not understand why, but it is by reason of his gestures.

Speech is inferior to gesture, because it corresponds to the phenomena
of mind; gesture is the agent of the heart, it is the persuasive agent.

Articulate language is weak because it is successive. It must be
enunciated phrase by phrase; by words, syllables, letters, consonants
and vowels--and these do not end it. That which demands a volume is
uttered by a single gesture. A hundred pages do not say what a simple
movement may express, because this simple movement expresses our whole
being. Gesture is the direct agent of the soul, while language is
analytic and successive. The leading quality of mind is number; it is to
speculate, to reckon, while gesture grasps everything by
intuition,--sentiment as well as contemplation. There is something
marvelous in this language, because it has relations with another
sphere; it is the world of grace.

An audience must not be supposed to resemble an individual. A man of the
greatest intelligence finding himself in an audience, is no longer
himself. An audience is never intelligent; it is a multiple being,
composed of sense and sentiment. The greater the numbers, the less
intelligence has to do. To seek to act upon an individual by gesture
would be absurd. The reverse is true with an audience; it is persuaded
not by reasoning, but by gesture.

There is here a current none can control. We applaud disagreeable things
in spite of ourselves--things we should condemn, were they said to us in
private. The audience is not composed of intellectual people, but of
people with senses and hearts. As sentiment is the highest thing in art,
it should be applied to gesture.