Here, too, the analogy between the child and the uncultured nature-man

is evident. The savage has no æsthetic sentiment for nature as a whole,

though he may feel the charm of some of her single features, a stream, a

mountain, the star-spangled sky, and may even be affected by some of the

awful aspects of her changing physiognomy. Are we not told, indeed, that

a true æsthetic appreciation of the picturesque variety of nature’s

scenes of the weird charm of wild places, and of the sublime

fascinations of the awful and repellent mountain, are quite late

attainments in the history of our race?[206]

-----

Footnote 206:

An excellent sketch of the growth of our feeling for the romantic and

sublime beauty of mountains is given by Mr. Leslie Stephen in one of

the most delightful of his works, _The Playground of Europe_.

-----

_Early Attitude towards Art._

We may now look at the child’s attitude towards those objects and

processes of human art which from the first form part of his environment

and make an educative appeal to his senses; and here we may begin with

those simple musical effects which follow up certain impressions derived

from the natural world.

It has been pointed out that sounds form a chief source of the little

child-heart’s first trepidations. Yet this prolific cause of

disquietude, when once the first alarming effect of strangeness has

passed, becomes a main source of interest and delight. Some of nature’s

sounds, as those of running water, and of the wind, early catch the ear,

and excite wonder and curiosity. Miss Shinn illustrates fully in the

case of her niece how the interest in sounds developed itself in the

first years.[207] This pleasure in listening to sounds and in tracing

them to their origin forms a chief pastime of babyhood.

-----

Footnote 207:

_Op cit._, p. 115 ff.

-----

Æsthetic pleasure in sound begins to be differentiated out of this

general interest as soon as there arises a comparison of qualities and a

development of preferences. Thus the sound of metal (when struck) is

preferred to that of wood or stone. A nascent feeling for musical

quality thus emerges which probably has its part in many of the first

likings for persons; certain pitches, as those of the female voice, and

possibly timbres being preferred to others.

Quite as soon, at least, as this feeling for quality of sound or tone,

there manifests itself a crude liking for rhythmic sequence. It is

commonly recognised that our pleasure in regularly recurring sounds is

instinctive, being the result of our whole nervous organisation. We can

better adapt successive acts of listening when sounds follow at regular

intervals, and the movements which sounds evoke can be much better

carried out in a regular sequence. The infant shows us this in his

well-known liking for well-marked rhythms in tunes which he accompanies

with suitable movements of the arms, head, etc.

The first likings for musical composition are based on this instinctive

feeling for rhythm. It is the simple tunes, with well-marked easily

recognisable time-divisions, which first take the child’s fancy, and he

knows the quieting and the exciting qualities of different rhythms and

times. Where rhythm is less marked, or grows highly complex, the motor

responses being confused, the pleasurable interest declines. It is the

same with the rhythmic qualities of verses. The jingling rhythms which

their souls love are of simple structure, with short feet well marked

off, as in the favourite, ‘Jack and Gill’.

Coming now to art as representative we find that a child’s æsthetic

appreciation waits on the growth of intelligence, on the understanding

of artistic representation as contrasted with a direct presentation of

reality.

The development of an understanding of visual representation or the

imaging of things has already been touched upon. As Perez points out,

the first lesson in this branch of knowledge is supplied by the

reflexions of the mirror, which, as we have seen, the infant begins to

take for realities, though he soon comes to understand that they are not

tangible realities. The looking-glass is the best means of elucidating

the representative function of the image or ‘Bild’ just because it

presents this image in close proximity to the reality, and so invites

direct comparison with this.

In the case of pictures where this direct comparison is excluded we

might expect a less rapid recognition of the representative function.

Yet children show very early that picture-semblances are understood in

the sense that they call forth reactions similar to those called forth

by realities. A little boy was observed to talk to pictures at the end

of the eighth month. This perhaps hardly amounted to recognition.

Pollock says that the significance of pictures “was in a general way

understood” by his little girl at the age of thirteen months.[208] Miss

Shinn tells us that her niece, at the age of forty-two weeks, showed the

same excitement at the sight of a life-size painting of a cat as at that

of real cats.[209] Ten months is also given me by a lady as the date at

which her little boy recognised pictures of animals by naming them

‘bow-wow,’ etc., without being prompted.

-----

Footnote 208:

_Mind_, iii., p. 393.

Footnote 209:

_Notes on the Development of a Child_, i., p. 71 f.

-----

This early recognition of pictures is certainly remarkable even when we

remember that animals have the germ of it. The stories of recognition by

birds of paintings of birds, and by dogs of portraits of persons, have

to do with fairly large and finished paintings.[210] A child, however,

will ‘recognise’ a small and roughly executed drawing. He seems in this

respect to surpass the powers of savages, some of whom, at least, are

said to be slow in recognising pictorial semblances. This power, which

includes a delicate observation of form and an acute sense of likeness,

is seen most strikingly in the recognition of individual portraits. Miss

Shinn’s niece in her fourteenth month picked out her father’s face in a

group of nine, the face being scarcely more than a quarter of an inch in

diameter.[211] I noticed the same fineness of recognition in my own

children.

-----

Footnote 210:

See Romanes, _Animal Intelligence_, pp. 311 and 453 ff. The only

exception is a photograph which is said to have been ‘large,’ p. 453.

Footnote 211:

_Op. cit._, i., p. 74.

-----

One point in this early observation of pictures is curious enough to

call for especial remark. A friend of mine, a psychologist, writes to me

that his little girl, aged three and a half, “does not mind whether she

looks at a picture the right way up or the wrong; she points out what

you ask for, eyes, feet, hands, tail, etc., about equally well whichever

way up the picture is, and never asks to have it put right that she may

see it better”. The same thing was noticed in the other children of the

family, and the mother tells me that her mother observed it in her

children. I have found a further illustration of this indifference to

the position of a picture in the two children of another friend of mine.

Professor Petrie tells me that he once watched an Arab boy looking at a

picture-book. One, a drawing of horses and chariot, happened to have a

different position from the rest, so that the book being held as before,

the horses seemed to be going upwards; but the boy was not in the least

incommoded, and without attempting to turn the book round easily made it

out. These facts are curious as illustrating the skill of the young eye

in deciphering. They may possibly have a further significance as showing

how what we call position—the arrangement of a form in relation to a

vertical line—is a comparatively artificial view of which a child as yet

takes little if any account. He may be able to concentrate his attention

so well on form proper that he is indifferent to the point how the form

is placed. Yet this matter is one which well deserves further

investigation.[212]

-----

Footnote 212:

Professor Petrie reminds me that a like absence of the perception of

position shows itself in the way in which letters are drawn in early

Greek and Phœnician writings.

-----

A further question arises as to whether this ‘recognition’ of pictures

by children towards the end of the first year necessarily implies a

grasp of the idea of a picture, that is, of a representation or copy of

something. The first reactions of a child, smiling, etc., on seeing

mirror-images and pictures, do not seem to show this, but merely that he

is affected much as he would be by the presence of the real object, or,

at most, that he recognises the picture as a kind of thing. The same is,

I think, true of the so-called recognition of pictures by animals.

That children do not, at first, seize the pictorial or representative

function is seen in the familiar fact that they will touch pictures as

they touch shadows and otherwise treat them as if they were tangible

realities. Thus Pollock’s little girl attempted to smell at the trees in

a picture and ‘pretended’ to feed some pictorial dogs.

When the first clear apprehension of the pictorial function is reached,

it is difficult to say. Miss Shinn thought that her niece “understood

the purport of a picture quite well” at the age of forty-five weeks. She

draws this conclusion from the fact that at this date the child in

answer to the question ‘Where are the flowers?’ leaned over and touched

the painted flowers on her aunt’s gown, and then looked out to the

garden with a cry of desire.[213] But this inference seems to me very

risky. All that the child’s behaviour proves is that she ‘classed’ real

and painted flowers together, while she recognised the superiority of

the former as the tangible and probably the odorous ones. The strongest

evidence of recognition of pictorial function by children is, I think,

their ability to recognise the portrait of an individual. But even this

is not quite satisfactory. It is conceivable, at least, that a child may

look on a photograph of his father as a kind of ‘double’. The boy C.

took his projected photograph very seriously as a kind of doubling of

himself. The story of the dog, a Dandy Dinmont terrier, that trembled

and barked at a portrait of his dead mistress[214] seems to me to bear

this out. It would surely be rather absurd to say that the

demonstrations of this animal, whatever they may have meant, prove that

he took the portrait to be a memento-likeness of his dead mistress.

-----

Footnote 213:

_Op. cit._, i., p. 72.

Footnote 214:

Romanes, _op. cit._, p. 453.

-----

We are apt to forget how difficult and abstract a conception is that of

pictorial representation, how hard it is to look at a thing as pure

semblance having no value in itself, but only as standing for something

else. A like slowness on the part of the child to grasp a sign, as such,

shows itself here as in the case of verbal symbols. Children will, quite

late, especially when feeling is aroused and imagination specially

active, show a disposition to transform the semblance into the thing.

Miss Shinn herself points out that her niece, who seems to have been

decidedly quick, was as late as the twenty-fifth month touched with pity

by a picture of a lamb caught in a thicket, and tried to lift the

painted branch that lay across the lamb. In her thirty-fifth month,

again, when looking at a picture of a chamois defending her little one

from an eagle, “she asked anxiously if the mamma would drive the eagle

away, and presently quite simply and unconsciously placed her little

hand edgewise on the picture so as to make a fence between the eagle and

the chamois”.[215] Such ready confusion of pictures with realities shows

itself in the fourth year and later. A boy nearly five was observed to

strike at the figures in a picture and to exclaim: “I can’t break them”.

