Without number, no science; without number, no poetry. The strophe, the epic poem, the drama, the riotous palpitation of man, the bursting forth of love, the irradiation of the imagination, all this cloud with its flashes, the passion,--all is lorded over by the mysterious word number, even as geometry and arithmetic. Ajax, Hector, Hecuba, the seven chiefs before Thebes, Œdipus, Ugolino, Messalina, Lear and Priam, Romeo, Desdemona, Richard III., Pantagruel, the Cid, Alcestes, all belong to it, as well as conic sections and the differential and integral calculus. It starts from two and two make four, and ascends to the region where the lightning sits. Yet, between art and science, let us note a radical difference. Science may be brought to perfection; art, not. Why? CHAPTER III. Among human things, and inasmuch as it is a human thing, art is a strange exception. The beauty of everything here below lies in the power of reaching perfection. Everything is endowed with that property. To increase, to augment, to win strength, to march forward, to be worth more to-day than yesterday,--that is at once glory and life. The beauty of art lies in not being susceptible of improvement. Let us insist on these essential ideas, already touched on in some of the preceding pages. A _chef-d'œuvre_ exists once for all. The first poet who arrives, arrives at the summit. You will ascend after him, as high, not higher. Ah, you call yourself Dante! well; but that one calls himself Homer. Progress, goal constantly displaced, halting-place forever varying, has a shifting horizon. Not so with the ideal. Now, progress is the motive power of science; the ideal is the generator of art. Thus is explained why perfection is the characteristic of science, and not of art. A savant may outlustre a savant; a poet never throws a poet into the shade. Art progresses after its own fashion. It shifts its ground like science; but its successive creations, containing the immutable, live, while the admirable attempts of science, which are, and can be nothing but combinations of the contingent, obliterate each other. The relative is in science; the positive is in art. The _chef-d'œuvre_ of to-day will be the _chef d'œuvre_ of to-morrow. Does Shakespeare interfere in any way with Sophocles? Does Molière take anything from Plautus? Even when he borrows Amphitryon he does not take him from him. Does Figaro blot out Sancho Panza? Does Cordelia suppress Antigone? No. Poets do not climb over each other. The one is not the stepping-stone of the other. They rise up alone, without any other lever than themselves. They do not tread their equal under foot. Those who are first in the field respect the old ones. They succeed, they do not replace each other. The beautiful does not drive away the beautiful. Neither wolves nor _chefs-d'œuvre_ devour each other.