Chapter XIX.

Delsarte's Last Years.

Before concluding these essays, my homage to the innovating spirit, the

matchless art, the sympathetic and generous nature of François Delsarte,

I make a final appeal to my memory, and, first, I invoke afresh the

testimony of others.

_La Patrie_, June 18, 1857, says in an enthusiastic and lengthy article:

"His deep knowledge, his incessant labors, his long and fatiguing

studies, have not allowed his life to pass unnoted; but although great

renown, attached in a short space to his name, has sufficed for the

legitimate demands of his pride, it has done nothing, it must be owned,

to provide for the wants which the negligences of genius do not always

foresee."

Then, apropos of Gluck and other unappreciated composers of genius, the

author of the article, Franck Marie, goes on:

"With the confidence to which I recently referred, Delsarte has

undertaken the reform. Sure of the success which shall crown his bold

undertaking, he began almost unaided, a movement which was no less than

a revolution. Between two snatches from Romagnesi or Blangini, the

majestic pages of Gluck appeared to the surprise of the auditor. The

heroes of the great master took the place of Thyrcis and Colin, the

songs of Pergolese and Handel, coming from the inspired mouth of the

virtuoso, at once aroused unknown sensations. Lully and Rameau,

rejuvenated in their turn, surprised by beauties hitherto unsuspected."

Earlier still (in the _Presse_ for December 6, 1840) in an article

signed Viscount Charles Delaunay are these lines:

"We are, to-night, to hear an admirable singer (Delsarte). He is said to

be the Talma of music; he makes the most of Gluck's songs, as Talma made

the most of Racine's verses. We must hasten, for his enthusiastic

admirers would never pardon us if we arrived in the middle of the air

from 'Alcestis;' and if all we hear be true, we could never be consoled

ourselves, for having missed half of it."

March 14, 1860, we read in the _L'Independance Beige:_

"Among the many concerts announced there is one which is privileged to

attract the notice of the _dilettanti_. We refer to that announced,

almost naively, by the two lines: Concert by François Delsarte, Tuesday,

April 4.--Nothing more! These two lines tell everything! Why give a

program? Who is there in the enlightened world who would not be anxious

to be present at a concert given by Delsarte? For, at _his_ concert, he

will sing--he who never sings anywhere, at any price. Observe what I

say: _never anywhere, at any price_, and I do not exaggerate."

This assertion, which shows the indifference of Delsarte to the

speculative side of art, is not without a certain analogy to the fact

which follows. At one of his concerts he was to be aided by one of the

great celebrities of the time; Rachel was to recite a scene from some

play.

The actress failed to appear. Some few outcries were heard. Delsarte

considered this a protest: "I beg those who are only here to hear

Mademoiselle Rachel," said he, "to step to the box-office. The price of

their tickets will be returned." Applause followed these words, and the

artist sang in a way to leave no room for regret.

I quote the following lines from an article published by the "_Journal

des Villes et des Campagnes_" in reference to a lecture given in the

great amphitheatre of the Medical School, March 11, 1867:

"Should I say lecture? It was rather a chat--simple, and wholly free

from academic forms. In somewhat odd, perhaps, but picturesque and

original form, M. Delsarte told us healthy and strengthening

truths:--'The misery of luxury devours us, but the truth makes no

display; it is modestly bare.'.... 'Art may convince by deceit; then it

blinds. When it carries conviction by contemplating truth, it

enlightens. Art may persuade by evil; then it hardens. When it persuades

by goodness, it perfects.' These are noble words. Orator, poet,

metaphysician, artist, M. Delsarte offers new horizons to the soul."

The sources whence I draw are not exhausted, but I must pause.

Thus all have hailed him with applause! Save for some few interested

critics, without distinction of opinions, political, religious or

philosophical, all differences were silenced by this admirable harmony

of the highest æsthetic faculties: the spirit of justice conquered party

spirit.

But whatever may have been said--and whatever may still be said,--those

who never heard Delsarte can never be made to comprehend him: in him,

feeling, intellect, physical beauty and beauty of expression formed a

magnificent assemblage of natural gifts and of acquired faculties. In

this distinguished personality nature became art, to prove to us that

outside her limits, as outside the limits of science, arbitrary

agreement and the caprices of imagination can create nothing noble and

great, persuasive and touching.

With this artist there was never anything to betray the _artificiality_

of a situation; interpreted by him, the creation, the invention, became

real. 'From his lips a cry never seemed a studied effect. It was the

rending of a bosom. A tear seemed to come straight from the heart; his

gesture was conscious of what it had to teach us; in all these

applications "of the sign to the thing," there was never an error, never

a mistake. It was _truth_ adorned by _beauty_. In his singing, roulades

became true bursts of laughter or true sobs.

Yes, all these things surpass description.

But what any and every mind may appreciate, is the lovable, loving and

generous nature which invested these transcendant qualities with

simplicity, with charm and with life. Delsarte had a wealth of

sentiment which overflowed upon the humble and the outcast, as well as

upon those favored by nature and by fortune. Without the riches which he

knew not how to gain, disdainful as he was of petty and sinuous ways, he

was benevolent in spite of his moderate means.

He gave, perhaps, oftener than he accepted payment for them, his time,

his knowledge and his advice to all who needed them. He admitted to his

classes pupils whose beautiful voices were their only wealth, and who

could pay him only in hope.

We may say of François Delsarte, that so sympathetic a nature is rarely

seen in this world of ours, where still prevail--tyrants to be

destroyed--so much antagonism, jealousy and rivalry. If some few of the

weaknesses natural to poor humanity may be laid to his charge, no one

had a greater right to redemption than he.

He once distressed a fashionable woman by speaking severely to her of

one of her friends. She was much troubled, but out of respect, dared not

complain. Delsarte saw tears in her eyes. He instantly confessed his

fault, and acknowledged, with the utmost frankness, that he spoke from

hearsay, and very lightly. He added that this mistake should be a lesson

to him, and that he would think twice before becoming the echo of evil

report.

If, touching his science and his art, this master often made assertions

which might seem conceited, aside from those convictions which, to his

mind, had the character of orthodoxy, he used forms of speech of which

judges without authority would never have dreamed. I have heard him say:

"I cannot be much of a connoisseur in regard to pianists, for I only

like to hear Chopin."

He was always ready to praise the amateurs who came to him for a

hearing, even if they were the pupils of other masters, finding out

among all their faults, the little acquirements or talent which he could

from their performance; sure, it is true, to correct them if he

afterward became their instructor.

Honors and fortune seemed within his grasp when he neared his end.

America offered him immense advantages, with a yearly salary of $20,000,

to found a conservatory in one of her cities. A street in Solesmes was

named for him. The King of Hanover sent him, as an artist, the Guelph

Cross, and, as a friend, a photograph of himself and family; it was to

this prince, the patron of art, that Delsarte wrote regarding his

"Episodes of a Revelator:"

"I am at this moment meditating a book singular for more than one

reason, which will be no less novel in form than in idea.... I know not

what fate is in store for this work, or if I shall succeed in seeing it

in print during my lifetime."

He did not realize this dream.

It was at about this same time that Jenny Lind took a long journey to

hear him and to consult him about her art.

At the period of the war of 1870-1871, Delsarte took refuge at

Solesmes, his native place. He left Paris, with his family, Sept. 10,

1870. Already ill, he lived there sad, and crushed by the misfortunes of

his country. Nevertheless, during this stay, he developed various points

in his method, and there his two daughters wrote at his dictation the

manuscript, "Episodes of a Revelator;" his intellect had lost none of

its vigor, but his nature was shadowed.

François Delsarte returned to Paris March 10, 1871, after his voluntary

exile. He soon yielded to a painful disease, doubtless regretting that

he had not finished his work, but courageous and submissive.

As far as it lay in my power, my task is done. I have furnished

documents for the history of the arts; I have aroused and tried to fix

attention upon that luminous point which was threatened with oblivion.

Now I call for the aid of all, that the work of memory may be

accomplished.

There are still among us many admirers of François Delsarte, many hearts

that loved him; a sort of silent freemasonry has been established

between them; when they meet in society, at the theatre, at concerts,

they recognize each other by mutual signs of regret or disappointment.

His name is pronounced, a few words are interchanged.

"Oh! those were happy days. Will his like ever be seen again?"

To these I say: Let us unite to assure him his place in the annals which

assert the glories of the artist and the man of science! Why should we

not combine soon to raise a statue on the modest grave where he lies?

Why should we not do for the innovator in the arts what the country

daily does for mechanical inventors and soldiers?

Part Fifth.

The Literary Remains of François Delsarte.

Translated by Abby L. Alger.

Publisher's Note.

_Part Fifth contains François Delsarte's own words._

_The manuscripts were purchased of Mme. Delsarte with the understanding

that they were all she had of the literary remains of her illustrious

husband. They are published by her authorisation._

_The reader will probably notice that at times Delsarte talks as if

addressing an audience. This he really did, and some of the manuscripts

are headings or draughts of his lectures before learned societies or of

talks at his own private sessions._

_These writings are given to the public in the same fragmentary

condition that Delsarte left them in. They were written upon sheets of

paper, scraps of paper, doors, chairs, window casements and other

objects. A literal translation has been made, without a word of comment,

and without any attempt at editing them. The aim has been to let

Delsarte speak for himself, believing that the reader would rather have

Delsarte's own words even in this disjointed, incomplete form--mere

rough notes--than to have them supplemented, annotated, interpreted and

very likely perverted by another person._

_Edgar S. Werner._

[Illustration: François Delsarte.]

Extract from the Last Letter to the King of Hanover

I am at this moment meditating a book, singular for more than one

reason, whose form will be no less novel than its contents. Your majesty

will read it, I hope, with interest.

The title of this book is to be: "My Revelatory Episodes, or the History

of an Idea Pursued for Forty Years."

It will be my task to connect and condense into a single narrative all

the circumstances of my life which had as logical consequences the

numerous discoveries which it has been granted me to follow up,

discoveries which my daily occupations left me neither time nor ability

to set forth as a whole.

I know not what fate is reserved for this book. I know not whether I

shall succeed in seeing it in print during my lifetime. The minds of men

are, in these evil days, so little disposed to serious ideas, that it

seems to me difficult to find a publisher disposed to publish things so

far removed from the productions of the century.

But, however it may be, if I succeed in getting at least some part of my

work printed, I crave, sire, your majesty's permission to offer the

dedication to you. This favor I entreat not only as an honor, but also

as an opportunity to pay public homage to all the kindnesses which your

majesty has never ceased to lavish upon me.

François Delsarte.

Episode I.

The subject in question was a scene in the play of the _Maris-Garçons_.

The young officer, whose part I was studying, met his former landlord

after an absence of several years, and as he owed him some money, he

desired to show himself cordial.

"Ah! how are you, papa Dugrand?" he says, on encountering him. This

apostrophe is, therefore, a mixture of surprise, soldierly bluntness and

joviality.

