life richer and higher. All physical beauty is
essentially geometrical.
That musical harmony has its foundation in
geometrical proportions of the vibrating body
or bodies has been known from the time of
Pythagoras, and his knowledge was probably
obtained from the more ancient peoples of
Egypt, Phoenicia, or Chaldea, among whom he
traveled,
The nature of light. and of color, has been
so little while known that we have no such
developed geometry of color as the geometry
of harmony which has furnished the principles
for the guidance of musical art for many centur
ies, But such is the similarity, as physical phe
nomena of sound and light, as to cause, nature
and propagation, and such the functional corres
pondence of the senses by which they are per
ceived that we should expect a geometrical
basis of beauty in color, and, indeed, it is in
some measure known.
That the third kind of physical beauty, form,
is geometrical; needs no more than statement.
Its principle is proportion. The elements of
this are relative size, relative dimensions, rela
tive angles relative curvatures, or general rela
tions of forms to one another.
Several writers have shown that a science of
proportions formed the basis of the education
of artists in Greece during the three centuries
in which "works of sculpture, architecture and
ornamental design were executed, which sur
pass in geometrical beauty any works produced
in the two thousand years that have since
elapsed, ' l " 3 ' and which arc still held to be
the most perfect specimens of formative art in
the world." This science, a method or key,
which it is said Pythagoras brought to Greece
from the east, was lost, and the arts of design
declined. But long after its application to
sculpture and decoration was lost, architecture
shows some evidence of its use. Its preserva
tion in this art has been ascribed to Free
masonry, of which it may have been the craft
secret while the order remained a working
THE FREE LANCE.
guild; and Moses (claimed to be a founder of
Masonry) may have learned it from the "wis
dom of the Egyptians," as perhaps did Pytha-
A scientific development of the principle of
geometric beauty, by which harmony of form
may with certainty be produced, beside its
financial value, would greatly promote the
progress of art and of culture, guiding one to
produce and the other to demand greater ex
cellence.
Why we are pleased with sounds, or colors,
or forms governed by geometric laws, and dis
pleased by others, is an enquiry of great inter
est, partly . psychological, which cannot have
space here.
Of that beauty which, born in the material
world without us, makes its impress upon our
minds through the senses, harmony of sound,
music, is the lowest of the three kinds, Its
organ, the ear, is inferior to that of the others,
the eye. It affects the emotions only, through
sensation simply, is purely sensuous, and does
not persist long enough for rational recogni
tion, It is the beauty that the infant, the un
cultured savage, and even the unfortunate
without intellectual powers or with dethroned
reason, all appreciate. So low in the scale of
organization and development must that one
be who can not apprehend this lowest of the
three physical beauties that Shakespeare says:
that " he that bath no music in his breast, and
is not moved by the harmony of sweet sounds,
is fit for stratagems, treason, and spoils; let no
such one be trusted." Painting ranks next.
It addresses the mind through the eye. It is
still, to a great extent, sensuous; but it persists
and, finally, makes its appeal to the imagina
tion also, and to the higher intellectual pow
ers. Except as a sensuous pleasure, it is little
appreciated without a good degree of mental
power and culture, Of highest rank in the
triad of physical beauty stand sculpture and
architecture, formative art, Their address is
through the highest of the senses. They are