The Worcester Collection of observations illustrates the first confused

idea of a picture. “One day F., a boy of four, called on a friend, Mrs.

C., who had just received a picture, representing a scene in winter, in

which people were going to church, some on foot and others in sleighs.

F. was told whither they were going. The next day he came and noticed

the picture, and looking at Mrs. C. and then at the picture said: ‘Why,

Mrs. C., them people haven’t got there yet, have they?’”

-----

Footnote 215:

_Op. cit._, ii., p. 104.

-----

All this points, I think, to a slow and gradual emergence of the idea of

representation or likeness. If a child is capable in moments of intense

imagination of confusing his battered doll with a living reality, he may

be expected to act similarly with respect to the fuller likeness of a

picture. Vividness of imagination tends in the child as in the savage,

and indeed in all of us, to invest a semblance with something of

reality. We are able to control the illusory tendency and to keep it

within the limits of an æsthetic semi-illusion; not so the child. Is it

too fanciful to suppose that the belief of the savage in the occasional

visits of the real spirit-god to his idol has for its psychological

motive the impulse which prompts the child ever and again to identify

his toys and even his pictures with the realities which they represent?

As might be expected this impulse to confuse representation and

represented reality shows itself very distinctly in the first reception

of dramatic spectacle. If you dress up as Father Christmas, your child,

even though he is told that you are his father, will hardly be able to

resist the illusion that your disguise so powerfully induces. Cuvier

relates that a boy of ten on watching a stage scene in which troops were

drawn up for action, broke out in loud protestations to the actor who

was taking the part of the general, telling him that the artillery was

wrongly placed, and so forth.[216] This reminds one of the story of the

sailors who on a visit to a theatre happened to see a representation of

a mutiny on board ship, and were so excited that they rushed on the

stage and took sides with the authorities in quelling the movement.

-----

Footnote 216:

Quoted by Perez, _op. cit._, p. 216.

-----

I believe that this same tendency to take art-representations for

realities reappears in children’s mental attitude towards stories. A

story by its narrative form seems to tell of real events, and children,

as we all know, are wont to believe tenaciously that their stories are

true. I think I have observed a disposition in imaginative children to

go beyond this, and to give present actuality to the scenes and events

described. And this is little to be wondered at when one remembers that

even grown people, familiar with the devices of art-imitation, tend now

and again to fall into this confusion. Only a few days ago, as I was

reading an account by a friend of mine of a perilous passage in an

Alpine ascent, accomplished years ago, I suddenly caught myself in the

attitude of proposing to shout out to stop him from venturing farther. A

vivid imaginative realisation of the situation had made it for the

moment a present actuality.

Careful observations of the first attitudes of the child-mind towards

representative art are greatly needed. We should probably find

considerable diversity of behaviour. The presence of a true art-feeling

would be indicated by a special quickness in the apprehension of

art-semblance as such.

In these first reactions of the young mind to the stimulus of

art-presentation we may study other aspects of the æsthetic aptitude.

Very quaint and interesting is the exacting realism of these first

appreciations. A child is apt to insist on a perfect detailed

reproduction of the familiar reality. And here one may often trace the

fine observation of these early years. Listen, for example, to the talk

of the little critic before a drawing of a horse or a railway train, and

you will be surprised to find how closely and minutely he has studied

the forms of things. It is the same with other modes of

art-representation. Perez gives an amusing instance of a boy, aged four,

who when taken to a play was shocked at the anomaly of a chamber-maid

touching glasses with her master on a _fête_ day. “In our home,”

exclaimed the stickler for regularities, to the great amusement of the

neighbours, “we don’t let the nurse drink like that.”[217] It is the

same with story. Children are liable to be morally hurt if anything is

described greatly at variance with the daily custom. Æsthetic rightness

is as yet confused with moral rightness or social propriety, which, as

we have seen, has its instinctive support in the child’s mind in respect

for custom.

-----

Footnote 217:

_Op. cit._, pp. 215, 216.

-----

Careful observation will disclose in these first frankly expressed

impressions the special directions of childish taste. The preferences of

a boy of four in the matter of picture-books tell us where his special

interests lie, what things he finds pretty, and how much of a genuine

æsthetic faculty he is likely to develop later on. Here, again, there is

ample room for more careful studies directed to the detection of the

first manifestations of a pure delight in things as beautiful, as

charming at once the senses and the imagination.

The first appearances of that complex interest in life and personality

which fills so large a place in our æsthetic pleasures can be best noted

in the behaviour of the child’s mind towards dramatic spectacle and

story. The awful ecstatic delight with which a child is apt to greet any

moving semblance carrying with it the look of life and action is

something which some of us, like Goethe, can recall among our oldest

memories. The old-fashioned moving ‘Schatten-bilder,’ for which the

gaudy but rigid pictures of the magic lantern are but a poor substitute,

the puppet-show, with what a delicious wonder have these filled the

childish heart. And as to the entrancing, enthralling delight of the

story—well Thackeray and others have tried to describe this for us.

Of very special interest in these early manifestations of a feeling for

art is the appearance of a crude form of the two emotions to which all

representations of life and character make appeal—the feeling for the

comic, and for the tragic side of things. What we may call the adults

fallacy, the tendency to judge children by grown-up standards,

frequently shows itself in an expectation that their laughter will

follow the directions of our own. I remember having made the mistake of

putting those delightful books, _Tom Sawyer_ and _Huckleberry Finn_,

into the hands of a small boy with a considerable sense of fun, and

having been humiliated at discovering that there was no response.

Children’s fun is of a very elemental character. They are mostly

tickled, I suspect, by the spectacle of some upsetting of the

proprieties, some confusion of the established distinctions of rank.

Dress, as we have seen, has an enormous symbolic value for the child’s

mind, and any confusion here is apt to be specially laughter-provoking.

One child between three and four was convulsed at the sight of his baby

bib fastened round the neck of his bearded sire. There is, too, a

considerable element of rowdiness in children’s sense of the comical, as

may be seen by the enduring popularity of the spectacle of Punch’s

successful misdemeanours and bravings of the legal authority.

Since children are apt to take spectacles with an exacting seriousness,

it becomes interesting to note how the two moods, realistic stickling

for correctness, and rollicking hilarity at the sight of the disorderly,

behave in relation one to another. More facts are needed on this point.

It is probable that we have here to do in part with a permanent

difference of temperament. There are serious matter-of-fact little minds

which are shocked by a kind of spectacle or narrative that would give

boundless delight to a more elastic fun-loving spirit. But discarding

these permanent differences of disposition, I think that in general the

sense of fun, the delight in the topsy-turviness of things, is apt to

develop later than the serious realistic attitude already referred to.

Here, too, it is probable that the evolution of the individual follows

that of the race: the solemnities of custom and ritual weigh so heavily

at first on the savage-mind that there is no chance for sprightly

laughter to show himself. However this be, most young children appear to

be unable to appreciate true comedy where the incongruous co-exists with

and takes on one half of its charm from serious surroundings. Their

laughter is best called forth by a broadly farcical show in which all

serious rules are set at nought.

Of no less interest in this attitude of the child-mind towards the

representations by art of human character and action are the first rude

manifestations of the feeling for the tragic side of life. A child of

four or six is far from realising the divine necessity which controls

our mortal lives. Yet he will display a certain crude feeling for

thrilling situation, exciting adventure, and something, too, of a

sympathetic interest in the woes of mortals, quadrupeds as well as

bipeds. The action, the situation, may easily grow too painful for an

imaginative child disposed to take all representative spectacle as

reality: yet the absorbing interest of the action where the sadness is

bearable attests the early development of that universal feeling for the

sorrowful fatefulness of things which runs through all imaginative

writings from the ‘penny dreadful’ upwards.

_Beginnings of Art-production._

We have been trying to catch the first faint manifestations of æsthetic

feeling in children’s contemplative attitude towards natural objects and

the presentations of art. We may now pass to what is a still more

interesting department of childish æsthetics, their first rude attempts

at art-production. We are wont to say that children are artists in

embryo, that in their play and their whole activity they manifest the

germs of the art-impulse. In order to see whether this idea is correct

we must start with a clear idea of what we mean by art-activity.

I would define art-activity as including all childish doings which are

consciously directed to an external result recognised as beautiful, as

directly pleasing to sense and imagination. Thus a gesture, or an

intonation of voice, which is motived by a feeling for what is ‘pretty’

or ‘nice’ is a mode of art-activity as much as the production of a more

permanent æsthetic object, as a drawing.

Now if we look at children’s activity we shall find that though much of

it implies a certain germ of æsthetic feeling it is not pure

art-activity. In the love of personal adornment, for example, we see, as

in the case of savages, the æsthetic motive subordinated to another and

personal or interested feeling, vanity or love of admiration. On the

other hand, in children’s play, which undoubtedly has a kinship with

art, we find the æsthetic motive, the desire to produce something

beautiful, very much in the background. We have then to examine these

primitive forms of activity so as to try to disengage the genuine

art-element.

One of the most interesting of these early quasi-artistic lines of

activity is that of personal adornment. The impulse to maintain

appearances appears to reach far down in animal life. The animal’s

care of its person is supported by two instincts, the impulse to

frighten or overawe others, and especially those who are, or are

likely to be, enemies, illustrated in the raising of feathers and hair

so as to increase size; and the impulse to attract, which probably

underlies the habit of trimming feathers and fur among birds and

quadrupeds. These same impulses are said to lie at the root of the

elaborate art of personal adornment developed by savages. The

anthropologist divides such ornament into alluring and alarming,

‘Reizschmuck’ and ‘Schreckschmuck’.[218]

-----

Footnote 218:

See Grosse, _Die Anfänge der Kunst_, pp. 106, 107.

