The orator’s abstraction should change the face, but not the gesture.  If the double change takes place simultaneously, there will be no unity.  The gesture should be retained and the expression of the face changed.

A variety of effects and inflections should be avoided.  While the speaker is under the influence of the same sentiment, the same inflection and gesture must be retained, so that there may be unity of style.

Art proposes three things:  to move, to interest, to persuade by unity of inflection and gesture.  One effect must not destroy another.  Divergence confuses the audience, and leaves no time for sentiment.

It is well to remember that the stone becomes hollowed by the incessant fall of the drop of water in the same place.

The Rhythm of Gesture.

Gesture is at the same time melodic, or rather inflective, harmonic and rhythmic.  It must embrace the elements of music, since it corresponds to the soul; it is the language of the soul, and the soul necessarily includes the life with its diverse methods of expression, and the mind.  Gesture is melodic or inflective through the richness of its forms, harmonic through the multiplicity of parts that unite simultaneously to produce it.  Gesture is rhythmic through its movement, more or less slow, or more or less rapid.

Gesture is, then, inevitably synthetic, and consequently harmonic; for harmony is but another name for synthesis.

Each of the inflective, harmonic and rhythmic modes has its peculiar law.

The rhythmic law of gesture is thus formulated: 

“The rhythm of gesture is proportional to the mass to be moved.”

The more an organ is restrained, the more vehement is its impulse.

This law is based upon the vibration of the pendulum.  Great levers have slow movements, small agents more rapid ones.  The head moves more rapidly when the torso and the eye have great facility of motion.  Thus the titillations of the eye are rapid as lightning.

This titillation always announces an emotion.  Surprise is feigned if there is no titillation.

For example, at the unexpected visit of a friend there is a lighting up of the eye.  Wherefore?  Because the image is active in the imagination.  This is an image which passes within ourselves, which lies in inward phenomena.

So in relation to material phenomena:  there is a convergence, a direction of the eyes toward the object; if the object changes place, the eyes cannot modify their manner of convergence; they must close to find a new direction, a convergence suited to the distance of the object.

There is never sympathetic vision.  The phenomena of the imagination are in the imagination at a fixed distance.  When an image changes place in the idea, it produces a titillation equal to that which would be produced in the order of material things.  For example, let us quote these lines: