Page:Scottishartrevie01unse.djvu/348

300 unfairly severe judgment of Diderot's seminal performance, and elaborates his own explanation of the phenomena of which he has collected evidence. This expansion of the earlier articles is all clear gain : the continued unsympathetic treatment of Diderot one cannot but regret. It is perfectly true, as Mr. Archer insists, that Diderot's dialogue is flawed by incon- sistencies. These inconsistencies, indeed, must be obvious to every moderately attentive reader ; and long ago one of the more fundamental was pointed out by Talma in his Reflexions sur Lckain et sur l'Art Thealral. Diderot, always employed and always rapid, first wrote for Grimm a brief refutation of the book, Garticlc, ou les Acleurs Anglais, to which he refers at the beginning of the Paradoxe; then later expanded it in the form of a dialogue; and later still revised and interpolated it; but always leaving uncured the inconsistencies which so readily come of any attempt to rapidly recast and systematise a psychological theory. The closing passages of the Paradojce, indeed, show that Diderot had actually glimpsed the confusion into which he had carried his argument by his incautious use of the word ' sensibility ' ; and it is not unlikely that this perception made him finally leave the work in manuscript, despite the attention he had given it. But even if this were not so, it is surely harsh to make it a ground of derision against such a composition that it falls into inconsistencies. Did any writer ever sustain a substantially new thesis without doing so ? Granted that Diderot is more headlong than most men of similar calibre, it is still the fact, as Mr. Archer himself pleads, that the subject is after the first blush intricate and baffling; and when it is recognised that Diderot suffered in particular from the slipperiness of the terms employed, surely the fair course is to make special allowance for the misadventures of exploration. If we to-day can proceed more securely, it is simply because these earlier miscarriages have shown us the nature of the ground. What Diderot did, one would say, was to attack a fallacious empiricism as to the psychological nature of the process of acting, and to lay down, with exaggeration and inconsistency certainly, yet with a stimulating vividness and an abundance of insight, a principle the final establishment of which is important alike to art and to science. He lifted the whole discussion one stage forward ; and it will be found that in few departments of human thought is this ever achieved without minor miscarriages and confusions; the pioneer almost always committing oversights which are easy enough of rectification by those who follow the path he has cleared, though these would have found it a very different matter to make the path for themselves. In the present case, indeed, we find oversights committed by those who follow in Diderot's tracks and claim to correct him. Talma, controverting the Paradoxe, offers a definition of 'sensibility,' and a statement of its functions, which he himself trips over in his next page; and he leaves the whole matter to the full as verbally confused as Diderot left it, though giving us some valuable side-lights in passing. Nay, Mr. Archer confesses the probability that he too has fallen into some inconsistencies in his attempt to unravel the problem; and he has indeed actually done so. Why then treat Diderot with something very like contempt for his preliminary lapses?

Let us see briefly how the discussion has gone. Diderot, rejecting certain current dicta as to good acting being the simple expression of genuine feeling on the actor's part, boldly alleged not only that 'nature' would fail on the stage, but that the actor must be without sympathetic emotion. 'Sensibility,' he says, 'is only in a slight degree the quality of a great genius'; and then, shifting the ground even here, he gives us his paradox: 'It is extreme sensibility which makes mediocre actors ; it is mediocre sensibility which makes the multitude of bad actors ; and it is the absolute lack of sensibility which makes sublime actors.' The idea is that ' sensibility ' and ' nature ' will give an actor good detached effects, but no continuous excellence; that the ordinary actor is not emotional enough to secure even such happy moments, and not genius enough to simulate the desired traits ; and that the great actor simulates all things by force of his mimetic gift without ever truly feeling what he acts; a quantity of more or less conclusive evidence being cited by Diderot on the latter head. On the general argument Mr. Archer pronounced, at the outset of his circular to the actors, that it was ' purely a priori,' and only 'eked out with a few scraps of anecdote.' Now, Mr. Archer's own researches go to show that the argument was not purely a priori ; that Diderot had earlier held a different opinion ; and that he only reached his ' paradox ' by comparing an exposition of what Mr. Archer calls the ' emotionalist ' view with his knowledge of what actually took place on the stage. On the other hand, Mi% Archer in his circular asked a question about the ' two or more strata of consciousness which 7iiiiil co-exist in your mind while acting.' ' It has been objected,' he tells us (p. 1.^1), 'that the phrase " must co-exist " begs the question ; but is there really any question to beg.'' I looked upon the double action of the brain as a matter of universal experience, a thing to be assumed just as one assumes that the normal man has two legs.' Now, Mr. Archer was quite right as to the ' double action ' ; but it is possible to beg the question even when you are right ; and he lets us know a few pages further on that ' manj' actors — a surprising number, indeed — seem to be quite unaware of any double action of the mind. Some resent the suggestion' ; so that Mr. Archer was confessedly wrong-as to the ' universal experience,' and really begged the question as against those very many actors who had not perceived the truth. And there are other proofs that he had a theory in the main ready before he asked for fresh evidence. Should we then be justified in saying lightly of his admirably methodical and intelli-