Still another kind of play belonging to this class (and at this point

all connection with fighting play is severed) consists in rolling or

throwing the projectile into or through a hole. The familiar game of

marbles with holes was known to Greek children, and was called τρόπα.

The same principle, too, is employed in the old-fashioned billiards

in those games requiring a ring into which the ball is rolled. For

other games the ring is made on the ground, as in this described by

Nordenskiöld: “Several stand in a circle and take turns at throwing a

short tapering iron rod, the object being to cause the iron to fall on

its sharp end within the circle and stand upright.”[266] In croquet

the balls must roll through wickets. Throwing balls through the open

mouth of a figure carved in wood was a mediæval diversion, and Eneas

Silvius wrote in 1438 that the youths of Basel hung an iron ring on

their playground and amused themselves with batting balls through

it.[267] In Genf, little metal balls were tossed through holes bored in

the head of a cask.[268] We have a classic description of such a game

in Storm’s Schimmel-reiter, where Hauke Haien wins the victory under

the eyes of his beloved: “Then it flew like lightning to Hauke’s arms.

He stooped a little, turning the ball two or three times in his hand,

and as he took aim deathlike silence reigned. All eyes followed the

flying ball as it hummed along, cutting the air. Suddenly, far away,

the silvery wings of a seagull gleamed, and her thrilling cry sounded

from the dikes, but in the same instant the ball crashed into the

cask, and all the people cried out ‘Hurrah for Hauke!’ while the word

ran through the crowd, ‘Hauke Haien has won the game.’ But he, as they

all crowded toward him, reached out for but one hand. She cried, ‘What

is the matter, Hauke? The ball is in the cask!’ He only nodded, and did

not stir from the spot. It was not till he felt the little hand fast

clasped in his own that he spoke. ‘You must be right,’ he said, ‘I do

believe I have won.’” Finally, I will recall Ulysses’s marvellous feat

in the presence of the drunken suitors, when on his return home he sent

an arrow through the ears of twelve oxen standing in a row.

In our last division of this class of games the projectile must cling

to the target. Everybody has tried to throw his cap on his head or

a peg, and jugglers and clowns give us numberless examples of feats

belonging here. One game is played with rings hung on a stick, or

caught with a hook, or thrown on an upright stake. At fairs the lucky

player gets a prize for tossing rings on knives. Play of this kind has

been used by a brilliant American journal to point a satire on American

bidding for European titles. The ambitious damsels stand in front of

a brightly lighted booth, in which numerous manikins of repulsive

appearance, with their armorial bearings suspended round their necks,

are ranged on exhibition, and attempt to throw engagement rings over

the heads of these figures.

6. _Catching_

Catching and holding moving objects is the direct opposite of throwing,

and the two are best understood by being contrasted. Catching, too, is

the complement of throwing; the object which has been set in motion,

animated, as it were, by human power, comes to our hand to get new

life. In no way can our supremacy over matter find more satisfactory

expression. It is with difficulty that children learn to catch, for the

direction of their necessary motions by means of sight requires so much

time that the moving object passes to another place before the hand is

ready to seize it. The child usually practises catching a ball rolling

on the floor first, then holds up its dress or apron or two hands

placed together to form a cup into which the ball thrown skilfully

through the air will drop. Many such attempts are required before the

art is acquired of controlling the muscular innervation to meet the

still distant moving object.

While there are various objects employed in such play—as, for instance,

in the Greek πενταλιθίζειν there were five pebbles, bits of china,

or what we call jack-stones, thrown up with one hand and caught on

its back, and in the beautiful game of magic rings, and trials of

skill with sticks, knives, watches, etc.[269]—still the ball is the

most perfect and suitable plaything, partly because it is easy to

grasp from any direction and partly on account of its lightness and

elasticity. It is equally well adapted to solitary or social play.

