146 Education through Nature 



general effect. If this question does not at once occur 

 to him, effort should be made to lead him to understand 

 that objects may be drawn as they really are, or they 

 may be idealized, just as an object may be considered 

 scientifically as to fact, or emotionally as to real or 

 imagined meaning and beauty. Which of these 

 criteria should prevail is often a serious question for 

 the teacher to decide. 



Pupils who have been trained in the ordinary free- 

 hand drawing often experience most difficulty in 

 representing minute details in form and structure. 

 They are apt to make a few bold strokes which may 

 look well enough at a distance, but which convey no 

 true picture of the reality. Shall this mode of draw- 

 ing be allowed or must it be prohibited ? 



To answer this, we may ask, what is the object of 

 drawing? In the first place, ideas of form, color, 

 shade, and structure can be better expressed in this 

 way than by means of language. If it is a part of nature 

 study, those ideas should correspond to the reality and 

 should be so expressed as to accurately represent the 

 reality. But this expression is not the final object of 

 the work. It is supposed to have an educational 

 value, as it involves various judgments and many 

 neural and muscular activities. Now, the object is 

 the ability to form true judgments, and the ability to 

 so control the hand as to exactly represent or execute 

 what the judgment has found to be true. The benefit 

 of this part of the work lies in the fact that it puts the 

 body into proper relation to the activities of the higher 

 centers and the mind, making the hand execute what 

 the mind dictates. The more completely this is 

 realized, the more effective is the training. But the 

 dictates of the mind must receive their sanction from 

 the testimony of the senses; otherwise the drawing 

 would represent mere imaginary creations instead of 

 a real thing. In imaginary representation there is no 



