_Men on Horseback, etc._ Childish drawing moves as the dialectic progress of the Hegelian thought from distinction and antithesis to a synthesis or unity which embraces the distinction. After illustrating the human biped in his contradistinction to the quadruped he proceeds to combine them in a higher artistic unity, the man on horseback. The special interest of this department of childish drawing lies in the fresh and genial manner of the combining. To draw a man and a horse apart is one thing, to fit the two figures one to the other, quite another. At first the degree of connexion is slight. There is no suggestion of a composite or mixed animal, such as may have suggested to the lively Greek imagination the myth of the centaur. The human figure is pitched on to the quadruped in the most unceremonious fashion. Thus in many cases there is no attempt even to combine the profile aspects, the man appearing impudently in frontal aspect, or what would be so but for the lateral nasal excrescence, as in the accompanying drawing by a boy of five (Fig. 46). [Illustration: Fig. 46.] With this indifference to a consistent profile there goes amazing slovenliness in attaching the man to the animal, and this whether the front or side view of the human figure is introduced. No attempt is made in many cases to show attachment: the man is drawn just above the quadruped, that is all. It seems to be a chance whether the two figures meet, whether the feet of the man rest circus-fashion on the animal’s back, or, lastly, whether the human form is drawn in part over the animal, and, if so, at what height it is to emerge from the animal’s back. Various arrangements occur in the same sheet of drawings (see Fig. 47 (_a_), (_b_) and (_c_)). [Illustration: Fig. 47 (_a_).] [Illustration: Fig. 47 (_b_).] [Illustration: Fig. 47 (_c_).] When this overlapping takes place the presence of the animal’s trunk makes no difference in the treatment of the man. He is drawn with his two legs just as if he were in relief against the horse; and this arrangement is apt to persist even when a child can draw a rude semblance of a horse and knows at what level to place the rider. So difficult to the little artist is this idea of one thing covering another that even when he comes to know that both the legs of the rider are not seen, he may get confused and erase both (see above (p. 376), Fig. 45 (_f_)).[277] [Illustration: Fig. 48 (_a_).] [Illustration: Fig. 48 (_b_).]