gent performance that his argument is ' purely ' a
priori, and that he only applied to the actors in order to be able to eke it out with more 'scrajjs of anecdote' than Diderot gave ? I think not.
The. first weighty contravention of Diderot's paradox came from Talma^ who, as already noted, defined 'sensibility' afresh, and got entangled in his definition. Diderot had formally explained the word to mean a cast of temperament which we should to-day speak of as finely strung and emotionally sympathetic; though, as Mr. Archer well shows, he really used the term in several senses, one of which was — ' unable to properly control one's simulation of another personality '; whereas such inability does not necessarily follow save on a
degree of excitability that would keep the subject off the stage altogether. There may be the plastic temperament and the power to control likewise. Talma, on the other side, defined ' sensibility ' out of hand as not only the faculty of appreciating and realising the emotions proper to a character, but the ability to imagine, enter into, and ' create ' in one's own person the ideal conception of the dramatist — as being, in
short, the substance of the actor's gift. Mr. Archer observes that Diderot's definition ends the discussion at once, since it makes sensibility mean ' a morbid habit of mind and body, which must interfere, not with acting alone, but with all healthy art whatsoever. This is self-evident.' But, though Diderot's definition is indeed unsatisfactory, this protest also goes too far.
Mr. Archer might have learned from Talma, as well as from observation, that specifically morbid conditions may, and do, often conduce to artistic successes; though it is indeed a truism to assert that ' moi-bid ' conditions interfere with ' healthy ' art. To continue, however : Talma's definition is at least as question-begging as Diderot's ; and )'et he too goes on to confuse his case by assigning to 'intelligence' a quantity of work which he has already credited to sensibility ; this, after a gratuitous attempt to account for Diderot's error by a criticism of that writer which is perhaps as hopelessly wrong as anything that has been said throughout the controversy.
What is of permanent value in Talma's Reflexions is his circumstantial demonstration of the truth at which Diderot was driving, freed in effect from the errors involved in Diderot's misuse of terms ; though his own mismanagement of terms leaves fresh verbal confusion for the reader who is not careful to do his own thinking. Had Talma been a disinterested and circumspect as well as an instructed judge of the problem, he might once for all have solved the discords of the Puradoxc, and left us the unsophisticated truth. M. Coquelin has lately declared that for him the paradox is the simple truth; he looking at the verity embodied in Diderot's exposition: Talma, on the other hand, looked mainly at the verity which Diderot failed to set properly forth. His interesting account of Lekain settles two things : first, that ' sensibility,' that is to say, plasticity of temperament and capacity to enter sympathetically into the emotions of an imaginary character, are necessary to the great actor ; and, second, that with this sensibility there must go the completest artistic control and calculation, so that the consciously sub-induced emotion shall never attain to the potency of a spontaneous personal possession of the corresponding sort. This is the gist of the whole matter. But Talma verbally contradicted Diderot, and fell himself into verbal laxities; verbalist partisans took up the two sides alternately ; Mr. Irving, naturally not getting to the bottom of the matter, took up one side polemically, creating a revival of faction ; and the war of half-truths has gone on somewhat after the fashion of wars of half-bricks, till now Mr. Archer, perhaps not quite purposely, shows a way of turning the half-bricks to better purpose by uniting them.
He might, indeed, have done his work with less polemic, and with less air of ill-will for one of the half-bricks that he was turning to account. He has set up two generalised antagonists in the shape of ' emotionalist ' and ' anti-emotionalist,' though the material for such generalisation only exists in that order of disputants who aspire to nothing beyond taking up somebody else's opinion and standing by it through thick and thin. Save in respect of a misapprehension about terms, there are no real 'anti-emotionalists'; and Talma and others whom Mr. Archer cites as ' emotionalists ' are really emphatic as to the need of keeping judgment above emotion. The whole difficulty lies in a nut-shell. Does the moving actor really 'feel' the emotion which he exhibits in tears, laughter, blushes, and variation of voice ? A number of actors testify that reminiscence of personal grief often blends movingly with the grief of their ro/e, and that besides they really feel ' moved ' by the feelings proper to the part. On this Mr. Archer insists that they feel a ' real ' emotion. But thus to use the word ' real ' without explanation is surely an oversight on the part of a critic who rightly enough condemns Diderot for not properly defining his terms. Everything depends on what you mean by ' real ' ; and it will hardly do, when you are claiming to ' speak by the card,' to write as Mr. Archer does about the actor's ' imagined emotion happening to coincide with a real emotion in his real life.' Such ' coincidence,' in the strict sense of the terms, would actually mean more ' real emotion ' on the stage than in the real experience ; when in the tenns of the case the actor on the stage is applying a large part of his functional activity to processes of memory and calculation. Why not rather say that the memory of a real {i.e. an experienced) emotion may so far facilitate and direct the nervous processes of simulation as to ensure an artistic success to the actor } Doubtless the memori/ is ' real ' ; but it is surely plain that any dispute which still takes place over the matter must be as to the extent to which the actor is experiencing mental pain. Mr. Archer, though apparently calling himself an
