He is the greatest living French artist, and one of the most complex and powerful movers of thought in modern art. He does not found a school, but he influences the soul of a generation. He remains alone, not susceptible of imitation; but if he did not exist sculpture would be deprived of its greatest regenerator.[1] By inscribing passions in symbols, he touches the sensibilities of all, and is a master to poets as much as to sculptors, because his subjects are moral, affecting, never commanded by an anecdote, bathed in the universally lyric. Attempts have been made to blame him because of the admiration of writers; it has been said, with an inflexion of scorn (especially in the circles of his fellow-artists), "he is a _littéraire_." An injustice easily committed at a time when the intellect of painters and sculptors seems to blush at itself, and when they make it a sort of false merit to show that their eye and hand are separate from their brain. Rodin's splendid technical power annuls the reproach and retains the praise. Resting firmly upon nature, his symbols may rise high. Rodin delights poets because he makes the infinite emanate from the most finite of arts. Everything has been patiently meditated by him. He dares, but is never overbold; his balance and his taste are those of a classic, despite the uncomprehending astonishment of the academic sculptors, hypnotised by the sophistry of _finish_ and _elegance_, and confusing the _exact_ with the _true._ There is a synthesized form, that corresponds to reality synthesized in symbols, a _second truth;_ and that proportion is observed by very few artists. Most of them, contenting themselves with an immediate, momentary, anecdotic truth, translate it by picturesque observation, or by minutely detailed copying. This attempt of a sterile cleverness to transcribe the instantaneous is the very contrary of art, the first character of which is to display the laws of vital permanence underlying fugitive aspects. Herein lies the reason why sculptors become uneasy over Rodin, while writers, more familiar with general ideas, become enthusiastic. The impressionist crisis--the study, that is to say, of instantaneous lights and actions--hardly got over, he brings in this _second truth,_ the transcription of general and permanent feelings into a form that speaks as much to the mind as to the senses. Such a man dominates impressionism as much as he does academism.