We hear a celebrated orator. We seek to recall, to imitate his
inflections and gestures. We adopt his mannerisms, and that is all. We
see these mannerisms everywhere, but the true type is nowhere.

After much unavailing search, I at last had the good fortune to meet a
genuine master of eloquence. After giving much study to the masterpieces
of painting and sculpture, after observing the living man in all his
moods and expressions, he has known how to sum up these details and
reduce them to laws. This great artist, this unrivaled master, was the
pious, the amiable, the lamented Delsarte.

There certainly was pleasure and profit in hearing this master of
eloquence, for he excelled in applying his principles to himself. Still
from his teachings, even from the dead letter of them, breaks forth a
light which reveals horizons hitherto unknown.

This work might have been entitled: _Philosophy of Oratorical Art_, for
one cannot treat of eloquence without entering the domain of the highest
philosophy.

What, in fact, is oratorical art? It is the means of expressing the
phenomena of the soul by the play of the organs. It is the sum total of
rules and laws resulting from the reciprocal action of mind and body.
Thus man must be considered in his sensitive, intellectual and moral
state, with the play of the organs corresponding to these states. Our
teaching has, then, for its basis the science of the soul ministered to
by the organs. This is why we present the fixed, invariable rules which
have their sanction in philosophy. This can be rendered plain by an
exposition of our method.