TEE PARADOX OF DIDEROT. 541 



into her part that she puts on features not described by the au- 

 thor, but conformable to its character, thus going far toward com- 

 pleting the personality filling in the outlines which the author 

 has sketched. M. Paul Mounet says that one can not master a 

 character till he has mastered its reflex actions, its unconscious 

 movements, gait, etc. M. Got tells us that the comedian's great 

 pleasure is the pleasure of metamorphosis, of becoming for the 

 moment in various things the personage he represents. M. Truf- 

 fier believes that his profession would be in a crude state with- 

 out the gift of such metamorphoses. He adds that he experiences 

 these metamorphoses more completely in old plays, which take 

 him out of the range of present life, than in those of to-day. 



An important fact to be noted is that each actor plays a part 

 according to the sensibility peculiar to him. M. Mounet Sully 

 speaks of a combination of the character of the personage evoked 

 and that of the actor, and observes that no two actors play the 

 same part in the same way. Madame Bartet says that she is not 

 capable of rendering every kind of emotions, and that she repre- 

 sents some categories better than others. Actors usually play 

 parts having a certain degree of agreement with one another, and 

 are liable to fail when they undertake a part of a different type. 

 This restriction of ability is in part of physical origin, but is also 

 largely moral or emotional. 



The power of sustaining emotion and the duration of it vary 

 among actors much, as M. Le Bargy has observed, as some horses 

 excel in speed and others in bottom. 



As to the exact nature of artistic emotion, Madame Bartet re- 

 gards it as real in the sense that it produces the same physical 

 effects in the organism as one would feel on his own account. 

 She is oppressed in a scene of continued grief, is transported in 

 another scene, and becomes wearied with the condition, especially 

 when the emotions correspond with those natural to her. 



Artistic emotion has, however, the two peculiar characteris- 

 tics of being always agreeable and of being subject to the will. 

 The answers we have reviewed are very precise. Othere are 

 less definite ; and some of the comedians to whom we have ap- 

 plied have simply answered that the factitious emotions inspired 

 by the parts are less intense than real ones ; but M. Mounet Sully 

 is of the opinion that the emotion is lived and felt as if it were 

 real. 



We come now to Diderot's principal argument, that one can 

 not be moved by emotion and be critical at the same time. With- 

 out availing ourselves of the fruits of recent researches on complex 

 consciousness, we will merely refer here to what we have learned 

 concerning the case in hand. M. Got found no difficulty in sup- 

 posing the combination of the two functions, in dramatic repre- 