-----

In the case of children’s attention to personal appearance there is no

question of tracing out the workings of a pure instinct. The care of the

person is before all other things inculcated and enforced by others, and

forms, indeed, a main branch of the nursery training. To a mother, as is

perfectly natural, a child is apt to present himself as the brightest of

the household ornaments, which has to be kept neat and spotless with

even greater care than the polished table and other pretty things. This

early drilling is likely to be unpleasant. Many children resent at first

not only soap and water and the merciless comb, but even arrayings in

new finery. Adornment is forced on the child before the instinct has had

time to develop itself, and the manner of the adornment does not always

accommodate itself to the natural inclinations of the childish eye.

Hence the familiar fact that with children the care of personal

appearance when it is developed takes on the air of a respect for law.

It is more than half a moral feeling, a readiness to be shocked at a

breach of a custom enforced from the first by example and precept.

Again, the instinct of adornment in the child is often opposed by other

impulses. I have already touched on a small child’s feeling of

uneasiness at seeing his mother in new apparel. A like apprehensiveness

shows itself in relation to his own dress. Many little children show a

marked dislike to new raiment. As I have remarked above, a change of

dress probably disturbs and confuses their sense of personality.

In spite, however, of these and other complicating circumstances I

believe that the instinct to adorn the person is observable in children.

They like a bit of finery in the shape of a string of beads or of

daisies for the neck, a feather for the hat, a scrap of brilliantly

coloured ribbon or cloth as a bow for the dress, and so forth.

Imitation, doubtless, plays a part here, but it is, I think, possible to

allow for this, and still to detect points of contact with the savage’s

love of finery. Perhaps, indeed, we may discern the play of both the

impulses underlying personal ornament which were referred to above,

_viz._, the alluring and alarming. Allowing for the differences of

intelligence, of sexual development and so forth, we may say that

children betray a rudiment of the instinct to win admiration by

decorating the person, and also of the instinct to overawe. A small

boy’s delight in adding to his height and formidable appearance by

donning his father’s tall hat is pretty certainly an illustration of

this last.

This is not the place to inquire whether the love of finery in

children—a very variable trait, as M. Perez and others have shown—is

wholly the outcome of vanity. I would, however, just remark that a child

lost in the vision of himself reflected in a mirror decked out in new

apparel may be very far from feeling vanity as we understand the word.

The pure child-wonder at what is new and mysterious may at such a moment

overpower other feelings, and make the whole mental condition one of

dream-like trance.

Since children are left so little free to deck themselves, it is of

course hard to study the development of æsthetic taste in this domain of

art-like activity. Yet the quaint attempts of the child to improve his

appearance throw an interesting light on his æsthetic preferences. He is

at heart as much a lover of glitter, of gaudy colour, as his savage

prototype. With this general crudity of taste, individual differences

soon begin to show themselves, a child developing a marked bent, now to

modest neatness and refinement, now to gaudy display, and this, it may

be, in direct opposition to the whole trend of home influence.[219]

-----

Footnote 219:

The whole subject of the attitude of the child-mind towards dress and

ornament is well dealt with by Perez, _op. cit._, chap. i.

-----

Another and closely connected domain of activity which is akin to art is

the manifestation of grace and charm in action. Much of the beauty of

movement, of gesture, of intonation, in a young child may be

unconscious, and as much a result of happy physical conditions as the

pretty gambols of a kitten. Yet one may commonly detect in graceful

children the rudiment of an æsthetic feeling for what is nice, and also

of the instinct to please. There is, indeed, in these first actions and

manners, into which stupid conventionality has not yet imported all

kinds of awkward restraints, as when the little girl M. would kiss her

hand spontaneously to other babies as she passed them in the street,

something of the simple grace and dignity of the more amiable savages.

Now a feeling for what is graceful in movement, carriage, speech and so

forth is no clear proof of a specialised artistic impulse: yet it

attests the existence of a rudimentary appreciation of what is

beautiful, as also of an impulse to produce this.

In the forms of childish activity just referred to we have to do with

mixed impulses in which the true art-element is very imperfectly

represented. There is a liking for pretty effect, and an effort to

realise it, only the effect is not prized wholly for its own sake, but

partly as a means of winning the smile of approval. The true art-impulse

is characterised by the love of shaping beautiful things for their own

sake, by an absorbing devotion to the process of creation, into which

there enters no thought of any advantage to self, and almost as little

of benefiting others. Now there is one field of children’s activity

which is marked by just this absorption of thought and aim, and that is

play.

To say that play is art-like has almost become a commonplace. Any one

can see that when children are at play they are carried away by

pleasurable activity, are thinking of no useful result but only of the

pleasure of the action itself. They build their sand castles, they

pretend to keep shop, to entertain visitors, and so forth, for the sake

of the enjoyment which they find in these actions. This clearly involves

one point of kinship with the artist, for the poet sings and the painter

paints because they love to do so. It is evident, moreover, from what

was said above on the imaginative side of play that it has this further

circumstance in common with art-production, that it is the bodying forth

of a mental image into the semblance of outward life. Not only so, play

exhibits the distinction between imitation and invention—the realistic

and the idealistic tendency in art—and in its forms comes surprisingly

near representing the chief branches of art-activity. It thus fully

deserves to be studied as a domain in which we may look for early traces

of children’s artistic tendencies.

If by play we understand all that spontaneous activity which is wholly

sustained by its own pleasurableness, we shall find the germ of it in

those aimless movements and sounds which are the natural expression of a

child’s joyous life. Such outpourings of happiness have a quasi-æsthetic

character in so far as they follow the rhythmic law of all action. Where

the play becomes social activity, that is, the concerted action of a

number, we get something closely analogous to those primitive harmonious

co-ordinations of movements and sounds in which the first crude music,

poetry and dramatic action of the race are supposed to have had their

common origin.

Such naïve play-activity acquires a greater æsthetic importance when it

becomes significant or representative of something: and this direction

appears very early in child-history. The impulse to imitate the action

of another seems to be developed before the completion of the first

half-year.[220] In its first crude form, as reproducing a gesture or

sound uttered at the moment by another, it enters into the whole of

social or concerted play. A number of children find the harmonious

performance of a series of dance or other movements, such as those of

the kindergarten games, natural and easy, because the impulse to

imitate, to follow another’s lead, at once prompts them and keeps them

from going far astray.

-----

Footnote 220:

Preyer places the first imitative movement in the fourth month (_op.

cit._, cap. 12). Baldwin, however, dates the first unmistakable

appearance in the case of his little girl in the ninth month (_Mental

Development_, p. 131).

-----

It is a higher and more intellectual kind of imitation when a child

recalls the idea of something he has seen done and reproduces the

action. This is often carried out under the suggestive force of objects

which happen to present themselves at the time, as when a child sees an

empty cup and pretends to drink, or a book and simulates the action of

reading out of it, or a pair of scissors and proceeds to execute

snipping movements. In other cases the imitation is more spontaneous, as

when a child recalls and repeats some funny saying that he has heard.

This imitative action grows little by little more complex, and in this

way a prolonged make-believe action may be carried out. Here, it is

evident, we get something closely analogous to histrionic performance. A

child pantomimically representing some funny action comes, indeed, very

near to the mimetic art of the comedian.

Meanwhile, another form of imitation is developing, _viz._, the

production of semblances in things. Early illustrations of this impulse

are the making of a river out of the gravy in the plate, the pinching of

pellets of bread till they take on something of resemblance to known

forms. One child, three years old, once occupied himself at table by

turning his plate into a clock, in which his knife (or spoon) and fork

were made to act as hands, and cherry stones put round the plate to

represent the hours. Such table-pastimes are known to all observers of

children, and have been prettily touched on by R. L. Stevenson.[221]

-----

Footnote 221:

_Virginibus Puerisque_, ‘Child’s Play’.

-----

Such formative touches are, at first, rough enough, the transformation

being effected, as we have seen, much more by the alchemy of the child’s

imagination than by the cunning of his hands. Yet, crude as it is, and

showing at first almost as much of chance as of design, it is a

manifestation of the same plastic impulse, the same striving to produce

images or semblances of things, which possesses the sculptor and the

painter. In each case we see a mind dominated by an idea and labouring

to give it outward embodiment. The more elaborate constructive play

which follows, the building with sand and with bricks, with which we may

take the first spontaneous drawings, are the direct descendant of this

rude formative activity. The kindergarten occupations, most of all the

clay-modelling, make direct appeal to this half-artistic plastic impulse

in the child.

In this imitative play we see from the first the tendency to set forth

what is characteristic in the things represented. Thus in the acting of

the nursery the nurse, the coachman and so forth are given by one or two

broad touches, such as the presence of the medicine-bottle or its

semblance, or of the whip, together, perhaps, with some characteristic

manner of speaking. In this way child-play, like primitive art, shows a

certain unconscious selectiveness. It presents what is constant and

typical, imperfectly enough no doubt. The same selection of broadly

distinctive traits is seen where some individual seems to be

represented. There is a precisely similar tendency to a somewhat bald

typicalness of outline in the first rude attempts of children to form

semblances. This will be fully illustrated presently when we examine

their manner of drawing.

As observation widens and grows finer, the first bald abstract

representation becomes fuller and more life-like. A larger number of

distinctive traits is taken up into the representation. Thus the

coachman’s talk becomes richer, fuller of reminiscences of the stable,

etc., and so colour is given to the dramatic picture. A precisely

similar process of development is noticeable in the plastic activities.

The first raw attempt to represent house or castle is improved upon, and

the image grows fuller of characteristic detail and more life-like.

Here, again, we may note the parallelism between the evolution of

play-activity and of primitive art.