At the first words I was stopped short by an almost insurmountable

difficulty. This difficulty was all in my gesture. Do what I would, my

manner of accosting papa Dugrand was grotesque; and all the lessons that

were given me on that scene, all the pains I took to profit by those

lessons, effected no change. I paced to and fro, saying and resaying the

words: "How are you, papa Dugrand?" Another scholar in my place would

have gone on; but the greater the difficulty seemed to me, the higher my

ardor rose. However, I had my labor for my pains.

"That's not it," said my instructors. Good heavens! I knew that as well

as they did; but what I did not know was _why_ that was not it. It seems

that my professors were equally ignorant, since they could not tell me

exactly in what my way differed from theirs.

The specification of that difference would have enlightened me, but all

remained, with them as with me, subject to the uncertain views of a

vague instinct.

"Do as I do," they said to me, one after the other.

Zounds! the thing was easier said than done.

"Put more enthusiasm into your greeting to papa Dugrand!"

The greater my enthusiasm, the more laughable was my awkwardness.

"See here; watch my movements carefully!"

"I do watch, but I don't know how to go to work to imitate you; I don't

seize the details of your gesture." (It varied with every repetition.)

"I don't understand why your examples, with which I am satisfied, lead

to nothing in me."

"You don't understand! You don't understand! It's very simple! Really,

your wits must have gone wool-gathering, my poor boy, if you are unable

to do what I have shown you so many times. Watch closely now!"

"I am watching, sir, with all my eyes."

"You certainly see that the first thing is to stretch out your arms to

your papa Dugrand, since you are so pleased to see him again!"

I stretched out my arms to their utmost extent; but my body, not

following the movement, still wanted poise, and recoiled into a

grotesque attitude. My teacher, for lack of basic principles to guide

him, was unable to correct my awkwardness; and, vexed at his inability

which he wished to conceal, fell back on blaming my unlucky intellect.

"Fool," said he finally, "you are hopelessly stupid! Why are you so

embarrassed? Are my examples, then, worthless?"

"Indeed, sir, your examples are perfect."

"Well, then, imitate them, imbecile!"

"I will try, sir."

In this, as in all preceding lessons, I could give only a blind

imitation, which had not the small merit of being twice alike, even in

my own eyes, for every time I reproduced them I observed marked

variations which the master did not perceive.

I went to my room, as I had done many times before, with tears in my

eyes and despair in my heart, to renew my useless efforts, vainly

turning and returning in all lights my unfortunate papa Dugrand.

This cruel ordeal lasted five months without the least progress to

lessen its bitterness.

Heaven knows with what ardor I cultivated my papa Dugrand! I thought of

him by day, and I dreamed of him by night. I clung to him with all the

frenzy of despair, for I was determined not to be beaten. I was bound to

triumph at any cost, for it was life or death to me. I resolved not to

give up papa Dugrand, even though he should resist me ten years!

My unceasing repetitions of (to them abominable) papa Dugrand caused my

comrades to call me a bore. In short, I became disagreeable to all

around me. Alas! all this study, all these efforts, could not overcome

the stubborn resistance of papa Dugrand. My teachers were at their wits'

end, and finally refused to give me another lesson on the subject. But

nothing could daunt the ardor of my zeal.

One day I was measuring the court-yard of the Conservatory, as usual, in

company with papa Dugrand, and repeating my "how are you?" in every

variety of tone, when, all at once, having got as far as: "How are you,

pa--," I stopped short without finishing my phrase. It was interrupted

by the sight of a cousin of mine, whose visit was most unexpected.

"Ah! how are you?" I said; "how are you, dear cou--"

Here my words were again interrupted by a surprise; but this surprise

was far greater than that caused by the appearance of my cousin. Struck

by the analogy between this greeting and the unstudied attitude which I

had assumed under the action of a genuine emotion, I cried in a

transport of joy which bewildered my innocent cousin: "Leave me--don't

disturb me--I've got it--wait for me--stay where you are--I've got it."

"But what is it that you've got?"

"The dickens, papa Dugrand!"

Thereupon I vanished like a flash, to run to my mirror and reproduce to

my sight papa Dugrand, Judge of my astonishment: not only my gesture,

until now so persistently awkward, seemed suddenly metamorphosed and

became harmonious and natural; but, stranger yet, it did not correspond

in the least to what had been prescribed. However, it was nature herself

that had revealed this to me. Then, the movements of my body, but a

moment before so discordant in my eyes, had acquired, under the

influence of this gesture inspired from above, an ease and a grace that

filled me with surprise. Without doubt, I now possessed the truth. An

emotion, spontaneously produced and so deeply felt, could not result in

an error.

This is what had happened under the action of a natural surprise:

My hands were not extended toward the object of my surprise--not the

least in the world. By an anterior extension of the arms, they were

raised high above my head, which, far from being uplifted with the

exultation which I had hitherto simulated, was lowered to my breast; and

my body, stranger yet, instead of bending toward the attractive object,

bent suddenly backward.

What a blow nature had given to my masters! What an overthrowal of all

conjectures! My reason, before this sovereign decision, was humbled and

dumbfounded. What arguments could my instructors invoke in the face of

truth itself?

"What," thought I, "are my masters absolutely ignorant of the laws of

nature?"

"What, does their reason, as well as mine, know nothing of all this?

How is it that this much-praised reason has inspired me with effects

precisely opposite to those that were prescribed? What is reason? Is it,

then, a blind faculty?"

Let us first see what these strange phenomena, whose importance I cannot

deny without denying nature herself, signify.

I was in the midst of these reflections when the recollection of my

cousin came into my mind.

"Good heavens," thought I; "I had forgotten all about my poor cousin;

what will he think? I will hurry down, and, lest my precious ideas take

flight, send him away, and return to my reflections.

"Wretch that I am; I think only how to get rid of him, when he has so

enriched me! This is a lesson to me. Poor boy! What opinion will he have

of me? Ah, that is he whom I see stretched out on that stone bench. He

has been patient, indeed. I believe that he is asleep!"

"No, I am not asleep," said he, rising; "I am furious! Explain, if you

are not too insane to be rational, the extraordinary manner in which you

received me. Do you know that I have been waiting here for you more than

an hour?"

"Ah, my dear cousin," said I, embracing him warmly, "you do not know

what a service you have rendered me. I embrace you now, my good friend,

for the wonderful lesson you have given me. Without you I should never

have found it out, and, rest assured, I shall never forget it."

"What? Who? What is it?"

"Zounds, papa Dugrand! I freely acknowledge that I have learned more

from you in one second than from all my masters during four years."

"Are you in your right senses?"

The matter was finally explained. My cousin then told me about my home

and my family; but I must confess that I paid little attention to the

good news that he brought me, so excited and preöccupied was my mind.

Even then I could not help thinking of the fragility of the heart in its

affections. We soon separated, and I hurried to my room, which seemed to

me on this day-paradise itself.

I gave myself up to my interrupted course of reflections.

I had proved the impotence of my own reason, and also that of my

masters. Now, as it was not probable that all my teachers and myself

were more stupid than the rest of mankind--the common herd--I concluded

that reason is blind in the matter of principles, and that all her

instructions would be powerless to guide me in my researches. But, from

another side, it was evident to me that without this reason I could not

utilize a principle. What is human reason, that faculty at once of so

little avail and yet so precious? What role does it play in art? I feel

that this is most important for me to know.

The answer to this question must spring from the study of the phenomena

of instinct. Let us examine, then, what nature offers us freely.

If these phenomena are directed by a physiological or a spiritual

necessity, a necessity on which instinct is based, I am forced to admit,

here, a reason that is not my reason; a superior, infallible reason in

the disposition of things; a reason that laughs at my reason, which, in

spite of itself, must submit under pain of falling into absurdity. I

feel that it is only by this absolute submission of my reason that it

can rise to the reason of things, since, of itself, it would know

nothing. [See definition of reason.]

Let us seek, then, without prejudice, the reason of the things that

interested me, in order that my own reason may be raised to a higher

plane. And when it shall be illumined with the light that must break

upon it from the superior reason, I feel that my reason can generalize

instruction, and will be all-powerful in arranging the conclusions that

it may deduce. I am aware, from the utter impotence of my reason, that

all principles must be accepted humbly, in order to understand the

deductions. My reason does not know how to lead me to principles of

which it is ignorant; but it knows how to guide me back. In other words,

it is a blind person _a priori_, it is a luminary _a posteriori_. Though

it may not know at first, once shown, it readily recognizes; though it

may not divine, it learns by study; though it may not seize, it

retains, masters and generalizes.

Reason, then, is a reflex power, and as such, if, in a matter of

principle, it recognizes itself as impotent and even absurd _a priori_,

it knows that once in possession of the principle, it borrows from its

light and becomes identified with it--an incomparable power of

generalization.

Let the reason of the attitudes that I had observed be once shown me,

and my individual reason would possess the Archimedean lever with which

I might open unknown worlds.

My reason! Ah! I will identify it with the reason of things!

Henceforward this shall be my method, this shall be my law.

But the reason of things--who will give it to me? Is it not my reason

itself? Oh, mystery! I will follow thee to the depths of thy abyss. Thou

shalt have no more secrets from me, for God has said that He hides only

from the wise and prudent man, but reveals Himself to the simple and to

children. Yes, these things shall be given to me through my reason, if

it will bow itself and be attentive and humble; if it will patiently

await the teachings of a mute and persevering observation; if it will

subordinate itself to the intuitive lights that constitute genius; and,

finally, if it knows how to estimate things other than itself.

Thus my reason, established, inflamed, consumed by the charm of its

contemplation, will be transfigured in order to be more closely united

to the sovereign reason toward which it ever reaches out.

The first fruit of my observation consists in making me recognize, in

the facts examined, the proof of a superior and infallible reason, and

then to arm against my individual reason and all its errors. Another

thing yet more strange, but easily comprehended on reflection, is that

to this defiance, this contempt of self, I owe the boldness and the

power of my investigations.

Let us see, now, from which observations the preceding thoughts are the

direct result.

In the phrase, "How are you, etc.," my reason dictated this triple,

parallel movement: Advancing the head, and the arms, with the torso on

the fore-leg. Now, the similar phrase, "How are you, dear cousin,"

although uttered in a situation identical with that of papa Dugrand,

produced phenomena diametrically opposed to those that my reason had

said were the only ones admissible. Is it not reasonable to suppose that

the sight of an agreeable or loved object will excite in us a genuine

feeling that before we had vainly striven to simulate? Does it not seem

natural to extend the hand to a friend when, with affectionate surprise,

we exclaim: "How are you, dear friend?" And should we ever think of

drawing the body away from the object that attracts us? Finally, does it

not seem that the head should be raised, the better to see that which

charms us?

Ah, no! All these things, apparently so true and so perfectly clear,

are radically false. Facts prove this beyond a doubt, and with facts

there can be on discussion, no argument. We must admit them _a priori_

or renounce the truth. Here, as in all questions of principle, _the

greatest act of reason consists in an act of faith_. This is absolutely

undeniable.

In the phrase, "How are you, papa Dugrand," the arms should be raised,

the head lowered and the torso thrown back, supporting itself on the

back leg. This was indeed a blow to the presumption of my poor reason,

but should it complain? No, for it has gained even from its confusion

most fruitful instruction.

