Chapter 41

The Law of Æsthetics.

However striking and superior the system of François Delsarte has been shown to be, however admirable and attractive the manifestation of art in his person,--herein lie not his first rights to the grateful sympathy which we owe to his memory. His works and discoveries in æsthetics are a benefit of general interest, while they disclose to us the fruitful resources of his genius.

In the first place, what is a law? We have here to deal, not with the legislation decreed by man for the regulation of social and political relations, but with those laws deduced from a natural order, as the principle of life itself, which govern the relations of beings and of things. In religion these laws are its dogmas and mysteries; philosophically speaking, the laws of things are the essentials of their nature, their specific relations.

Voltaire has written: "Law is the instinct by which we feel justice." In Littré's Dictionary we find stated that "laws are conditions imposed by circumstances." Another has said: "The constant, uneludable succession in which phenomena occur, takes the name of law."

I would here state, that in no one of the last three citations does the word "law" seem to me to be precisely defined. From the different explanations of the natural laws which I have been able to compare, I conclude that laws are forces containing in themselves the reasons, to us unknown, of a power and permanence which are unchangeable. Plato named them _ideas_. We must now conclude that the nature of a law, in the present acceptation of the term, _can_ be but imperfectly interpreted by exact formulæ. Laws are still much involved in the secrets of creation. Here must we seek their origin or origins.

But courage still! Although these formulæ but imperfectly define law, the facts suffice to establish them. They (facts) show the certain action and, as stated heretofore, the uneludable nature of these formulæ.

But the discovery of Delsarte is the application to æsthetics of a natural law, proven and established by science. This law is that which governs the system of man's organism. Its present application is justified by a series of scientifically coördinated facts. Delsarte rests upon the principle that man is the object of art. Thus the artist should aim to manifest _human nature_ in its three modalities, in its three phases which the master named _life, soul_ and _mind_. In other words, the beings _physical, moral_ and _mental_.

These three expressions figure in the work of Pierre Leroux (_De l'Humanité_) in the following equivalent terms: _sensation, sentiment, knowledge._ But Leroux applied to ethics this law of human organism, whereas Delsarte derived from it the law of æsthetics. When two minds of this stamp are thus led, each in his own way, to the same source of analogous principles differently applied, is it not a proof that they have stated truth? And in this case it is more than presumable that the two men of whom I speak had never worked together. Delsarte was a philosopher in spite of himself. With Pierre Leroux art was only an element contingent upon a system which he elaborated.

Was Delsarte led to his classification of man's nature by the doctrine of the three persons in the Trinity combined in unity? Was he, by his observations upon the _human triplicity_, led on to consider their infinite development in the divine personalities? I know not, nor is it of importance in considering the system.

Leroux affirmed a relation between the unity of man and the universality of his pantheism; both relying at the outset upon an idea at once religious and philosophical. But the research of Leroux was philosophically inclined, while that of Delsarte was of a character more especially religious.

Is it necessary to urge that you accept this obviously primitive classification of the human faculties? Who, that shall have considered a moment to convince himself, can doubt this truth,--that our sensations, our sentiments, our understanding, are the principal elements of our life, and that all that we are able to know of ourselves is made known to us by them directly, or by the result of their combinations? This consideration will soon lead us to the rational development of the theory of Delsarte. For the present, it suffices to receive these principles as they have been presented to us, and to admit that art could not go far astray while following a clue leading from a law invincible, and guiding to a science as positive as that of the astronomer, derived from the law of attraction, or that of the chemist, depending upon the law of affinities. Here need be no confusion. The science is positive. The mystery of the natural law implies a hypothesis,--even were the proposition negative.

Delsarte insisted upon the influence of a religious sentiment in art, as a part of the constitutive animating faculties of the human being. In the light of this proposition his enemies maintain that he teaches this heresy: that success in æsthetics depends upon a definite faith--even upon the observance of the _Catholic religion!_ This distinction between religion and creed, between sentiment and assertion, I have followed carefully since the beginning of my study. Delsarte was able to so address his pupils at the beginning of a lecture, as to arouse the apathetic, and electrify the passionate; but his teaching was far from dogmatic. I do not say that at times, in his aspirations and dreams, which he regarded perhaps as intuitions, this religious philosophy did not make some incursions into the region of mysticism. I have seen at his home charts named from the circumincession,[7] and classifying celestial spirits; but these trans-mundane personifications found no place in his practical lectures. They are not found in the great synthetical chart which I possess, and which recapitulates the system as the master arranged it in the strength of his youth and genius, free from all mystical element.

When, in 1859, I submitted to Delsarte my treatise containing a succinct statement of his method, he said to me: "You have not followed me so far as the angels."

