From the PREFACE.
The brief Manual, on a matter of national importance, which I now venture to submit to public criticism, is simply the completion of an idea entertained by me for nearly a quarter of a century. From the time, indeed, that I first taught anatomy, or rather I ought to say, studied anatomical shapes, their import or signification, their relations to each other, and their artistic, philosophic, and utilitarian aspects, I felt convinced, instinctively as it were, that the true relation of anatomy to art, meaning Fine Art, had been misrepresented and misunderstood. But it was not until I had visited the galleries of the Louvre, and looked attentively at the Elgin Marbles, that I was in a position to support this view with an appeal to demonstration.
The Manual now completed is simply an attempt to demonstrate the true relations of anatomy to art; to show the influence which the interior of man exercises over the exterior; and, therefore, in so far is simply a school-book. But has school-books should, if possible, be progressive, I have ventured to add to the elementary matter contained in Part I. a second and a third section, in which will be found a sketch of the nature of form as the grand element of beauty; a theory of the beautiful; and an analysis of the principles which must ever form the basis of a correct taste. I have ventured to recommend a perusal of these sections to amateurs; by whom I merely mean the general public. The remark has been often made that, in respect of works of art, there are two parties to be considered, namely, the artist and his patrons. Should the latter happen to be low in taste, of utilitarian tendencies, purely and simply; mechanical, plodding, fond of substituting a model conventionalism for nature, the lot of the artist must ever be an unhappy one. To secure fair play for him, his patrons also ought to be lovers of true art, or be at least made sensible that there exist amongst them persons who are so. In brief, it is not the artist alone who requires instruction,?it is the public. Above all, it ought to be clearly shown to them that Posterity?the living embodiment of Times progress and work on earth?will pass a stern, impartial, and irrevocable judgment on those nations despising literature, science, and art, whom they will class with barbarians, however powerful they may have been politically, however wealthy and luxurious. The future historian will, it is to be presumed, criticise the present times as we do the Coptic, Greek, and Roman eras of civilization. Let us hope that, in so doing, some future Gibbon may not discover that Britain was a land from which a love of nature and of truth had been expelled,?a fact proved by the absence of all artistic monuments of a lofty and ennobling character.
But further than this hint to patrons, the work has no further pretensions than what its title-page indicates....