Delsarte approached in a certain sense this very idea, but his doctrine
of the True in art, although depending upon the mystic basis of a holy
Trinity, brought forth developments both rational and scientific which
leave far behind the Platonic hypothesis.
In the system of Delsarte it is no longer a vague ideal dimly
perceptible, which must guide the artist in the execution of his work,
for the _innovator_ says expressly that "the divine thought is written
in man himself." It is therefore at the command of every one who seeks
truth to make it manifest in art. In the new system, man being at once
the _artist_ and _object of art_, literary men, sculptors and painters
proceed from a basis ever to be observed and studied, to rise from the
True to the Ideal. Here the flight must be more rapid and, above all,
less deceptive than the purely mystic fancy of Plato.
We shall see in considering the _Beautiful_ in the arts, that far from
giving rise to arbitrary and fantastic conceptions, the great ideal must
become, according to the science and method of the master,--the
aggrandizement and the harmony of the faculties of the human being.
_The Good._
The Good Sanctifies the Soul.
What is the Good in art? Here again the philosophical standard bars the
way and demands priority. What, then, is _Good_ independent of varied
feelings and of all the varied and contradictory interests of human
subjectivity which encumber it in the minds of the multitude of thinking
people?
The Good, after this elimination, is reduced or rather elevated to one
simple idea, so general and requisite is it.
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