Now the child has to acquire the co-ordinations here briefly described. He may have the visual image of the human face or the horse which he wishes to depict. This power of visualising shows itself in other ways and can be independently tested, as by asking a child to describe the object verbally. But he has as yet no inkling of how to reproduce his image. That his inability at the outset is due to a want of co-ordination is seen in the fact that at this stage he cannot draw even when a model is before his eyes. The process of learning here is very like what takes place when a child learns to speak. The required movements have somehow to be performed and attached to the effects they are then found to produce. Just as a child first produces sounds, partly instinctively or spontaneously, partly by imitating the seen movements of another’s lips, etc., so he produces lines by play-like scribble and by imitating the visible movements of another person’s hand. The tendency to imitate is observable in the first loop-formations, and possibly also in the abrupt angular changes which give a zig-zag look to some of these early tracings. In this early stage we see a marked want of control. The effort is spasmodic and short-lived: the little draughtsman presently runs off into nonsense scribble. The want of control is seen, too, in the tendency to prolong lines unduly, and to repeat or multiply them, the primitive play-movements being very much under the empire of inertia or habit, _i.e._, the tendency to repeat or go on with an action. The effect of limitating natural conditions in the motor apparatus is illustrated, not only in the slightly curved form of these first scribble lines, but in the general obliquity or inclination of the line; it being manifestly easier for the hand when brought in front of the body to describe a line running slightly upwards from left to right (or in the reverse direction) than one running horizontally. The want of control by means of a steady visual image is further seen in the absence of any attempt at a plan, at a mapping out of the available space, and at an observation of proportion.