TEE PICTURE AND THE TEXT 281 



All this, in the first place, has of course added an extraordinary rich- 

 ness and definition to our imaginative representation of the distant and 

 unseen. Places and persons, forms of life and manufacturing processes 

 are thus brought actually before our vision, if not before our senses, in 

 their completeness. We are made familiar in advance with things which 

 are to be seen only later in life, if at all ; and our sympathetic participa- 

 tion in affairs at large is deepened as well as broadened. The greater 

 world must be brought to the individual through the imagination if he 

 is to come into contact with it at all, and pictorial representation vital- 

 izes and reinforces this sense of understanding and community with 

 mankind. 



In more specific relations the picture-supplement facilitates our 

 understanding, and this service has made it indispensable in bringing 

 before the mind objects or processes whose constitution is too complex to 

 be presented analytically, or to be reconstructed from a purely verbal 

 description. In the lecture, just as in the book, illustration has a place 

 not only legitimate, but important. Comprehension begins in intuition, 

 and our sense of security in any general conception is weakened in pro- 

 portion to the vagueness which marks our mental picture of its field. 

 So long as photographs, stereopticon views and moving pictures perform 

 this service, their use by the platform lecturer must be welcomed. 

 Nevertheless, their function is a distinctly subordinate one — namely, the 

 illustration of a theme which is itself still the essential preoccupation of 

 the mind. 



This relation has now significantly altered; the picture is advanced 

 to the front rank and the theme has correspondingly fallen back. The 

 very relation of speaker and screen in the illustrated lecture symbolizes 

 this change. The lecturer stands in an obliterating shadow while all the 

 energy of illumination is concentrated upon the stereopticon sheet. 

 Even in its most elementary physical relations the focus of attention is 

 thus shifted, and the change is significant of a profound modification in 

 the relations of audience and lecturer. Language is an appeal to the 

 mind, not to the eye ; and its function is imperiled whenever this fact is 

 obscured. The focusing of vision plays an important part in maintain- 

 ing this intimate spiritual contact, and nothing more effectual in de- 

 stroying it can well be conceived than the substitution of another point 

 of regard so violent and alluring as the illuminated screen. • 



The extraordinary mechanical perfection of photography, its exten- 

 sion into the fields of panoramic, telescopic and micro-photography, and 

 above all the development of motion pictures, have accelerated this adop- 

 tion of a new attitude and the creation of a novel demand on the part of 

 the audience. For one does not merely introduce a new medium in sub- 

 stituting pictures for discourse; the appeal is to a different side of 

 human nature and satisfies an independent craving. Confronting facts 



