Suppose now, gentlemen, we should succeed in this undertaking, and that we should be able to mark clearly and precisely the various intellectual conditions which have led to the birth of Italian painting--its development, its bloom, its varieties and decline. Suppose the same undertaking successful with other countries, and other ages, and with the different branches of art, architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry, and music. Suppose, that through the effect of all these discoveries, we succeed in defining the nature, and in marking the conditions of existence of each art, we shall then have a complete explanation of the Fine Arts, and of all in general; that is to say, a philosophy of the Fine Arts--what is called an _æsthetic_ system. This is what we aim at, gentlemen, and nothing else. Ours is modern, and differs from the ancient, inasmuch as it is historic, and not dogmatic; that is to say, it imposes no precepts, but ascertains and verifies laws. Ancient Æsthetics gave, at first, a definition of beauty, and declared, for instance, that the beautiful is the expression of the moral ideal, or rather is the expression of the invisible, or, rather still, is the expression of the human passions; then starting hence, as from an article of a code, they absolved, condemned, admonished, and directed. It is my good fortune not to have such a formidable task to meet. I do not wish to guide you--it would embarrass me too much. Besides, I say with all humility, that, as to precepts, we have as yet found but two: the first is to be born a genius, an affair of your parents, and not mine; and the second, which implies much labor in order to master art, which likewise does not depend on me, but on yourselves. My sole duty is to offer you facts, and show you how these facts are produced. The modern method, which I strive to pursue, and which is beginning to be introduced in all the moral sciences, consists in considering human productions, and particularly works of art, as facts and productions of which it is essential to mark the characteristics and seek the causes, and nothing more. Thus understood, science neither pardons nor proscribes; it verifies and explains. It does not say to you, despise Dutch art because it is vulgar, and prize only Italian art; nor does it say to you despise Gothic art because it is morbid, and prize only Greek art. It leaves every one free to follow their own predilections, to prefer that which is germane to one's temperament, and to study with the greatest care that which best corresponds to the development of one's own mind. Science has sympathies for all the forms of art, and for all schools, even for those the most opposed to each other. It accepts them as so many manifestations of the human mind, judging that the more numerous they are, and the more antithetical, the more they show the human mind in its innumerable and novel phases. It is analogous to botany, which