g. And the more perfectly made the engine,
the less will the amount of this "dither" be.

The word "dither" will be a useful name to give that elusive quality,
that play on mechanical accuracy, existing in all vital art. #It is this
vital quality that has not yet received much attention in art training.#

It is here that the photograph fails, it can only at best give
mechanical accuracy, whereas art gives the impression of a live,
individual consciousness. Where the recording instrument is a live
individual, there is no mechanical standard of accuracy possible, as
every recording instrument is a different personality. And it is the
subtle differences in the individual renderings of nature that are the
life-blood of art. The photograph, on account of its being chained to
mechanical accuracy, has none of this play of life to give it charm. It
only approaches artistic conditions when it is blurred, vague, and
indefinite, as in so-called artistic photography, for then only can some
amount of this vitalising play, this "dither" be imagined to exist.

It is this perfect accuracy, this lack of play, of variety, that makes
the machine-made article so lifeless. Wherever there is life there is
variety, and the substitution of the machine-made for the hand-made
article has impoverished the world to a greater extent than we are
probably yet aware of. Whereas formerly, before the advent of machinery,
the commonest article you could pick up had a life and warmth which gave
it individual interest, now everything is turned out to such a
perfection of deadness that one is driven to pick up and collect, in
sheer desperation, the commonest rubbish still surviving from the
earlier period.

But to return to our drawings. If the variations from strict accuracy
made under the influence of feeling are too great, the result will be
a caricature. The variations in a beautiful drawing are so subtle as
often to defy detection. The studies of Ingres are an instance of what I
mean. How true and instinct with life are his lines, and how easily one
might assume that they were merely accurate. But no merely accurate work
would have the impelling quality these drawings possess. If the writer
may venture an opinion on so great an artist, the subtle difference we
are talking about was sometimes missed by even Ingres himself, when he
transferred his drawings to the canvas; and the pictures have in some
cases become academic and lifeless. Without the sti