This movement away from bare symbolic indication to concrete pictorial

representation involves a tendency to individualise, to make the play or

the shapen semblance life-like in the sense of representing an

individual reality. Such individual concreteness may be obtained by a

mechanical reproduction of some particular action and scene of real

life, and children in their play not infrequently attempt a faithful

recital or portraiture of this kind. Such close unyielding imitation

shows itself, too, now and again in the attempt to act out a story. Yet

with bright fanciful children the impulse to give full life and colour

to the performance rarely stops here. Fresh individual life is best

obtained by the aid of invention, by the intervention of which some new

scene or situation, some new grouping of personalities is realised.

Nothing is æsthetically of more interest in children’s play than the

first cautious intrusion into the domain of imitative representation of

this impulse of invention, this desire for the new and fresh as distinct

from the old and customary. Perhaps, too, there is no side of children’s

play in which individual differences are more clearly marked or more

significant than this. The child of bold inventive fancy is shocking to

his companion whose whole idea of proper play is a servile imitation of

the scenes and actions of real life. Yet the former will probably be

found to have more of the stuff of which the artist is compacted.

All such invention, moreover, since it aims at securing some more

vivacious and stirring play-experience, naturally comes under the

influence of the childish instinct of exaggeration. I mean by this the

untaught art of vivifying and strengthening a description or

representation by adding touch to touch. In the representations of play,

this love of colour, of strong effect, shows itself now in a piling up

of the beautiful, gorgeous, or wonderful, as when trying to act some

favourite scene from fairy-story, or some grand social function, now in

a bringing together of droll or pathetic incidents so as to strengthen

the comic or the tragic feeling of the play-action. In all this—which

has its counterpart in the first crude attempts of the art of the race

to break the tight bonds of a servile imitation—we have, I believe, the

germ of what in our more highly developed art we call the idealising

impulse.

I have, perhaps, said enough to show that children’s play is in many

respects analogous to art of the simpler kind, also that it includes

within itself lines of activity which represent the chief directions of

art-development.[222]

-----

Footnote 222:

The telling of stories to other children does not, I conceive, fall

under my definition of play. It is child-art properly so called.

-----

Yet though art-like this play is not fully art. In play a child is too

self-centred, if I may so say. The scenes he acts out, the semblances he

shapes with his hands, are not produced as having objective value, but

rather as providing himself with a new environment. The peculiarity of

all imaginative play, its puzzle for older people, is its contented

privacy. The idea of a child playing as an actor is said to ‘play’ in

order to delight others is a contradiction in terms. As I have remarked

above, the pleasure of a child in what we call ‘dramatic’ make-believe

is wholly independent of any appreciating eye. “I remember,” writes R.

L. Stevenson, “as though it were yesterday, the expansion of spirit, the

dignity and self-reliance, that came with a pair of mustachios in burnt

cork _even when there was none to see_.”[223] The same thing is true of

concerted play. A number of children playing at being Indians, or what

not, do not ‘perform’ _for_ one another. The words ‘perform,’ ‘act’ and

so forth all seem to be out of place here. What really occurs in this

case is a conjoint vision of a new world, a conjoint imaginative

realisation of a new life.

-----

Footnote 223:

_Virginibus Puerisque_, ‘Child’s Play’.

-----

This difference between play and art is sometimes pushed to the point of

saying that art has its root in the social impulse, the wish to

please.[224] This I think is simplifying too much. Art is no doubt a

social phenomenon, as Guyau and others have shown. It has been well said

that "an individual art—in the strictest sense—even if it were

conceivable is nowhere discoverable".[225] That is to say the artist is

constituted as such by a participation in the common consciousness, the

life of his community, and his creative impulse is controlled and

directed by a sense of common or objective values. Yet to say that art

is born of the instinct to please or attract is to miss much of its

significance. The ever-renewed contention of artists, ‘art for art’s

sake,’ points to the fact that they, at least, recognise in their

art-activity something spontaneous, something of the nature of

self-expression, self-realisation, and akin to the child’s play.

-----

Footnote 224:

According to Mr H. Rutgers Marshall art-activity takes its rise in the

instinct to attract others (_Pain, Pleasure, and Æsthetics_).

Footnote 225:

Grosse, _Anfänge der Kunst_, p. 48.

-----

May we not say, then, that the impulse of the artist has its roots in

the happy semi-conscious activity of the child at play, the

all-engrossing effort to ‘utter,’ that is, give outer form and life to

an inner idea, and that the play-impulse becomes the art-impulse

(supposing it is strong enough to survive the play-years) when it is

illumined by a growing participation in the social consciousness, and a

sense of the common worth of things, when, in other words, it becomes

conscious of itself as a power of shaping semblances which shall have

value for other eyes or ears, and shall bring recognition and renown?

Or, to put it somewhat differently, may we not say that art has its

twin-rootlets in the two directions of childish activity which we have

considered, _viz._, the desire to please so far as this expresses itself

in dress, graceful action, and so forth, and the entrancing isolating

impulse of play? However we express the relation, I feel sure that we

must account for the origin of art by some reference to play. A study of

the art of savages, more especially perhaps of the representations of

fighting and hunting in their pantomime-dances, seems to show that art

is continuous with play-activity.

To insist on this organic connexion between play and art is not to say

that every lively player is fitted to become an art-aspirant. The

artistic ambition implies too rare a complex of conditions for us to be

able to predict its appearance in this way. It may, however, be thrown

out as a suggestion to the investigator of the first manifestations of

artistic genius that he might do well to cast his eye on the field of

imaginative play. It will possibly be found that although not a romping

riotous player, nor indeed much disposed to join other children in their

pastimes, the original child has his own distinctive style of play,

which marks him out as having more than other children of that impulse

to dream of far-off things, and to bring them near in the illusion of

outer semblance, which enters more or less distinctly into all art.

I have left myself no space to speak of the child’s first attempts at

art as we understand it. Some of this art-activity, more particularly

the earliest weaving of stories, is characteristic enough to deserve a

special study. I have made a small collection of early stories, and some

of them are interesting enough to quote. Here is a quaint example of the

first halting manner of a child of two and a half years as invention

tries to get away from the sway of models: “Three little bears went out

a walk and they found a stick, and they poked the fire with it, and they

poked the fire and then went a walk”. Soon, however, the young fancy is

apt to wax bolder, and then we get some fine invention. A boy of five

years and a quarter living at the sea-side improvised as follows. He

related “that one day he went out on the sea in a lifeboat when suddenly

he saw a big whale, and so he jumped down to catch it, but it was so big

that he climbed on it and rode on it in the water, and all the little

fishes laughed so”.

With this comic story may be compared a more serious not to say tragic

one from the lips of a girl one month younger, and characterised by an

almost equal fondness for the wonderful. “A man wanted to go to heaven

before he died. He said, ‘I don’t want to die, and I must see heaven!’

Jesus Christ said he must be patient like other people. He then got _so_

angry, and screamed out as loud as he could, and kicked up his heels as

high as he could, and they (the heels) went into the sky, and the sky

fell down and broke earth all to pieces. He wanted Jesus Christ to mend

the earth again, but he wouldn’t, so this was a good punishment for

him.” This last, which is the work of one now grown into womanhood and

no longer a story-teller, is interesting in many ways. The wish to go to

heaven without dying is, as I know, a motive derived from child-life.

The manifestations of displeasure could, one supposes, only have been

written by one who was herself experienced in the ways of childish

‘tantrums’. The naïve conception of sky and earth, and lastly the moral

issue of the story, are no less instructive.

These samples may serve to show that in the stories of by no means

highly-gifted children we come face to face with interesting traits of

the young mind, and can study some of the characteristic tendencies of

early and primitive art.[226] Of the later efforts to imitate older art,

as verse writing, the same cannot, I think, be said. Children’s verses

so far as I have come across them are poor and stilted, showing all the

signs of the cramping effect of models and rules to which the child-mind

cannot easily accommodate itself, and wanting all true childish

inspiration. No doubt, even in these choking circumstances, childish

feeling may now and again peep out. The first prose compositions,

letters before all if they may be counted art, give more scope for the

expression of a child’s feeling and the characteristic movements of his

thought, and might well repay study.[227]

-----

Footnote 226:

The child’s feeling for climax shown in these is further illustrated

in a charming story taken down by Miss Shinn, but unfortunately too

long to quote here. See _Overland Monthly_, vol. xxiii., p. 19.

Footnote 227:

Perez deals with children’s literary compositions in the work already

quoted (chap. ix.). Cf. Paola Lombroso, _op. cit._, cap. viii. and ix.

-----

There is one other department of this child-art which clearly does

deserve to be studied with some care—drawing. And this for the very good

reason that it is not wholly a product of our influence and education,

but shows itself in its essential characteristics as a spontaneous

self-taught activity of childhood which takes its rise, indeed, in the

play-impulse. This will be the subject of the next essay.

X.

THE YOUNG DRAUGHTSMAN.

_First Attempts to Draw._

A child’s first attempts at drawing are pre-artistic and a kind of play,

an outcome of the instinctive love of finding and producing semblances

of things illustrated in the last essay. Sitting at the table and

covering a sheet of paper with line-scribble he is wholly self-centred,

‘amusing himself,’ as we say, and caring nothing about the production of

“objective values”.

Yet even in the early stages of infantile drawing the social element of

art is suggested in the impulse of the small draughtsman to make his

lines indicative of something to others’ eyes, as when he bids his

mother look at the ‘man,’ ‘gee-gee,’ or what else he fancies that he has

delineated.[228] And this, though crude enough and apt to shock the

æsthetic sense of the matured artist by its unsightliness, is closely

related to art, forming, indeed, in a manner a preliminary stage of

pictorial design.

