The scanty abstract treatment, the circle enclosing two dots and the vertical and horizontal lines, points to the absence of any serious attempt to imitate a form closely and fully. It seems absurd to suppose that a child of three or four does not image a human face better than he delineates it; and even if this were doubtful it is certain that when he sets down a man without hair, ears, trunk, or arm, his execution is falling far short of his knowledge. How is this to be accounted for? My explanation is that the little artist is still much more of a symbolist than a naturalist, that he does not in the least care about a full and close likeness, but wants only a barely sufficient indication. This scantiness of treatment issuing from want of the more serious artistic intention is of course supported by technical limitations. The lunar face with the two propping lines answers to what the child can do easily and comfortably. Much more than his elder brethren our small limner is bound by the law of artistic economy, the need of producing his effects with the smallest expenditure of labour, and of making every touch tell. Defects of executive resource and of manual skill appear plainly in other characteristics. The common inclination of the lines of the legs points to the unconscious selection of easiest directions of manual movement.[285] The unduly lengthened arm and leg, the multiplication of legs—as seen most strikingly in the case of the quadruped—illustrate the influence of motor or muscular inertia. There is, too, a noticeable want of measurement and management of the space to be covered, as when one eye is put in so large as to leave no room for a second, or when filling in details from above downwards the eyes are put in too near the occipital curve, and so all the features set too high up. The same want of measurement of space may contribute to the child’s habit of drawing the trunk so absurdly small in proportion to the head; for he begins with the head, and by making this large finds he has not left, within the limits of what he considers the right size of figure, space enough for the trunk. ----- Footnote 285: This is supported, in the case of children who have begun to wield the pen, by the exercises of the copy-book. -----