Priority of gesture may be thus explained:  First a movement responds to the sensation; then a gesture, which depicts the emotion, responds to the imagination which colors the sensation.  Then comes the judgment which approves.  Finally, we consider the audience, and this view of the audience suggests the appropriate expression for that which has already been expressed by gesture.

The basis of this art is to make the auditors divine what we would have them feel.

Every speaker may choose his own stand-point, but the essential law is to anticipate, to justify speech by gesture.  Speech is the verifier of the fact expressed.  The thing may be expressed before announcing its name.  Sometimes we let the auditors divine rather than anticipate, gazing at them in order to rivet their attention.  Eloquence is composed of many things which are not named, but must be named by slight gestures.  In this eloquence consists.  Thus a smack of the tongue, a blow upon the hand, an utterance of the vowel u as if one would remove a stain from his coat.  The writer cannot do all this.  The mere rendition of the written discourse is nothing for the orator; his talent consists in taking advantage of a great number of little nameless sounds.

A written discourse must contain forced epithets and adjectives to illustrate the subject.  In a spoken discourse a great number of adjectives are worse than useless.  Gesture and inflection of the voice supply their place.  The sense is not in the words; it is in inflection and gesture.

Retroaction.

We have formulated this general law:  The eccentric, normal and concentric expression must correspond to the sensitive, moral and intellectual state of man.  When gesture is concerned, the law is thus modified:  In the sensitive state, the gesture, which is naturally eccentric, may become concentric, as the orator is passive or active.

He is passive when subject to any action whatever, when he depicts an emotion.

He is agent when he communicates to the audience the expression of his own will or power; in a word, at all times when he controls his audience.

When the orator assumes the passive role, that is, when he reflects, he gazes upon his audience; he makes a backward (or concentric) movement; when he assumes the active role, he makes a forward (or eccentric) movement.  When one speaks to others, he advances; when one speaks to himself, he recoils a step, his thought centres upon himself.

In the passive state, one loves.  But when he loves, he does not move forward.  A being who feels, draws back, and contemplates the object toward which the hand extends.  Contemplation makes the body retroact.

Hence in the passive state, the orator must step backward.  In the opposite state he moves forward.  Let us apply this law:  A spendthrift officer meets his landlord, whom he has not yet paid, and greets him with an—­“Ah, good day, sir!” What will be his movement?  It must be retroactive.  In the joy of seeing a friend again, as also in fright, we start back from the object loved or hated.  Such is the law of nature, and it cannot be ignored.