In the satisfaction of physical wants the ideal consists, above all, in the simplicity of the means. Instead of being artificial, factitious, complex, the latter emanate directly from the activity of man, and freedom. The heroes of Homer themselves slay the oxen which are to serve for the feast, and roast them; they forge their arms, and prepare their couches. This is not, as one might think, a relic of barbarous manners, something prosaic; but we see, penetrating everywhere the delight of invention, the pleasure of easy toil and free activity exercised on material objects. Everything is peculiar to and inherent in his character, and a means for the hero of revealing the force of his arm and the skill of his hand; while, in civilized society, these objects depend on a thousand foreign causes, on a complex adjustment in which man is converted into a machine subordinated to other machines. Things have lost their freshness and vitality; they remain inanimate, and are no longer proper, direct creations of the human person, in which the man loves to solace and contemplate himself. A final point relative to the external _form of the ideal_ is that which concerns the _relation of works of art to the public_, that is to say, to the nation and epoch for which the artist or the poet composes his works. Ought the artist, when he treats a subject, to consult, above all, the spirit, taste and manners of the people whom he addresses, and conform himself to their ideas? This is the means of exciting interest in fabulous and imaginary or even historic persons. But then there is a liability to distort history and tradition. Ought he, on the other hand, to reproduce with scrupulous exactness the manners and customs of another time, to give to the facts and the characters their proper coloring and their original and primitive costume? This is the problem. Hence arise two schools and two opposite modes of representation. In the age of Louis XIV., for example, the Greeks and Romans are conceived in the likeness of Frenchmen. Since then, by a natural reaction, the contrary tendency has prevailed. Today the poet must have the knowledge of an archeologist, and possess his scrupulous exactness, and pay close attention, above all, to local color, and historic verity has become the principal and essential aim of art. Truth here, as always, lies between the two extremes. It is necessary to maintain, at the same time, the rights of art and these of the public, to have a proper regard for the spirit of the epoch, and to satisfy the exigencies of the subject treated. These are the very judicious rules which the author states upon this delicate point.