Genius:--its attribute is creative power.--Refutation of the opinion that art is the imitation of nature.--M. Emeric David, and M. Quatremere de Quincy.--Refutation of the theory of illusion. That dramatic art has not solely for its end to excite the passions of terror and pity.--Nor even directly the moral and religious sentiment.--The proper and direct object of art is to produce the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful; this idea and this sentiment purify and elevate the soul by the affinity between the beautiful and the good, and by the relation of ideal beauty to its principle, which is God.--True mission of art. Man is not made only to know and love the beautiful in the works of nature, he is endowed with the power of reproducing it. At the sight of a natural beauty, whatever it may be, physical or moral, his first need is to feel and admire. He is penetrated, ravished, as it were overwhelmed with the sentiment of beauty. But when the sentiment is energetic, he is not a long time sterile. We wish to see again, we wish to feel again what caused us so vivid a pleasure, and for that end we attempt to revive the beauty that charmed us, not as it was, but as our imagination represents it to us. Hence a work original and peculiar to man, a work of art. Art is the free reproduction of beauty, and the power in us capable of reproducing it is called genius. What faculties are used in this free reproduction of the beautiful? The same that serve to recognize and feel it. Taste carried to the highest degree, if you always join to it an additional element, is genius. What is this element? Three faculties enter into that complex faculty that is called taste,--imagination, sentiment, reason.