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real domain of the artist. Ris spirit and intelligence became emancipated and henceforth his eye could be directed by his mind. Re believed that figures and their movements should be drawn from the mind of the artist and not merely be copied from nature, that harmony and beauty could result only from the choice that is made from among the unassorted elements of our environment and that while the forest is provided by nature, it is for the artist to create the path. Through knowledge, the artist can control his representation of nature, through his interpretation, he can recreate her. Such a synthesis is of incomparably greater value than the poor simplifications and phantasies of ignorance.
There was immense progress in art as the result of the establishment of these new "laws of reason," but still more was to be learned from the art of Greece. There is an intangible science; one that seems to be the natural gift of certain persons of genius. Lhis recognizes that art often eludes mathematicallaws and is ruled by laws that are far more subtle- ~he laws of sensibility. According to these laws, two and two do not make four. An example will en able the reader to understand better what is meant by this distinction. ln geometry a straight line is straight. Two equal lengths are equal. But in art, lines have a reciprocal influence upon one another. Rare a straight line is not necessarily straight. It is necessary only that it should appear so to the eye. In the Grecian temples, the line of the base of the pediment is raised in the middle, then broken; but it appears straight. ln Roman temples (maladroit copies of the Greek) this same line is perfectly horizontal, but it appears to sink. The Greeks had obeyed the laws of sensibility in raising their line of the base in the middle, whereas the Romans, not suspecting these phenomena, had preserved the geometrical horizontality of this line. The result is that in their buildings it seems to go down in the middle. ln a Grecian statue, the leg that rests on the ground is always a little longer and thinner than the one that is in the air. This is necessary to make the legs appear equal; whereas in Roman statues they always have dimensions of equal volume and, from that fact, appear dissimilar. It is undoubt- |