Let us see. In questioning the effects and the analogy, we shall

doubtless explain their reason of being. Why should the head become

lowered? I do not see all at first sight; but let us generalize the

question and probably it will specify itself.

When does a man bow his head before the object which strikes his eye?

When he considers or examines it.

Does he never consider things with head raised?

Yes, when he considers them with a feeling of pride. It is thus that he

rules them or exalts them; and also when he questions them with his

glance; in fine, when what he sees astonishes or surprises him.

This last statement contradicts the example in question, and seems to

condemn it. Not the least in the world. How is this? Thus: when the

astonishment or the surprise is not intense enough to shake the frame,

the head wherein all the surprise is concentrated, is lifted and

exalted. But so soon as that surprise is great enough to raise the

shoulders and the arms, as by a galvanic shock, the head takes an

inverse direction, it sinks and seems anxious to become solid to offer

more resistance to that which might attack it, for the first instinctive

movement in such a case is to guard against any unpleasant event; then

if the head is lifted to look at that which surprises it, it is because

it has no great interest in the recognition of that which it considers;

but as soon as that interest commands it to examine, to recognize, it is

instantly lowered and placed in the state of expectation.

O, now it becomes clear.

Now, how does surprise cause us to lift our arms?

The shoulder, in every man who is agitated or moved, rises in exact

proportion to the intensity of his emotion.

It thus becomes the thermometer of the emotions. Now, the commotion that

imprints a strong impression, communicates to the arms an ascending

motion which may lift them high above the head.

But why do not the arms, in an agreeable surprise, tend toward the

object of that surprise?

The arm should move gently toward the object that it wishes to caress.

Under the rapid action of surprise, therefore, it could only injure or

repel that object.

This it does in affright.

But instinct--that marvelous agent of divine reason--in that case turns

the arms away from the object which they might injure by the rapidity of

their sudden extension, and directs them toward heaven, leads them to

rise as if expressing thanks for an unexpected joy, so true it is that

everything is turned to use and is modified under the empire of our

instinct. Certainly, there is no similarity between this and the

superfluous action, the inconsequent movements determined by the working

of a rule without a reason. And this is so because in all that instinct

suggests, it is the Supreme Artist himself who disposes of us and acts

in us, while whatever is suggested by a reason insufficiently inspired

by the contemplation of the divine handiwork is fatally incoherent, for

we thus pretend to substitute ourselves for God, and God thenceforth

leaving us to ourselves, surrenders us to all the discordant effects of

an inconsequential and vain conception.

It remains to find the justificatory reason for this retroactive

movement of the body, which seems illogical at first sight.

Let us inquire in what case and under the action of what emotions a man

may shrink from the object which he is considering.

In the first place, he shrinks back whenever it inspires him with a

feeling of repulsion. He shrinks from it particularly when it inspires

him with fright. This is a matter of course and self-evident.

In what case does the body take an inverse direction to the object

which attracts it? This we must know before we can explain the

phenomenon in question.

We move away from the thing which we contemplate to prove to it,

doubtless, the respect and veneration that it inspires. In fact, it

seems a lack of respect to that which we love to approach it too

closely; we move away that we may not profane it by a contact which it

seems might injure its purity.

Thus the retrograde movement may be the sign of reverence and

salutation, and moreover a token that the object before which it is

produced is more eminent and more worthy of veneration.

A salutation without moving shows but little reverence, and should only

occur in the case of an equal or an inferior.

In justification of the actual fact, let me give another observation of

quite another importance.

When a painter examines his work, he moves away from it perceptibly. He

moves away in proportion to the degree of his admiration of it, so that

the retroactive movement of his body is in equal ratio to the interest

that he feels in contemplating his work, whence it follows that the

painter who examines his work in any other way, reveals his indifference

to it.

The picture-dealer usually proceeds in quite another manner. He examines

it closely and with a magnifying-glass in hand. Why is this? Because it

is less the picture which he examines than the handiwork of the painter,

the actual work which is the chief object of his survey.

But why does the artist move away from the work which he contemplates?

The better to seize the total impression. For instance: if it be a full

length portrait and the artist studies it too closely he sees, I will

suppose, the nose of his portrait and nothing more. If he moves a little

farther off he sees a little more, he sees the head; still farther and

he sees both the head and the torso which supports it. Finally, moving

still farther away, he gets a view of the whole and thus seizes its

harmonious relations. This inspection may be called synthetic vision,

and in opposition to this, direct vision, which I assumed before

instinct taught me better, is but short and limited.

To sum up: If instinct did not lead us to retroact, to examine an object

unexpectedly offered to our gaze, each surprise would expose us to

error.

Now we must retroact to see an object as a whole and not expose

ourselves to error, and then, too, does not the love which a creature

inspires within us naturally extend to the medium which surrounds him,

and in this way does it not seem as if all that touched him partook of

his life and thus acquired some title to our contemplation?

Thus my mind, tortured by one preoccupying thought, had, thanks to the

fixed idea which swayed it, found wondrous lessons in the simple

incident of my cousin's return, otherwise so devoid of interest; and I

may truly say that the lesson learned from meeting my cousin taught me

more than all those I had received in the space of three years. In

short, I had learned how vain is advice dictated by the caprice of a

master without a system! I had learned the inanity of individual reason

in a matter of experience. I knew that certain laws existed, that those

laws proceeded from a Supreme Reason, an immense centre of light, of

which each man's reason is but a single ray. I knew without a doubt how

ignorant my masters were of those laws to the study of which I meant to

devote my life. I possessed facts which I saw could be applied in

countless ways, luminous doctrines radiating from the application.

Thenceforth I had the nucleus of the science I had so vainly asked of my

masters, and I did not despair of formulating it.

Judge of my joy! The facts I then found myself the possessor of, seemed

to me more valuable than all the treasures of the world.

Episode II.

Some time later, I again saw my worthy cousin, the innocent cause of all

my joys. He was a medical student, and came to propose a visit to the

dissecting-room. I did not hesitate to accept; the proposal harmonized

with my desire.

I did not go, as so many go to the morgue, merely to see dead bodies.

No; the curiosity that impelled me, and the avidity with which I pursued

the object of my study, was not to be so easily satisfied.

Dead bodies only attracted me when they were--if not dissected--at least

flayed. Children break their dolls to see what there is inside; so I,

too, wanted to see what there was in a corpse. It seemed to me that

under the mutilations which the scalpel had inflicted on the body, I

should find the answer to more than one enigma--might solve some of the

secrets of life.

The prospect of this visit had the charm of a pleasure party to me. I

made it a holiday and awaited the hour with impatience.

But, on arriving, when I found myself in that place chill and gloomy as

the tomb; when I felt choked by the mephitic gases that arose from this

seat of infection; when I found myself in the presence of a heap of

corpses mutilated by the scalpel, disfigured by putrefaction and

partially devoured by rats and worms; when, beneath tables laden with

these horrible remains, I saw mean tubs filled with human entrails

mingled with limbs and heads severed from their trunks; when I felt

fragments of flesh reduced to the state of filthy mud, clinging to my

feet, my heart throbbed violently, and I was overcome by an

indescribable sense of repulsion.

"What," I said to myself, "those shapeless and putrifying masses have

lived! They have thought, they have loved! And, who would believe it

from the horror and disgust that they inspire, they have been loved,

cherished, perhaps adored! Ah! if, as some think, the soul is not

immortal, if so many aspirations, so many schemes, so many hopes are to

end here--what is man?"

But yet more lamentable food for thought was reserved for me: the

spectacle of a ruin yet more profound than those which my eyes could

scarce endure, was to appear before me in all its hideousness.

In fact, there reigns in these gloomy halls where no tear has ever

fallen, no prayer has ever been heard and no ray of hope has ever

pierced--there reigns something yet colder than death, something more

unwholesome, more nauseous, more deleterious than the putrid miasmas

that infect the air, something more sad to see than the nameless

fragments of extinct life, something more loathsome than those filthy

and disgusting remnants, something more repulsive than those noses eaten

by worms and those empty eyeballs devoured by rats. I mean the cynicism

of the dwellers in that place; I mean their insensibility, their

indifference and calm heedlessness in the presence of such grave

subjects for thought. I mean that lack of perception, that spirit of

negation and revolt of which those wretched men make a boast and which

they obstinately oppose to all religious sentiment, all principle of

tradition or revealed authority. I mean the atheism and ceaseless

mockery with which they invariably meet any generous impulse aroused in

an honest soul by a healthy faith.

This struck me even more sensibly than the spectacle of death and

dissolution which I have striven to describe. Thus the apparently living

men who haunt this spot are more truly dead than the corpses upon which

they exercise their pretended science. They seemed to me ruins far more

terrible than those of the body, ruins which repelled all hope, being

born of doubt and leading to negation.

If the mutilated and half-devoured bodies that lay before me, filled me

with horror and disgust, they, at least, left within me a faint

lingering hope surviving death; but the state of blindness of those

souls who have lost consciousness of their being and even the feeling of

their existence, the shadowy abyss into which they allow themselves

complaisantly to glide, the nullity which they adorn with the title of

science,--all this filled me with fright, for I felt the doubt and

despair into which contact with it would inevitably have plunged me,

if, by a special favor, the tone and mimetics, alike self-sufficient and

mocking, of these free-thinkers, as they are now styled, had not, from

the first, inspired me with aversion for them and a salutary hatred of

their doctrine.

And yet, amidst so many repulsive objects, the faculty of observation to

which I already owed such fruitful remarks was not dormant in me: I had

already asked myself by what evident sign one could recognize a recent

corpse.

From this point of view, I made a rapid exploration, and I questioned

the various corpses left almost intact; I sought in some portion of the

body, common to all, a form or a sign invariably found in all.

The hand furnished me that sign and responded fully to my question.

I noticed, in fact, that in all these corpses the thumb exhibited a

singular attitude--that of adduction or attraction inward, which I had

never noted either in persons waking or sleeping.

This was a flash of light to me. To be yet more sure of my discovery, I

examined a number of arms severed from the trunk; they showed the same

tendency. I even saw hands severed from the forearm; and, in spite of

this severing of the flexor muscles, the thumb still revealed this same

sign. Such persistence in the same fact could not allow of the shadow of

a doubt: I possessed the sign-language of death, the semeiotics of the

dead.

I rejoiced, foreseeing the service which this discovery would render

upon a battle-field, for instance, where more than one man risks being

buried alive. I divined, moreover, something of its artistic importance.

I then questioned my cousin and the other students present in regard to

the symptomatics of death, and I saw with surprise that, not only had

the expression of this phenomenon escaped them hitherto, but that they

had no exact and precise knowledge concerning this grave and important

question.

There remained, in order to complete my discovery and to deduce useful

results from it, to verify the symptom on the dying man. It was

important for me to know in what degree it might become manifest on the

approach of death.

