methods employed in the ordinary
elementary school seem to be governed by the assumption that the
perceptive and the expressive faculties are two distinct groups which
admit of being separately trained. In the ordinary Drawing lesson,
for example, the child is trying to express what he does not even
pretend to have perceived; whereas in the ordinary History or Science
lesson the process is reversed, and the child pretends to perceive
what he makes no attempt to express.

But is the assumption correct? Do the two groups of faculties admit
of being separately trained? Is it possible to devote this hour or
half-hour to the training of perception, and that to the training
of expression? Surely not. Perception and expression are not two
faculties, but one. Each is the very counterpart and correlate, each
is the very life and soul, of the other. Each, when divorced from
the other, ceases to be its own true self. When perception is real,
living, informed with personal feeling, it must needs find for
itself the outlet of expression. When expression is real, living,
informed with personal feeling, perception--the child's own
perception of things--must needs be behind it. More than that. _The
perceptive faculties_ (at any rate in childhood) _grow through the
interpretation which expression gives them, and in no other way. And
the expressive faculties grow by interpreting perception, and in no
other way_. The child who tries to draw what he sees is training his
power of observation, not less than his power of expression. As he
passes and repasses between the object of his perception and his
representation of it, there is a continuous gain both to his vision
and to his technique. The more faithfully he tries to render his
impression of the object, the more does that impression gain in truth
and strength; and in proportion as the impression becomes truer and
stronger, so does the rendering of it become more masterly and more
correct. So, again, if a man tries to set forth in writing his views
about some difficult problem--social, political, metaphysical, or
whatever it may be--the very effort that he makes to express himself
clearly and coherently will tend to bring order into the chaos and
light into the darkness of his mind, to widen his outlook on his
subject, to deepen his insight into it, to bring new aspects of it
within the reach of his conscious thought. And here, as in the case
of the child who tries to draw what he sees,