502 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
earliest stages not only no time be lost, but that every morsel of time and energy be 
csurned to good effect, and no bad habits of half-seeing and half-doing be contracted. 
Now from the very title of my subject it will have impressed you that mechanical 
help is to come in somewhere, and I may as well say at once that we do believe in the 
intelligent use of simple, mechanical test-instruments suited to the needs of each class 
or stage of work. Leonardo appears to favor the use of any practical help, mechan- 
ical or other, in view of learning thoroughly the true perspective of form, including 
organic or living forms ; gaining the science of right seeing,” which we may take to 
oe the nearest equivalent of the ancient and true meaning of the term perspective as 
used by the old masters. If such things were allowable in his time, surely it were vain 
now, in our own days of rapidity and accuracy, of scientific testing, weighing, probing, and 
studying, to insist that in ¢hds one difficult and generally proclaimed indispensable branch 
of work alone no kind of test should be adopted, the use of no outside means permitted 
for strengthening and quickening the powers of observation and judgment as to pro- 
dortion, form, and space. Whether we like and admit it or not, it is very clear that 
machinery, in the shape of photography, has been doing its very best during the last 
ifly years, even in the so-called arts of design, to replace human handiwork—far worse, 
to supersede the human ee. It is very strange to remark how those people who ery 
out against anything mechanical in learning to draw, to the extent sometimes of 
objecting to a pencil being held in the outstretched hand for measuring the general pro- 
portions of subject or model, do not perceive how frequent a thing it is becoming for 
the painter, the well-established, full-grown artist, to discredit his own God-given power 
of sight in favor of the glass eye of the camera. Yet so far is this the case that many 
of the most modern and fashionable painters of the day, much more glaringly in France 
than elsewhere, give us in their pictures neither more nor less than the disturbed pre- 
sentment obtained by what photographers term a ‘‘ wide-angle” lens, thus completely 
renouncing their own natural human sight in faver of the distorted production of pho- 
cography. Such cases are, of course, extreme ; still, anyone who thinks the statement 
exaggerated should make sure for himself by visiting and carefully examining exhi- 
oitions held in London, Paris, and doubtless in this country, and there is no question but 
ne will discover some few choice examples of such inhuman perspective. If the pro- 
fessional artist can be so misled, and is so ready to mislead others, it is not too soon to 
make mention of this dangerous tendency, and to seek means of opposing it. It has 
seemed to us upholders of the philographic system that the very simple, elementary 
suggestion proffered by Leonardo in the work above alluded to might be taken as the 
oasis of an instrument constructed on precisely the same principle as the human eye, 
‘hat, namely, of obtaining the immediate projection of forms on a transparent plane, 
forming a section of the visual cone, and necessarily at right angles to the axis of that 
:one, which would give us the help we require. 
As auxiliary to this, and in conjunction with it, we adopt the principle of that most 
nseful invention of one Dillingen, known in modern times as the pantograph. Add to the 
above the study of the oblique line or axis, forming the basis of a simple graphic lan- 
guage or alphabet corresponding to the systems of names and notation used in the study 
of color tones, numbers, etc., and you have the whole substructure of this method. 
which I will now explain more in detail. } 
Let us suppose a pupil is possessed of the ordinary amount of intelligence, wishing 
to learn, but ignorant of any knowledge of drawing whatever—whether the freehand 
copy or the pretty little view sort, or even, if you wish it, of plane geometry. We 
count two principal means of acting on this pupil; the first, well expressed by the 
french word *“ entrainement,” rests on the immense power for good of well-directed 
repetition (force of habit). Produce from the very beginning true and correct represen- 
cations of forms by what means soever, you must soon learn to see those forms correctly,