The decline of the West, Volume 2 : $b Perspectives of world-historySpengler, Oswald
History
The decline of the West, Volume 2 : $b Perspectives of world-history
Spengler, Oswald
Civilization -- History
If the race-expression of the plant consists predominantly in
the physiognomy of position, the animal-expression resides in _a
physiognomy of movement_--namely, in the form as having motion,
in the motion itself, and in the set of the limbs as figuring the
motion. Of this race-expression not very much is revealed in the
sleeping animal, and far less still in the dead animal, whose parts
the scientist explores; we have practically nothing to learn now
about the skeleton of the vertebrate. Hence it is that in vertebrates
the limbs are more expressive than the bones. Hence it is that the
limb-masses are the true seat of expressiveness in contrast to the
ribs and skull-bones--the jaw being an exception in that its structure
discloses the character of the animal’s food, whereas the plant’s
nutrition is a mere _process of nature_. Hence it is, again, that the
insect’s skeleton, which clothes its body, is fuller of expression
than the bird’s, which is clothed by its body. It is pre-eminently
the organs of the outer sheath that more and more forcefully gather
the race-expression to themselves--the eye, not as a thing of form
and colour, but as _glance_ and expressive _visage_; the mouth, which
becomes through the usage of speech the expression of understanding;
and the head (not the skull), with its lineaments formed by the
flesh, which has become the very throne of the non-vegetable side
of life. Consider how, on the one hand, we breed orchids and roses
and, on the other, we breed horses and dogs--and would like human
beings to be bred, too. But it is not, I repeat, the mathematical
form of the visible parts, but exclusively the expression of the
movement, that displays this physiognomy. When we seize at a glance
the race-expression of a motionless man, it is because our experienced
eye sees the appropriate motion already potentially in the limbs.
The real race-appearance of a bison, a trout, a golden eagle, is not
to be reproduced by any reckoning of the creature’s plane or solid
dimensions; and the deep attractiveness that they possess for the
creative artist comes precisely from the fact that the secret of race
can reveal itself in the picture _by way of the soul_ and not by any
mere imitation of the visible. One has to see and, seeing, to feel
how the immense energy of this life concentrates upon head and neck,
how it speaks in the bloodshot eye, in the short compact horn, in the
“aquiline” beak and profile of the bird of prey--to mention one or two
only of the innumerable points that cannot be communicated by words and
are only expressible, by me for you, in the language of an art.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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