Delsarte System of Oratory

Excerpt

Chapter I.

Preliminary Ideas--criterion of the Oratorical Art.

Let us note an incontestable fact. The science of the Art of Oratory has not yet been taught. Hitherto genius alone, and not science, has made great orators. Horace, Quintilian and Cicero among the ancients, and numerous modern writers have treated of oratory as an art. We admire their writings, but this is not science; here we seek in vain the fundamental laws whence their teachings proceed. There is no science without principles which give a reason for its facts. Hence to teach and to learn the art of oratory, it is necessary:

1. To understand the general law which controls the movements of the organs;
2. To apply this general law to the movements of each particular organ;
3. To understand the meaning of the form of each of these movements;
4. To adapt this meaning to each of the different states of the soul.

The fundamental law, whose stamp every one of these organs bears, must be kept carefully in mind. Here is the formula:

The sensitive, mental and moral state of man are rendered by the eccentric, concentric or normal form of the organism.

Such is the first and greatest law. There is a second law, which proceeds from the first and is similar to it:

Each form of the organism becomes triple by borrowing the form of the two others.

It is in the application of these two laws that the entire practice of the art of oratory consists. Here, then, is a science, for we possess a criterion with which all phenomena must agree, and which none can gainsay. This criterion, composed of our double formula, we represent in a chart, whose explanation must be carefully studied.

The three primitive forms or genera which affect the organs are represented by the three transverse lines.

Illustration

The subdivision of the three genera into nine species is noted in the three perpendicular columns.

Under the title Genus we shall use the Roman numerals I, III, II.

Under the title Species we employ the Arabic figures 1, 3, 2.

I designates the eccentric form, II the concentric form, III the normal form.

The Arabic figures have the same signification.

The normal form, either in the genus or the species, we place in the middle column, because it serves as a bond of union between the two others, as the moral state is the connecting link between the intellectual and vital states.

Thus the first law relative to the primitive forms of the organs is applied in the three transverse columns, and the second law relative to their compound forms is reproduced in the three vertical columns.

As may be easily proven, the eccentric genus produces three species of eccentric forms, marked in the three divisions of the lower transverse column.

Since the figure 1 represents the eccentric form, 1-I will designate the form of the highest degree of eccentricity, which we call eccentro-eccentric.

Since the figure 3 represents the normal form, the numbers 3-I will indicate the normo-eccentricform.

Since the figure 2 designates the form which translates intelligence, the figures 2-I indicate the concentro-eccentric form as a species....