5. If I tell how that organism behaves under the inherent action, that is Physiology.
6. If I examine, one by one, the agents of that organism, it is Anatomy.
7. If, amid these different studies, I seek by means of analogy and generalization for light to guide my steps toward my advantage, that is System.
8. If I make that light profitable to my material and spiritual interests, that is Reason.
9. If I add to all this the loving contemplation of the Supreme Author in His work, that is Wisdom.
Let us now leave the abstractions to which you have kindly lent your attention. I cannot here avoid casting a rapid glance at those sources of science and art, the sources whence I desire to draw applications which I am assured will interest you as they interest me. May they afford you the same delight!
By listening to me thus far you have passed through the proofs requisite for your initiation into science as well as art; into science, whose very definition is unknown to the learned bodies, since they have never studied aught of it but its specialties; into art, whose very fundamental basis is unsuspected by the School of Fine Arts, as I have elsewhere demonstrated. Therefore, I now desire in the course of these lectures to set aside the terms of a technology which I could not avoid at the outset, and by the recital of my labors and my researches, my disappointments and my discoveries, to show you the painful birth of a science, whose possession entitles me to the honor of addressing you to-day.
Definition of Form.
Form is the garb of substance. It is the expressive symbol of a mysterious truth. It is the trademark of a hidden virtue. It is the actuality of the being. In a word, form is the plastic art of the Ideal.
We have to consider three sorts of form: The form assumed by the being at birth and which we will call constitutional form. Under the sway of custom forms undergo modifications: We will call these forms habitual forms. Then there are the fugitive forms, modifications of the constitutional form, which are produced under the sway of passion. These forms, which we will call accidental, passional or transitory, are fugitive as the things which give them birth.