Mannerism and affectation should forever be
proscribed--_unless they are imitated as an exercise_--but all the
excellence that chance has produced up to the present time should be
incorporated in the new science.
Moreover, by referring to a law the occasional successes which come to
one, it becomes possible to reproduce them at will.
The essential point is to get back to the truth, to express the passions
and emotions as nature manifests them, and not to repeat mechanically a
series of conventional proceedings which are violations of the natural
law. "Effects should be the echoes of a situation clearly comprehended
and completely felt,"--such was the import of this teaching.
One of the great benefits arising from the discoveries of Delsarte is
the reconciliation of freedom and restraint. If it bind the artist by
determinate rules, it is in order to free him from routine, to recall
him to the general law of being and of his own individuality. It is in
order that he may study himself, in the place of submitting to arbitrary
prescriptions. In such study every marked personality will find itself
in its native element.
As for those who have no _vocation_, and in whom the "ego" distinguishes
itself so little from the multitude that it remains lost in it, it is
best that they should withdraw, since _they are not called_. They have
in view only vanity or speculation, and must always be intruders in the
sacred temple of art.
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