What I Propose.
I propose a great, a worthy subject for your study. At those oratorical
sessions which are rapidly increasing under the name of conferences,
sessions at which so many distinguished men take the floor, you have
been told in elegant terms, often in eloquent terms, of the sciences, of
their application and of their progress. You have listened to discourses
upon art, its primitive purity, its supposed principles, its decadence,
its renaissance, its multifarious changes; its masterpieces have been
pointed out to you; they have been described to you; you have, in some
degree, been made familiar with their origin. You have heard the story
of the lives of the great artists. They have been shown to you in their
weakness and in their strength. The times and manners amid which they
lived have been painted for you in more or less imaginary colors. I
propose something better than all this.
I offer you a work superior even to those sciences which have been
described to you; superior to all which the genius of a Michael Angelo
or a Raphael could conceive; a work in comparison with which all the
magnificences of science and of art must pale. I propose that you should
contemplate yourselves!
Nothing is so unfamiliar to man as himself. I will, therefore, as I have
promised, show you the marvels which God himself has placed within you,
in the transluminous obscurities of your being.
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