The Delsarte System.
By
Angélique Arnaud, (Pupil of Delsarte).
Translated by Abby L. Alger.
Chapter I.
The Bases of the Science.
Delsarte published no book upon art. The bases of the science which he created are contained in a synthetical table. Other tables develop each branch of it considered separately.
Starting from an undeniable law--that which regulates the constitution of man,--Delsarte applies it to æsthetics; he designates man as "the object of art," and groups in series the organic agents that co-operate in the manifestation of human thought, sentiment and passion; declaring the purpose of these manifestations, now become artistic, to be the amelioration of our being by throwing into relief and light the splendors of moral beauty and the horrors of vice.
Delsarte defines art in several ways. He has been reproached for his over-amplitude of definition, and his development of it in a sense too metaphysical for a science which he himself calls "positive." I give here only such definitions as seem to me most clear and important.
"Art is at once the knowledge, the possession and the free direction of the agents by virtue of which are revealed the life, soul and mind. It is the appropriation of the sign to the thing. It is the relation of the beauties scattered through nature to a superior type. It is not, therefore, the mere imitation of nature."
The word life, in the sense employed above, is the equivalent of sensation, of physical manifestations.