caricature. For exaggeration to be comic, it must not appear as an
aim, but rather as a means that the artist is using in order to make
manifest to our eyes the distortions which he sees in embryo. It is
this process of distortion that is of moment and interest. And that
is precisely why we shall look for it even in those elements of the
face that are incapable of movement, in the curve of a nose or the
shape of an ear. For, in our eyes, form is always the outline of a
movement. The caricaturist who alters the size of a nose, but
respects its ground plan, lengthening it, for instance, in the very
direction in which it was being lengthened by nature, is really
making the nose indulge in a grin. Henceforth we shall always look
upon the original as having determined to lengthen itself and start
grinning. In this sense, one might say that Nature herself often
meets with the successes of a caricaturist. In the movement through
which she has slit that mouth, curtailed that chin and bulged out
that cheek, she would appear to have succeeded in completing the
intended grimace, thus outwitting the restraining supervision of a
more reasonable force. In that case, the face we laugh at is, so to
speak, its own caricature.

To sum up, whatever be the doctrine to which our reason assents, our
imagination has a very clear-cut philosophy of its own: in every
human form it sees the effort of a soul which is shaping matter, a
soul which is infinitely supple and perpetually in motion, subject
to no law of gravitation, for it is not the earth that attracts it.
This soul imparts a portion of its winged lightness to the body it
animates: the immateriality which thus passes into matter is what is
called gracefulness. Matter, however, is obstinate and resists. It
draws to itself the ever-alert activity of this higher principle,
would fain convert it to its own inertia and cause it to revert to