All the preceding exercises are "formative" for the art of drawing. They develop in the child the manual ability to execute a geometric design and prepare his eye to appreciate the harmony of proportions between geometric figures. The countless observations of drawings, the habit of minute examination of natural objects, constitute so many preparatory drills. We can, however, say that the whole method, educating the eye and the hand at the same time and training the child to observe and execute drawings with intense application, prepares the mechanical means for design, while the mind, left free to take its flight and to create, is ready to produce.

It is by developing the individual that he is prepared for that wonderful manifestation of the human intelligence, which drawing constitutes. The ability to see reality in form, in color, in proportion, to be master of the movements of one's own hand—that is what is necessary. Inspiration is an individual thing, and when a child possesses these formative elements he can give expression to all he happens to have.

There can be no "graduated exercises in drawing" leading up to an artistic creation. That goal can be attained only through the development of mechanical technique and through the freedom of the spirit. That is our reason for not teaching drawing directly to the child. We prepare him indirectly, leaving him free to the mysterious and divine labor of reproducing things according to his own feelings. Thus drawing comes to satisfy a need for expression, as does language; and almost every idea may seek expression in drawing. The effort to perfect such expression is very similar to that which the child makes when he is spurred on to perfect his language in order to see his thoughts translated into reality. This effort is spontaneous; and the real drawing teacher is in the inner life, which of itself develops, attains refinement, and seeks irresistibly to be born into external existence in some empirical form. Even the smallest children try spontaneously to draw outlines of the objects which they see; but the hideous drawings which are exhibited in the common schools, as "free drawings" "characteristic" of childhood, are not found among our children. These horrible daubs so carefully collected, observed, and catalogued by modern psychologists as "documents of the infant mind" are nothing but monstrous expressions of intellectual lawlessness; they show only that the eye of their child is uneducated, the hand inert, the mind insensible alike to the beautiful and to the ugly, blind to the true as well as to the false. Like most documents collected by psychologists who study the children of our schools, they reveal not the soul but the errors of the soul; and these drawings, with their monstrous deformities, show simply what the uneducated human being is like.

Such things are not "free drawings" by children. Free drawings are possible only when we have a free child who has been left free to grow and perfect himself in the assimilation of his surroundings and in mechanical reproduction; and who when left free to create and express himself actually does create and express himself.

The sensory and manual preparation for drawing is nothing more than an alphabet; but without it the child is an illiterate and cannot express himself. And just as it is impossible to study the writing of people who cannot write, so there can be no psychological study of the drawings of children who have been abandoned to spiritual and muscular chaos. All psychic expressions acquire value when the inner personality has acquired value by the development of its formative processes. Until this fundamental principle has become an absolute acquisition we can have no idea of the psychology of a child as regards his creative powers.

Thus, unless we know how a child should develop in order to unfold his natural energies, we shall not know how drawing as a natural expression is developed. The universal development of the wondrous language of the hand will come not from a "school of design" but from a "school of the new man" which will cause this language to spring forth spontaneously like water from an inexhaustible spring. To confer the gift of drawing we must create an eye that sees, a hand that obeys, a soul that feels; and in this task the whole life must cooperate. In this sense life itself is the only preparation for drawing. Once we have lived, the inner spark of vision does the rest.

Leave to man then this sublime gesture which transfers to the canvas the marks of creative divinity. Leave it free to develop from the very time when the tiny child takes a piece of chalk and reproduces a simple outline on the blackboard, when he sees a leaf and makes his first reproduction of it on the white page. Such a child is in[310]
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[312] search of every possible means of expression, because no one language is rich enough to give expression to the gushing life within him. He speaks, he writes, he draws, he sings like a nightingale warbling in the springtime.

Let us consider, then, the "elements" which our children have acquired in their development with reference to drawing: they are observers of reality, knowing how to distinguish the forms and colors they see there.

Children are peculiarly sensitive in their appreciation of color. This sensibility began to grow in the sensory exercises in the early years. Their hands have been trained to the most delicate movements and the children have been masters of them since the days of the "Children's House." When they begin to draw outlines they copy the most diverse objects—not only flowers but everything which interests them: vases, columns and even landscapes. Their attempts are spontaneous; and they draw both on the blackboard and on paper.

As regards colors, it should be recalled that while still in the "Children's House" the children learned to prepare the different shades, mixing them themselves and making the various blends. This always held their eager interest. Later the care with which they seek to get shades corresponding exactly to natural colorings is something truly remarkable.[8] Over and over again the children try to mix the most diverse colors, diluting or saturating them until they have succeeded in reproducing the desired shade. It is surprising also to see how often their eye succeeds in appreciating the finest differences of color and in reproducing them with striking accuracy.

The study of natural science proved to be a great help in drawing. Once I tried to show some children how a flower should be dissected, and for this purpose I provided all the necessary instruments: the botanist's needle, pincers, thin glass plates, etc., just as is done at the university for the experiments in natural science. My only aim was to see whether the preparations which university students make for botanical anatomy were in any way adaptable to the needs of little children. Even at the time when I studied in the botanical laboratory at the university I felt that these exercises in the preparation of material might be put to such use. Students know how difficult it is to prepare a stem, a stamen, an epithelium, for dissection, and how only with difficulty the hand, accustomed for years exclusively to writing, adapts itself to this delicate work. Seeing how skilful our children were with their little hands I decided to give them a complete scientific outfit and to test by experiment whether the child mind and the characteristic manual dexterity shown by children were not more adapted to such labors than the mind and hand of a nineteen-year-old student.

My suspicion proved correct. The children with the keenest interest dissected a section of the violet with remarkable accuracy, and they quickly learned to use all the instruments. But my greatest surprise was to find that they did not despise or throw away the dissected parts, as we older students used to do. With great care they placed them all in attractive order on a piece of white paper, as if they had in mind some secret purpose. Then with great joy they began to draw them; and they were accurate, skilled, tireless, and patient, as they are in[313]
[314] everything else. They began to mix and dilute their colors to obtain the correct shades. They worked up to the last minute of the school session, finishing off their designs in watercolor: the stem and leaves green, the individual petals violet, the stamens—all in a row—yellow, and the dissected pistil light green. The following day a little girl brought me a charmingly vivacious written composition, in which she told of her enthusiasm over the new work, describing even the less noticeable details of the little violet.

These two expressions—drawing and composition—were the spontaneous manifestations of their happy entrance into the realms of science.

Encouraged by this great success, I took some simple microscopes to school. The children began to observe the pollen and even some of the membrane coverings of the flower. By themselves they made some splendid cross-sections of the stems, which they studied most attentively.

They "drew everything they saw." Drawing seemed to be the natural complement of their observation work.

In this way the children learned to draw and paint without a drawing teacher. They produced works which, in geometric designs as well as in studies from life, were considered far above the average drawings of children.

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