When alone, the player throws it with a view to its return to the

starting point, whether its course be perpendicular or a rebound. A

game of skill popular with girls consists in throwing the ball, and

before it has time to descend taking another ball from a table, then

catching the first one with the same hand.[270] In bilboquet, which was

played by Henry III of France, and is known to many primitive peoples,

as, for instance the Eskimos, the ball is caught in a cup, to which

it is attached by a string. The games are much more varied when two

or more play together at throwing and catching, though in that case

experimentation is usually transformed into a contest. The kadokadoka

of the Gilbert Islanders illustrates a simple and universally known

form. Women play it by standing in two opposing lines and throw the

ball, which must never be allowed to drop, back and forth.[271] In

the Greek οὐφρανία σφᾶιρα the ball was thrown as high as possible,

and the contest was over who should catch it, or, if only two were

playing, in the agility of the leap for it, as in the Odyssey. The

victor must throw the ball aloft again before his feet touch the

earth. A game practised by the Indians is apparently of a similar

character. “The beginner of the game holds a rather hard ball in his

hand, throws it directly up, and attempts to catch it. This is by no

means an easy task, for around him stands an eager circle each with

hands outstretched to seize the ball. The successful one rushes to an

appointed goal, while the others try to hinder him.”[272] The game in

which one boy rides on another’s back to throw the ball is illustrated

in an Egyptian wall picture, and Bastion saw it also in Burmah. In

this, imitation becomes prominent, as does the element of rivalry,

where the boys vie with one another in clapping, kneeling, and going

through various motions before catching the ball. In most games where

the ball is struck the contest develops after it is caught. In playing

trapball, the ball is placed on a springboard and sent aloft. All try

to catch it, and the victor must bounce the ball until he is supplanted

by another. In England, trapball can be traced back to the fourteenth

century. Strutt gives an illustration of the spoon-shaped board then

used.[273]

In closing these remarks on movement-play we will notice briefly the

distinction implied in our use of the word “sport,” since many of the

games which we have been considering are so designated and practised

by adults. What is it that converts play into sport? Preeminently the

seriousness, the stress of earnestness with which it is pursued. Yet

this statement is too general, for children too, as every one knows,

are deeply earnest about their play, which does not on that account

become a sport; and a man may play billiards or chess with such

perseverance and zeal that his game becomes the principal event of his

daily life, and yet he is not called a sportsman. We must evidently

find a more specific definition. The fact that in the merest play all

sorts of acts and achievements are involved which are not, as such,

playful, but rather preparatory for play, may help us to this. In the

eyes of adults the interest of a game lies in the construction of a

theory for it; they busy themselves with perfection of form in play,

with the rules of the game, with practice and training, with the proper

outfit and suitable costume, etc. Only he who does so assiduously

busy himself is a genuine sportsman, according to this theory. We may

then define sport as play pursued reflectively, scientifically. This

accounts for the fact that children are never sportsmen, despite the

immense importance of their play to them, and that the mountain climber

whose highest ideal is to conquer the heights, or the chess player who

devotes all his spare time to the game, is still not a sportsman.

III. PLAYFUL USE OF THE HIGHER MENTAL POWERS

Rousseau, who dwells upon the fact that a man’s education begins at

his birth, illustrates clearly, if somewhat exaggeratedly (being under

the influence of Condillac), the threefold biological significance of

youth when he says in the first volume of Émile that if man came into

the world full grown he would be “un parfait imbécile, un automate, une

statue immobile et presque insensible.” These words exactly fit into

our subject and its classification. Having treated of the sensor and

motor aspects of experimentation, we now proceed to examine its value

to the higher mental life, where by its help man is rescued from the

danger of remaining “un parfait imbécile.”

The influence of experimentation is felt in the activity of intellect,

feeling, and will alike. Of course all play, including the limited

group which we have been considering, is of great importance to the

whole mental make-up, since it acts in all directions, sharpening

the intellect, exercising the will, and furnishing occasion for the

discharge of emotion. But the special aim of the present discussion

lies in the investigation of how far these powers of the mind are

themselves the subjects of experimental play, and accordingly in what

follows we shall not inquire as to the advantageous effect of play on

attention, imagination, reason, etc., but will examine cases where

these capacities are directly experimented with.

