Origin and Oratorical Value of Gesture.

Origin.

The infant in the cradle has neither speech nor gesture:—­he cries.  As he gains sensibility his tones grow richer, become inflections, are multiplied and attain the number of three million special and distinct inflections.  The young infant manifests neither intelligence nor affection; but he reveals his life by sounds.  When he discerns the source of his joys or sufferings, he loves, and gesticulates to repulse or to invite.  The gestures, which are few at first, become quite numerous.  It is God’s art he follows; he is an artist without knowing it.

Oratorical Value of Gesture.

The true aim of art is to move, to interest and to persuade.  Emotion, interest and persuasion are the first terms of art.  Emotion is expressed by the voice, by sounds; interest, by language; persuasion is the office of gesture.

To inflection belongs emotion through the beautiful; to logic, interest through the truth; to plastic art, persuasion through the good.

Gesture is more than speech.  It is not what we say that persuades, but the manner of saying it.  The mind can be interested by speech, it must be persuaded by gesture.  If the face bears no sign of persuasion, we do not persuade.

Why at first sight does a person awaken our sympathy or antipathy?  We do not understand why, but it is by reason of his gestures.

Speech is inferior to gesture, because it corresponds to the phenomena of mind; gesture is the agent of the heart, it is the persuasive agent.

Articulate language is weak because it is successive.  It must be enunciated phrase by phrase; by words, syllables, letters, consonants and vowels—­and these do not end it.  That which demands a volume is uttered by a single gesture.  A hundred pages do not say what a simple movement may express, because this simple movement expresses our whole being.  Gesture is the direct agent of the soul, while language is analytic and successive.  The leading quality of mind is number; it is to speculate, to reckon, while gesture grasps everything by intuition,—­sentiment as well as contemplation.  There is something marvelous in this language, because it has relations with another sphere; it is the world of grace.

An audience must not be supposed to resemble an individual.  A man of the greatest intelligence finding himself in an audience, is no longer himself.  An audience is never intelligent; it is a multiple being, composed of sense and sentiment.  The greater the numbers, the less intelligence has to do.  To seek to act upon an individual by gesture would be absurd.  The reverse is true with an audience; it is persuaded not by reasoning, but by gesture.

There is here a current none can control.  We applaud disagreeable things in spite of ourselves—­things we should condemn, were they said to us in private.  The audience is not composed of intellectual people, but of people with senses and hearts.  As sentiment is the highest thing in art, it should be applied to gesture.