ing this, at times,
imperceptible tendency, and in rendering it visible to all eyes by
magnifying it. He makes his models grimace, as they would do themselves
if they went to the end of their tether. Beneath the skin-deep harmony
of form, he divines the deep-seated recalcitrance of matter. He
realises disproportions and deformations which must have existed in
nature as mere inclinations, but which have not succeeded in coming to
a head, being held in check by a higher force. His art, which has a
touch of the diabolical, raises up the demon who had been overthrown by
the angel. Certainly, it is an art that exaggerates, and yet the
definition would be very far from complete were exaggeration alone
alleged to be its aim and object, for there exist caricatures that are
more lifelike than portraits, caricatures in which the exaggeration is
scarcely noticeable, whilst, inversely, it is quite possible to
exaggerate to excess without obtaining a real caricature. For
exaggeration to be comic, it must not appear as an aim, but rather as a
means that the artist is using in order to make manifest to our eyes
the distortions which he sees in embryo. It is this process of
distortion that is of moment and interest. And that is precisely why we
shall look for it even in those elements of the face that are incapable
of movement, in the curve of a nose or the shape of an ear. For, in our
eyes, form is always the outline of a movement. The caricaturist who
alters the size of a nose, but respects its ground plan, lengthening
it, for instance, in the very direction in which it was being
lengthened by nature, is really making the nose indulge in a grin.
Henceforth we shall always look upon the original as having determined
to lengthen itself and start grinning. In this sense, one might say
that Nature herself often meets with the successes of a caricaturist.
In the movement through which she has slit that mouth, curtailed that
chin and bulged out that cheek, she would appear to have succeeded in
completing the intended grimace, thus outwitting the restraining
supervision of a more reasonable force. In that case, the face we laugh
at is, so to speak, its own caricature.

To sum up, whatever be the doctrine to which our reason assents, our
imagination has a very clear-cut philosophy of its own: in every human
form it sees the effort of a soul which is shaping matter, a soul which
is infinitely supple and perpetually in motion, subject to no la