A. EXPERIMENTATION WITH THE MENTAL POWERS

If we ask ourselves what aspects of intellectual activity are most

conspicuously subjects of playful experimentation we naturally turn

to memory, imagination, attention, and reason. Our first subject for

consideration, then, is memory, where again we must distinguish between

simple recognition and reflective recollection.

1. _Memory_

(_a_) Recognition

Recognition is the link which connects the present with what we have

known in the past. The new psychology repudiates the common idea that

the present impression is compared with a memory picture of the past

and the two recognised as identical, since it is not borne out by

the facts. Neither the emergence of a genuine memory picture nor its

comparison with the present object is demonstrable. When I select my

own from a number of hats I simply recognise it, and can tell no more

about it. But a careful study of cases in which the recognition is

hesitating clearly distinguishes the two following stages. First there

is the simple knowledge: I have seen this before, the recognition

having been accomplished by the “Coefficient of Recognition”[274]

(Höffding) without our necessarily knowing why we recognise the object.

It is difficult to say what grounds this feeling. Physiologically there

may be special reasons for the accompanying nervous processes. Speaking

psychologically, there seem to be certain shadowy feelings of warmth

and intimacy. In any case the content of the memory picture is genuine,

though it does not stand alone, but blends with the impression of the

moment by the process of assimilation.[275] A second stage is reached

through the fact that we are able to place the object suitably; we know

that we have had something to do with it, and this is often facilitated

by a hasty reversion to its earlier psychic _milieu_ of space and time

relations, as well as of word and idea connections. When not too

mechanical, as sometimes when dressing we put on everything in its

right relation but without attention, recognition is pre-eminently

pleasurable. Even the mere coefficient of recognition is accompanied

with a mild satisfaction such as Faust experienced when after a foreign

sojourn he found himself once more in his study. “Ah, when in one’s own

narrow cell the friendly lamp is burning.” But much more intense is

the effect of the second stage, for here comes in joy in accomplishing

a task, in overcoming some difficulty, however slight. A short time

ago I found on my table a fragment of porcelain decorated with gold. I

knew it at once; the pattern was one I had often seen, but where? My

glance accidentally fell on the curtain cord, and immediately I felt

that the scrap must be from one of the porcelain knobs which it was

looped on. The result was lively, almost triumphant satisfaction. The

act of recognition being so pleasurable, we would naturally expect man

to make use of it for its own sake—that is, experimentally. Aristotle,

indeed, grounds appreciation of art in pleasurable recognition, and,

while not going to that length, we must admit that the idea deserves

consideration.

We have already spoken of visual recognition, which is a prominent

division, and will now consider play connected with it. The earliest

manifestations of pleasure in the perception of form recorded by child

psychologists are no other than acts of recognition. In its second

quarter the infant begins to recognise its mother and nurse. There is

nothing playful about this, of course, but very soon experimentation

becomes prominent as the same form appears in changed conditions

with consequent uncertainty involving the stimulus of difficulty to

be overcome. At six months Preyer’s baby saw his father’s reflection

in a mirror, and made a sudden motion toward it.[276] The little

girl observed by Pollock at thirteen months recognised pictures in a

newspaper, calling out “Wah, wah” to the animals, trees, etc.[277]