I replied: "I have related and recognized as truth all that I have heard you teach upon the laws of art as deduced from the relations of the human faculties, because I have observed and verified it among people and upon myself. But I speak not of things which you have never shown me, and whose existence you have never _demonstrated_. The angels are of this number."

Yet he received with no less approval my profane work. And it is the judgment which he placed upon that essay which authorizes my resuming the subject, augmented by further developments and evidence.

I should not state with so great confidence this great truth--the application of a natural law to a succession of discoveries constituting a science, an incontestable innovation--were I not able to refer to competent opinions supporting my statement. A few of these opinions I would here quote from some of the journals I have examined, many of which thoroughly appreciated Delsarte throughout the long period of his teaching.

It was said by Adolphe Guéroult (_Presse_, May 15, 1858): "To discover and produce wonderful effects, is preëminently the characteristic of great artists, but never, so far as I can learn, has it occurred to any one, before Delsarte, to attach these strokes of genius to positive laws." And further: "The eloquent secrets of pantomime, the imperceptible movements which, in great actors, so forcibly impress us, coming under the observation of this discoverer, were by him analyzed and synthetized in accordance with laws whose clearness and simplicity render them doubly admirable."

I give also some statements from the _Journal des Débats_ (May 10, 1859). Though in the following the word "law" does not appear, it bears interestingly upon the relations of the ideas and expressions under consideration. The quotation is:--

"The audience was charmed and instructed. It applauded the new definitions. It divined the essence of each art, and comprehended that the various manifestations of art are classified according to the classifications of the human faculties. It knows why each passion produces each accent: 'because the accent is the modulation of the soul,' and why a given emotion produces a given expression of the face, gesture and attitude of the body."

When we allow that "the classifications of the manifestations of art are made according to those of the human faculties," do we not also allow that they are derived from one law?

Thus the _fiat lux_ ("let there be light") is pronounced. Art departs from chaos, escapes from anarchy; it acts no longer only for the so-called artist, but also for the actor and singer, whom we are now to consider. Art has to do with the pose of the body, a graceful carriage, distinct pronunciation and an unconscious command of dramatic effects. For a tenor to phrase agreeably, vocalize skilfully, giving us resonant chest-tones, no longer suffices to gain for him the title of great singer.

The followers of art should be able, before and above all, to portray humanity in its essential truth, and according to the original tendency of each type. Mannerism and affectation should forever be proscribed--_unless they are imitated as an exercise_--but all the excellence that chance has produced up to the present time should be incorporated in the new science.

Moreover, by referring to a law the occasional successes which come to one, it becomes possible to reproduce them at will.

The essential point is to get back to the truth, to express the passions and emotions as nature manifests them, and not to repeat mechanically a series of conventional proceedings which are violations of the natural law. "Effects should be the echoes of a situation clearly comprehended and completely felt,"--such was the import of this teaching.

One of the great benefits arising from the discoveries of Delsarte is the reconciliation of freedom and restraint. If it bind the artist by determinate rules, it is in order to free him from routine, to recall him to the general law of being and of his own individuality. It is in order that he may study himself, in the place of submitting to arbitrary prescriptions. In such study every marked personality will find itself in its native element.

As for those who have no _vocation_, and in whom the "ego" distinguishes itself so little from the multitude that it remains lost in it, it is best that they should withdraw, since _they are not called_. They have in view only vanity or speculation, and must always be intruders in the sacred temple of art.

"My glass is not large, but I drink from my glass," said Alfred de Musset. Very well! let each one drink from his glass, but observe! it is not necessary that in the true artist all should be individual and peculiar. It is necessary only that there should exist a degree of individuality, something novel, a distinguishing tone and an artistic physiognomy peculiarly his own. Servile imitations, plagiarism, stupid adaptations, put to death all art and all poetry. In literature particularly is such decline most easy.

Hoping that, from what has been said, you have been led more fully to appreciate the advantage of seeing all of the branches of intellectual culture led out of the ruts of routine, away from plagiarism and from disorder and anarchy, one word upon the most distasteful and effectual blight to which art is subject--_the loss of naturalness_, viz., _affectation_. Can anything be more irritating than an affected actor or singer, caterers to perverted tastes?

In sculpture what is more displeasing than a distorted figure, which aimed at grace and is become a caricature? Affectation is in the arts the equivalant of sophistry in logic, of the false in morals, of hypocrisy in religion. It is not extravagant to assume that affectation, being a falsity, an active lie, is a torture to the spirit which perceives it, and a wrong to the honest souls who endure it. It should be, therefore, for twofold cause, banished without pity from the realm of æsthetics. Why should the natural, which is the expression of truth, have so great an attraction if affectation--its enemy and incumbrance--aroused not our impatience or disdain?

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."

