use to a child who is learning to walk, and, though they are afterwards discarded, the advantage derived from them remains.
14. (x) The perfect teaching of art is based on synthesis and analysis.
We have already shown (chap. xviii. Principle 5) by examples taken from nature and the workshop that in this relation synthesis is more important. The following points in addition will show that synthetic exercises should generally come first: (1) We should always commence with what is easy, and our own efforts are easier to understand than those of other people. (2) Writers take pains to conceal the artifices by which their results are obtained, so that at first the student finds difficulty in understanding what he sees, or fails to do so altogether. This difficulty would be removed if he began by practising on his own attempts, which are void of artifice. (3) The chief thing aimed at should be given the chief place in practice, and our real aim is to accustom the student of art to produce original work, and not merely to copy what is placed before him (see chapter xviii. Principle 5).
15. For all this, the accurate analysis of the work of others must not be neglected. It is only by continually traversing it that we get to know a road, its by-paths, and its cross-roads. Besides, the variety that exists in nature is so great that it is impossible for rules to cover it or for one mind to master it. Many processes require many rules to express them, and these we can only learn if we analyse and study, and by imitation and emulation put ourselves in a position to produce similar results.
16. It is our wish then that in each art complete and exact models or examples of everything that can be produced in that art be supplied to the student. Precepts also and rules should be given him to help him to carry out the processes, to guide his efforts at imitation, to show him how to avoid making faults, and to correct them when made. Then other and different models should be given him, and these he should learn to classify and compare
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