even in its most adult form, and that the products of science, invention,
discovery, as well as the association plexus of all that was originally determined
in the form of consciousness, are made by rhythmic alternation of attack, as it
moves from point to point creating diversions and recurrence.
The other study, although quite independent, is part a special application and
illustration of the same principle.
At the age of four or five, when they can do little more than scribble, children's
chief interest in pictures is as finished products; but in the second period, which
Lange calls that of artistic illusion, the child sees in his own work not merely
what it represents, but an image of fancy back of it. This, then, is the golden
period for the development of power to create artistically. The child loves to
draw everything with the pleasure chiefly in the act, and he cares little for the
finished picture. He draws out of his own head, and not from copy before his
eye. Anything and everything is attempted in bold lines in this golden age of
drawing. If he followed the teacher, looked carefully and drew what he saw, he
would be abashed at his production. Indians, conflagrations, games, brownies,
trains, pageants, battles—everything is graphically portrayed; but only the little
artist himself sees the full meaning of his lines. Criticism or drawing strictly
after nature breaks this charm, since it gives place to mechanical reproduction in
which the child has little interest. Thus awakens him from his dream to a
realization that he can not draw, and from ten to fifteen his power of perceiving
things steadily increases and he makes almost no progress in drawing.
Adolescence arouses the creative faculty and the desire and ability to draw are
checked and decline after thirteen or fourteen. The curve is the plateau which
Barnes has described. The child has measured his own productions upon the
object they reproduced and found them wanting, is discouraged and dislikes
drawing. From twelve on, Barnes found drawing more and more distasteful; and
this, too, Lukens found to be the opinion of our art teachers. The pupils may
draw very properly and improve in technique, but the interest is gone. This is the
condition in which most men remain all their lives. Their power to appreciate
steadily increases. Only a few gifted adolescents about this age begin a to
develop a new zest in production, rivaling that of the period from five to ten,
when their satisfaction is again chiefly in creation. These are the artists whose
active powers dominate.
Lukens[3] finds in his studies of drawing, that in what he calls his fourth period
of artistic development, there are those "who during adolescence experience a