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AMERICAN  PREFACE.

he  kesitate  about  giving  an  explanation  of  the  laws  and  conditions
of  animal  or  vegetable  growth?  No,  indeed.  He  will  assert  that
he  knows  much  about  these  matters  which  can  be  described  and
taught  with  the  utmost  certainty.  Ask  the  chemist  whether  he
can  inform  you  what  gives  to  food  that  peculiar  davor,  lacking
which  food  is  not  appetizing  and  life-supporting,  and  he  will  reply
that  it  is  beyond  the  reach  of  Chemical  analysis,  and  that  no
chemically  compounded  food  can  be  substituted  for  the  natural
product.  But  he  will  not  hesitate  to  say  that  he  can  give  a  vast
deal  of  other  and  useful  Information  about  food  ;  that  he  can  teil
what  ingredients  to  add  to  any  given  soil  to  improve  the  wheat
crop,  and  with  what  to  feed  animals  to  keep  tkem  in  health  and
to  improve  their  flesh  for  the  table.
Just  so  it  is  with  those  who  have  made  a  study  of  what  is  called,
for  the  want  of  a  better  name,  Art-science.  While  tliey  realize
and  acknowledge  that  many  things  pertaining  to  art  have  not  yet
been  explained,  and  that  some  of  them  probably  never  will  be,
they,  on  the  contrary,  hold  that  other  things  have  been  definitely
settled,  and  can  be  taught  with  precision.  This  ‘teachable  artknowledge
  has  been  derived  from  a  study  of  art  as  illustrated  in
the  works  of  the  past,  also  from  the  study  of  nature  as  the
original  source  of  art.  Some  of  it  has  come,  indirectly,  from  a
study  of  nature  for  other  purposes,  as  for  the  purposes  of  Chemistry ­
  and  physics  ;  indeed,  it  is  impossible  to  draw  a  clear  line  of
demarkation  between  art  and  Science.  Art  is  not  wholly  independent ­
  of  other  lines  of  human  endeavor.  It  may  not  be  out  of
place  to  enumerate  some  of  these  teachable  elements  of  art.
l’ORMS  AND  LINES.
All  art  involves  the  representation  of  forms.  The  simplest  and
elemental  forms,  those  upon  which  rest  all  the  varied  forms  of
art  and  nature,  are  geometric.  It  is  essential  to  know  these  as
they  really  are,  and  the  power  to  draw  them  should  be  acquired
before  an  attempt  is  made  to  draw  forms  of  greater  intricacy.
But  the  representation  of  forms  by  any  method  calls  for  lines,  and
not  unfrequently  for  mathematical  lines,  that  is,  lines  which  are
expressed  by  an  equation.  Mathematical  lines  are  especially  employed
  by  those  who  are  engaged  in  designing  the  buautiful  forms