-----

Footnote 228:

This indicative or communicative function of drawing has, we know,

played a great part in the early stages of human history. Modern

savages employ drawings in sand as a means of imparting information to

others, _e.g._, of the presence of fish in a lake, see Von den

Steinen, _Unter den Naturvölkern Braziliens_, kap. x., s. 243 f.

-----

We shall therefore study children’s drawings as a kind of rude embryonic

art. In doing this our special aim will be to describe and explain

childish characteristics. This, again, will compel us to go to some

extent into the early forms of observation and imagination. It will be

found, I think, that the first crude drawings are valuable as throwing

light on the workings of children’s minds. Perhaps, indeed, it may turn

out that these spontaneous efforts of the childish hand to figure

objects are for the psychologist a medium of expression of the whole of

child-nature, hardly less instructive than that of early speech.

In carrying out our investigation of children’s drawings we shall need

to make a somewhat full reference to the related phenomena, the drawings

of modern savages and those of early art. While important points of

difference will disclose themselves the resemblances are important

enough to make a comparison not only profitable but almost

indispensable.

I have thought it best to narrow the range of the inquiry by keeping to

delineations of the human figure and of animals, especially the horse.

These are the favourite topics of the child’s pencil, and examples of

them are easily obtainable.

As far as possible I have sought spontaneous drawings of quite young

children, _viz._, from between two and three to about six.[229] In a

strict sense of course no child’s drawing is absolutely spontaneous and

independent of external stimulus and guidance. The first attempts to

manage the pencil are commonly aided by the mother, who, moreover, is

wont to present a model drawing, and, what is even more important at

this early stage, to supply model-movements of the arm and hand. In most

cases, too, there is some slight amount of critical inspection, as when

she asks, ‘Where is papa’s nose?’ ‘Where is doggie’s tail?’ Yet perfect

spontaneity, even if obtainable, is not necessary here. The drawings of

men and quadrupeds of a child of five and later disclose plainly enough

the childish fashion, even though there has been some slight amount of

elementary instruction. Hence I have not hesitated to make use of

drawings sent me by kindergarten teachers. I may add that I have used by

preference the drawings executed by children in elementary schools, as

these appear to illustrate the childish manner with less of parental

interference than is wont to be present in a cultured home.

-----

Footnote 229:

Only a few drawings of older children above seven have been included.

-----

A child’s drawing begins with a free aimless swinging of the pencil to

and fro, which movements produce a chaos of slightly curved lines. These

movements are purely spontaneous, or, if imitative, are so only in the

sense that they follow at a considerable distance the movements of the

mother’s pencil.[230] They may be made expressive or significant in two

ways. In the first place, a child may by varying the swinging movements

accidentally produce an effect which suggests an idea through a remote

resemblance. A little boy when two years and two months, was one day

playing in this wise with the pencil, and happening to make a sort of

curling line, shouted with excited glee, ‘Puff, puff!’ _i.e._, smoke. He

then drew more curls with a rudimentary intention to show what he meant.

In like manner when a child happens to bend his line into something like

a closed circle or ellipse he will catch the faint resemblance to the

rounded human head and exclaim, ‘Mama!’ or ‘Dada!’

-----

Footnote 230:

E. Cooke gives illustrations of these in his thoughtful and

interesting articles on “Art-teaching and Child-nature,” published in

the _Journal of Education_, Dec., 1885, and Jan., 1886.

-----

But intentional drawing or designing does not always arise in this way.

A child may set himself to draw, and make believe that he is drawing

something when he is scribbling. This is largely an imitative

play-action following the direction of the movements of another’s hand.

Preyer speaks of a little boy who in his second year was asked when

scribbling with a pencil what he was doing and answered ‘writing

houses’. He was apparently making believe that his jumble of lines

represented houses.[231] Almost any scribble may in this earliest stage

take on a meaning through the play of a vigorous childish imagination.

-----

Footnote 231:

Preyer, _op. cit._, p. 47.

-----

[Illustration: Fig. 1 (_a_) and (_b_).]

The same play of imagination is noticeable in the child’s first

endeavours to draw an object from memory when he is asked to do so. Thus

a little girl in her fourth year referred to by Mr. E. Cooke when asked

to draw a cat produced a longish irregularly curved line crossed by a

number of shorter lines, which strange production she proceeded quite

complacently to dignify by the name ‘cat,’ naming the whiskers, legs,

and tail (Fig. 1 (_a_); compare the slightly fuller design in Fig. 1

(_b_)).[232]

-----

Footnote 232:

Taken from E. Cooke’s articles already quoted, drawings 19 and 20.

-----

Here it is evident we have a phase of childish drawing which is closely

analogous to the symbolism of language. The representation is

arbitrarily chosen as a symbol and not as a likeness. This element of a

non-imitative or symbolic mode of representation will be found to run

through the whole of childish drawing.

Even this chaotic scribble shows almost from the beginning germs of

formative elements, not merely in the fundamental line-elements, but

also in the loops, and in the more abrupt changes of direction or

angles. A tendency to draw a loop-like rudimentary contour soon emerges,

and thus we get the transition to a possible outlining of objects. Miss

Shinn gives a good example of an ovoid loop drawn by her niece in her

hundred and ninth week.[233] With practice the child acquires by the

second or third year the usual stock in trade of the juvenile

draughtsman, and can draw a sort of straight line, curved lines, a

roughish kind of circle or oval, as well as dots, and even fit lines

together at angles.[234] When this stage is reached we begin to see

attempts at real though rude likenesses of men, horses and so forth.

These early essays are among the most curious products of the

child-mind. They follow standards and methods of their own; they are apt

to get hardened into a fixed conventional manner which may reappear even

in mature years. They exhibit with a certain range of individual

difference a curious uniformity, and they have their parallels in what

we know of the first crude designs of the untutored savage.

-----

Footnote 233:

_Op. cit._, pt. ii., p. 97; “fifty-sixth week” is, she informs me, an

error for hundred and ninth week.

Footnote 234:

I am much indebted to Mr. Cooke for the sight of a series of early

scribbles of his little girl. _Cf._ Baldwin, _Mental Development_,

chap. v., where some good examples of early line-tracing are given.

According to Baldwin angles or zig-zag come early, and are probably

due to the cramped, jerky mode of movement at this early stage. Preyer

seems to me wrong in saying that children cannot manage a circular

line before the end of the third year (_op. cit._, p. 47). Most

children who draw at all manage a loop or closed curved line before

this date.

-----

_First Drawings of the Human Figure._

It has been wittily observed by an Italian writer on children’s art that

they reverse the order of natural creation in beginning instead of

ending with man.[235] It may be added that they start with the most

dignified part of this crown of creation, _viz._, the human head. A

child’s first attempt to represent a man proceeds, so far as I have

observed, by drawing the front view of his head. This he effects by

means of a clumsy sort of circle with a dot or two thrown in by way of

indicating features in general. A couple of lines may be inserted as a

kind of support, which do duty for both trunk and legs. The circular or

ovoid form is, I think, by far the most common. The square head in my

collection appears only very occasionally and in children _at school_,

who presumably have had some training in drawing horizontal and vertical

lines. The accompanying example (Fig. 2) is the work of a Jamaica girl

of five, kindly sent me by her teacher.

-----

Footnote 235:

Corrado Ricci, _L’Arte dei Bambini_ (1887), p. 6.

-----

[Illustration: Fig. 2.]

This first attempt to outline the human form is, no doubt, characterised

by a high degree of arbitrary symbolism. The use of a rude form of

circle to set forth the human head reminds one of the employment by

living savage tribes of the same form as the symbol of a house (hut?), a

wreath, and so forth.[236] Yet there is a measure of resemblance even in

this abstract symbolism: the circle does roughly resemble the contour of

the head: as, indeed, the square or rectangle may be said less obviously

to do when hair and whiskers and the horizontal line of the hat break

the curved line.

-----

Footnote 236:

See Von den Steinen, _op. cit._, p. 247.

-----

[Illustration: Fig. 3.]

But it is not the mere contour which represents the face: it is a circle

picked out with features. These, however vaguely indicated, are an

integral part of the facial scheme. This is illustrated in the fact that

among the drawings by savages and others collected by General

Pitt-Rivers, one, executed by an adult negro of Uganda, actually omits

the contour, the human head being represented merely by an arrangement

of dark patches and circles for eyes, ears, etc. (Fig. 3).[237]

-----

Footnote 237:

These drawings, of the highest interest to the student of child-art as

well as to the anthropologist, are to be seen in the General’s Museum

at Farnham (Dorset) (7th room).

-----

Coming now to the mode of representing the features, we find at an early

stage of this schematic delineation an attempt to differentiate and

individualise features, not only by giving definite position but by a

rough imitation of form. Thus we get the vertical line as indicating the

direction of the nose, the horizontal line that of the mouth, and either

a rounded dot or a circular line as representative of the curved outline

of the eye—whether that of the iris, of the visible part of the eyeball,

or of the orbital cavity. A precisely similar scheme appears in the

drawings of savages.[238]

-----

Footnote 238:

Schoolcraft has a good example of this facial scheme in the drawing of

a man shooting (_The Indian Tribes of the United States_, i., pl. 48).

-----

[Illustration: Fig. 4 (_a_). Fig. 4 (_b_).]

