to suggest to the spectator the impression of natural size.  The demand of the imagination for the normal size of the persons and things in the picture is so strong that it easily and constantly overcomes great enlargements or reductions.  We see at first a man in his normal size and then by a close-up an excessive enlargement of his head.  Yet we do not feel it as if the person himself were enlarged.  By a characteristic psychical substitution we feel rather that we have come nearer to him and that the size of the visual image was increased by the decreasing of the distance.  If the whole picture is so much enlarged that the persons are continually given much above normal size, by a psychical inhibition we deceive ourselves about the distance and believe that we are much nearer to the screen than we actually are.  Thus we instinctively remain under the impression of normal appearances.  But this spell can easily be broken and the esthetic effect is then greatly diminished.  In the large picture houses in which the projecting camera is often very far from the screen, the dimensions of the persons in the pictures may be three or four times larger than human beings.  The illusion is nevertheless perfect, because the spectator misjudges the distances as long as he does not see anything in the neighborhood of the screen.  But if the eye falls upon a woman playing the piano directly below the picture, the illusion is destroyed.  He sees on the screen enormous giants whose hands are as large as half the piano player, and the normal reactions which are the spring for the enjoyment of the play are suppressed.

The further we go into details, the more we might add such special psychological demands which result from the fundamental principles of the new art.  But it would be misleading if we were also to raise demands concerning a point which has often played the chief role in the discussion, namely, the selection of suitable topics.  Writers who have the unlimited possibilities of trick pictures and film illusions in mind have proclaimed that the fairy tale with its magic wonders ought to be its chief domain, as no theater stage could enter into rivalry.  How many have enjoyed “Neptune’s Daughter”—­the mermaids in the surf and the sudden change of the witch into the octopus on the shore and the joyful play of the watersprites!  How many have been bewitched by Princess Nicotina when she trips from the little cigar box along the table!  No theater could dare to imitate such raptures of imagination.  Other writers have insisted on the superb chances for gorgeous processions and the surging splendor of multitudes.  We see thousands in Sherman’s march to the sea.  How hopeless would be any attempt to imitate it on the stage!  When the toreador fights the bull and the crowds in the Spanish arena enter into enthusiastic frenzy, who would compare it with those painted people in the arena when the opera “Carmen” is sung.  Again others emphasize the opportunity