In Sully’s beautiful experiment, made in the seventeenth month, the

playful character is more evident. “The young thinker,” he says in

the diary, “achieved his first success in geometric abstraction, or

the consideration of pure form, when just seventeen months old. He had

learned the name of his rubber ball. Having securely grasped this,

he went on calling oranges ‘Bo.’ This left the father in some doubt

whether the child was attending exclusively to form, as a geometrician

should, for he was wont to make a toy of an orange, as when rolling

it on the floor. This uncertainty was, however, soon removed. One day

C—— was sitting at table beside his sire, while the latter was pouring

out a glass of beer. Instantly the ready namer of things pointed to

the bubbles on the surface, and exclaimed ‘Bo!’ This was repeated on

many subsequent occasions. As the child made no attempt to handle

the bubbles, it was evident that he did not view them as possible

playthings. As he got lost in contemplation, muttering ‘Bo, bo!’ his

father tells us that he had the satisfaction of feeling sure that the

young mind was already learning to turn away from the coarseness of

matter and fix itself on the refined attribute of form.”[278] At this

time, too, the child begins to enjoy recognising things from their mere

outline. Sigismund records progress in this direction at about the

end of the second year. “They already know many things by the simple

outline. My boy, who, by the way, has seen few pictures, recognised

my shadow in his twenty-first month, being frightened for the first

moment, then clearly delighted, calling out ‘Papa!’ and has probably

not been afraid of any shadow since. On the contrary, he, like other

children of his age, likes to watch shadow pictures,[279] especially

moving ones.” They soon learn to know the outlines of their own. How

deeply must the essence of individuality be impressed upon them when

these meagre outlines of a figure which they are accustomed to seeing

filled out are sufficient for recognition! Perhaps for children who

do not see pictures early, shadows serve to introduce the latter and

explain them, just as, according to the Greek fable, they led to the

art of drawing. Children are so fond of looking at pictures that they

often enjoy the representation more than the reality. “A house!”

exclaims the little picture gazer delightedly when he comes to one,

while he would hardly notice the real thing. Does this pleasure arise

from the solving of a riddle, as Aristotle seems to say?[280] This

would make the enjoyment of recognition identical with that derived

from overcoming difficulties, and there can be no doubt that this is an

important element in all art appreciation, if it be not, indeed, the

very kernel of æsthetic enjoyment. In the enjoyment of a landscape,

it is safe to say that for nine tenths of the observers the chief

satisfaction comes from recognising the various peaks, villages,

castles, etc., in the panorama. There is one more point. As soon as

anything like a contest is involved, a stronger shock, a sturdier

resistance to the act of recognition, a comic colouring is given to

the enjoyment. Marie G——, who from the time she was two years old had

a veritable passion for having things drawn for her, considered it a

great joke when she could not make out what was meant without some

effort. For older children and adults puzzle pictures are skilfully

prepared with a view to rendering recognition difficult, and success

is followed by triumphant laughter. Finally, it may be added that

primitive folk are sometimes unable to see the meaning of photographs

and other pictures,[281] a fact which makes their early recognition by

children the more wonderful. On the other hand, I recall Charles de

Lahitte’s observation of an imprisoned Guayaké, (a little-known and

utterly uncivilized tribe of southern Paraguay) which proves that the

very lowest savage may recognise a photograph and be overjoyed with

it. “He recognised his picture after some instruction, and broke out

with expressions of pleasure and astonishment, crying repeatedly as he

slapped his body, ‘Gon, gon!’ which equals ‘me!’”[282]

Acoustic recognition, too, is more important and significant for art

than one might at first suppose. We find even in children who repeat

a simple melody indefatigably that pleasure in repetition forms a

psychological basis for a physiological impulse, and in the musical

pleasures of adults this feeling is much stronger.[283] The playful

feature is emphasized when acoustic conditions vary, as in changed

pitch or some other modification, so that overcoming difficulty enters.

Potpourri and variations are instances. In Wagner’s music there is

a peculiar satisfaction in the emergence of a leading motive from

the overwhelming mass of tones; like a friendly island rising in the

midst of surging seas. All modern music, indeed, is evolved from the

intricacies and modifications of such acoustic play; to follow them

and identify the unity in variety is a pleasure which grows with the

hearer’s technical appreciation, until at last, in fuguelike movements,

actual beauty is subordinated to the artfully ordered formal features

of the composition.

