274 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



paper the features of the original in all their refinement of details and 

 values that to look on the reproduction in a book is now comparable with 

 looking on the scene or composition itself. The result has been a still 

 further widening of the breach between text and illustration; and the 

 temptation must often be great to introduce a picture because it is good 

 in subject and admirably reproduced, though in its composition little 

 regard has been paid to the situation which it is intended to represent. 

 This defect is no less noticeable in the flotsam of periodical literature and 

 the daily press than in the more elaborate composition of book-illustra- 

 tions. When pictures are looked for, pictures will be forthcoming, 

 whether appropriate or not. The waste corners of the newspaper are 

 often filled with odds and ends of wit, humor and anecdote, in which the 

 union of text and illustration too often suggests that the items have been 

 thrown together and then drawn forth in pairs at haphazard. 



The significance of such variations in the place of illustration, as 

 well as the factors in their production, will perhaps be more clearly ap- 

 prehended if the changes of value which the picture undergoes in indi- 

 vidual mental development are recalled. In adult literature the text has 

 complete meaning in itself, the picture has not; the text is made first, 

 then the picture is composed ; for the latter aims simply to present in a 

 concrete visual image what has been set forth through verbal analysis in 

 the text. The picture is thus completely subordinate to the text; it 

 serves only to reinforce a feeble visual imagination in its effort to get 

 before the mind a scene which the writer of necessity presents in frag- 

 ments by successive statements. 



But this is not the primitive way of conceiving the relation between 

 these two constituents, nor is it the association which at first existed for 

 the child. The picture, in those earliest days, was primary, the text 

 secondary. For the adult the picture illustrates the text ; for the young 

 child the text explains the picture — it is needful only in case the picture 

 can not be understood by itself. The text marks the imperfection of the 

 picture, or series of pictures, in telling a story, and is added to supple- 

 ment its deficiencies. 



Pictures have a meaning for the child long before he begins to read 

 or understand printed words. From babyhood they form part of his 

 perennial delights, and are among the most treasured of Ms sources of 

 pleasure. They have splendor of color and never-failing variety of 

 forms; they represent objects of enduring interest, whether familiar or 

 novel ; they are full of action or suggestive of manifold and significant 

 relationships; they tell, singly or in series, stories vivid and direct in 

 their appeal, which are made scarcely the less alluring by their partial 

 incomprehensibility. 



The appreciation of pictures is a part of the child's introduction to 

 language and representative thought. They have something of the con- 

 trollability of images and, except for motion, the vividness and natural- 



