aintings, but they are no longer pure
paintings. The drama in which the later event comes before the earlier
is an esthetic barbarism which is entertaining as a clever trick in a
graceful superficial play, but intolerable in ambitious dramatic art. It
is not only tolerable but perfectly natural in any photoplay. The
pictorial reflection of the world is not bound by the rigid mechanism of
time. Our mind is here and there, our mind turns to the present and then
to the past: the photoplay can equal it in its freedom from the bondage
of the material world.

But the theater is bound not only by space and time. Whatever it shows
is controlled by the same laws of causality which govern nature. This
involves a complete continuity of the physical events: no cause without
following effect, no effect without preceding cause. This whole natural
course is left behind in the play on the screen. The deviation from
reality begins with that resolution of the continuous movement which we
studied in our psychological discussions. We saw that the impression of
movement results from an activity of the mind which binds the separate
pictures together. What we actually see is a composite; it is like the
movement of a fountain in which every jet is resolved into numberless
drops. We feel the play of those drops in their sparkling haste as one
continuous stream of water, and yet are conscious of the myriads of
drops, each one separate from the others. This fountainlike spray of
pictures has completely overcome the causal world.

In an entirely different form this triumph over causality appears in the
interruption of the events by pictures which belong to another series.
We find this whenever the scene suddenly changes. The processes are not
carried to their natural consequences. A movement is started, but before
the cause brings its results another scene has taken its place. What
this new scene brings may be an effect for which we saw no causes. But
not only the processes are interrupted. The intertwining of the scenes
which we have traced in detail is itself such a contrast to causality.
It is as if different objects could fill the same space at the same
time. It is as if the resistance of the material world had disappeared
and the substances could penetrate one another. In the interlacing of
our ideas we experience this superiority to all physical laws. The
theater would not have even the technical means to give us such
impressions, but if it