The theory of degrees was largely developed at these meetings, and I have purposely delayed it till this chapter. To understand this theory--one of the most striking points in Delsarte's method, and original with him,--one should have some idea of the grammar which he composed for the use of his pupils.
I will not say that this treatise was complete in the sense usually attached to the word grammar. There is no mention of orthography or of lexicology; but all that is the very essence of language, that from which no language, no idiom can escape--the constituent parts of speech--are examined and investigated from a philosophic and psychologic point of view. Just as the author examined the constituent modalities of our being in the light of æsthetics, he seized the affinities between the laws of speech, as far as regards the voice--logos--and the moral manifestations of art.
This production of Delsarte has undergone the fate of almost all his works--it has not been printed. Indeed, I greatly fear that, all his notes on the subject can never be collected; nevertheless that which has been gathered together presents a certain development. I will not enter into the purely metaphysical part, limiting myself, as I have done from the beginning of this study, to making known the conceptions of Delsarte only in so far as they refer to the special field of æsthetics.
In this category, we find the following definitions which serve to classify the quantitative values or degrees: that is the extent assigned to each articulation or vocal emission to enable it to express the thoughts, sentiments and sensations of our being in their truth and proportionate intensity:
1. Substantive is the name given to a group of appearances, to a totality of attributes.
2. Adjective expresses ideas, simple, abstract, general and medicative; it is an abstraction in the substantive.
3. Verb is the word that affirms the existence and the co-existence between the being existing and its manner of existing: that is to say it connects the subject with the attribute. The verb is not a sign of action, but of affirmation, and existence.
4. The participle alone is a sign of action.
5, 6, 7. The article, pronoun and preposition fit into the common definitions.
8. The adverb is the adjective of the adjective and of the participle (in so far as it is an attribute of the verb); it modifies them both, and is not modifiable by either of them; it is a sign of proportion, an intellectual compass.