ABSTRACT
The little child seems at first to find more aesthetic pleasure in natural phenomena than in works of art, perhaps because material interest and selfish wishes must take a secondary place when confronted with nature. Handling a pencil is indeed a fruitful source of pleasure for every child, and as in this branch it is comparatively easy to collect and study the productions, this form of childish activity has been the object of particularly searching enquiry. Children in their drawings never think of trying to represent visual reality, indeed their strokes are nothing but the marking down of the ideas and thoughts that come scurrying through their heads. The child's unconcern as to whether his drawings correspond with the objects drawn is also shown in the remarkable "misplacements" which occur fairly often in the very early stages. The child's favourite subject is that which every artist undertakes as his last and most difficult, that is man.