At first the child is grandly indifferent to completeness in the

enumeration of features. Even ‘the two eyes, a nose and a mouth’ are

often imperfectly represented. Thus when dots are used we may have one

or more specks ranging, according to M. Perez, up to five.[239] The use

of a single dot for facial feature in general has its parallel in the

art of savage tribes.[240] It is, however, I think, most common to

introduce three dots in a triangular arrangement, presumably for eyes

and mouth,—a device again which reappears in the art of uncivilised

races.[241] Even when the young draughtsman has reached the stage of

distinguishing the features he may be quite careless about number and

completeness. Thus a feature may be omitted altogether. This funnily

enough happens most frequently in the case of that one which seems to us

‘grown-ups’ most self-assertive and most resentful of indignity, _viz._,

the nose. These moon-faces with two eyes and a mouth are very common

among the first drawings of children. The mouth, on the other hand, is

much less frequently omitted. The same thing seems to hold good of the

drawings of savages.[242] The eyes are rarely omitted. The single dot

may perhaps be said to stand for ‘eye’. Some drawings of savages have

the two eyes and no other feature, as in the accompanying example from

Andree, plate 3 (Fig. 4 (_a_)). On the other hand, a child will, as we

have seen, sometimes content himself with one eye. This holds good not

only where the dot is used but after something like an eye-circle is

introduced, as in the accompanying drawing by a Jamaica girl of seven

(Fig. 4 (_b_)).

-----

Footnote 239:

_L’Art et la Poésie chez l’Enfant_, p. 186.

Footnote 240:

For an illustration see Andree, _Eth. Parallelen und Vergleiche_, pl.

3, fig. 19.

Footnote 241:

See for an example, Schoolcraft, iv., pl. 18.

Footnote 242:

According to Stanley Hall the nose comes after the mouth. This may be

an approximate generalisation, but there are evidently exceptions to

it. On the practice of savage draughtsmen see the illustrations of

Australian cave drawings in Andree, _op. cit._, p. 159. _Cf._ the

drawings of Brazilian tribes, plate iii., 15. In some cases there

seems a preference for the nose, certain of the Brazilian drawings

representing facial features merely by a vertical stroke.

-----

[Illustration: Fig. 4 (_c_).—Moustache = horizontal line above curve of

cap.]

In these first attempts to sketch out a face we miss a sense of relative

position and of proportion. It is astonishing what a child on first

attempting to draw a human or animal form can do in the way of

dislocation or putting things into the wrong place. The little girl

mentioned by E. Cooke on trying, about the same age, to draw a cat from

a model actually put the circle representing the eye outside that of the

head. With this may be compared the drawings of Von den Steinen and

other Europeans made by his Brazil Indian companions, in which what was

distinctly said by the draughtsman to be the moustache was in more than

one instance set above the eyes (Fig. 4 (_c_)). When dots are inserted

in the linear scheme they are apt at first to be thrown in anyhow. The

two eyes, I find, when these only are given, may be put one above the

other as well as one by the side of the other, and both arrangements

occur in the drawings of the same child. And much later when greater

attention to position is observable there is a general tendency to put

the group of features too high up, _i.e._, to make the forehead or brain

region too small in proportion to the chin region (_cf._ above, Fig. 2,

p. 336).[243]

-----

Footnote 243:

M. Passy calls attention to this in his interesting note on children’s

drawings, _Revue Philosophique_, 1891, p. 614 ff. I find however that

though the error is a common one it is not constant.

-----

[Illustration: Fig. 5 (_a_).]

The want of proportion is still more plainly seen in the treatment of

the several features. The eye, as already remarked, is apt to be

absurdly large. In the drawing of Mr. Cooke’s little girl mentioned

above it is actually larger than the head outside which it lies. This

enlargement continues to appear frequently in later drawings, more

particularly when one eye only is introduced, as in the accompanying

drawing by a boy in his seventh year (Fig. 5 (_a_); _cf._ above, Fig. 4

(_b_)). The mouth is apt to be even more disproportionate, the child

appearing to delight in making this appalling feature supreme, as in the

following examples, both by boys of five (Fig. 5 (_b_) and (_c_)). The

ear, when it is added, is apt to be enormous, and generally the

introduction of new details as ears, hair, hands, is wont to be

emphasised by an exaggeration of their magnitude.

[Illustration: Fig. 5 (_b_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 5 (_c_).]

Very interesting is the gradual artistic evolution of the features.

Here, as in organic evolution, there is a process of specialisation, the

primordial indefinite form taking on more of characteristic complexity.

In the case of the eye, for example, we may often trace a gradual

development, the dot being displaced by a small circle or ovoid, this

last supplemented by a second circle outside the first,[244] or by one

or by two arches, the former placed above, the latter above and below

the circle. The form remains throughout an abstract outline or scheme,

there being no attempt to draw even the lines—_e.g._, those of the

lid-margins—correctly, or to indicate differences of light and dark,

save in the case where a central black dot is used. In this schematic

treatment so striking and interesting a feature as the eye-lash only

very rarely finds a place. A similar schematic treatment of the eye in

the use of a dot, a dot in a circle, and two circles, is observable in

the drawings of savages and of Egyptian and other archaic art.[245]

-----

Footnote 244:

In one case I find the curious device of two dots or small circles,

one above the other within a larger circle, and this form repeated in

the eye of animals.

Footnote 245:

An example of circle within circle occurs in a drawing by a male Zulu

in General Pitt-Rivers’ collection.

-----

The evolution of the mouth is particularly interesting. It is wont to

begin with a horizontal line (or what seems intended for such) which is

frequently drawn right across the facial circle. But a transition soon

takes place to a more distinctive representation. This is naturally

enough carried out by the introduction of the characteristic and

interesting detail, the teeth. This may be done, according to M. Perez,

by keeping to the linear representation, the teeth being indicated by

dots placed upon the horizontal line. In all the cases observed by me

the teeth are introduced in a more realistic fashion in connexion with a

contour to suggest the parted lips. The contour—especially the circular

or ovoid—occasionally appears by itself without teeth, but the teeth

seem to be soon added. The commonest forms of tooth-cavity I have met

with are a narrow rectangular and a curved spindle-shaped slit with

teeth appearing as vertical lines (see the two drawings by boys of six

and five, Fig. 6 (_a_) and (_b_)). These two forms are improved upon and

more likeness is introduced by making the dental lines shorter, as in

Fig. 5 (_c_) (p. 340). With this may be compared a drawing by a boy of

five (Fig. 6 (_c_)), where however we see a movement from realism in the

direction of a freer decorative treatment.

[Illustration: Fig. 6 (_a_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 6 (_b_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 6 (_c_).]

A somewhat similar process of evolution is noticeable in the case of the

nose, though here the movement is soon brought to a standstill. Thus the

vertical line gives place to an angle, which may point to the side, as

in the drawing of a country-boy between three and four (Fig. 7 (_a_)),

but more frequently, I think, points upwards, as in the drawing of a boy

of six (Fig. 7 (_b_)). This in its turn leads to an isosceles triangle

with an acute angle at the apex, as in the drawing of a boy of six (Fig.

7 (_c_)). In a few cases a long spindle-shaped or rectangular form

similar to that of the mouth is employed, as in a drawing of a nervous

child of six (Fig. 7 (_d_)). Refinements are introduced now and again by

an attempt at the nostrils, as in the accompanying curious drawing by a

seven-years-old Jamaica girl (Fig. 7 (_e_)).[246]

-----

Footnote 246:

It is possible that in this drawing the two short lines added to the

mouth are an original attempt to give the teeth.

-----

[Illustration: Fig. 7 (_a_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 7 (_b_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 7 (_c_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 7 (_d_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 7 (_e_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 8 (_a_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 8 (_b_).]

The introduction of other features, more especially ears and hair, must,

according to my observations, be looked on as occasional only, and as a

mark of an advance to a more naturalistic treatment. Differences of

treatment occur here too. Thus the ears, which are apt to be absurdly

large, are now inserted inside the head circle, now outside it. The hair

appears now as a dark cap of horizontal strokes, now as a kind of

stunted fringe, now as a bundle or wisp on one side, which may either

fall or stand on end (see above, Fig. 7 (_d_), and the accompanying

drawing by a girl of nearly four, Fig. 8 (_a_)). These methods of

representation are occasionally varied by a more elaborate line-device,

as a curly looped line similar to that employed for smoke, as in the

annexed drawing by a girl of seven (Fig. 8 (_b_)).

[Illustration: Fig. 9.]

As implied in this account of the facial features, a good deal of

convention-like agreement of method is enlivened by a measure of

diversity of treatment. Perhaps one of the most striking instances of

daring originality is seen in the attempt by a girl of four—who was

subjected to a great deal of instruction—to give separate form to the

chin (Fig. 9). This may be compared with the attempt of the Uganda negro

to indicate symbolically the cheeks (see above, p. 336, Fig. 3).

As I have remarked, to the child bent on representing ‘man’ the head or

face is at first the principal thing, some early drawings contenting

themselves with this. But in general the head receives some support. The

simplest device here is the abstract mode of representation by two

supporting lines, which do duty for legs and body. These are for the

most part parallel (see above, p. 336, Fig. 2), though occasionally they

are united at the top, making a kind of target figure. This same

arrangement, fixing the head on two upright lines, meets us also in the

rude designs of savages, as may be seen in the accompanying rock

inscription from Schoolcraft (Fig. 10).[247]

-----

Footnote 247:

_Op. cit._, pt. iv., plate 18.

-----

[Illustration: Fig. 10.]

The comparative indifference of the child to the body or trunk is seen

in the obstinate persistence of this simple scheme of head and legs, to

which two arms attached to the sides of the head are often added. A

child will complete the drawing of the head by inserting hair or a cap,

and will even add feet and hands, before he troubles to bring in the

trunk (see above, p. 336, Fig. 2, and p. 342, Fig. 7 (_d_), also the

accompanying drawing by a boy of six, Fig. 11 (_a_)). With this neglect

of the trunk by children may be compared the omission of it—as if it

were a forbidden thing—in one of General Pitt-Rivers’ drawings, executed

by a Zulu woman (Fig. 11(_b_)).

