How is it that in children of all classes we find grace, ravishing and inimitable? It is because in them the accord is perfect between the look, the smile, the gesture and the impression within, of which they are the interpreters--the adequate signs, as Delsarte would say--the perfidious flexibility of words never interposing to alter the harmony.
True grace in adults is not that which is studied, nor that which is artistically copied from a badly-chosen type. Grace is born of itself, the natural fruit of the culture of the mind, of elevated thoughts and noble sentiments. It is a combination of excellences which come unconsciously to some privileged beings. To imitate beautiful effects in nature, to surprise their expressions, after having observed and established the relation of cause to effect,--this is the end to which the discovery of Delsarte would lead us.
As it is difficult for each to find ready at his command the elements for such research, how can we overestimate the great value of establishing schools in which the instruction of students of the great art shall be guided in accordance with the established laws of æsthetics? The time of greatest necessity is the immediate present, since the voice of the people cries loudly through the press, "Art is decaying and will surely die!"
"Barriers are also supports," said Madame de Staël; and what more sure support in the decadence which threatens us, than a positive science deduced from irrefragable law! I say irrefragable with conviction. Though human laws be subject to change, the laws of nature are shown to be immutable, at least so far as the observations of learned men of all ages have been able to establish them.
To such assertions one objection arises: Why, admitting that the human organism furnishes exact and complete means of manifesting art in all the departments of æsthetics, should not others before Delsarte have discovered that correlation? I have conscientiously considered and sought light in this direction, and the result of my research furnishes me only a negation. Although I do not here attempt a complete study of the philosophy of art, nor a general history of the arts, I have sought to discover all that could warrant one in presuming the discovery of a law of æsthetics in antiquity, particularly among the Greeks.
I find that in the writings of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle--who are the best authorities--art was a dependence upon philosophy; that is to say, one with it, having no law outside of it. (Whereas, in the work of Delsarte, æsthetics occupies the first place, and philosophy becomes accessory.)
I will here enter into some details of the ancient teachings.
Socrates gave to his teachings a practical character founded upon the knowledge of man. He took for his point of departure man himself, and established (according to this idea) a morality with the motto of the temple of Delphi,--"Know thyself." This doctrine related more especially to ethics than to æsthetics--as later did that of Pierre Leroux--and it was far from being able to direct artists in their work.
Plato often discoursed upon the True, the Beautiful, the Good. He strove to disengage them from the concrete that he might derive some general formulæ. To do this he employed the method of "elimination," a form of dialectics which I recommend to no one, notwithstanding its great value and the services it may render, after all, to those minds endowed with patience. What does he conclude in regard to art?
The Socratic and dogmatic dialogues--the Phaedo, the Gorgias, the Symposium, Protagoras, Ion, Phaedrus--abound in allegories, aphorisms, and in aspirations toward an ideal, more or less clearly defined, which end, however, not by any means in a discussion of art, but in such affirmations as that which closes the first Hippias:--"Beautiful things are difficult."