Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/65

 PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY. 51 that at this stage he cannot draw even when a model is >efore his eyes." May I suggest the following objections ? 1. That the image is a later product than is here implied. 2. That verbal description is no evidence of visual imagery. ?he child describes " the object," be it noted, not what he rould see on a particular view ; and how many of us can jive excellent verbal descriptions who have no imagery at all ? 3. That the young child does not try to reproduce his lage if he have one, but draws certain salient characteristics rhich he knows to co-exist in the same object, being indif- ferent to their co-existence in the same view. 4. That the fact that he cannot draw what he sees " even fhen the model is before his eyes " is not necessarily due to 3k of co-ordination. This appears from the kind of errors rhich are made. There comes a stage, I admit, when a clear risual image or visual sensation enables us again and again practise much erasure for the purpose of getting our draw- ing to coincide with our copy, but this is certainly not " at the outset ". Does a child put two eyes on one side of a face because he cannot draw in accordance with a visual image which has one eye ? Does he draw a fire in Jack's house when Jack is in the oven because his hand will not execute rhat his eye pictures ? l The child probably has no visual lage of a horse, a face, a brick in this sense at all. Even rhen he has attained to images, they are probably, at first, Broken scraps, disproportioned, non-synchronous, irration- ally and impossibly linked into what is the merest parody of a visual whole. The difficulties in interpretation seem to me to be overcome by the following view, viz., that early drawing is of objects as known, not of synchronously perceived aspects of objects, nor of images ; and that the power to see is the result of a long and difficult analytical process. We find then in children's spontaneous drawings the same general characteristics as in their inventive language. It may be well to repeat the question which we asked in that connexion. To what extent will children learn drawing spontaneously and by play ? A system of reading lately introduced into several infant schools prescribes that, after a story or reading, the little ones shall draw, without their teacher's help, anything they can in connexion with the story. I have seen hundreds of these drawings and am in hearty agreement with Prof. Sully as to the non-progressiveness of this play-drawing. 1 See Studies in Children's Drawings, Prof. Earl Barnes.