THE YOUXG draughtsman: 533 



ing of science all over the world echoes again and again the words 

 of Gal ton, that the way to better a race lies " in preventing the 

 more faulty members from breeding." 



The proper method has been, used often enough, but crudely, 

 by such rulers as Ezzelin da Romano, Henry I, and many others. 



We need this reform more than any other that has been pro- 

 posed in our present time. We should look forward to it as we 

 do to the noblest and best aspirations which crown our lives with 

 light, yea, as we look with uplifted eyes for the hope of our best 

 salvation in this world. The earth is reeking with the sweat of 

 evil, injustice, and moral sickness ; the means for relief are easily 

 within our reach ; they will bring injustice to no one, they will 

 put a stop to millions of wrongs, they will guarantee to our pos- 

 terity the possibility of a higher career in every way, without the 

 burdensome disadvantages which crowd us to low planes of life. 

 There is no room with us for the confirmed criminal ; there is less 

 room for his offspring, for they pollute the place whereon they 

 stand. 



THE YOUNG DRAUGHTSMAN.* 



By JAMES SULLY, M. A.,LL.D., 



GEOTE PROFESSOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND LOGIC AT THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, 



LONDON. 



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. Sitting at the table and 

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

 centered, " 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 draughts- 

 man 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, f And this, though crude 

 enough and apt to shock the aesthetic sense of the matured artist 

 by its unsightliness, is closely related to art, forming, indeed, in 

 a manner a preliminary stage of pictorial design. 



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



* From advance sheets of Studies of Childhood, by James Sully, M. A., LL. D., in press 

 of D. Appleton & Co. 



j- 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 den 

 Steinen, Unter den Naturvolkern Braziliens, Kap. x, S. 243 f. 