My wishes were gratified as if by magic, for I was led from the school

of anatomy to that of clinical medicine. There a house-student, a friend

of my cousin, placed me beside a dying patient, and I examined with the

utmost attention the hands of the unhappy man struggling against the

clutches of inevitable death.

At first I observed something strange in regard to myself, namely that

the emotion which such a sight would have caused me under any other

circumstances, was absolutely null at this moment; close attention

dulled all feeling in me. I then understood the courage which may

inspire the surgeon in the discharge of his duty; and I drew from this

observation deductions of great artistic interest.

Now I proved that the thumbs of the dying man contracted at first in

almost imperceptible degree; but as the last struggle drew near, and in

the supreme efforts made by the patient to hold fast to the life which

was slipping from him, I saw all his fingers convulsively directed

toward the palm of the hand, thus hiding the thumbs which had previously

approached that centre of convergence. Death speedily followed this

crisis and soon restored to the fingers a more normal position; but the

contraction of the thumb persistently conformed to my previous

observations. The presence and progress of this phenomenon in the dying

was invariably confirmed by numerous tests which I afterward tried.

Thus, I had acquired the proof that, not only does the total adduction

of the thumb characterize death, but that this phenomenon indicates the

approach of death in proportion to its intensity. I, therefore,

possessed the fundamental principle of a system of semeiotics hitherto

unknown to physiologists; but this principle, already so full of

interest, must be made profitable to art.

A multitude of pictures, which in former times I had admired at the

museum, passed before my mind's eye. I recalled battle-scenes where the

dying and the dead are represented; descents from the cross where Christ

is necessarily represented as dead. The idea struck me that I would go

and verify the action of the thumb in these various representations

which the painter's fancy has given us of death.

It was on a Sunday. The Louvre was on my way to the Conservatory,

where, as is well known, I lived as pensioner.

I had often traversed the galleries of the Louvre; but now I was armed

with a criterion that would give my criticisms indisputable authority.

The ignorance of the fact I sought, even among artists of renown, was

not long in being made apparent: all those hands, where they thought

they had depicted death, afforded me nothing but the characteristics of

a more or less peaceful sleep. The correctness of my criticism may be

verified anywhere.

Thus, the mere discovery of a law sufficed to elevate a poor boy of

fifteen years, destitute of all science and deploring the deep ignorance

in which he had hitherto been left, to the height of an infallible

critic in whom the greatest artists found no mercy. I then understood

all the power, all the fertility given by an acquaintance with the laws

that regulate the nature of man, and in how much even genius itself may

be rendered sterile by ignorance of those laws which simple observation

would make them acquainted with. But, I thought, my discovery is not

complete, for if, thanks to it, I have succeeded in proving that all

these pictures of death are false, true only as representing sleep, it

is, on the other hand, impossible for me to prove in how far those

figures live, in which the painter aims to represent life. I must,

therefore, seek the sign of life to complete my standard of criticism.

Suddenly, struck with amazement by the dazzling rays of unexpected

light, I asked myself whether the criterion of death would not reveal to

me, by the law of contraries, the thermometer of life. It should _a

priori_--it does!

Still I felt that it was not here that I might be permitted to

contemplate the vital phenomena attached to the thumb: since death was

so badly rendered here, I had strong reasons for thinking that life was

no better treated.

I left the museum, then, where I had nothing more to learn; and, to

observe living mimetics of the thumb, I went out on the promenade of the

Tuileries thronged by aristocratic people. I carefully examined the

hands of this crowd, but I was not long in discovering that these

elegant idlers had nothing good to offer. "This class," I said to

myself, "is false from head to foot. They live an artificial, unnatural

life. I see in them only artifice, or an art dishonored by using it to

mask their insincerity and artificiality."

The happy idea came to me to mingle with mothers, children and nurses.

"Ah," said I, "in the midst of this throng, laughing and crying at the

same time--singing, shouting, gesticulating, jumping, dancing--here is

life! If the contemplation of this turbulent and affectionate little

world does not instruct me, where shall I find the solution I seek?"

I did not have to wait long for this solution.

I noticed nurses who were distracted and indifferent to the children

under their charge; in these the thumb was invariably drawn toward the

fingers, thus offering some resemblance to the adduction which it

manifests in death. With other nurses, more affectionate, the fingers of

the hand that held the child were visibly parted, displaying a thumb

bent outward; but this eccentration rose to still more startling

proportion in those mothers whom I saw each carrying her own child;

there the thumb was bent violently outward, as if to embrace and clasp a

beloved being.

Thus I was not slow to recognize that the contraction of the thumb is

inversely proportionate, its extension directly proportionate to the

affectional exaltation of the life. "No doubt," I said to myself, "the

thumb is the _thermometer of life_ in its extending progression as it is

of _death_ in its contracting progression."

Countless examples have confirmed this. I could even, on the spot, form

an idea of the degree of affection felt for the children entrusted to

their care, by the women who passed before my eyes.

Sometimes I would say: "There is a servile creature whose heart is dead

to that poor child whom she carries like an inert mass; the position of

the thumb drawn toward the fingers renders that indifference evident,"

Again it was a woman in whom the sources of life swelled high at the

contact with the dear treasure which she clasped; that woman was surely

the mother of the child she carried, the excessive opening of her thumb

left no room for doubt.

Thus my diagnostics were invariably confirmed by exact information, and

I could see to what extent the remarks which I had recorded, were

justified. I drew from them most interesting applications for my special

course of study.

Thus, suppose I had asked the same service from three men, and that each

had answered me with the single word _yes_, accompanied by a gesture of

the hand. If one of them had let his thumb approach the forefinger, it

is plain to me that he would deceive me, for his thumb thus placed tells

me that he is dead to my proposition.

If I observe in the second a slight abduction of the thumb, I must

believe that he, although indisposed to oblige me, will still do so from

submission.

But if the third abducts his thumb forcibly from the other fingers, oh!

I can count on him, he will not deceive me! The abduction of his thumb

tells me more in regard to his loyalty than all the assurances which he

might give me.

Behold, then, an intuition whose correctness the experience of forty

years has not contradicted.

It is hard to imagine the joy I felt at my discovery produced and

verified in a single day by so many examples, differing so greatly one

from another and of such diverse interest.

All the emotions of this extraordinary and fertile day had so

over-excited my imagination that I had great difficulty in calming my

poor brain, and far from being able to enjoy the rest which I so much

needed, I was a prey to wakefulness in which the turmoil of my ideas at

one time made me fear that I was going mad. I then felt for the first

time the frailty of the instrument of thought in regard to the faculty

which rules and governs it.

In brief, I was--thanks to my double discovery--in possession of a law

whose deductions ought to touch the loftiest questions of science and

art,--and I was enabled thenceforth to affirm upon strong and

irrefragable proof that the thumb, in its double sphere of action, is

the thermometer of life as well as of death.

Episode III.

The day after that which had been so fruitful both in emotions and

discoveries, a thousand recollections tumultuously besieged my mind and

still disturbed me. I saw that if I could not contrive to classify them

in strict order of succession, I should never be able to derive any

practical value from them. I therefore took up link by link the chain of

events of the previous day, but in inverse order. That is, I began my

course where I left off the day before, and thus proceeded toward the

Tuileries to end at the Medical School.

At the retrospective sight of all that merry, noisy little world, of all

those fat, cheerful nurses, careless and laughing as they were, of those

mothers each so tenderly expansive in contemplation of her child, so

happy in its health and strength, so joyous and so proud of its small

progress, the recollection of a phenomenon which I had not at first

observed struck me with all the force of a vivid actuality.

I should say, by the way, that it is much more to the strength of my

memory than to the present observation of facts, that I owe these

remarks. Stability is the _sine qua non_ of the things one proposes to

examine, and the memory must possess the singular power of communicating

fixity to fugitive things, permanence to instantaneousness, and

actuality to the past.

Now, the phenomena of life occurring with the rapidity of lightning can

only be studied retrospectively; that is to say, in the domain of

memory, except to be verified if the attention, free from all other

preöccupation, allows us to seize them on the wing once more. The remark

suggested to me by memory seemed all the more interesting because it

formed in a new order of facts a flagrant opposition to the opinion

formulated by my masters under the title of theory. Thus nature once

more proved to me that the only point in which I had found them to

agree, rested upon a fundamental error. I have since recognized that it

is thus in the majority of cases, so that one may almost certainly

pronounce erroneous any statement in regard to which all the masters of

art agree.

This proposition at first seems inexplicable, but its reason is readily

understood by those who know the sway of falsehood over a society

perverted in its opinions as in its tastes; to those who know the

deplorable facility with which error is spread and the tenacity with

which it clings to our poor mind. Error, moreover, owes to our abasement

which it flatters and crushes, the privilege of freedom from

contradiction, and it is only in regard to truth that the minds of men

are divided and contend.

On retracing in my memory the walks I had taken in the Tuileries, I was

struck by an important fact amidst the phenomena called up: the voice

of the nurse or mother, when she caressed her child, invariably assumed

the double character of tenuity and acuteness. It was in a voice equally

sweet and high-pitched that she uttered such words as these: "How lovely

he is!" ... "Smile a little bit for mamma!" Now this caressing

intonation, impressed by nature upon the upper notes of all these

voices, forms a strange contrast to the direction which all

singing-teachers agree in formulating; a direction which consists in

augmenting the intensity of the sound in direct ratio to its acuteness.

Thus, to them, strange to say, the entire law of vocal shades would

consist in augmenting progressively the sound of the ascending phrase or

scale, and diminishing in the same proportion for a descending scale.

Now, nature, by a thousand irrefutable examples, directs us to do the

contrary, that is, she prescribes a decrease of intensity (in music,

_decrescendo_) proportionate to the ascensional force of the sounds.

Another blow, I thought, for my masters, or rather I receive it for

them, for they, poor fellows, do not feel it. But how can these

phenomena of nature have escaped them, and by what indescribable

aberration can they direct, under the name of law, a process absolutely

contrary to that so plainly followed by those same phenomena? However, I

added, every supreme error under penalty of being self-evident, must, to

endure, necessarily rest upon some truth or other. Now, on what truth do

so many masters claim to base so manifest an error? This is what we

must discover.

I was now convinced that caressing, tender and gentle emotions find

their normal expression in _high_ notes. This is beyond all doubt. Thus,

according to the foregoing examples, if we propose to say to a child in

a caressing tone that he is a darling, it would clearly be very bad

taste to bellow the words at him on the pretext that, according to

singing-teachers, the intensity of the sound is augmented in direct

ratio to its acuteness.

But my memory, as if to confirm this principle, and to show its contrast

with the custom admitted by those gentlemen, suggests to me other

instances derived from the same source. Let a mother be _angry_ with her

child and threaten him with punishment; she instantly assumes a grave

tone which she strives to render powerful and intense. Here, then, on

the one hand (and nature proclaims it), the voice decreases in intensity

in proportion as it rises higher; and, on the other hand, it increases

in proportion as it sinks. This double fact, undeniably established,

constitutes an unanswerable argument against the system in question. But

it is not, therefore, necessarily its radical and absolute refutation.

