Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/389

Rh we step naturally and certainly to the observation, perception, and classification, of principles which constitute the highest exercise of thought. Drawing, therefore, should be cultivated primarily as a means of developing the mind; secondarily, as an accomplishment or a profession. Instruction in it should begin in early childhood, and continue until education is accomplished; and, instead of being given to a few, it should be given to all.

The work before us appears preeminently adapted to produce natural and rational mental development. The pupil has his attention directed first to straight lines, and, being shown the difference between horizontal, perpendicular, and oblique, he is required to invent forms that can be represented by the combination of two lines. In order to give direction to his efforts, he is furnished with a book containing representations of a few such combinations, but he is not allowed to confine himself to the imitation of these; he is taught to observe in things around him suggestions for other forms. In like manner he is taught to combine three, four, and as many as eight lines. Next, he is led through the same process in the combination of two or more right, acute, and obtuse angles, squares, oblongs, rhombs, etc. Being thoroughly versed in rectilinear forms, he is introduced to curved lines, circles, etc., and taught to combine them in the same manner that he followed with straight lines. As the pupil is herein taught to construct forms from simple lines, it is called the Synthetic Series. And, in order to give the development of his mind a scientific turn, the examples given in the various combinations lead with straight lines to the construction of crystalline forms, and with curved lines to the simpler vegetable and animal forms.

The Analytic Series, which is the next above, begins like the other, with straight lines, the difference being that, instead of constructing forms as in that case, the pupil is here required to pull them to pieces. He is first shown how to bisect and trisect a single line, and then to treat similarly the various sections thus formed. He is next given a square, and required to form designs on the bisection of it; next. on the trisection, and so on, until he becomes perfectly familiar with the innumerable forms that can be produced on the basis of a square, an octagon, or a hexagon. And he is led to observe on which of these bases the objects around him can be represented. He is instructed in the same manner with regard to the circles and ellipses. Thus, by an easy and interesting process, the pupil is brought to perceive and understand what is indispensable alike to drawing and to scientific thinking, the relation of parts to the whole. The examples in this series lead to landscape-gardening, architecture, and descriptive anatomy.

A Perspective and Geometric Series, based on the same plan as the two published series, will follow, to complete the system.

the compass of this little volume, Chancellor Winchell has summed up with great fairness, although, of course, with brevity, the leading arguments that are offered both for and against the theory of evolution. He has certainly not failed to do justice to its objectors; and his book is especially valuable as presenting very fully certain arguments against Darwinism that are not readily accessible. As to his own position upon the subject he says: "Should the reader demand categorically whether the author holds to the doctrine of evolution or not, he replies that this seems clearly the law of universal intelligence under which complex results are brought into existence. The existence and universality of a law operating upon materials so various, and under circumstances so diverse, but always evolving a succession of terms having the same values relatively to each other, is a fact which, to the ear of reason, proclaims intelligence more loudly than any possible array of isolated phenomena. But the diversity of the materials with which the law has to deal, brings out a variety of special values for the general terms of the evolutionary series. Mechanical force acts with uniformity, symmetry, and always in one