Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/280

276 be elementary enough, as a mere collection of individual figures and objects.

The way one expresses himself in pictures or writing, and the way one interprets illustration or text, thus reflects the level of organization which the mind itself has reached. The single figure, the composition, the pictorial series and the textual description mark successive stages in the evolution of representative functions in the individual human mind. The child passes through each of these stages in turn as he advances toward maturity in synthetic thought, and a customary dependence upon any given type fixes the developmental level which has then been reached.

The aim of education in this regard is to develop in the individual a capacity to represent experience and to express thought adequately through a system of analytic and verbal symbols. It seeks also an ability to translate these symbols fluently into terms of significant thought when they are thus employed by others and to create imaginatively the forms of original experience which they are designed to describe. It marks an arrest of development in the mind not to be thus a master of words, whether in their use or their understanding. To need pictures in order to make the thought plain means either that the writer has not mastered his craft thoroughly and does not know how to use his tools, or that the reader's mind is immature or has momentarily lapsed from the habits which characterize maturity.

The child's love of pictures obviously persists in adult life; it is eradicated in few, if any, natures and to their distinct loss. We, as well as they, on taking up a book, often look first to see the pictures, and turn to the text only when the illustrations have been explored. The pictures are a mental appetizer which whets our appetite to a keener edge as we approach the solid courses of the printed page. How often, too, when we are tired or disinclined for strenuous mental effort, do we explore the pictures of an illustrated book or magazine, which can be understood and enjoyed without exertion! It is not only at such moments of intellectual idling, however, that we thus turn to pictures in connection with our reading. How often, when a point of difficulty arises do we long for a pictorial representation which would make all plain to us, as by a flash of lightning the dark landscape is revealed at night! How gratefully do we turn to a satisfactory illustration and find there the realization of our own conception which the artist has made still more rich and splendid by his craft! And when the subject matter is such as to put our logical reflection under severe or continuous strain, how constantly do we have recourse to the device of tabulating or schematizing the substance of discussion in some spatial way that shall present it concretely and visibly!

Illustration has thus a distinct and important place in literature. The use of pictures is twofold—they serve understanding and they increase enjoyment. In the latter case, however, they are not, in the