The Analysis of Beauty 12+

📕 This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XI OF PROPORTION If anyone should ask, what it is that constitutes a fine proportioned human figure? how ready and seemingly decisive is the common answer: a just symmetry and harmony of parts with respect to the whole. But as probably this vague answer took its rise from doctrines not belonging to form, or idle schemes built on them, I apprehend it will cease to be thought much to the purpose after a proper inquiry has been made. Preparatory to which, it becomes necessary, in this place, to mention one reason more which may be added to those given in the introductory chapter, for my having persuaded the reader to consider objects scooped out like thin shells; which is, that partly by this conception, he may be the better able to separate and keep asunder the two following general ideas, as we will call them, belonging to form; which are apt to coincide and mix with each other in the mind, and which, for the sake of making each more fully and particularly clear, should be kept apart, and considered singly. First, the general ideas of what has already been discussed in the foregoing chapters, which only comprehends the surface of form, viewing it in no other light than merely as being ornamental or not. Secondly, that general idea, now to be disc...