nd that the moral
instinct of modern society can with difficulty comprehend. But these
dissertations are of no aid in the solution which I seek.

And yet the spirit of Socrates at times attained to great heights. He
puts into the mouth of a woman of Mantinea the theory which saps the old
doctrine and presents monotheism. It is but one step thence to
Christianity, and it was Apollonius of Tyana, disciple of Pythagoras,
who established a connection between the idealism of the later Greek
philosophy and the spirituality of the new religion taught by Jesus of
Nazareth.

Socrates, after a discussion upon those intermediate deities, whom he
called _daimons_, and among whom he places love, assigns to love an
origin and strange attributes which, to a certain extent, explain the
remarkable workings of this passion at that time. He at once exalts and
seeks to make comprehended the new god--"Beauty eternal, uncreated and
imperishable, a beauty having nothing sensuous, nothing
corporeal,--which exists absolutely and eternally." This is all.

Perhaps this ideal of love, as that of philosophy, may have been
expressed in the foundation of the religious ideal of Delsarte, but this
encounter in the ethereal regions of theology and psychology--where the
human consciousness perceives nothing tangible, and whence it derives
only vague aspirations--implies no knowledge, of anything like a law, a
science or a method, such as our artist-innovator of the nineteenth
century conceived and taught.

Aristotle, disciple of the founder of the Academy of Athens, divided
the sciences into three classes--logic, philosophy and morals. Within
this classification art is closely bound, but this philosopher made no
scientific demonstration of it. His workings are not those of
application and execution. More than his predecessors, it is true, he
considered the human organism and, in this, his conception bears a
certain analogy to the system of Delsarte. Aristotle, as well as Plato,
advised the study of nature, and seeking there the elements of the
Beautiful; but they had specially in view literature and eloquence.
Further than this, their precepts are counsels and have reference to no
definite law. They have not shown the links of connection between the
human faculties and the mechanism which manifests them; they have not
taught man the manner of using his organs to express artistically his
sensations, emotions and thoughts.

The Greeks had every advan