In poetry, playful repetition takes manifold forms,[284] such as

rhyme, alliteration, and that chainlike reiteration of words referred

to earlier. But still more ingenious and charming is the device of

bringing the repetition so close on its own heels that the first

impression still dwells in the mind when the second demands attention.

Pure enjoyment of repetition as such is simplest when the same or

similar forms are separated by a long interval, allowing the first

impression to sink below the threshold of consciousness before its

analogue appears. A passage of this kind occurs in Goethe’s poem

quoted above, “O gieb vom weichen Pfuhle,” etc., and is still better

illustrated by the similarity of the second and eighth verses of a

triolet. Take this of Gleims:

“Ein Triolet soll ich ihr singen?

Ein Triolet ist viel zu klein,

Ihr grosses Lob hineinzubringen.

Ein Triolet soll ich ihr singen?

Wie sollt ich mit der Kleinheit ringen,

Es müsst’ ein grosser Hymnus sein!

Ein Triolet soll ich ihr singen?

Ein Triolet ist viel zu klein!”[285]

It is but a step from this to the familiar and primitive refrain.[286]

To serve this purpose, interjections, single sounds, words, and

sentences are repeated after so long an interval that there can be

no question of sensuous enjoyment; it becomes mere repetition. As

the soothing satisfaction of a melody is produced by dwelling on the

keynote, so with the refrain. This principle is even more strongly

brought out in the turn, which is so prominent a feature in much lyric

poetry, and also in the form originating in Spain and Portugal in which

a single verse of a familiar stanza is made the keynote of a new poem.

This is play to the producer and hearers as well. Such analogy of lyric

form to musical variation as is shown in the “freien Glosse” actually

deserves to be called variation itself.[287]

In the imitation of particular sounds poetry offers further indulgence

to the enjoyment of repetition, to the amusement of adults and delight

of children. This is really imitative play and as such belongs to a

later division of our subject; yet for the listener it is also an

exercise in repetition, and is conspicuous in many refrains. Minor

says: “The imitation of musical instruments by means of articulate

or nondescript sounds is common in folk songs. The shepherd’s pipe,

the horn, trumpet, and drum are introduced in pastoral, hunting, and

military pieces.”[288] Children are especially partial to the mimicry

of animals, and some of the formulæ have become traditional. The German

robin sings, it seems,

“Buble witt witt witt,

I will dir e Krüi-zerrle gean.”

The sparrow says “Twitter, twitter”; the quail “Bob White, peas ripe?”

the cackling hen in English, “Cut, cut, cadahcut,” and in German “Duck

di duck Alli Stuck Unter mî Ruck.”

Finally, we must not forget a very popular game founded on recognition.

A whole company will dance around a blindfolded person until he hits on

the floor with a stick, whereupon they all stand still, and he touches

one and attempts to identify him by the sound of his voice, having

three trials. Sometimes the sense of touch is allowed to assist the

recognition, as in blind-man’s-buff and the Greek μυίνδα.[289]

(_b_) Reflective Memory

Playful exercise of the recollective faculty, dependent on the

enjoyment of reproduction as such rather than on any quality of the

memory picture, is confined almost exclusively to children, and indeed

to those not yet of the school age. From about the third year[290]

