CHAPTER 1. METHODS OF STUDYING THE PROPORTIONS OF THE WHEN HUMAN BODY. HEN we take a superficial view of the human species we find it composed of individuals appears varying so widely in physical character that it almost hopeless to subject it to a methodical and scientific study. On closer examination, however, certain typical forms are found to prevail through all the stages of development round which the irregularities of size and weight group themselves in the most uniform manner. The proportions of the body have been studied by sculptors and artists from the earliest times of which we have any record, and, as will be seen from the foregoing list of works of reference, numerous books have been written by them on the subject. Indeed, until quite recently, the study has been appropriated by them, and neglected by physiologists and naturalists as one pertaining only to the Fine Arts. Their works are, however, of little scientific value, as we are ignorant for the most part how the innumerable varieties of mankind run into one another by insensible degrees. This state of things, due partly to mixture and crossing of races, and partly to independent variations of type, makes the attempt to arrange the whole human species within exact bounded divisions an apparently hopeless task. It does not follow, however, that the attempt to distinguish special races should be given up; for there, at least, exist several definable types, each of which so far prevails in a population as to be taken as its standard. It is by following M. Quetelet's method of defining such types that the subdivisions of mankind into races, so far as it has been done to any purpose, has been carried out by anthropologists."* * Dr. E. R. Tylor, in Ency. Brit., 9th edit., article 'Anthropology.' CHAPTER 1. METHODS OF STUDYING THE PROPORTIONS OF THE WHEN HUMAN BODY. HEN we take a superficial view of the human species we find it composed of individuals varying so widely in physical character that it appears almost hopeless to subject it to a methodical and scientific study. On closer examination, however, certain typical forms are found to prevail through all the stages of development round which the irregularities of size and weight group themselves in the most uniform manner. The proportions of the body have been studied by sculptors and artists from the earliest times of which we have any record, and, as will be seen from the foregoing list of works of reference, numerous books have been written by them on the subject. Indeed, until quite recently, the study has been appropriated by them, and neglected by physiologists and naturalists as one pertaining only to the Fine Arts. Their works are, however, of little scientific value, as we are ignorant for the most part how the a vague idea of the beautiful in the human form or from actual measurements of the living body. M. Quetelet, who has studied these early records with the eye of an artist as well as a scientific inquirer, thus speaks of them: 'I have tried to gain a glimpse of the principal works on the proportions of man by consulting different times and different peoples. I have been astonished, I avow, at the few original documents I have found. Even according to these, the authors employed but few models to fix the size and the beauty of the conformation of the members, and oftenest the proportions of the child were totally wanting. We see, however, from the works of the Greeks alone, who have always remained masters in these matters, the infinite precautions which they took to arrive at their ends, and to unite elegance of proportion to exactitude of form. Imbued with a knowledge of these, they indeed only consulted the stature of man for the assemblage and agreement of the different parts. Phidias, it is said, to arrive at elegance, employed twenty models; he borrowed from each of them the most beautiful parts, his knowledge of the human form permitting him to arrange them with all the necessary strength and dignity.* It is foreign to my object in this small work to describe the various attempts which have been made to reduce the study of human proportions to exact schemes by the various authors to whom M. Quetelet refers. From the Silpi Sastri of the Sanscrit manuscript of India to Mr. Story's disquisition on the mystical qualities of triangles, squares, and circles (1866), the same fallacy pervades them all, namely, a belief that the key to the theory is to be found in the occult relations of numbers or in the parts of a geometrical diagram.* There is one artist, however, to whom this remark does not apply, namely, our illustrious countryman Sir Joshua Reynolds, who seems to have had a clear conception in his own mind of the true theory of proportions, although it does not appear that he took any pains to establish it by actual measure ments. As science owes to the poetical mind of Goethe the discovery which has so greatly simplified the study of vegetable morphology-that the leaf is the typical form of the plant, and that all the other organs are modifications of the leaf-so she owes to the æsthetic mind of Sir Joshua Reynolds the idea of the existence of a typical form in man, and the order which prevails in the seeming variations from that type. In this, as in so many other matters, Sir * See Dr. Baxter's Introduction to Statistics, Medical and |