these exceptions include Leonardo da Vinci) usually ignore this impulse, and offer few suggestions and little help to the mannikin-drawing children. The reason is not far to seek. Even very learned people are usually aware that they cannot draw a man very well, and they do not want to be asked to try. But writers on education, feeling perhaps secure that no one will require or expect them to draw the human figure, are not nearly so reserved about the child's selection of subjects.
Thus psychologists such as Sully have filled books with grotesque child drawings, and have traced their evolution, so that now many people know when to expect the appearance of ears and nose, of heels and elbows in the mannikins—also when to expect profiles showing two eyes and riders whose legs do not appear behind the horse's transparent body. It is noticeable, however, that in the case of most children, those embryo-like drawings, with their saw-teeth, rake fingers, and claw-like hands, do not give place to others of better proportions. They do not go on (though it is only a step) from the straight arm to the tapered one, or from the clawed hand to the human hand. On the contrary, they stop drawing quite suddenly, and nothing remains of the early and healthy impulse but a life-long
