Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 3, September 1850Various
General
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 3, September 1850
Various
Literature -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals
V. Of these forms the globular is probably the very lowest; and,
accordingly, of it we have no perfect instance in the animal body, and
no near approach to it, except the eye-ball, where mechanical law
compels a rotundity, that muscle, fat, and skin seem employed to hide as
well as move and guard, and, in the round heads of bones, where the ball
and socket-joint is required for rotatory motion. But in both these
cases the offices which the roundness serves are mechanical, and so, not
exceptions to our rule. The perfectly spherical must rank as a low order
of form, because it results from the simplest kind of force, mere
physical attraction being adequate to its production, without any
inherent modifying power or tendency in the subject. It is, accordingly,
very repugnant to taste in the human structure; as, for instance,
rotundity of body, or a bullet-head. Nothing of that regularity of curve
which returns into itself, and might be produced upon a turning lathe,
and no continuity of straight lines within the capacity of square and
jack-plane, are tolerable in a human feature. Lips, slit with the
straightness of a button-hole, or conical precision, or roly-poly
globularity, would be equally offensive in the configuration of any
feature of the face or general form. Cheek, chin, nose, brow, or bosom,
put up into such rotundity and uniformity of line and surface, have that
mean and insignificant ugliness that nothing can relieve. In raggedest
irregularity there is place and space for the light and shade of thought
and feeling, but there is no trace or hint of this nobler life in the
booby cushiony style of face and figure. Nose and brows, with almost any
breadth of angle; and chin, with any variety of line and surface, are
better, just as crystalization, flat and straight and sharp as it is,
nevertheless, seems to have some share in its own make and meaning,
which rolls and balls cannot lay any claim to.
VI. But the law under consideration cannot be restrained to shape only.
Dimension is also a result of intrinsic qualities, and must in some way
and to some extent, indicate the character to which it corresponds.
Druggists are so well aware of, and so much concerned with the
difference in the size of the drops of different fluids, that they have
constructed a table of equivalents, made necessary by the fact. Thus a
fluid drachm of distilled water contains forty-five drops, of sulphuric
ether one hundred and fifty, of sulphuric acid ninety, and of Teneriffe
wine seventy-eight. So that the law is absolutely universal, however
varied in expression, and a specific character in fluids and other parts
of the inanimate world declares itself as decidedly in bulk or volume,
as difference of constitution is shown by variety of figure in the
living and sentient creation.
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