DRAWING FROM THE FLAT. 461 
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But how shall we teach the embodiment of spirit? . We haven't to 
each it. We can’t. Our business is to perfect the means for such em- 
sodiment as soon as possible, and if we do not hinder the mind and 
check its activity by insisting on conventionality and mannerism, its vital 
force will permeate the drawing as the Divine Mind permeates this 
aniverse. 
'“ There is no great and no small 
To the soul that maketh all. 
And where it cometh, all things are, 
And it cometh evervwhere.” 
‘¢ As aman thinketh, so is he.” If the pupil feels the exquisite delicacy 
of the petal, he cannot draw a broad gray line to represent it ; if he feels 
she springing life in the leaf-stalk expanding into its glistening shield of 
green, his representation of it cannot be lifeless. If he thinks solidity 
when he represents an object—if while he draws the outline he sees the 
drawing as a reality in space, with its three dimensions—his pencil will 
somehow represent his thought (unless he is required to hold it three 
inches from the point, at right angles to the line, and at forty-five degrees 
with the paper!). If he thinks roughness as he draws the lemon, smooth- 
ness as he draws the apple ; brittleness, transparency as he draws the glass, 
softness as he draws the head of cotton-grass, his drawing will reveal it. 
I'he mind informs the hand. No one can think delicacy and draw massive- 
ness, nor think life and draw death. Nor can the artist draw life without 
thinking it. 
But shall copies never be used ? Shall not the pupil have the benefit 
of the experience of others before him ? 
Yes, by all means ; give him every scrap of help available. Life is too 
short and too precious for each to tread all the weary way traveled by the 
race, and repeat all its disheartening experiments. Give the pupil abun- 
lant illustration of technique, but let it be of the best—good reproduc- 
sions of the work of masters, not the cheap, inaccurate, and lifeless dia- 
grams by some lithographer’s apprentice. Urge the pupil to study them. 
He is not to copy line for line and dot for dot ; he is to seize their spirit ; 
ne 1s to analyze them to discover the order in which the spirit unfolds its 
.dea, and what forms it assumes. He may think the artist’s thought, and, 
so far as he 1s able, may represent its successive stages of manifestation, 
reproducing if he can the same effect ; but never, never is he to copy 
ouch by touch. Such copying will never lead to art. Unless we can 
ead pupils to see deeper than the surface, our work will be worthless. 
Without the spirit a simple sketch reveals only the poverty of death ; an 
2laborate drawing, only its endlessness. With the spirit, the merest outline 
glows with life, and a perfect drawing lives on when the cunning hand that 
made it is dust. The artist being dead yet speaketh.