hical aspects:

"Form," says the innovator in aesthetics, "is the vestment of substance;
it is the expressive symbol of a mysterious truth; it is the stamp of a
hidden virtue, the actuality of being; in a word, form is the plastic of
the Ideal."

"The Beautiful is the transparency of the aptitudes of the agent, and it
radiates from the faculties which govern it. It is order which results
from the dynamical disposition of forms."

"Beauty is the reason which presides at the creation of things; it is
the invisible power which draws us and subjugates us in them."

"The Beautiful comprises three characters, which we distinguish under
the following titles: Ideal, moral and plastic beauty."

By the enunciation of these three categories, Delsarte enters upon the
positive aspect of his system. As the result of the careful examination
of the aptitudes or faculties of the Ego, approachable by analysis and
applied to aesthetics, he has established this first class of
manifestations (ideal beauty) as requisite to art. This must result from
a combination of the faculties; the possibilities of combination being
infinite, but always in subjection to the human being. The artist,
according to this personal power of inspiration, should be able to
portray a totality of superior and harmonious qualities, such as will
oblige any competent observer to recognize it as beautiful. We have
taken a step into the realm of the Ideal; that is to say, we have
touched that which, without departing from the law, surpasses
conventional rule and the natural types accepted for the Beautiful.

Before following the Ideal into its ethereal region, we will further
consider the nature of its foundation, which is a combination of the
three mother faculties which Delsarte declares to be, in aesthetics, the
criterion of the law and the foundation of the science. We already
recognize these as the physical, mental and moral aspects of the human
being.

The plastic art allies itself particularly to the physical constitution,
but the physique cannot be perfectly beautiful unless it manifests
intellectual and moral faculties.

Moral and intellectual beauty reveal themselves in the human being under
the empire of passion and of sentiment, and the physique is momentarily
transformed. The artist should seize beauty at this moment of fullest
perfection, above the normal conditions of human existence and perhaps
beyond possible plastic beauty.

Behold what glori