Cosmic Ethics; Or the Mathematical Theory of Evolution Showing the Full Import of the Doctrine of the Mean, and Containing the Principia of the Science of Proportion - Softcover

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896. Excerpt: ... frequently inscrutable, but the causes of the arrested art development of nations are easily to be divined. The Egyptian, the Chinese, and the Gothic styles may be regarded as arrested art developments. Let us, however, for the present concentrate our attention on the arrested evolution of Egyptian art. The Egyptian civilisation endured longer than that of any other nation recorded in history. It endured more thousands of years than the Grecian civilisation did centuries, and yet its art never transcended the elementary. Egyptian painting and sculpture having taken, as it were, their first steps, became petrified, immutably fixed. But of this arrested development we know the cause. The free exercise of the intellect was interdicted. Freedom of thought and of action were impossible in ancient Egypt. Therefore intellectual progress was arrested. It was decreed by the priestly caste that the human figure should always be represented in the same manner, with the same colours, the same contour, the same measures. Thus the artist's intellectual limit was fixed, the evolution of art effectually arrested. Evolution in art is indeed but an epitome of evolution in the Kosmos, for in the wide expanse of Nature there are unmistakable evidences of a progression towards proportioned existence. Part III.--Proportion In Relation To ARCHITECTURE In this chapter we have, not for the first time, attempted to expound the science of proportion in relation to architecture. The lapse of years has, however, enabled us to pursue a former clue, even unto the foundation of a new science; but a subject of such importance necessarily requires considerable thinking and re-thinking, and possibly the labours of several minds for its completion. Nevertheless, we are better able than of o...

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