Starting from an undeniable law--that which regulates the constitution
of man,--Delsarte applies it to aesthetics; he designates man as "the
object of art," and groups in series the organic agents that co-operate
in the manifestation of human thought, sentiment and passion; declaring
the purpose of these manifestations, now become artistic, to be the
amelioration of our being by throwing into relief and light the
splendors of moral beauty and the horrors of vice.

Delsarte defines art in several ways. He has been reproached for his
over-amplitude of definition, and his development of it in a sense too
metaphysical for a science which he himself calls "positive." I give
here only such definitions as seem to me most clear and important.

"Art is at once the knowledge, the possession and the free direction of
the agents by virtue of which are revealed the life, soul and mind. It
is the appropriation of the sign to the thing. It is the relation of
the beauties scattered through nature to a superior type. It is not,
therefore, the mere imitation of nature."

The word _life_, in the sense employed above, is the equivalent of
_sensation_, of _physical manifestations._

Man being the object of art, it is from the working of the various
faculties of the human organism that Delsarte deduces the task of the
artist; as from the knowledge of the essential modalities of the _ego_,
he deduces his law of general aesthetics.

Delsarte teaches, therefore, that man is a triplicity of persons; that
is, he contains in his indestructible unity, three principles or
aspects, which he calls _life, soul_ and _mind_; in other words,
_physical, moral_ and _intellectual_ persons.

In this statement this master agrees with the philosophers who give a
triplicity of essential principles as the base of ontology. Pierre
Leroux names them as follows: _sensation, sentiment, consciousness._

That which is personal to Delsarte is the derivation of the law of
aesthetics from this conception of being.

The primal faculties once ascertained, he devotes himself to an analysis
of the organism; he describes the harmony of each of these faculties
with the apparatus which serves it as agent for manifesting itself, and
demonstrates the fitness of each organ for the task assigned it. The
master establishes that the inflections of the voice betray more
especially the sensitive nature; that gesture is the interpreter of
emotion; that articulation--a special e