When we say, “This is a face, and not mere strokes”, we are, of course, distinguishing such a drawing from such a one . And it is true: If you ask anyone: “What is this?” (pointing to the first drawing) he will certainly say: “It's a face”, and he will be able straight away to reply to such questions as, “Is it male or female?”, “Smiling or sad?”, etc. If on the other hand you ask him: “What is this?” (pointing to the second drawing), he will most likely say, “This is nothing at all”, or “These are just dashes”. Now think of looking for a man in a picture puzzle; there it often happens that what at first sight appears as “mere dashes” later appears as a face. We say in such cases: “Now I see it is a face.” It must be quite clear to you that this doesn't mean that we recognize it as the face of a friend or that we are under the delusion of seeing a “real” face: rather, this “seeing it as a face” must be compared with seeing this drawing either as a cube or as a plane figure consisting of a square and two rhombuses; or with seeing this “as a square with diagonals”, or “as a swastika”, that is, as a limiting case of this ; or again with seeing these four dots .... as two pairs of dots side by side with
135.
each other, or as two interlocking pairs, or as one pair inside the other, etc.