Volume 1

Mind and brain, or, The correlations of consciousness and organisation : systematically investigated and applied to philosophy, mental science and practice / by Thomas Laycock.

  • Thomas Laycock
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mind and brain, or, The correlations of consciousness and organisation : systematically investigated and applied to philosophy, mental science and practice / by Thomas Laycock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    ness of form as they approach the biotic; and in the biotic we have the highest degree of both. But there are higher and higher degrees of derivation in the biotic, according as Mind is evolved into conscious activity, until they culminate in Man. In him, the highest beauty is associated with the largest complexity and the most perfect unity. This is seen in both his colour or com- plexion and his form, including, under man, both sexes. 237. With this higher and higher development, limita- tion, such as is possible and even aesthetic in the cosmic or geometrical forms, becomes more and more difficult. The nobler the materials, says Mr Kuskin, the less their [geometrical] symmetry is endurable. Mr Buskin shows clearly the importance of knowing that indefinableness in colour is one of the first requisites to beauty in colour. It is a marvellous thing to me that book after book should appear on this last subject, without, apparently, the slightest consciousness, on the part of the writers, that the first necessity of beauty in colour is gradation, as the first necessity of beauty in line is curvature,—or that the second necessity in line is softness. . . . Unless it loses itself, and melts away towards other colours, as a true line loses itself and melts away towards other lines, Colour has no proper existence, in the noble sense of the word.* It is interesting, too, to note the atomic cha- racter of the material. The final particles of colour necessary to the completeness of a colour's harmony are always infinitely small, either laid by immeasurably subtle touches of the pencil, or produced by portions of the colouring substance, however distributed, which are so absolutely small as to become at the intended distance infinitely so to the eye.f * The Two Paths, by J. Ruskin, M.A., p. 270. (App. v.) t Ibid. p. 271.
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