Semeiotics studies organic forms in view of the sentiment which produces them.

It is thus that wisdom and reason proceed in inverse sense from the principle to the knowledge which is the object of both.  Wisdom, in fact, studies the principle in its consequences, while reason studies the consequences in the principle, hence it comes that wisdom and reason are often at war with each other; hence also the obscurity which generally prevails as to the distinction between them.  Let us say that wisdom and reason are to intelligence what aesthetics and semeiotics are to art.  Let us add to this parallel that wisdom and reason are to intelligence what aesthetics and semeiotics are to ontology; that is:—­

1.  If, from a certain organic form, I infer a certain sentiment, that is Semeiotics.

2.  If, from a certain sentiment, I deduce a certain organic form, that is AEsthetics.

3.  If, after studying the arrangement of an organic form whose inherent fitness I am supposed to know, I take possession of that arrangement under the title of methods, invariably to reproduce that form by substituting my individual will for its inherent cause, that is Art.

4.  If I determine the initial phenomena under the impulsion of which the inherent powers act upon the organism, that is Ontology.

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.