spectator,
or rather the relation between the mental mechanism and the pictures on
the screen. We recognized that in every case the objective world of
outer events had been shaped and molded until it became adjusted to the
subjective movements of the mind. The mind develops memory ideas and
imaginative ideas; in the moving pictures they become reality. The mind
concentrates itself on a special detail in its act of attention; and in
the close-up of the moving pictures this inner state is objectified. The
mind is filled with emotions; and by means of the camera the whole
scenery echoes them. Even in the most objective factor of the mind, the
perception, we find this peculiar oscillation. We perceive the movement;
and yet we perceive it as something which has not its independent
character as an outer world process, because our mind has built it up
from single pictures rapidly following one another. We perceive things
in their plastic depth; and yet again the depth is not that of the outer
world. We are aware of its unreality and of the pictorial flatness of
the impressions.

In every one of these features the contrast to the mental impressions
from the real stage is obvious. There in the theater we know at every
moment that we see real plastic men before us, that they are really in
motion when they walk and talk and that, on the other hand, it is our
own doing and not a part of the play when our attention turns to this or
that detail, when our memory brings back events of the past, when our
imagination surrounds them with fancies and emotions. And here, it
seems, we have a definite starting point for an esthetic comparison. If
we raise the unavoidable question--how does the photoplay compare with
the drama?--we seem to have sufficient material on hand to form an
esthetic judgment. The verdict, it appears, can hardly be doubtful. Must
we not say art is imitation of nature? The drama can show us on the
stage a true imitation of real life. The scenes proceed just as they
would happen anywhere in the outer world. Men of flesh and blood with
really plastic bodies stand before us. They move like any moving body in
our surroundings. Moreover those happenings on the stage, just like the
events in life, are independent of our subjective attention and memory
and imagination. They go their objective course. Thus the theater comes
so near to its purpose of imitating the world of men that the comparison
with the photoplay suggests almo