gestures, is appreciated only after long training. Their beauty is primarily due to the pleasure we take in making the muscular movements necessary to follow them, and this pleasure is strictly akin to that which we feel in tracing them with the hand, either upon paper, or simply in gesture. Pleasure-giving, graceful, muscular movements are always in curves, and their grace depends upon the subtileness of the curve.
If decorative art has had a beginning and an evolution, we should expect to find a progress from straight lines to circles, spirals, and ellipses, while more subtile curves, such as we find in Nature, would be adopted later, and this is the case, not only in the art-history of nations, but also in that of individuals, for the child must be educated not only to make, but to appreciate and enjoy beautiful lines.[2]
Man, the world over, seeks to give pleasure to the eye. He is not satisfied that an object should be useful to him; it must be at the same time beautiful; and indeed he is usually quite as anxious that it should look well, as that it should minister to his comfort. It is not enough that clothing should be warm: it must be graceful in form, and covered, more or less, with ornament. A house of logs would hold a congregation and supply all the facilities for public worship, but that is not enough. We strive to make it a palace, and enrich its walls with beautiful forms. It is verily surprising what an important element ornament is in life. Is it, then, wonderful that man, striving everywhere to please the same eye by lines, should occasionally invent, independently, similar ornamental forms, or that decorative art should, in its beginning, evolve in the same direction in different countries?
The class of ornaments I have studied with the greatest care, and, at the same time, the greatest success, is that to which the so-called "Greek fret" and "honeysuckle ornament" belong, and I now propose to discuss the question of the origin and evolution of these decorative forms, premising that other classes of ornaments may be studied in exactly the same way.
If a single straight line is pleasant to the eye, two parallel straight lines are still more so; for, in running the eye over one of the lines, we have a sort of accompaniment produced by the indistinctly-seen second line; or, in looking along an imaginary line between the two,
- ↑ A straight line is beautiful, because of the pleasure we derive from the perfectly even, regular use of the muscles employed in following it with the eye, a pleasure comparable to that produced by passing the hand over a smooth, flat surface, or by listening to a single musical note.
- ↑ In music we find also a progress from a monotonous series of effects, to those which may be represented by more and more subtile sounds. These are the curves of melody, of force, and of acceleration, all of which, in the evolution of music, tend to greater subtilty. I suppose that this progress from monotony to subtilty is to be explained by the unconscious desire to escape the fatigue produced by a series of too similar effects.
