Hiatus; The Void in Modern Education, by Outis (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. MEDIATE EFFECTS OF EXACT ART, AND ITS TEACHING. If we come now to look into the process of instruction that will indeed result in a real knowledge and power of drawing, there will perforce present themselves for examination the constituents of an extensive subject- matter; all that varied range of objects which would constitute the learner's field of study, and which, however restricted by other demands upon his time, would still be very various and extensive. Bearing this necessary restriction in mind, I shall confine my examination to such objects and such amount of study thereof, as I know to be possible and practicable; examining these less with a view to the immediate artistic result than to that indirect or mediate effect which has been already glanced at: the diiference between this and the former consideration being, that whereas in that case we contemplated the sure effect of a minimum amount of true unadulterated teaching, we shall now try to trace what certain consequences attend on an equally exact but more liberal range of study. And seeing that the structure we now propose to raise is destined to rise higher than before, the founda- GEOMETRIC BASIS OF NATURE AND ART. 39 tion should be deeper in proportion; and we accordingly begin with lower and more fundamental forms, the cube, the sphere, and the cone?not on paper, however, but solid. That these creatures of geometry are, in a boy's estimate of things, a dry unlovely generation, is clear enough: but anything to touch and handle is better surely than those horizontals, uprights, and diagonals that stand, lie, or lean in the first sheet of elementary drawing-books, followed by a circle, an oblong, and a square. Conceded your school-boy does not affect a circle as it figures in these bo...