of the really eminent
Institute statues would make were their heads knocked off by some band
of modern barbarian invaders. In the event of such an irruption, would
there be any torsos left from which future Poussins could learn all they
should know of the human form? Would there be any _disjecta membra_ from
which skilled anatomists could reconstruct the lost _ensemble_, or at
any rate make a shrewd guess at it? Would anything survive mutilation
with the serene confidence in its fragmentary but everywhere penetrating
interest which seems to pervade the most fractured fraction of a Greek
relief on the Athenian acropolis? Yes, there would be the debris of
Auguste Rodin's sculpture.

In our day the human figure has never been so well understood. Back of
such expressive modelling as we note in the "Saint Jean," in the "Adam"
and "Eve," in the "Calaisiens," in a dozen figures of the Dante doors,
is a knowledge of anatomy such as even in the purely scientific
profession of surgery can proceed only from an immense fondness for
nature, an insatiable curiosity as to her secrets, an inexhaustible
delight in her manifestations. From the point of view of such knowledge
and such handling of it, it is no wonder that the representations of
nature which issue from the Institute seem superficial. One can
understand that from this point of view very delightful sculpture, very
refined, very graceful, very perfectly understood within its limits, may
appear like _baudruche_--inflated gold-beater's skin, that is to say, of
which toy animals are made in France, and which has thus passed into
studio _argot_ as the figure for whatever lacks structure and substance.
Ask M. Rodin the explanation of a movement, an attitude, in one of his
works which strikes your convention-steeped sense as strange, and he
will account for it just as an anatomical demonstrator would--pointing
out its necessary derivation from some disposition of another part of
the figure, and not at all dwelling on its grace or its other purely
decorative felicity. Its artistic function in his eyes is to aid in
expressing fully and completely the whole of which it forms a part, not
to constitute a harmonious detail merely agreeable to the easily
satisfied eye. But then the whole will look anatomical rather than
artistic. There is the point exactly. Will it? I remember speculating
about this in conversation with M. Rodin himself. "Isn't there danger,"
I said, "of getting too fond o