In the _Symposium_ we have a philosophical discussion interposed between two orgies. Socrates there maintains his title of sage, but it is surely not wisdom which presides at the feast. What light upon my subject? Do we here find any conclusive decision regarding art? No! We have instead such statements as this: "It is possible for the same man to be both a tragic and a comic poet." Then are made some reflections upon time in music. We can as yet discover nothing like a law of æsthetics.

In this company, where are assembled the most cultivated of the Athenian citizens, they discuss love and jealousy of a kind that the moral instinct of modern society can with difficulty comprehend. But these dissertations are of no aid in the solution which I seek.

And yet the spirit of Socrates at times attained to great heights. He puts into the mouth of a woman of Mantinea the theory which saps the old doctrine and presents monotheism. It is but one step thence to Christianity, and it was Apollonius of Tyana, disciple of Pythagoras, who established a connection between the idealism of the later Greek philosophy and the spirituality of the new religion taught by Jesus of Nazareth.

Socrates, after a discussion upon those intermediate deities, whom he called _daimons_, and among whom he places love, assigns to love an origin and strange attributes which, to a certain extent, explain the remarkable workings of this passion at that time. He at once exalts and seeks to make comprehended the new god--"Beauty eternal, uncreated and imperishable, a beauty having nothing sensuous, nothing corporeal,--which exists absolutely and eternally." This is all.

Perhaps this ideal of love, as that of philosophy, may have been expressed in the foundation of the religious ideal of Delsarte, but this encounter in the ethereal regions of theology and psychology--where the human consciousness perceives nothing tangible, and whence it derives only vague aspirations--implies no knowledge, of anything like a law, a science or a method, such as our artist-innovator of the nineteenth century conceived and taught.

Aristotle, disciple of the founder of the Academy of Athens, divided the sciences into three classes--logic, philosophy and morals. Within this classification art is closely bound, but this philosopher made no scientific demonstration of it. His workings are not those of application and execution. More than his predecessors, it is true, he considered the human organism and, in this, his conception bears a certain analogy to the system of Delsarte. Aristotle, as well as Plato, advised the study of nature, and seeking there the elements of the Beautiful; but they had specially in view literature and eloquence. Further than this, their precepts are counsels and have reference to no definite law. They have not shown the links of connection between the human faculties and the mechanism which manifests them; they have not taught man the manner of using his organs to express artistically his sensations, emotions and thoughts.

The Greeks had every advantage of models and philosophical schools, in which art was taught. But they had no school of æsthetics. Artists of genius taught the schools more than they learned of them; and these artists, so far as I can learn, have left no trace of theoretical works, but, as before written, genius precedes and exemplifies law. While Plato and Aristotle placed a beacon light upon the road leading to a law, they never touched the goal. Delsarte proceeded otherwise. He starts with a principle clearly defined and everything harmonizes with it.

Have the historians and critics of the Greek philosophy discovered that which I vainly sought in its initiators,--_a law of æsthetics?_ This is a question to be answered.

Winkelmann, in his "History of Art," says: "The fine arts, in their rise and decadence, may be likened unto great rivers which, at the point of fullest greatness, break up into innumerable tiny streams and are lost in the sands." Still following this imagery, he compares "Egyptian art to a fine tree whose growth is stopped by a sting; Etruscan art to a torrent; Greek art to a limpid stream."

Now, the law of life of trees, streams or torrents, is not identical with that which governs the unity of a human life.

Like Aristotle, Winkelmann states clearly the principle that man is the measure of all things, but he does not follow up the consequences; he reaches no scientific demonstration upon any point. Far from establishing the existence of a law of æsthetics among the Greeks, he simply remarks upon the extreme simplicity of their beginnings, and shows by what gropings they came from Hermes to the most perfect works of Phidias and Praxiteles.

Mengs states that "the first designs were of forms approaching human semblance;" and that the sciences and philosophy must of necessity have preceded the Beautiful in the arts. He thinks that the Greeks established the proportions of their figures by imitation of beautiful nature.

From these two commentators we have a history of the progression of the arts toward the Ideal. Mengs states that the Greeks and the Etruscans have given rules of proportion and style. But progression, proportion, style,--all of which proceeding from a fixed standard of beauty may guide artists--the perception even of the ideal which each one interprets in his own way--cannot be assimilated to that original law which carries in itself all the reasons of the concept, that which contains all conditions and means of a true execution,--_individual even to the perfection of each type, general and varied as the infinite shades of nature_.

In response to the allegation of Mengs, that "the sciences and philosophy must necessarily have preceded the Beautiful in the arts," I would call attention to the fact that celebrated artists--as Phidias and Zeuxis for example--had produced their works long before the dialogues between Socrates, Protagoras, Hippias and others, upon the True, the Good and the Beautiful. The great painter and the great sculptor could only have proceeded by the intuition of their genius, knowing nothing of a law of æsthetics.

In that which remains to us of antiquity, I find nothing which implies such an application of the human organism to the arts as that whose discovery, promulgation, exemplification and teaching we owe to Delsarte.

