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.

On Distinction and Vulgarity of Motion.

Motion generally has its reaection; a projected body rebounds and it is this rebound which we call the reaection of the motion.

Rebounding bodies are agreeable to the eye.  Lack of elasticity in a body is disagreeable from the fact that lacking suppleness, it seems as if it must, in falling, be broken, flattened or injured; in a word, must lose something of the integrality of its form.  It is, therefore, the reaection of a body which proves its elasticity, and which, by this very quality, gives us a sort of pleasure in witnessing a fall, which apart from this reaection could not be other than disagreeable.  Therefore, elasticity of dynamic motions is a prime necessity from the point of view of charm.

In the vulgar man there is no reaection.  In the man of distinction, on the contrary, motion is of slight extent and reaection is enormous.  Reaection is both slow and rapid.

Gesture.

The artist should have three objects:  To move, to interest, to persuade.  He interests by language; he moves by thought; he moves, interests and persuades by gesture.

Language is the weakest of the three agents.  In a matter of the feelings language proves nothing.  It has no real value, save that which is given to it by the preparation of gesture.

Gesture corresponds to the soul, to the heart; language to the life, to the thought, to the mind.  The life and the mind being subordinate to the heart, to the soul, gesture is the chief organic agent.  So it has its appropriate character which is persuasion, and it borrows from the other two agents interest and emotion.  It prepares the way, in fact, for language and thought; it goes before them and foretells their coming; it accentuates them.

By its silent eloquence it predisposes, it guides the listener.  It makes him a witness to the secret labor performed by the immanences which are about to burst forth.  It flatters him by leading him to feel that he partakes in this preparation by the initiation to which it admits him.  It condenses into a single word the powers of the three agents.  It represents virtue effective and operative.  It assimilates the auxiliaries which surround it, and reflects the immanence proper to its nature, the contemplation of its subject deeply seen, deeply felt.  It possesses them synthetically, fully, absolutely.