Frazer.] 4db [j an . ig, 



crisis by the effects which it makes visible on those who are participators 

 in and spectators of it. Here is no place to admit variation, the atti- 

 tudes, or, in other words, the lines of the figures in such a composition 

 must be normal and intelligible to the mass of mankind ; must be, in short, 

 a composite or abstraction of the lines that would survive were a hundred 

 thousand such scenes to be instantaneously photographed : all else weak- 

 ens the efiect intended. Composite photography is a method of obtain- 

 ing the essence of a number of objects and, in so far as those objects are 

 typical of similar phenomena, of recording the relations of things to each 

 other, the effects produced by a certain force or certain forces on matter. 

 The composite will enable the mind, armed with some experience in life, 

 to ascend from the individual cases to the underlying cause or motive. 



Is it necessary, then, to prove that a line made by a human arm and 

 hand is liable to the variations which such an arm or hand must pro- 

 duce when influenced, as they always are, by indefinitely numerous 

 physical and mental forces ? Is it necessary to devote much time to the 

 proof that a line on paper so produced is as much a resultant of organic 

 processes as the outline of the human figure or the expressions of the 

 human face ? It is a kind of fossil like the print of a footstep or of a leat 

 which, while it consists of nothing having life, or that ever need have had 

 life, and possesses none of the material of the body which made it, is ca- 

 pable like the impressions above referred to of telling a great deal of the 

 characteristics of its creator : it is, in fact, as organic as the forms of living 

 things by which we judge them, for their forms or images do not possess 

 life either. 



Such methods as composite photography, or composite drawing or 

 painting of any kind which can be accomplished when the hand has the 

 skill to reproduce what the memory has stored away, are applicable only 

 to the representation of resultants which do not vary within too wide 

 limits, and are especially applicable where such variations depend upon 

 the influences brought to bear on sentient things, and when they do not 

 occur per saltum, but gradually and by imperceptible steps. 



If the purpose be to represent an average of some object which presents 

 images differing radically from each other at successive views there must 

 be a very large number of such images selected to photograph, and then an 

 ill-defined but darker blur will show vaguely on what part of the field on 

 the whole the images have been most numerous. For phenomena of this 

 kind the method is not adapted to offer its best results, though it still may 

 be used to ascertain some facts in a general way.* 



The attempt to apply the composite system of photography to the 

 curves representing the rate of mortality in cities and towns, or to the 



*Iu a pleasant letter received from Mr. Francis Gal ton, F. R. S„ in answer to 

 a copy of the preliminary note given above, which 1 sent him, he mentions that 

 an attempt was made at the Kew Observatory to apply the principle of compo- 

 site photography to the meteorological charts, without great success, though 

 with more than Mr. Ualton would have anticipated. 