M. Eugène Véron, writer of our day, and author of remarkable works on art, far from recognizing among the Greeks a law of æsthetics, writes of Plato: "He considered ideas as species of divine beings, intermediate between the Supreme Deity and the world. Theirs is the power of creation and formation.... Matter unintelligent and self-formed is _nothing_, and realizes existence only through the operation of the idea which gives it its form. Aristotle begins by rejecting all this phantasmagory of eternal and creative ideas. He fills the abyss between matter and spirit. God, pure thought and being preëminent, brings all into existence by his power of attraction which gives to all activity and life."

We wander farther and farther from a law of æsthetics and its means of application as established by Delsarte.

Of all the writers who have thoroughly examined antique art, Victor Cousin would seem the one with whom Delsarte had most in common, if this eminent philosopher were not a contemporary of the master and had not attended his lectures, his artistic sessions and his concerts. In his manner of treating art, this is often shown bywords and forms and flashes of instinctive reminiscence which recall the great school. In his book, "The True, the Beautiful and the Good" (edition of 1858), the learned professor writes: "The true method gives us a law to start from man to arrive at things. All the arts, without exception, address the soul _through the body_."

He is on the way, but his position embraces neither the starting-point, which is the law, nor any practical means toward an end. For the rest, the nearer his propositions approach the law of Delsarte, the easier it becomes to establish the radical differences which separate them. Delsarte does not say that "the law is to start from man to arrive at things," but that "man uses his corporeal organs to manifest himself in his three constituent modalities,--physical, mental and moral."

It is very certain that works of art, like all concrete forms, can only be perceived by the senses. Who does not know this? But that which is most difficult to comprehend, is the just relation of cause to effect--as to the faculty and its manifestation,--and it is this which Delsarte discovered and made clear. The one stated the action of art when perceived; the other, the necessities of the artist in order that art respond to the law.

I shall have more than once to render justice to Victor Cousin. Inheritor of the Greek philosophers, he allows dialectics too great margin. He wanders in his premises and arrives at his conclusions--when he can. (Here, of course, I speak only of art.) In philosophy, Cousin, beginning with effects, from induction to induction, often arrives at causes and states some principles. Delsarte, perhaps, proceeded thus while seeking to combine his discoveries, but this accomplished, he placed in the first line, synthesis, whence all emanates, and this focus of light radiating in all directions, illumines even to its farthest limit, the vast field of æsthetics. Cousin, after all, claims neither for the Greeks nor for himself the discovery of a law.

Proudhon, who represented the Protagorean school among us, humoring his whim, produced a work on art. In this he declares that he has very little gift in æsthetics, and asserts himself a dialectician, and we cannot deny his power in logic while he regards things from a proper stand-point. Very well! Proudhon challenged the Academy "to indicate a _method_"--with even more reason might he have said _law_ of æsthetics.

Shall we, at last, find among the true critics of French literature any synthetic basis which may guide us in all branches of art? What do I find in "The Poetic Art," by Boileau, the great authority of the Augustan age,--rhetoric, beautiful verses, full of excellent counsel? I find there wisely arbitrated rules, a sieve through which it would be well to pass the works of our own times, including the verdicts which distribute the glory.

But the means of putting into practice these valuable precepts--the criterion to establish their truth, the touchstone which may distinguish the pure gold--does not appear! In default of these means of certitude, each may, according to his instinct or his pride, insist that he has fulfilled the conditions prescribed by the author of the _Lutrin_, and judge his rivals by the sole authority of his prejudices.

La Harpe and his followers have distributed praise and blame, and at the same time said _what_ should be done, but they have given no _how_.

More grievous still are the meanderings of the critics of our public journals. They wander without compass and without rudder, approving or condemning according to their friendships and antipathies; save those _connoisseurs émérites_, whose fine, sure taste and exceptional erudition are rarely able to supply a law and state a reason for their judgment.

Among us, as among the Greeks, may be found artists who have given proofs of the existence of the supreme theory of which I now write. Talma and Malibran--in another order, Déjazet, and Frederick Lemaître, even Thérésa herself, have, in a greater or less degree, exemplified this law imprescriptable. These artists, marked by nature with the seal of their vocation, possessed that force of truth which produces sudden bursts of eloquence, great dramatic effects; in a word, as before expressed, "the happy strokes of genius."

Yes, before and after Delsarte, there were and shall be beings conforming by _instinct_ to his _law_. But with him alone shall rest the honor of its discovery and first teaching, and of the establishment of the science upon strong foundations.

It remains for me to examine the relations between the workings of Delsarte and those who have treated the same questions concerning the terms (according to him, accessory), the True, the Good and the Beautiful; and also to consider the value of each branch of æsthetics in the entirety of the system.