n the pupil
would make, "What am I to select?" it were answered, "Only the important
things," then the next question, "What are the important things?" could
be answered only by saying, "That alone the real artist knows, but
cannot teach." Certainly there are important things that can be taught
the student in the initial stage of "laying-in" a figure, but _when_ to
begin selecting or eliminating no teacher could tell him, simply because
he must be aware that a true draughtsman can afford to eliminate nothing
when the truth of the whole is at stake. The artist's conception and its
expression may be slight or elaborate, but in neither case can selection
or elimination take place, for a true conception must be founded upon
the character of the whole, which is determined by the entire complex of
all the parts.

To explain the essential difference between art and mechanical drawing
or mechanical reproduction, a more applicable theory must be found.
Compare the art of telling a story. If, to describe an incident in the
street you had the entire affair reenacted on the same spot, you would
have but made a mechanical reproduction of it, leaving the spectator to
simplify the affair, and construct his _own_ conception of it. You have
not given _your_ ideas of the event, and so you have not made a work of
art. So, if a man draws an object detail for detail by any mechanical
process, or traces over its photograph, he has but reduplicated the
real aspect of the object, and has failed to give the spectator a simple
and intelligible idea of it. Starting out with the generous notion of
giving all, that there may be "something for everyone," he has given
nothing. He did not originally form an intelligible and simplified idea
of the figure, so how can his drawing be expected to give one to others?

But how can forms be made _more_ simple and intelligible than by
reproducing their aspect with absolute accuracy? Our combined sense of
vision and touch comprehends very easily certain elementary solid forms,
the sphere, the cube, the pyramid and the cylinder. No forms but these,
and their modifications, can be apprehended by the mind in one and the
same act of vision. Every complex form, even so simple as that of a
kidney, for instance, must be first broken up into its component parts
before it can be fully apprehended or remembered. Analogously with the
above, Prof. Wundt has shown how the mind can apprehend _as separate
units_ any number, o