There is in our imperfect life too little of pleasure and too much of
play. This means that our activities are largely wasted in
pleasureless ways; that, being more tired than we should be, we lose
much time in needed rest; moreover, that being, all of us more or
less, slaves to the drudgery of need or fashion, we set a positive
value on that negative good called freedom, even as the pause between
pain takes, in some cases, the character of pleasure.
There is in all play a sense not merely of freedom from
responsibility, from purpose and consecutiveness, a possibility of
breaking off, or slackening off, but a sense also of margin, of
permitted pause and blank and change; all of which answer to our
being on the verge of fatigue or boredom, at the limit of our energy,
as is normal in the case of growing children (for growth exhausts),
and inevitable in the case of those who work without the renovation of
interest in what they are doing.
If you notice people on a holiday, you will see them doing a large
amount of "nothing," dawdling, in fact; and "amusements" are, when
they are not excitements, that is to say, stimulations to deficient
energy, full of such "doing nothing." Think, for instance, of "amusing
conversation" with its gaps and skippings, and "amusing" reading with
its perpetual chances of inattention.
All this is due to the majority of us being too weak, too badly born
and bred, to give full attention except under the constraint of
necessary work, or under the lash of some sort of excitement; and as a
consequence to our obtaining a sense of real well-being only from the
spare energy which accumulates during idleness. Moreover, under our
present conditions (as under those of slave-labour) "work" is rarely
such as calls forth the effortless, the willing, the pleased
attention. Either in kind or length or intensity, work makes a greater
demand than can be met by the spontaneous, happy activity of most of
us, and thereby diminishes the future chances of such spontaneous
activity by making us weaker in body and mind.
Now, so long as work continues to be thus strained or against the
grain, play is bound to be either an excitement which leaves us poorer
and more tired than before (the fox-hunter, for instance, at the close
of the day, or on the off-days), or else play will be mere dawdling,
getting out of training, in a measure demoralisation. For
demoralisation, in the etymological sense being _debauched_, is the
correlative of over-great or over-long effort; both spoil, but the one
spoils while diminishing the mischief made by the other.
Art is so much less useful than it should be, because of this bad
division of "work" and "play," between which two it finds no place.
For Art--and the art we unwittingly practice whenever we take pleasure
in nature--is without appeal either to the man who is straining at
business and to the man who is dawdling in amusement.
Æsthetic pleasure implies energy during rest and leisureliness during
labour. It means making the most of whatever beautiful and noble
possibilities may come into our life; nay, it means, in each single
soul, _being_ for however brief a time, beautiful and noble because
one is filled with beauty and nobility.