[Illustration: Fig. 11 (_a_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 11 (_b_).]

From this common way of spiking the head on two forked or upright legs

there is one important deviation. The contour of the head may be left

incomplete, and the upper occipital part of the curve be run on into the

leg-lines, as in the accompanying example by a Jamaica girl of seven

(Fig. 12). I have met with no example of this among English children.

[Illustration: Fig. 12.]

The drawing of the trunk may commence in one of two ways. With English

children it appears often to emerge as an expansion or prolongation of

the head-contour, as in the accompanying drawings of the front and side

view (Fig. 13 (_a_) and (_b_)).[248] Or, in the second place, the

leg-scheme may be modified, either by drawing a horizontal line across

them and so making a rectangle, as in the accompanying drawing by a boy

of six, or by shading in the upper part of the space, as in the other

figure by a girl of five (Fig. 13 (_c_) and (_d_)). A curious and

interesting variant of this second mode of introducing the trunk is to

be found in the drawings of Von den Steinen’s Brazilians, where the

leg-lines are either kept parallel for a while and then made to diverge,

or are pinched in below what may be called the pelvis, though not

completely joined (Fig. 13 (_e_) and (_f_)).

-----

Footnote 248:

A drawing given by Andree, _op. cit._, plate ii., II, seems to me to

illustrate a somewhat similar attempt to develop the trunk out of the

head.

-----

[Illustration: Fig. 13 (_a_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 13 (_b_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 13 (_c_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 13 (_d_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 13 (_e_) and (_f_).]

When the trunk is distinctly marked off, it is apt to remain small in

proportion to the head, as in the following two drawings by boys of

about five (Fig. 14 (_a_) and (_b_)). As to its shape, it is most

commonly circular or ovoid like the head. But the square or rectangular

form is also found, and in the case of certain children it is expressly

stated that this came later. A triangular cape-like form also appears

now and again, as in the accompanying drawing by a boy of six (Fig. 14

(_c_)).[249] The treatment of the form of trunk often varies in the

drawings of the same child.

-----

Footnote 249:

The opposite arrangement of a triangle on its apex occurs among savage

drawings.

-----

[Illustration: Fig. 14 (_a_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 14 (_b_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 14 (_c_).]

At this stage there is no attempt to show the joining on of the head to

the trunk by means of the neck. The oval of the head is either laid on

the top of that of the trunk, or more commonly cuts off the upper end of

the latter. The neck, when first added, is apt to take the exaggerated

look of caricature. It may be represented by a single line, by a couple

of parallel lines, or by a small oval or circle, as in the accompanying

drawings by a girl of six and a boy of five respectively (Fig. 15 (_a_)

and (_b_); _cf._ above, p. 342, Fig. 7 (_b_)).

[Illustration: Fig. 15 (_a_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 15 (_b_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 16 (_a_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 16 (_b_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 16 (_c_).]

It is noticeable that there is sometimes a double body, two oval

contours being laid one upon the other. In certain cases this looks very

like an expansion of the neck, as in the accompanying drawing by the

same boy that drew the round neck above (Fig. 16 (_a_)). In other cases

the arrangement plainly does not aim at differentiating the neck, since

this part is separately dealt with (Fig. 16 (_b_)). Here it may possibly

mean a crude attempt to indicate the division of the trunk at the waist,

as brought out especially by female attire, as may be seen in the

accompanying drawing where the dots for buttons on each oval seem to

show that the body is signified (Fig. 16 (_c_); _cf._ above, p. 342,

Fig. 7 (_c_)).[250] This, along with the triangular cape-shape of the

trunk, is one of the few illustrations of the effect of dress on the

first childish treatment of the figure. As a rule, this primitive art is

a study of nature in so far as the artificial adjuncts of dress are

ignored, and the rounded forms of the body are, though crudely enough no

doubt, hinted at.

-----

Footnote 250:

On the other hand I find the button dots sometimes omitted in the

lower oval.

-----

Coming now to the arms we find that their introduction is very

uncertain. To the child, as also to the savage, the arms are what the

Germans call a Nebensache—side-matter (_i.e._, figuratively as well as

literally), and are omitted in rather more than one case out of two.

After all, the divine portion, the head, can be supported very well

without their help.

[Illustration: Fig. 17.]

The arms, as well as the legs, being the thin lanky members, are

commonly represented by lines. The same thing is noticeable in the

drawings of savages.[251] The arms appear in the front view of the

figure as stretched out horizontally, or, at least, reaching out from

the sides; and their appearance always gives a certain liveliness to the

figure, an air of joyous self-proclamation, as if they said in their

gesture-language, ‘Here I am’ (see above, p. 339, Fig. 5 (_a_), and the

accompanying drawing of a boy of six, Fig. 17).

-----

Footnote 251:

For examples, see Andree, _op. cit._, plate 3. _Cf._ the drawings of

Von den Steinen’s Brazilians.

-----

In respect of shape and structure a process of evolution may be

observed. In certain cases the abstract linear representation gives

place to contour, the arm being drawn of a certain thickness. But I find

that the linear representation of the arm often persists after the legs

have received contour, this being probably another illustration of the

comparative neglect of the arm; as in the accompanying drawing by a boy

of five (Fig. 18 (_a_)). The primal rigid straightness yields later on

to the freedom of an organ. Thus an attempt is made to represent by

means of a curve the look of the bent arm, as in the accompanying

drawings by boys of five (Fig. 18 (_b_) and (_c_)). In other cases the

angle of the elbow is indicated. This last comes comparatively late in

children’s drawings, which here, too, lag behind the crudest outline

sketches of savages.

[Illustration: Fig. 18 (_a_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 18 (_b_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 18 (_c_).—A miner.]

[Illustration: Fig. 19.]

The mode of insertion or attachment of the arms is noteworthy. Where

they are added to the trunkless figure they appear as emerging either

from the sides of the head, as in the accompanying drawing by a boy of

two and a half years, or from the point of junction of the head and legs

(Fig. 19; _cf._ above, p. 342, Fig.7 (_d_) and (_e_)). In the case of

savage drawings wanting the trunk the arm is also inserted at this point

of junction (see above, pp. 344, 346, Figs. 10 and 13 (_f_)).[252]

-----

Footnote 252:

On the treatment of the arm in the drawings of savages, see in

addition to the authorities already mentioned _The Annual Report of

the Bureau of Ethnology_, 1883-4, p. 42 ff.

-----

After the trunk has been added, the mode of insertion varies still more.

In a not inconsiderable number of cases the arms spring from the bottom

of the head-circle, and sometimes even from the median region, as before

the trunk appeared (_cf._ above, p. 346, Fig. 14 (_b_)). In the last

case the most grotesque arrangements occur, as if the arms might sprout

at any point of the surface.[253] In the majority of cases, however, and

certainly among the better drawings, the arms spring from the side of

the trunk towards the median level (_cf._ above, p. 341, Fig. 6 (_a_)).

-----

Footnote 253:

The tendency which appears in more than one child’s drawings to put

the right arm below the left is worth noting, though I am not prepared

to offer an explanation of the phenomenon.

-----

The length of the arm is frequently exaggerated. This adds to the

self-expansive and self-proclamatory look of the mannikin, as may be

seen in the accompanying drawings by boys of five and of six

respectively (Fig. 20 (_a_) and (_b_)).

[Illustration: Fig. 20 (_a_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 20 (_b_).]

This arrangement of the arms stretched straight out, or less commonly

pointing obliquely upwards or downwards, continues until the child grows

bold enough to represent actions. When this stage is reached their form

and length may be materially modified, as also their position.[254]

-----

Footnote 254:

On the treatment of the arm, see Perez, _op. cit._, p. 190: _cf._

Ricci, _op. cit._, pp. 6-8. I have met with no case of the arms being

attached to the legs such as Stanley Hall speaks of, _Contents of

Children’s Minds_, p. 267.

-----

The arm in these childish drawings early develops the interesting

adjunct of a hand. Like other features this is apt at first to be

amusingly forced into prominence by its size, and not infrequently by

heaviness of stroke as well.

[Illustration: Fig. 21 (_a_).—Humpty Dumpty on the wall.]

[Illustration: Fig. 21 (_b_).]

The treatment of the hand illustrates the process of artistic evolution,

the movement from a bold symbolism in the direction of a more life-like

mode of representation. Thus one of the earliest and rudest devices I

have met with, though in a few cases only, is that of drawing strokes

across the line of the arm by way of digital symbols. Here we have

merely a clumsy attempt to convey the abstract idea of branching or

bifurcation. These cross-strokes are commonly continued upwards so that

the whole visible part of the arm becomes tree-like. It is an important

step from this to the drawing of twig-like lines which bifurcate with

the line of the arm (Fig. 21 (_a_) and (_b_)).

It is a still more significant advance in the process of evolution when

the digital bifurcations are placed rightly, being concentrated in a

bunch-like arrangement at the extremity of the arm-line. Here, again,

various modes of treatment disclose themselves, marking stages in the

development of the artist.

The simplest device would seem to be to draw one short line on either

side of the termination of the arm-line so as to produce a rude kind of

bird’s foot form. This may be done clumsily by drawing a stroke across

at right angles to the line of the arm, or better by two independent

strokes making acute angles with this line. These two modes of

delineation manifestly represent a restriction of the two varieties of

diffuse or dispersed treatment of the fingers already illustrated. Both

forms occur among children’s drawings. They may be found among the

drawings of savages as well.[255]

-----

Footnote 255:

See Andree’s collection, _op. cit._, ii., II.

