Proudhon, who represented the Protagorean school among us, humoring his whim, produced a work on art.  In this he declares that he has very little gift in aesthetics, and asserts himself a dialectician, and we cannot deny his power in logic while he regards things from a proper stand-point.  Very well!  Proudhon challenged the Academy “to indicate a method”—­with even more reason might he have said law of aesthetics.

Shall we, at last, find among the true critics of French literature any synthetic basis which may guide us in all branches of art?  What do I find in “The Poetic Art,” by Boileau, the great authority of the Augustan age,—­rhetoric, beautiful verses, full of excellent counsel?  I find there wisely arbitrated rules, a sieve through which it would be well to pass the works of our own times, including the verdicts which distribute the glory.

But the means of putting into practice these valuable precepts—­the criterion to establish their truth, the touchstone which may distinguish the pure gold—­does not appear!  In default of these means of certitude, each may, according to his instinct or his pride, insist that he has fulfilled the conditions prescribed by the author of the Lutrin, and judge his rivals by the sole authority of his prejudices.

La Harpe and his followers have distributed praise and blame, and at the same time said what should be done, but they have given no how.

More grievous still are the meanderings of the critics of our public journals.  They wander without compass and without rudder, approving or condemning according to their friendships and antipathies; save those connoisseurs emerites, whose fine, sure taste and exceptional erudition are rarely able to supply a law and state a reason for their judgment.

Among us, as among the Greeks, may be found artists who have given proofs of the existence of the supreme theory of which I now write.  Talma and Malibran—­in another order, Dejazet, and Frederick Lemaitre, even Theresa herself, have, in a greater or less degree, exemplified this law imprescriptable.  These artists, marked by nature with the seal of their vocation, possessed that force of truth which produces sudden bursts of eloquence, great dramatic effects; in a word, as before expressed, “the happy strokes of genius.”

Yes, before and after Delsarte, there were and shall be beings conforming by instinct to his law.  But with him alone shall rest the honor of its discovery and first teaching, and of the establishment of the science upon strong foundations.

It remains for me to examine the relations between the workings of Delsarte and those who have treated the same questions concerning the terms (according to him, accessory), the True, the Good and the Beautiful; and also to consider the value of each branch of aesthetics in the entirety of the system.

Chapter VII.