The final experiments were arrangements of lines and simple figures on a square, black background in which the center was marked by a white vertical line with a blue or a red line on each side.  On one side of these central lines a line was fixed; and the subject had to place on the other side lines and simple figures of different sizes and different colors, so as to balance the fixed line.  The results showed that lines of greater length, or figures of greater area must be put nearer the center than shorter or smaller ones—­’A short line must be farther than a long one, a narrow farther than a wide, a line farther than a square; an empty interval must be larger than one filled, and so on.’  And for colors, “blue, maroon and green, the dark colors, are the farthest out; white, red and orange, the bright colors, are nearest the center.  This means that a dark color must be farther out than a bright one to compensate for a form on the other side.  The brightness of an object is then a constant substitute for its distance in satisfying our feeling of symmetry.”

Now from these conclusions two things are clear.  By his extremely emphasized central line, and his explicit question to the subjects, ‘Does this balance?’ the author has excluded any other point of view than that of mechanical balance.  His central fulcrum is quite overpowering.  Secondly, his inquiry has dealt only with size and color, leaving the questions of interest, movement, and perspective untouched.  But just the purpose of this experimental study is to seek for the different and possibly conflicting tendencies in composition, and to approximate to the conditions given in pictorial art.  It is evident, I think, that the two studies on symmetry will not trespass on each other’s territory.  The second paper of Dr. Pierce, on ’The Functions of the Elements,’ deals entirely with the relation of horizontal and vertical positions of the aesthetic object and of the subject to aesthetic judgments, and has therefore no bearing on this paper.

For his apparatus Dr. Pierce used a surface of black cloth stretched over black rubber, 1 m. square.  Now an investigation which is to deal with complicated and varied relations, resembling those of pictures, demands an instrument resembling them also in the shape of the background.  A rectangle 600 mm. broad by 400 mm. high seemed to meet this requirement better than the square of Dr. Pierce.  Other parts, also, of his instrument seemed unfitted for our purpose.  The tin, 5 cm. broad and confined to the slits across the center of the square, gave not enough opportunity for movement in a vertical direction, while the scale at the back was very inconvenient for reading.  To supply these lacks, a scale graduated in millimeters was attached on the lower edge of the board, between a double track in which ran slides, the positions of which could be read on the scale.  To the slides were attached long strips of tin covered with black