Victor Cousin has said:  “It is reason which decides as to the Beautiful and reduces it to the sensation of the agreeable, and taste has no further law.”

“Aversion accompanies the Ugly (unseemly) as love walks hand in hand with the Beautiful.”

“The Beautiful inspires love profound but not passionate.”

“The artist perceives only the Beautiful where the sensual man sees only the attractive or frightful.”

And, again, “That is sublime which presents the idea of the Infinite.”

This last thought brings us to Delsarte, who, perhaps, was its inspiration.

The following valuable thoughts of the master, while not related scientifically to his system, are still allied to its physical and philosophical 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.