No, doubtless, whatever may be the significance and the number of the

facts opposed to the directions of those gentlemen, these facts do not

seem to exclude exceptions upon which they may be founded. In fact, I

find in my memory many examples favorable to those masters. Thus, I

have seen many nurses lose their temper and still use the higher tones

of their voice; and, on the other hand, I also remark (and the remark is

important) a certain form, the appellative form, where all the

characters agree without exception in producing the greatest intensity

possible upon the high notes.

The professors of singing triumph, for they find in this appellative

form, always and necessarily sharp and boisterous at the same time, a

striking confirmation of their system. Here I seem to stray far from the

solution which I thought I already grasped! Far from it; the light is

breaking. Hitherto the examples evoked had only increased my obscurity

by their multiplicity, and I saw nothing in all these remarks but a

series of contradictions whence it seemed impossible to deduce anything

but confusion, into which I found myself plunged.

But was this confusion really in the facts which I examined, or was it

not rather the creation of my own mind? Now, in the matter of principle,

the weakness of individual reason has been too often proved to me to

allow of my attaching any other cause to the contradictions which block

my path and force me to confess my ignorance. I will not, then, here cry

_mea culpa_ for myself or for others to justify that ignorance or excuse

its confession. It must be acknowledged that God knows what He does, and

His omnipotence is assuredly guiltless of the divagations which an

impotent mind finds it convenient to attribute to it.

Now, let others in the blindness of proud reason, forget this truth,

which they contest even by opposing to it the quibbles for which

free-thinkers are never at a loss, and to escape the confusion which

they inevitably derive from the ill-studied work of the Supreme Artist.

Let them venture to attribute to it their own darkness. For my part, I

shall not thereby lose my conviction that all which seems to me

disordered or contradictory in the expression of the facts which I

question, is only apparent and only exist in my own brain.

The profound obscurity into which light plunges us does not prevent the

light from being; and the chaos of ideas which, most generally, results

from our examination of things, proves nothing against the harmonies of

their constitution.

The pebble virtually contains the spark, but we must know how to produce

it. Thus the phenomena of nature contain luminous lessons, but we must

know how to make them speak; and, what is more, understand their

language. Now, I would add, the spirit of God is inherent in all things;

and this spirit should, at a given moment, flash its splendors in the

eyes of an intellect alike submissive, attentive, patient and suppliant.

Moreover, does not the Gospel show us the way to fertilize

investigations such as those to which I have given my life? Does it not

say: "Knock and it shall be opened, ask and it shall be given?" Then

what must I do to find my way out of the maze in which my reason

wanders? What must I do in presence of the contradictions which

nevertheless must needs contain a fecund principle? Finally, what must I

do in order to see light break from the very heart of those obscurities

wherein light is lost?

I will seek anew, night and day, if needful; I will knock incessantly at

the door of the facts which I desire to examine. I will descend into the

secret depths of their organism; there I will patiently question every

phenomenon, every organ, and I will entreat their Author to divulge to

me their purpose, their relations and their very object.

Well! It is thus that those men, proud of their vain knowledge, were

made dizzy by the splendor of that same light which they thought that

they could subject to their investigations, and the blindness which has

fallen upon them is the punishment which God is content to inflict upon

them in this world.

Having said this, where was I in my investigations? Ah! it was here.

The memory of the high inflections invariably affected by the women whom

I had seen on the previous day, caressing their infants, struck me with

the more force that I had learned from my masters that law which had

hitherto ruled uncontested, and now underwent a refutation which

demonstrated the falsity of its applications with a clearness and

minuteness which left no room for doubt.

The examples in virtue of which I saw the errors of my masters,

unanimously proclaimed the tenuity of the voice to be in proportion to

its acuteness.

Now this formula is, in letter as in spirit, the reverse of the

prescription upon which, by a caprice whose cause I have just explained,

all the masters of art agree.

I then perceived that my first affirmations were no better founded than

those of the masters, whose theories I had attacked. The truth of the

matter is that ascending progressions may arise from opposite shades of

meaning. "Therefore," said I to myself, "it is equally inadmissible to

exclude either affirmation."

The law is necessarily complex: let us bring together, that we may seize

them as a whole, both the contrary expressions and the circumstances

which produce them.

Vulgar and uncultured people, as well as children, seem to act in regard

to an ascensional vocal progression in an inverse sense to

well-educated, or, at any rate, affectionate persons, such as mothers,

fond nurses, etc.

No example has, to my knowledge, contradicted this remark.

But why this difference? What are its motive causes?

"Ha!" I cried, as if struck by lightning, "I've found the law! As with

the movements of the head, _sensuality_ and _tenderness_, these shades

of the voice may be traced back to two distinct sources: _sentiment_ and

_passion_. It is sentiment which I have seen revealed in mothers; it is

passion which we find in uncultured persons."

Sentiment and passion, then, proceed in an inverse way. Passion

strengthens the voice in proportion as it rises, and sentiment, on the

contrary, softens it in due ratio to its intensity. It was the confusion

of these different sources which caused a momentary obscurity in my

understanding.

Let us now formulate boldly the law of vocal proportions.

Given a rising form, such as the ascending scale, there will be

intensitive progression when this form should express passion (whether

impulse, excitement or vehemence).

There will be, on the other hand, a diminution of intensity where this

same form should express sentiment.

This law even seems regulated by a quantitative expression, the form of

which appeared to me like a flash of light. This is the formula:

Under the influence of sentiment the smallest and most insignificant

things that we may wish to represent proportion themselves to the degree

of acuteness of the sounds, which become softened in proportion as they

rise.

Under the influence of passion, on the contrary, the voice rises, with a

corresponding brilliancy, in proportion to the magnitude of the thing

it would express, and becomes lowered to express smallness or meanness.

Thus an ascending scale being given, it must be considered as a double

scale of proportion, agreeing alternately with an increasing or

decreasing intensitive progression, increasing under the influence of

passion and decreasing under the influence of sentiment.

Thus we would not use the same tones for the words: "Oh, what a pretty

little girl!" "What a lovely little flower!" and: "See that nice, fat

peasant woman!" "What a comfortable great house!"

By such formulæ as these I was able to sum up, in clear and didactic

form, the multifarious examples suggested by my memory, startled at

first by their contradiction and then delighted at the light thrown upon

them by these very formulæ, due, not to my own merit, but to the favor

of Him who holds in His hand the source of all truth.

Thus, I feel and readily acknowledge, that the discovery upon which I am

at work is not my own work; and, therefore, I pray for it as for a

signal favor. Nor can it be otherwise with any man. It is, therefore,

always an impertinence for any man to attribute to his personal genius,

vast as he may suppose it to be, the discovery of any law. God alone

discloses His treasures, and, as I have experienced, He only reveals

them to the eye of reason raised by humility to contemplation.

Man seeks that which he desires to know with attention and patience

proportioned to the ardor of his desire. The attention of which his mind

is capable and the constancy of will brought to bear in pursuit of his

research, constitute his only mark of distinction. Herein lies all the

merit to which he can lay just claim. But at a moment absolutely

unforeseen, God reveals to him that which he seeks, I should say that

for which he does not seek, and for his due edification it is generally

the opposite of what he seeks which is revealed to him. This is not to

be contested. Thus the things discovered to him cause him such surprise

that he never fails to beat his brow when he sees them, as if to prove

that he is not the author of their discovery, and that he was far from

foreseeing anything like what has been shown to him; and that there may

be no possible mistake in the interpretation of the gesture, he

invariably accompanies it by the phrase: "What a fool I am!" All will

admit that if a man really believed himself the author of his discovery,

he takes a very inopportune time to declare his impotence and his

stupidity so distinctly. But taking none too kindly his avowal which,

moreover, is but the proclamation of an indisputable truth, let us

rather say that this act of humility is forced from him by the greatness

of his surprise.

Happy, very happy is the man whose pride does not instantly react

against the humble and truthful confession of his folly.

Ever since I made these remarks I have asked myself the cause of the

sterility of the learned bodies, and I do not hesitate to say to-day,

that it is because scientists refuse to declare themselves fools, and it

is to this lack of sincerity that they doubtless owe the punishment that

paralyzes their genius.

How can these men fail to take seriously the little knowledge to which

they cling and their fortune and renown; how can these wise men, to whom

the world pays incessant homage, consent meekly to confess the infirmity

of their reason? They feign, on the contrary, even when crushed beneath

the Divine splendor, an air of great importance; and when the Omnipotent

in His mercy deigns to bend to their low level, to lay open to them the

treasures of His sovereign thought, do you think that in token of the

sacred and respectful admiration which they owe in return for such

goodness, they will prostrate themselves like the Seraphim whose

knowledge assuredly equals the few notions which they adorn with that

title? Ah! far from it. You little know these scientists, when you

impute to them an act which they would qualify as contemptible and would

declare unworthy of a free-thinker! They stand erect, on the contrary,

with head held high, insolently laying claim, by virtue of I know not

what conquest of the human mind, to judge the eternal and immovable

light of the Divine Reason.

Episode IV.

My retrospective journey from this point of departure seemed destined to

be even more full of observations than that which preceded it. My day

had been so full of work, so fruitful in unexpected discoveries, that it

was absolutely necessary for me to stop at this first station.

After a few days of rest I naturally resumed my walk, toward the garden

of the Tuileries, whither I was led by an instinct full of promise.

There, in fact, fresh re-appearances were not long in adding light to

that with which I was still dazzled!

I remember that I had been vaguely struck by the contemplative attitude

of a mother toward her child. The reason why this attitude struck me

even in the midst of my absorption in search of notes relative to the

thumb, was, first, because this attitude was a contrast to that assumed

by most of the nurses under the action of the same feeling; and, in the

next place, it seemed to deny the contemplative forms which I had

deduced from my first discovery, and which rested upon such motives as

the following: That a painter admires his work by throwing back his

head. Hitherto it had seemed to me clearly proven that admiring

contemplation entailed this retroaction. I considered this, it will be

remembered, the characteristic feature of a law, and that for the

reasons which I had previously given. Well! were all these reasons,

plausible as they appeared, to be contradicted by a single fact still

present to my memory, in spite of the observations in the midst of which

it arose, and which, moreover, should have been more than enough to

efface it? Strange to say, this fact vaguely noted amidst preöccupations

to which it seemed absolutely foreign, had remained persistently in my

mind! Now this fact, becoming by a reflex act the object of serious

thought, resulted from this observation:

That a woman, as she contemplated her child, bent her head toward it.

Searching in my memory, I found several similar instances completely

confirming this principle, opposed to my observations, that

contemplation tends to push the head toward the object contemplated.

And yet this example does not affect those to which I had at first paid

exclusive heed. Here, as in the preceding remarks, the law is complex,

and it must first be recognized that contemplation or simple admiration

is produced alike by the retreat or advance of the head. This double

action being admitted, it remained to decide how far they might be

mingled in a single situation; that is to say, to what point these two

inverse inclinations might be produced indifferently; and if, as I must

_a priori_ suppose, these inclinations recognized two distinct causes.

