Chapter XVII.
Delsarte's Inventions.
Delsarte always had his father's propensity to devote himself to
mechanics that he might apply his knowledge of them to new things. When
he felt his artistic abilities, not growing less, but their plastic
expression becoming more difficult, owing to the cruel warnings of his
departing youth, this tendency toward occupations more especially
intellectual, became more marked.
It may be helpful here to note that a _machine_--that positive and most
material of all things--is the thing whose creation requires force of
understanding in the highest degree.
The brain, that living machine, lends its aid to the intellect; it
represents the physical side; it is the spot where the work is carried
on. Feeling has no part in the intellectual acts which work together in
mechanical production,--mathematics playing the principal part,--it has
no other share, I say, but to inspire certain persons with a passionate
taste for abstract studies, which leads them toward useful and glorious
discoveries.
Thus, this thought of Delsarte and Pierre Leroux seems to be justified:
that, in no case, can man break his essential triplicity.
Delsarte, moreover, by changing the direction of his faculties, or
rather by displacing the dominant, affirmed his freedom of will. If he
did not always class himself with the strong, he still loved to reign
over himself in the omnipotence of his will.
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