The Portland daily press., 1882-12-07
PORTLAND SOCIETY OF ART.
DIR. Hills Discovery in Regard to Hays
Law.

The Portland Society Of Art held its De-
cember meeting last evening which was we'll
attended by the members.
The Rev. DR.. Hill gave brief essay on
Beauty" with a particular application to the
beauty of proportion IN architecture and draw
ing. The sense of beauty arose from an inn
plicit perception of unity in an object Unity
in its highest form belonged TO persons alone
and unity in an object, concept not a per-
cept; it therefore implied not only conscious
mind in the observer; but conscious mind in
the Creator, whose conceptsi if we might so
designate them, were embodied or suggested in
thugs perceived by sense. Not merely the
germs and the species, but even the individuals
were thus supersensible objects.
You did not see a snowflake, or cat, with
the optic nerve and retina; they gave only
certain waves of light and shade; it was the
informing mindwhich alone saw the individual
lying behind; the noumenon in phenomena;
and that noumenon being thing of intellect,
had its source in intellect. All beauty, all
unity, thus testified that the origin of things is
in a Divine mind. The sense Of beauty did
not however require the Intellectual recogni-
ton OF this intellectual organ Of the beauti-
iul.
The lecturer then proceeded to show in de-
tail what was signiied by the unity of q beau
tifnl object; that that alone had unity for us
Wnlcn We can hold undiSturbed in single
mood OF contemplation; or in q succession of
moods, naturally and easily related to each
other. Then, descending to a more particular
treatment, he showed how naturally and in
evita0ly we endeavor 10 bring all things under
numerical FORMS The very process of Ian
guages, as it were, process of numbering:
and IN all conscious thought, dim impression
of unity and plurality was implied. All pro-
portions, whether of dimentions, or light and
shade. or color, or what not, were in some sort,
numerical proportions; and the perception OF
beauty, in all cases, was what PythagOras de-
cared it to be in the case of harmony and
melody; the result of secret UNCONSCIOUS
numerical calculation.
But DIR, Hill doubted much whether Hay
had obtained the Whole law of the beauty of
external forms, when he declared that, in
beautiful forms, the really expressed, and
prominently suggested angles, must bs in
harmonic ratio to the right angle. Plants were
certainly beautiful in form, and the Gothic
architecture .s supposed to have been sugges-
ted by the interlacsng branches of a forest.
Yet in plants while the lower approximations
to the perfect angle make harmonic divisions
OF circle; the higher approximations, in the
pine cove, the dahlia, the daisy, the sunfower
etc, made divisions which would be- rudely
dscordant. The lecturer would, therefore,
suggest that Hays "Science of Beauty needs
modification; and that Phyllotactc division,
in extreme and mean ratio, instead of harmon
ic division, be made the bases He made the
suggestion the more confidently, because of the
results which he had obtained from imperfect
measurements made upon a photograph and
upon lithogrdph, OF the front of Notre Dame
in Paris. Eight different angles appeared
prominent, or prominently suggested there.
OF these two were harmonic, as well as phyl-
totectic; the other six were peculiarly phy-
totectic. This went far toward showing that
the grand beauty of that celebrated front arises
from its faithful reflection of the peculiar an
giles OF forest aisles.