If so, what were those reasons? The question was not easy of solution,

and yet it must be decided definitely. I could enjoy no peace until I

had answered it. The doubt instilled into my mind by this new

contradiction was intolerable. I set boldly to work, determined not to

pause until I had found a final solution. I called to mind all my

memories having any bearing on this double phenomenon. These memories

were far more numerous and far more striking than I had dared to hope.

What a magnificent thing are those mysterious reservoirs whence, at a

given moment, flow thousands of pictures which until then we knew not

that we possessed? A whole world of prostrate believers adoringly

turning their heads toward the object of their worship, appeared before

me to support the example afforded me by the mother lovingly bending her

head toward the child at which she gazed.

Among other instances, I saw a venerable master affectionately bending

his head toward the being to whom he thus seemed with touching

predilection to give luminous instructions.

I saw lovers gazing at their loved one with this attractive pose of the

head, their tenderness seeming thus to be eloquently affirmed. But, side

by side with these examples, I saw others totally opposite; thus, other

lovers presented themselves to my mind's eye with very different aspect,

and their number seemed far greater than that of the other. These lovers

delighted to gaze at their sweetheart as painters study their work, with

head thrown back. I saw mothers and many nurses gazing at children with

this same retroactive movement which stamped their gaze with a certain

expression of satisfied pride, generally to be noted in those who

carried a nursling distinguished for its beauty or the elegance of its

clothes.

Two words, as important as they are opposite in the sense that they

determine, are disengaged: _sensuality_ and _tenderness_.

Such are the sources to which we must refer the attitudes assumed by the

head on sight of the object considered.

Between these inverse attitudes a third should naturally be placed. It

was easy for me to characterize this latter: I called it _colorless_ or

_indifferent_.

It is entirely natural that the man who considers an object from the

point of view of the mere examination which his mind makes of it, should

simply look it in the face until that object had aroused the innermost

movements of the soul or of the life.

Whence it invariably follows that from the incitement of these

movements, the head is bent to the side of the soul or to the side of

the senses.

"Which is, then, for the head, the side of the soul," you will ask me,

"and which the side of the senses?"

I will reply simply, to cut short the useless description of the many

drawbacks that preceded the clear demonstration that I finally

established, that the side of the heart is the objective side that

occupies the interlocutor, and that the side of the senses is the

subjective, personal side toward which the head retroacts; that is to

say, the side opposed to the object under examination. Thus, when the

head moves in an inverse direction from the object that it examines, it

is from a selfish standpoint; and when the examiner bends toward the

object it is in contempt of self that the object is viewed.

These are the two related looks that I have named Sensuality and

Tenderness, for these reasons:

The former of these glances is addressed exclusively to the form of its

object; it caresses the periphery of it, and, the better to appreciate

its totality, moves away from it. This is what occurs in the retroactive

attitude of the head.

The other look, on the contrary, aims at the heart of things without

pausing on the surface, disdaining all that is external. It strives to

penetrate the object to its very essence, as if to unite itself more

closely within it; it has the expression of confidence, of faith--in a

word, the giving up of self.

Thus, when a man presses a woman's hand, we may affirm one of three

things from the attitude which his head assumes:

1. That he does not love her, if his head remains straight or simply

bent in facing her.

2. That he loves her tenderly, if he bows his head obliquely toward her.

3. Finally, that he loves her sensually--that is to say, solely for her

physical qualities--if, on looking at her, he moves his head toward the

shoulder which is opposite her.

Such are, in brief, the three attitudes of the head and the eyes, which

I have named _colorless, affectional, sensual_.

Henceforth I possessed completely the law of the inclinations of the

head, a law which derives from its very complexity the fertility of its

applications.

Episode V.

Semeiotics of The Shoulder.

When I found myself the possessor of this law whose triple formula is of

a nature to defy every objection, I sought to appropriate to myself,

before the mirror, all its applications.

But there arose yet another difficulty that I had not foreseen.

I, indeed, reproduced, and at the proper time, the movements of the head

already described, but they remained awkward and lifeless.

What was the cause of this awkwardness and coldness of which I was well

aware, but which I could not help? I strove unceasingly to reproduce the

examples that lived so vividly in my memory, but all these laborious

reproductions, these efforts from memory, were futile. The stubbornness

of an indomitable will, however, led only to a negative result. I was

vexed at an awkwardness the reason of which I could not find.

One day, almost discouraged by the lack of success in my researches, I

sorrowfully said to myself: "What shall I do? Alas! the more I labor,

the less clearly I see; am I incapable of reproducing nature--is the

difficulty that holds me back invincible?"

As I uttered the preceding words, I noticed that, under the sway of the

grief which dictated them, my shoulders were strangely lifted up, and,

as then I found myself in the attitude which I had previously tried to

render natural, the unexpected movement of my shoulders, joined to that

attitude, suddenly impressed it with an expression of life so just, so

true, so surprising, that I was overwhelmed.

Thus I gained possession of an æsthetic fact of the first rank, and I

was as amazed at my discovery as I was surprised that I had not observed

sooner a self-evident movement, whose powerful and expressive character

seems fundamentally connected with the actions of the head. "How stupid

I am," I thought, "not to have remarked so evident an action of an agent

which leads the head itself. How could I let this movement of the

shoulder escape me!" And I revelled in the pleasurable triumph of

reproducing and contemplating expressions which I could not have

rendered previously without dishonoring them. Thenceforth I understood

without a doubt all the importance of this latest discovery. But this

importance, clearly proven as it was, was not yet fully explained to me.

Thus, I knew henceforth the necessity for movements of the shoulder, but

I was still ignorant of their motive cause; and I was reluctant to be

longer ignorant. I foresaw a concomitance of relations between this

movement of the shoulder and the expression of the head.

The shoulder, then, became, in its turn, the chief object of my

studies, and I gained therefrom clear and indisputable principles.

In this way I managed to form the bases of my discovery. The mothers

whom I had seen bending their heads over the children on whom they

gazed, thus revealed something unreserved and touching; and in my

ignorance the important part which the shoulder played in the attitude

had escaped me. It was indeed from the action of the shoulder, even more

than from the inclination of the head, that this expression of

tenderness, so touching to behold, proceeded.

The head, in such a case, accordingly receives its greatest sum of

expression from the shoulder. That is a fact to be noted.

For instance, let a head--however loving we may suppose it to be

intrinsically--bend toward the object of its contemplation, and let the

shoulder not be lifted, that head will plainly lack an air of vitality

and warm sincerity without which it cannot persuade us. It will lack

that irresistible character of intensity which, in itself, supposes

love; in brief, it will be lacking in love.

"Then," I said, "I have found in the shoulder the agent, the centre of

the manifestations of love."

Yes, if in pressing a friend's hand I raise my shoulders, I shall

thereby eloquently demonstrate all the affection with which he inspires

me.

If in looking at a woman I clasp my hands and at the same time raise my

shoulders, there is no longer any doubt as to the feeling that attaches

me to her, and instinctively every one will say: "He loves her truly;"

but if, preserving the same attitude in the same situation, the same

facial expression, the same movement of the head, I happen to withhold

the action of the shoulder, instantly all love will disappear from my

expression and nothing will be left to that attitude but a sentiment

vague and cold as falsehood.

Once more, then, the inclinations of the head whose law I have

previously determined, seem, to owe to the shoulder alone the

affectionate meaning that they express; but the head--as I have

said,--in its double inclination, characterizes two kinds of love (or

rather two sources of love) which are not to be confounded: _sensuality_

and _tenderness_.

What part, then, does the shoulder play in regard to this distinction?

It will be curious to determine this point. Let us see!

The part played by the shoulder is considerable in tenderness; that is

not to be doubted. But its role seems to be less in sensuality. Thus the

shoulder generally rises less when the head retroacts than when it

advances toward the object of its contemplation. Why is this? Is it

because sensuality pertains less to love than tenderness? Has it not the

same title to rank as one of the aspects of love? In a word, why is less

demand made upon the shoulder in one instance than in the other?

If I do not mistake, the reason is this: love gives more than it lays

claim to receive, while sensuality asks continually and seeks merely the

possession of its object. Love understands and loves sacrifice; it

pervades the whole being; it inspires it to bestow its entire self, and

that gift admits of no reserve.

Sensuality, on the contrary, is essentially selfish; far from giving

itself, it pretends to appropriate and absorb in itself the object of

its desires. Sensuality is, so to speak, but a distorted, narrow and

localized love; the body is the object of its contemplation, and it

[sensuality] sees nothing beyond the possession of the object.

But love does not stop at the body--that would be its tomb; it crosses

the limits of it, to rise to the soul in which it is utterly absorbed.

Thus love transfigures the being by consuming its personality, whence it

comes that he who loves, no longer lives his own life, but the life of

the being whom he contemplates.

Let the vulgar continually confound these two things in their

manifestations; let lovers themselves fail to distinguish accurately

between tenderness and sensuality; for me this confusion is henceforth

forbidden, and I can from the first glance boldly separate them, thanks

to the lessons taught me by the inflections of the head.

But let us return to the shoulder. Am I not right in saying that in this

agent I possess the organic criterion of love? Yes, I maintain it. But

let us follow the action of this organ in its various manifestations.

One thing at first amazed me, in view of the part which I felt I must

assign to the shoulder. Whence comes, if the designation of that role be

in conformity with truth,--whence comes the activity so apparent, so

vehement indeed, which the shoulder displays in a movement of anger or

of mere impatience? Whence comes its perfect concomitance or relations

with moral or physical pain? Lastly, whence comes that universal

application which I just now perceived clearly and which, until now, I

had confined to such narrow limits? But if the elevation of the shoulder

is not the criterion of love, if, on the contrary, that movement is met

with again just as correctly associated with the most contradictory

impressions, what can it mean?

Here I was, once again, thrown far back from the discovery that I was so

sure I possessed.

It is very fortunate that I have been neither an author nor a

journalist, and I bless to-day that distrust of self which has saved me

from the mania of writing. I highly congratulate myself on the spirit of

prudence that has invariably made me reply to whoever pressed me to

publish: "When I am old."

Age has come, and it has found me even less disposed to publicity than

ever. This work owes its existence solely to the earnest and continual

solicitations, the sometimes severe demands of deep friendship and

devotion, which it was impossible for me to refuse. This book is not,

then, a spontaneous enterprise on my part; it is the work of friendship.

And if this book has any measure of success, if it accomplishes any

good, it may be traced back to and acknowledged as rising from the

never-failing encouragement of my old friend Brucker.

Let us return, now, to where I was in my researches.

It remains, then, for me to specify the true meaning of the shoulders in

the expression of the passions. Their intervention in all forms of

emotion being proven to me, it would seem that the very frequency of

that intervention should exclude the possibility of assigning any

particular role to this agent.

Fancy my perplexity, placed face to face with an organ infinitely

expressive, but whose physiognomy is mingled promiscuously with every

sentiment and every passion!