-----

In this terminal finger-arrangement the number of finger-lines varies

greatly, being, in the cases observed by me, frequently four and five,

and sometimes even as great as ten. It varies, too, greatly in the

drawings of the same child, and in some cases even in the two hands of

the same figure, showing that number is not attended to, as may be seen

in the two annexed drawings, both by boys of five (Fig. 22 (_a_) and

(_b_)). The idea seems to be to set forth a multiplicity of branching

fingers, and multiplicity here seems to mean three or more. The same way

of representing the hand by a claw-form, in which the number of fingers

is three or more, reappears in the drawings of savages (_cf._ above, p.

339, Fig. 4 (_c_)).[256]

-----

Footnote 256:

Examples may be found in Catlin, Schoolcraft, Andree, Von den Steinen,

and others, also in the drawings in the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Farnham.

Von den Steinen gives a case of seven finger-strokes.

-----

[Illustration: Fig. 22 (_a_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 22 (_b_).]

An important advance on these crude devices is seen where an attempt is

made to indicate the hand and the relation of the fingers to this. One

of the earliest of these attempts takes the form of the well-known

toasting-fork or rake hand. Here a line at right angles to that of the

arm symbolically represents the hand, and the fingers are set forth by

the prongs or teeth (see above, p. 341, Fig. 6 (_a_), and p. 349, Fig.

18 (_a_)). Number is here as little attended to as in the radial

arrangements. It is worth noting that this _schema_ seems to be widely

diffused among children of different nationalities, and occurs in the

drawings of untaught adults. I have not, however, noticed any example of

it among savage drawings.

Another way of bringing in the hand along with the fingers is by drawing

a dark central patch or knob. This not infrequently occurs without the

fingers as the symbol for hand. It becomes a complete symbol by

arranging finger-lines after the pattern of a burr about this (see

above, p. 347, Fig. 15 (_a_)).

A further process of artistic evolution occurs when the fingers take on

contour. This gives a look of branching leaves to the hand. The

leaf-like pattern may be varied in different ways, among others by

taking on a floral aspect of petal-like fingers about a centre, as in

the two annexed drawings by boys of six (Fig. 23 (_a_) and (_b_); _cf._

above, p. 350, Fig. 20 (_a_)).

[Illustration: Fig. 23 (_a_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 23 (_b_).]

One curious arrangement by which a thickened arm is made to expand into

something like a fan-shaped hand appears with considerable frequency. It

is zoologically interesting as being a kind of rough representation of

the fundamental typical form from which hand, fin, and wing may be

supposed to have been evolved. Here the arm sinks into insignificance,

the whole limb taking on the aspect of a prolonged hand, save where the

artist resorts to the device of making the double organ go across the

body (Fig. 24 (_a_) and (_b_)).

[Illustration: Fig. 24 (_a_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 24 (_b_).]

The legs come in for very much the same variety of treatment as the

arms. The abstract straight line here, as already pointed out, soon

gives place to the pair of lines representing thickness. They are for

the most part parallel and drawn at some distance one from the other,

though in certain cases there is a slight tendency to give to the figure

the look of the ‘forked biped’ (_cf._ above, p. 342, Fig. 7 (_c_)). In a

large proportion of cases there is a marked inclination of the legs, as

indeed of the whole figure, which seems to be falling backwards (see

above, pp. 340, 352, Figs. 5 (_c_) and 22 _(b_)). In many instances, in

front and profile view alike, one of the legs is drawn under the body,

leaving no room for the second, which is consequently pushed behind, and

takes on the look of a tail (see above, p. 352, Fig. 22 (_b_)s).

[Illustration: Fig. 25.]

Both legs are regularly shown alike in front and in profile view. Yet

even in this simple case attention to number may sometimes lapse. Among

the drawings collected by me is one by a boy of five representing the

monster, a three-legged ‘biped’ (Fig. 25).[257]

-----

Footnote 257:

Unless this is a jocose suggestion of a tail.

-----

The shape of the leg varies greatly. With some children it is made short

and fat. It develops a certain amount of curvature long before it

develops a knee-bend. This is just what we should expect. The standing

figure needs straight or approximately straight legs as its support.

When the knee-bend is introduced it is very apt to be exaggerated (_cf._

above, Fig. 24 (_b_)). This becomes still more noticeable at a later

stage, where actions, as running, are attempted.

[Illustration: Fig. 26 (a).]

The treatment of the foot shows a process of evolution similar to that

seen in the treatment of the hand. At first a bald abstract indication

or suggestion is noticeable, as where a short line is drawn across the

extremity of the leg. In place of this a contour-form, more especially a

circle or knob, may be used as a designation. Very interesting here is

the differentiation of treatment according as the booted or naked foot

is represented. Children brought up in a civilised community like

England, though they sometimes give the naked foot (see p. 342, Fig. 7

(_d_), where the claw pattern is adopted), are naturally more disposed

to envisage the foot under its boot-form. Among the drawings of the

Jamaica children, presumably more familiar with the form of the naked

foot, I find both the toasting-fork and the burr arrangement, as also a

rude claw, or birch-like device used for the foot (see above, pp. 336,

338, 345, Figs. 2, 4 (_b_), and 12). The toasting-fork arrangement

appears in General Pitt-Rivers’ collection of savage drawings. Also a

bird’s foot treatment often accompanies a similar treatment of the hand

in the pictographs of savage tribes, and in the drawings of Von den

Steinen’s Brazilians (see above, pp. 338, 339, Fig. 4 (_a_) and (_c_)).

[Illustration: Fig. 26 (_b_).]

[Illustration: Fig. 26 (_c_).]

An attempt to represent the booted foot seems to be recognisable in the

early use of a triangular form, as in the accompanying drawing by a

small artist of five (Fig. 26 (_a_)).[258] Very curious is the way in

which the child seeks to indicate the capital feature of the boot, the

division of toe and heel. This is very frequently done by continuing the

line of the leg so as to make a single or a double loop-pattern, as in

the following (Fig. 26 (_b_), (_c_); _cf._ above, p. 342, Fig. 7 (_b_)).

A tendency to a more restrained and naturalistic treatment is sometimes

seen (see above, p. 354, Fig. 24 (_a_) and (_b_)). It may be added that

the notch between toe and heel is almost always exaggerated. This may be

seen by a glance at Figs. 17 and 22 (_a_), pp. 348, 352. The same thing

is noticeable in a drawing by a young Zulu in General Pitt-Rivers’

collection.

-----

Footnote 258:

This is hardly conclusive, as I find the triangular form used for the

foot of a quadruped, presumably a horse.

-----

_Front and Side View of Human Figure._

So far, I have dealt only with the treatment of the front view of the

human face and figure. New and highly curious characteristics come into

view when the child attempts to give the profile aspect. This comes

considerably later than the early lunar representation of the full face.

Children still more than adults are interested in the full face with its

two flashing and fascinating eyes. ‘If,’ writes a lady teacher of

considerable experience in the Kindergarten, ‘one makes drawings in

profile for quite little children, they will not be satisfied unless

they see two eyes; and sometimes they turn a picture round to see the

other side.’ This reminds one of a story told by Catlin of the Indian

chief, who was so angry at a representation of himself in profile that

the unfortunate artist was in fear of his life.

At the same time children do not rest content with this front view.

There is, I believe, ample reason to say that, quite apart from

teaching, they find their own way to a new mode of representing the face

and figure which, though it would be an error to call it a profile

drawing, has some of the characteristics of what we understand by this

expression.

The first clear indication of an attempt to give the profile aspect of

the face is the introduction of the angular line of the side view of the

nose into the contour. The little observer is soon impressed by the

characteristic, well-marked outline of the nose in profile; and as he

cannot make much of the front view of the organ, he naturally begins at

an early stage, certainly by the fifth year, to vary the scheme of the

lunar circle, broken at most by the ears, by a projection answering to a

profile nose.

[Illustration: Fig. 27.]

This change is sometimes made without any other, so that we get what has

been called the mixed scheme, in which the eyes and mouth retain their

front-view aspect. This I find very common among children of five. It

may be found—even in the trunkless figure—along with a linear mouth (see

above, pp. 340-344, Figs. 5 (_c_) and following, also 11 (_a_)). The

nasal line is, needless to say, treated with great freedom. There is

commonly a good deal of exaggeration of size. In certain cases the nose

is added in the form of a spindle to the completed circle (Fig. 27;

_cf._ above, p. 340, Fig. 5 (_c_)).

It may well seem a puzzle to us how a normal child of five or six can

complacently set down this irrational and inconsistent scheme of a human

head. We must see what can be said by way of explanation later on. It is

to be noticed, further, that in certain cases the self-contradiction

goes to the point of doubling the nose. That is to say, although the

interesting new feature, the profile nose, is introduced, earlier habit

asserts itself so that the vertical nasal line appears between the two

eyes (see above, p. 349, Fig. 18 (_c_)).

The further process of differentiation of the profile from the primitive

full-face scheme is effected in part by adding other features than the

nose to the contour. Thus a notch for the mouth appears in some cases

below the nasal projection (Fig. 28 (_a_)), though the grinning front

view is apt to hold its own pertinaciously. A beard, especially the

short ‘imperial,’ as it used to be called, shooting out like the nose

from the side, also helps to mark profile.[259] Less frequently an ear,

and in a very few cases, hair, are added on the hinder side of the head,

and assist the impression of profile. Adjuncts, especially the pipe, and

sometimes the peak of the cap, contribute to the effect, as in the

accompanying drawing by a boy of six (Fig. 28 (_b_); _cf._ above, Figs.

6 (_a_), 18 (_c_), and 24 (_b_), pp. 341, 349, 354).[260]

-----

Footnote 259: