Not that this master never exceeded the limits of his science and his method.  He had sketched out a “Treatise on Reason,” and had begun to classify the faculties of being, entering into the subject more profoundly than the categories of Kant; but all this only exists in mere outline, in a technology whose terms have not been weighed and connected together by a solid chain of reasoning:  logic has not uttered its final word therein.

A separate volume would be required to give an idea of these gigantic sketches, which must remain in their rudimentary state.

If Delsarte had finished his work, it would seem that he must have leaned toward the scholastic method, now so much out of favor; but certainly he would put his own personality into this, as into everything that he undertook to investigate; for he was held back on the steeps of mysticism by the science which he had created, and which could only afford a shelter to the supernatural as an extension of those psychical faculties which have been called intuition, imagination, etc.

Then the influence of Raymond Brucker, who died shortly after Delsarte, being lessened, and conscientious and patient study having fed the flame in that vast brain, we might have obtained affirmations of a new order.  And Delsarte might have met with thinkers like Leibnitz, Descartes and Jean Reynaud, on that height where religion is purged of superstition and fanaticism, philosophy set free from atheism and materialism!

If Delsarte had a fault, it was that he regarded all modern philosophy as sensuous naturalism; and if reason sometimes seemed to him suspicious, it was because he often confounded it with sophistry, which reasons indeed, but is far from being reason.

Let us regret that Delsarte never finished his complete philosophy; but let us be grateful to him for having raised his art and all arts to the level of philosophy, by giving them truth as a basis and morality as a final aim; which fairly justifies, it seems to me, the title of artist-philosopher, which I have sometimes applied to him.

I should not neglect, in this connection, to set down the explanation, given by Delsarte, of what he meant by the word trinity, as used in his scientific system.  The reader cannot fail to see the elements of a system of philosophy in this succinct statement, this outline to be filled up: 

“The principle of the system lies in the statement that there is in the world a universal formula which may be applied to all sciences, to all things possible:  —­this formula is the trinity.

“What is requisite for the formation of a trinity?

“Three expressions are requisite, each presupposing and implying the other two.  Each of three terms must imply the other two.  There must also be an absolute co-necessity between them; thus, the three principles of our being—­life, mind and soul—­form a trinity.