How, then, are we to characterize the shoulder? What name shall we give

to its dominant rôle? How specify that supreme power outside of which

all expression ceases to exist? Is it allowable for me to call it

_neutral?_ And if the universal application of that agent apparently

authorizes that appellation up to a certain point, whence comes its

importance? Whence the empire that it exerts over the aspect of its

congeners? Is it admissible for a neutral agent to exert so much action

upon the totality of the forces to which it is allied?

Assuredly not! The word _neutral_, moreover, excludes the idea of

action, and even more strongly that of predominant action which belongs

surpassingly to the shoulder. Truly, here was a treasure-house for me.

It was, as they say, "to give speech to the dogs."

This new difficulty only increased the determination with which I had

pursued my researches; and with the confidence arising from the fact

that no obstacle had yet conquered me, I said to myself that the

solution of this problem would be due to my perseverance. I could not,

in view of the importance of its expression, consider the shoulder as a

neutral agent. After spending a long time in vain study, I was on the

point of giving up as insoluble the problem that I had set myself. Let

us see by what simple means I obtained the solution. How much trouble

and pains one will sometimes give himself in looking for spectacles that

are on his nose!

The shoulder, in every man who is moved or agitated, rises sensibly, his

will playing no part in the ascension; the successive developments of

this involuntary act are in absolute proportion to the passional

intensity whose numeric measure they form; the shoulder may, therefore,

be fitly called _the thermometer of the sensibility_.

"Thermometer," I cried, "there is an excellent word, strikingly correct.

But have I not, in pronouncing it, simply and naturally characterized

the rôle that I am striving to define?

"Thermometer of the sensibility! Is not that the solution of the

enigma? Thermometer; yes, that is it! That is the very expression to

give to my researches, an expression without which nothing could be

explained. That, indeed, answers to everything, and makes the

difficulties against which my reason struggled disappear."

The shoulder is, in fact, precisely the thermometer of passion as well

as of sensibility; it is the measure of their vehemence; it determines

their degree of heat and intensity. However, it does not specify their

nature, and it is certainly in an analogous sense that the instrument

known by the name of thermometer marks the degrees of heat and cold

without specifying the nature of the weather--a specification belonging

to another instrument, the complement of the thermometer--the barometer.

The parallel is absolute, perfect.

Let us examine this point:

The shoulder, in rising, is not called upon to teach us whether the

source of the heat or vehemence which mark it, arise from love or hate.

This specification does not lie within its province; it belongs entirely

to the face, which is to the shoulder what the barometer is to the

thermometer. And it is thus that the shoulder and the face enter into

harmonious relations to complete the passional sense which they have to

determine mutually and by distinct paths.

Now, the shoulder is limited, in its proper domain, to proving, first,

that the emotion expressed by the face _is_ or _is not_ true. Then,

afterward, to marking, with mathematical rigor, the degree of intensity

to which that emotion rises.

After having finished the formulation of this principle I exultingly

exclaimed:

"God be praised! I now possess the semeiotics of the shoulder, and

thereby I hold the criterion of the passional or sensitive powers--a

criterion outside of which no truth can be demonstrated in the sphere of

sentiment or feeling."

Thus, a word suggested by chance became my Archimedean lever. The word,

like a flash of light, flooded my mind with radiance which suddenly

revealed to me the numerous and fertile applications of a principle

hitherto unknown. Yes, I henceforth possessed an æsthetic principle of

the utmost value, the consequences of which, I could readily see, were

as novel as they were profound.

Episode VI.

First Objection to the Thermometric System of the Shoulder.

The innate æsthetic principle of the semeiotics of the shoulder was at

last clearly demonstrated to me, and no more doubt or uncertainty upon

that point seemed to me possible. I might safely formulate the following

rule:

When a man says to you in interjective form: "I love, I suffer, I am

delighted," etc., do not believe him if his shoulder remains in a normal

attitude. Do not believe him, no matter what expression his face may

assume. Do not believe him--he lies; his shoulder denies his words. That

negative form betrays his thoughts; and, if he expresses ardent passion,

you have merely to consult the thermometer which, all unwittingly, he

himself offers to your inspection. See, it marks zero! therefore he

lies; doubt it not, he lies! but his shoulder does not lie. He amiably

puts it at your disposal--read, read at your ease; it bears inscribed in

living letters his deceit and craft. It can never cheat you, and when

the gentleman accosts you with such words as: "Dear friend! how charmed

I am to see you!" say to yourself as you look at his thermometer:

"Traitor, your delight as well as your friendship is below zero! You try

to deceive me, but in vain; henceforth you have no secrets from me,

clumsy forger! You do not see, as with one hand you proffer the false

jewel which you would sell me, that the other at the same instant gives

me the touch-stone which reveals your tricks; your right hand thus

incessantly exposing to me the secrets of your left hand!"

What an admirable thing is this mechanism of the body working in the

service of the soul! With what precision it reveals the least movements

of its master! What magnificent things it lays bare! Voluntarily or

involuntarily, everything leads to truth under the action of the

translucid light which breaks forth in the working of each of our

organs!

And yet, well founded as the preceding theory may be, solid as are the

bases upon which it rests, is it free from any and all objection? May

not some oppose to it, for instance, the impassibility of men and women

of the world, among whom it would be difficult to find the movements of

the shoulder, which such people deem so ungraceful in others as to

deprive them of all desire to imitate them? Now what conclusions are we

to draw from the absence of this movement in those who are known as

aristocrats? Must we tax them all indiscriminately with falsehood?

Here I might, and without hesitation, answer by the affirmation, Yes,

all aristocrats lie! The medium which they constitute and which is

called _the world_ is nothing but a perpetual lie. Civility itself

rests upon a lie. Nay, more, it insists upon deceit as a duty. Heavens,

what would become of the world if truth were a necessity! Quarter of an

hour of sincerity would be intolerable; ... the inhabitants would slay

each other!

In the world people display their feelings, even the most avowable, with

great reserve; this prudence, which paralyzes the very springs of

sensitive life, seems as if it needs must neutralize the role which I

attribute to the shoulder; and yet, in spite of contrary appearances, I

deny that the thermometric action of the shoulder undergoes the least

alteration in the aristocratic world; I deny explicitly that this agent

proves less expressive and, above all, less truthful there than in the

street; and that for the following reasons:

In the first place, we cannot reasonably suppose very ardent passions in

men who are enervated by the perpetual influence of an artificial

society. Now, here the stationary condition of the thermometer is

explained: it proves absolutely nothing against the truth of the

reports; it remains at zero to mark a colorless medium totally destitute

of vitality. The shoulder would violate its law if it were to rise under

such circumstances. It is, therefore, perfectly in character here; it

should be, _a priori_, impassive in a negative society.

But is the shoulder really impassive in that medium which we call

society?

_Yes_, in the eyes of people who are not of it, and who, from that very

fact, cannot understand the value of certain expressions which are

almost imperceptible; _no_, to those who constitute that special world

of relations called superior.

How many things, in fact, the shoulder reveals by those slight changes

unseen by ignorant persons, and expressing particularly the delicate and

exquisite charm of spiritual relations! It is the law of infinitesimal

quantities, of those scarcely perceptible movements or sensations that

characterize the finer relations of people of culture, of eloquence, of

grace, and of refined tastes.

It should be borne in mind, as I have already shown, that the

manifestations of the shoulder in the street by no means accord with

those of people ruled by the fashions of society. There is very little

harmony or relation between the exquisite joints of a refined nature,

the swift and flexible movements of an elegant organism, and the

evolutions clumsily executed by torpid limbs, ankylosed, as it were, by

labor at once hard and constant

This observation logically led me to an important conclusion, namely,

that the value or importance of a standard is deduced expressly from the

nature of the being, or the object to which it is applied. Of what

value, for instance, could a millimeter be when added to the stature of

a man? That same millimeter, however, would acquire a colossal value

when added to the proportions of a flea. It would form a striking

monstrosity.

An imperceptible fraction may, in certain cases, constitute an

enormity. Again, the value of a standard, not the specific or numerical

value which is an invariable basis, but the relative or moral value,

must be deduced from the importance of the medium to which it applies.

For instance: Five hundred men constitute a very good army in the midst

of a peaceful population; and this handful of soldiers exerts, indeed,

more moral power than the multitudes restrained under their government.

A smile coming from the lips of a sovereign leaves in the soul that it

penetrates a far deeper trace than all the demonstrations of a common or

vulgar crowd. The traveler, detained by the winter in the polar regions,

finds that he is warm and takes pleasure in the discovery, though at the

time the thermometer marks 10 degrees below zero.

The atmosphere of a cave that we find warm in winter seems to us,

without being modified in the least, of an icy coldness in summer.

The large quantity of alcohol that laboring people consume would ruin

the health of less strongly constituted persons.

To conclude, then, these examples prove beyond dispute that one can only

appreciate the importance of an act when he takes into account the

nature of its agents, and that without these considerations he will be

obliged to give up immediately all serious estimation of these

manifestations.

Here I touch, it seems to me, a law of harmony, a curious law that I

wish to examine incidentally. I shall, then, occupy myself with the

objections that may, perhaps, be opposed even yet to the thermometric

system of the shoulder

Episode VII.

The foregoing study has, as it seems, established an important fact,

namely, that among the various classes of men which make up society

there is no common standard of measure. It, therefore, appears

impossible, at first sight, to establish a harmonious scale of relations

between so many various circles.

However, if these circles, whatever their differences may be, were

specified and sufficiently known; if I could, for example, judge _a

priori_ of the style and mode of activity adapted to each class of

society; in a word, if it were possible for me to characterize each of

its classes dynamically, should I not succeed in ascertaining a

proportionate gamut or scale among them, and thereby should I not be

enabled securely to apply the principles established above?

Let us say, to begin with, that if each social sphere affects a

determinate character in the intensity of its passional evolutions, it

has, in consequence, its special gamut; then, as many spheres as there

are, so many gamuts must there be. Now, all these gamuts taken together

must form a scale of proportion in virtue of which they may be

characterized. That is obvious. But the difficulty is to prove the mode

or first tonality of these gamuts. How are we to set to work?

I cut short, for the clearness of my demonstrations, the recital of the

events through which I have been obliged to pass before realizing even

my earliest observations. I shall set forth, plainly and simply, the

final result of my studies; and it will be seen, in spite of the many

difficulties that may arise, with what absolute certainty the principles

I have established can be applied.

What I Propose.

I propose a great, a worthy subject for your study. At those oratorical

sessions which are rapidly increasing under the name of conferences,

sessions at which so many distinguished men take the floor, you have

been told in elegant terms, often in eloquent terms, of the sciences, of

their application and of their progress. You have listened to discourses

upon art, its primitive purity, its supposed principles, its decadence,

its renaissance, its multifarious changes; its masterpieces have been

pointed out to you; they have been described to you; you have, in some

degree, been made familiar with their origin. You have heard the story

of the lives of the great artists. They have been shown to you in their

weakness and in their strength. The times and manners amid which they

lived have been painted for you in more or less imaginary colors. I

propose something better than all this.

I offer you a work superior even to those sciences which have been

described to you; superior to all which the genius of a Michael Angelo

or a Raphael could conceive; a work in comparison with which all the

magnificences of science and of art must pale. I propose that you should

contemplate yourselves!

