Many claims are put forward, but the best founded is that of Seurat;
and, so far as my testimony may serve his greater honour and glory, I
do solemnly declare that I believe him to have been the original
discoverer of the division of the tones.

A tone is a combination of colours. In Nature colours are separate;
they act and react one on the other, and so create in the eye the
illusion of a mixture of various colours-in other words, of a tone.
But if the human eye can perform this prodigy when looking on colour
as evolved through the spectacle of the world, why should not the eye
be able to perform the same prodigy when looking on colour as
displayed over the surface of a canvas? Nature does not mix her
colours to produce a tone; and the reason of the marked discrepancy
existing between Nature and the Louvre is owing to the fact that
painters have hitherto deemed it a necessity to prepare a tone on the
palette before placing it on the canvas; whereas it is quite clear
that the only logical and reasonable method is to first complete the
analysis of the tone, and then to place the colours which compose the
tone in dots over the canvas, varying the size of the dots and the
distance between the dots according to the depth of colour desired by
the painter.

If this be done truly--that is to say, if the first analysis of the
tones be a correct analysis--and if the spectator places himself at
the right distance from the picture, there will happen in his eyes
exactly the same blending of colour as happens in them when they are
looking upon Nature. An example will, I think, make my meaning clear.
We are in a club smoking-room. The walls are a rich ochre. Three or
four men sit between us and the wall, and the blue smoke of their