Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1906 (Heft 15))

delightful and beautiful; but if they are annoyed, they say things are horrid
and ugly.

Now, while admitting that some of what we term beauty of line may
be due to kinesthetic pleasure or pain, I deny that these kinesthetic sen-
sations are the whole, or even more than a very small part of the causation
of the feeling of beauty. The eye, unless it is expressly forced to do so,
never looks at objects in this exact mathematical way, and, although it is not
equally sensitive over its whole surface, yet it can and does see sufficiently
well (aided by guess-work and past experience, I admit) to almost instantly
— betore it has had a chance to move and bring into play the muscles —
recognize the difference between curves and angles, and also between curves
and curves, and this sufficiently exactly to enjoy or dislike accordingly. The
truth of my assertions becomes evident the moment we view diagrams of
geometrical patterns under the illumination of the electric spark. The dura-
tion of the spark is so short that the eye can not possibly move, yet it
recognizes distinctly what it sees : Hogarth’s curve as well as all other kinds.
Also, when watching the cinametograph, our vision is of the same order.

The truth seems to me to lie in a totally different direction. Beauty of
line I believe to be a matter of association—an association with those animal
movements which express joy, pride, strength, and life. But in advancing
this theory I make no claim that it is entirely new, only I have carried its
roots down deeper; and I also contend that beauty is, in its relation to
man, an absolute quality, and not, as is so generally held by scientists, a
relative one.

It appears, according to anatomical investigation, that when we (human
beings) feel pleasure, we exhibit this pleasure by the use of the extensor
muscles ; when we feel pain, we exhibit it by the use of the constrictor
muscles. (The extensor muscles are those which raise, expand, and stretch
out; the constrictor, those which contract and depress.) Now, while we are
employing the extensor muscles, the contours of our features and body
become curved and stretch out; while we are employing the constrictor
muscles, the contours of our body and features become straight, angular, and
contracted. This is so true that we rarely seek any other evidence to deter-
mine whether those around us are happy or miserable than that furnished by
their curves and angles. When we see a face in which the lines are curved
up — that is, in which the corners of the eyebrows and eyes and mouth are
raised, and the cheeks are curved out — we know that the possessor of those
curves is under the influence of a pleasurable sensation — or assuming to be
so; while, if these same corners droop and the lines run down, we recognize
the cause to be a disagreeable one. (Note that the kinesthetic theory takes
no cognizance of lines that run up, or lines that run down ; to it they are
the same — they are merely oblique.) When men are in pain, their move-
ments are jerky and angular, and their outlying members are drawn in to
themselves, as it were : the teeth are set, the eyebrows are lowered, the hands
are clenched, and the arms contracted toward the body, and possibly the
legs are doubled in ; every muscle that pulls downward and together seems

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