Nothing is so unfamiliar to man as himself. I will, therefore, as I have

promised, show you the marvels which God himself has placed within you,

in the transluminous obscurities of your being.

Now, if there be more science, more genius in the production of a violet

or a worm than is revealed by all the combined powers of science and of

art, how much admiration should we not feel at the sight of all the

splendors which God has spread broadcast in the privileged work wherein

He was pleased to reveal his own image! But a light inaccessible to the

vain demonstrations of your sciences constantly removes this mysterious

image from your gaze. As light eludes the eye which it illumines, if we

would seize and contemplate it, we must have two things: we must have a

special and a supernatural object. There must be light within you, and

it must pierce the depths wherein that image dwells.

Here there is no question of the light which shines to show us the

things of the natural world by which we are surrounded. Nor is it a

question of the intellectual light sometimes visible to scholars. I

speak of that light which is hidden from those very scholars because

their eyes could not bear its lustre, a transluminous light which fills

the soul with beatific visions, and of which it is said that God wraps

it about Him as a mantle.

Now, three worlds, of the nature of which man partakes, are offered for

our contemplation. These three worlds are: The _natural_, the

_intellectual_, and the _supernatural_.

Three sorts of vision have been given man to initiate him into these

three worlds. These different forms of vision are: _Direct, inward_ and

_higher_.

By means of direct vision man is made acquainted with the world of

nature; by inward vision he is shown the world of science; and, lastly,

by higher vision he sees the world of grace. But as there can be no

vision where no light penetrates, it follows that between the three

kinds of vision described and the corresponding worlds there must

intervene three sorts of light, in order to produce the triple vision

necessary for the knowledge of man:

Direct vision--sidereal light--natural world.

Inward vision--the light of tradition--the world of science.

Higher vision--revealed light--supernatural world.

Such are the conditions necessary for the understanding of my

demonstrations.

Having prepared your eye for the vision of these three worlds which

serve as the bases of art, I shall, then, reveal to you their splendors;

happy if, thus, I can help to make you bless the author of so many

marvels, and communicate to you those keen joys which perpetuate in the

soul a fountain of youth which can never be quenched by the infirmities

of the body.

The Beautiful

Beauty is that reason itself which presides at the creation of things.

It is the invincible power which attracts and subjugates us in it. The

Beautiful admits of three characters, which we distinguish under the

titles of _ideal_ beauty, _moral_ beauty, _plastic_ beauty.

Plato defined ideal beauty when he said: "Beauty is the splendor of

truth." St. Augustine said of moral beauty that it is the splendor of

goodness. I define plastic beauty as the plastic manifestation of truth

and goodness.

In so far as it responds to the particular type in accordance with which

it is formed, every creature bears the crown of beauty; because in its

correspondence with its type it manifests, according to its capacity,

the Divine Being who created it.

The Beautiful is an absolute principle; it is the essence of beings, the

life of their functions. Beauty is a consequence, an effect, a form of

the Beautiful. It results from the attractions of the form. The

attraction of the form comes from the nobility of the function. This is

why all functions not being equally noble, all do not admit of beauty.

The characteristic of beauty is to be amiable; consequently a thing is

ugly only in view of the amiable things which we seek in beauty.

Beauty is to the Beautiful what the individual reason is to the Divine

reason of things. Human reason is but one ray of a vast orb called the

reason of things,--Divine reason. Let us say of beauty what we have said

of the individual reason, and we shall understand how the Beautiful is

to be distintinguished from it. Beauty is one ray of the Beautiful.

Beauty is the expression of the object for which the thing is.

It is the stamp of its functions. It is the transparency of the

aptitudes of the agent and the radiance of the faculties which it

governs. It is the order which results from the dynamic disposition of

forms operated in view of the function.

Beauty is based on three conditions: Clearness, integrity and due

proportion.

Beauty exists in the practical knowledge of the tendencies affected by

the form in view of the object for which it is; in view, above all, of

the action which it exerts upon the beings with whom it is in relation.

Thus a thing is not only beautiful from the transparency of its

aptitudes, it is especially so from the beauty of the acts which its use

determines abroad. This is the reason why beauty is to all creatures an

object of appetency, of desire and of love.

Trinity.

There is a mystery full of deep instruction, a mystery whose divine

obscurities surpass all the light whose splendors dazzle us by their

supernatural clarity, and which, as a great saint once said, radiates

splendid beams and floods with the glory of its fires those spirits who

are blind with the blindness of holiness. This mystery, outside of which

all is to man dark and incomprehensible, illuminates everything and

explains it in the sense that it is the cause, the principle and the end

of all things.

This dazzling mystery is the universal criterion of all truth; it is the

science of sciences, which is self-defining and whose name is Trinity.

Here we foresee an objection to which we must first reply. Some will be

surprised that a system declared to be infallible should rest upon a

mystery; they will ask what a mystery can have to do with a purely

didactic question. Patience! You shall see that it cannot be otherwise.

Nothing is more evident than light, yet light is a mystery, the most

obscure of all mysteries. Thus light escapes the eye and it does not see

that by means of which it sees. Now, if light is a mystery, why should

not mystery be a light? Let us see first what the church teaches us in

regard to this mystery.

God is a word which serves as a pretext for every Utopia, for every

illusion and for every human folly. The Trinity is the express

refutation of all these stupidities; it is their remedy, corrective and

preservative. Deprive me of the Trinity and I can no longer understand

aught of God. All becomes dark and obscure to me, and I have no longer a

rational motive for hope.

The Trinity, the hypostatical basis of beings and things, is the

reflection of the Divine Majesty in its work. It is, as it were, a

reflection upon us of its own light. The Trinity is our guide in the

applied sciences of which it is at once the solution and the enigma.

The Trinity is manifest in the smallest divisions of the Divine work,

and is to be regarded as the most fertile means of scientific

investigation; for if it is at once the cause, the principle and the end

of all science, it is its infallible criterion and we must start from it

as an immovable axiom.

Every truth is triangular, and no demonstration responds to its object

save in virtue of a triply triple formula.

_Theory of Processional Relations; or of the Connection between

Principiants and Principiates._

THEOREM.

Each term in the Trinity is characterized processionally by the

arrangement of the relations which unite it to its congeners. We will

represent the nature of these relations by an arrow, the head of which

starts from the principiant, touching with its point the principiate.

Example.

Principiant terms ---------------> Principiate terms

This established, let us see by what sort of relations we are to

distinguish the persons in the Trinity represented by 1, 2 and 3.

1. The Father--a term exclusively principiant, giving the mission and

not receiving it.

2. The Son--a term both principiant and principiate, receiving and

giving the mission.

3. The Holy Ghost--a term exclusively principiate, receiving the mission

and not giving it.

[Illustration]

TYPICAL

ARRANGEMENTS

BASED ON THE KNOWLEDGE

OF THE PROCESSIONAL

RELATIONS INTERUNITING

THE PERSONS IN THE TRINITY.

3

/ \

/ \

/ \

B/ \C

/ TRINITY \

/ \

1/ \2

---------------

A

[Illustration]

_A._ Relation of generation starting from the generator, ending at the

engendered (2), expressing by its horizontality the co-equality of the

principiant with the principiate.

_B._ Relation of spiration starting from the spirator or first

principiant 1, ending at the principiate 3.

_C._ Relation of spiration starting from the spirator or second

principiant 2, ending at the principiate 3, emanated by way of the

common spiration of its double principle 1 and 2.

_Vicious Arrangements._

Reversal of the Processional Relations and Confusion Which Leads to

Reversals.

These first three examples sin from lack of a necessary relationship, in

default of which the extreme terms cannot be designated. Here,

therefore, the intermediate term alone can be estimated.

1 >--------> 2 <--------< 3

Here the Son offers the relational characteristics of the Holy Ghost.

1 <--------< 2 >--------> 3

Here He plays the part of the Father by the arrangement of His

relations.

1 >--------> 3 >--------> 2

Here the Holy Ghost is evidently out of place, for He indicates

relations which belong only to the Word.

(1.) According to these relations, the Holy Ghost plays the part of the

Son, and the Son that of the Holy Ghost.

[Illustration]

3

^ \

/ 1 \

/ v

1------>2

(2.) Here all the relations are reversed so that the Father plays the

part of the Son; the Holy Ghost plays the part of the Father; and,

finally, the Son that of the Holy Ghost.

[Illustration]

3

/ \

/ 2 \

v v

1------>2

(3.) This curious example represents by the identical arrangement of

the terms that it brings together, three Sons; that is to say, the

person of the Son three times over.

[Illustration]

3

^ \

/ 3 \

/ v

1<------2

(4.) Another reversal of the relations, which derives the Holy Ghost

from the Father, the Father from the Son, and the Son from the Holy

Ghost.

[Illustration]

3

/ ^

/ 4 \

v \

1<------2

Passion Of Signs. Signs of Passion.

These two terms at first sight seem very similar. It is not so. They

express two wholly distinct things. Therefore to know the meaning of

words by no means proves one capable of finding words and fitting them

to the meaning.

It is clearly easier to translate a language than to write it, and just

as we must learn to translate before we can compose, so we must become

thoroughly familiar with semeiotics before trying to work at æsthetics;

and, as the science of semeiotics is still wholly incomplete, it is,

therefore, absolutely impossible that that which is called æsthetics

should in the least resemble the science which I have just defined.

I have shown you æsthetics as a science. I have given you its

definition. I have fixed its special part in the sum total of knowledge

which goes to make up art; moreover, I have pointed out what this

science is intended to teach you. I have, by so doing, assumed serious

obligations toward you. I must needs produce under this title something

more than mere fantastic reflections upon works of art, or more or less

attractive stories about their authors and the circumstances in which

they lived. It will not be so amusing, but assuredly it will be more

profitable, and that is all for which I aspire.

Art, then, is an act whose semeiotics characterizes the forms produced

by the action of powers, which action is determined by æsthetics, and

the causes of which are sought out by ontology.

/ Ontology examines the constituent virtues of the being.

¦

Art. < Æsthetics examines its powers.

¦

\ Semeiotics characterizes its forces.

/ Inherent form of sentiments . . . . . . Æsthetics.

¦

Art. < Metaphysical form of the principles . . Ontology.

¦

\ Organic form of signs . . . . . . . . . Semeiotics.

The object of art, therefore, is to reproduce, by the action of a

superior principle (ontology), the organic signs explained by

semeiotics, and whose fitness is estimated by æsthetics.

Semeiotics is the science of the organic signs by which æsthetics must

study inherent fitness.

Æsthetics is the science of the sensitive and passional manifestations

which are the object of art, and whose psychic form it constitutes.

If semeiotics does not tell us the passion which the sign reveals, how

can æsthetics indicate to us the sign which it should apply to the

passion that it studies? In a word, how shall the artist translate the

passion which he is called upon to express?

Æsthetics determines the inherent forms of sentiment in view of the

effects whose truth of relation it estimates.

Semeiotics studies organic forms in view of the sentiment which produces

them.