to the end of the sixth, when enforced mental exercise is begun, we

find in children outspoken satisfaction in the voluntary exercise

of reproduction. During this time mental feats almost unachievable

by adults are performed, such as learning by heart thick books of

nursery rhymes, long poems, interminable stories—acquirements which

stir the proud parents with hope and mistaken conclusions as to the

extraordinary mental endowments of their offspring. That children

of this age often burden their minds with lists of unconnected

and meaningless words and take pride in reciting them, proves that

enjoyment of the mere ability to do it is the chief incentive. Thus,

when she was in her sixth year, Marie G—— learned to count in French

from one to one hundred, and enjoyed going over the numbers when

she supposed herself to be unobserved, as when lying in bed in the

morning. Carl Stumpf’s report of the prodigy Otto Poehler,[291] who

at two years of age had learned to read fluently without teaching, is

highly interesting in this connection. Stumpf says of the boy, then

four years old and in other respects normal, having, indeed, a decided

disinclination for systematic education when others tried to impose

it on him: “Reading is his greatest passion, and the most important

thing in his life. He knows the birth and death year of every German

Kaiser from Charles the Great, as well as of many poets, philosophers,

etc., and can tell the birthday and place of most of them. Besides, he

knows the capitals of most countries, and the rivers on which they are

situated, etc. He knows all about the Thirty Years’ War from beginning

to end, with the leading battles of this and other wars. According to

his mother’s statement, he has acquired all this without aid, and by

diligent study of a patriotic almanac and similar literature about

the house, and from deciphering monumental inscriptions in the city,

an amusement which he dotes on. I myself can witness to the lasting

impression which such facts make on his mind. At the Seminary I showed

him pictures of Fechner, Lotze, and Helmholtz, mentioning their full

names. Of each he asked at once when and where he was born and died,

and some days later could give not only name and surname of every one,

but the full date of birth and death, mentioning day, month, year, and

place.” Since Stumpf tells us that there was no trace of vanity or a

desire to show off, we must explain these accomplishments as the result

of the child’s desire to experiment playfully with his own mental

powers.

In assigning such play chiefly to the period between the third

and sixth years, I did not by any means intend to imply that it

is suspended thereafter. It is, indeed, often seriously impeded

by the compulsory methods common in our schools, yet it does not

entirely vanish. Lessing is a brilliant example of the scholar by

whom even erudition may be turned to playful account, and who is

able to assimilate every kind of pabulum that falls in the way of

his omnivorous brain. When the teacher is able to direct his pupils

to the discharge of their tasks with interest and pleasure, there

may still be something playful about the mental exercise of school

work. Subordination to authority does not exclude play so long as the

obedience is voluntary. Children never submit so absolutely to any one

else as to a leader among their playfellows. Fénelon was not far wrong

when he said: “The common way of educating is very mistaken—to place

everything that is pleasant on one side and all that is disagreeable on

the other, connecting the latter with industry and study and regarding

the former as waste of time. How can we expect anything else than

that the child will grow impatient of the restraint and run to his

play with the greatest eagerness?”[292] Those who, on the other hand,

protest against making play of instruction are mistaken in supposing

that it is thereby turned into a jest, for we well know that play

can be prosecuted with great zeal and earnestness. Yet they are not

altogether wrong, for it is most important to impress the necessity for

doing what is repugnant to us, and for this merely playful study, even

if it accomplished all else that we want, would always be inadequate.

Finally, with regard to the adult: it does occasionally happen even

in our rushing times that some one commits a poem to memory with the

avowed intention of giving exercise to his mind. Were this practical

end the only one, play, indeed, would not be involved; but, as a rule,

pleasure in acquisition as such is combined with the other motive.

Such exercise was formerly much more common, and at a time when few

could read surprising feats were performed. A survival of this may be

found now in the Balkan countries, where the heroic songs are still

orally preserved. In mental exercise of this kind it is difficult to

draw the line between the emotions aroused by the content of the piece

and what pleasure is derived from the act of learning, and we will not

here go into that phase of the subject, only mentioning, in closing

the section, that conjuring up one’s own past is another form of

memory-play with the feelings.

2. _Imagination_

The phenomena which the exigencies of language compel us to include

under the words imagination or fantasy naturally fall into two quite

clearly differentiated groups, namely, illusion, either playful or

serious, and the voluntary or involuntary transformation of our

mental content. Considerable controversy has arisen as to which of

these groups shall be taken as the basis of a definition, and it

is in opposition to the prevailing view that I have designated the

capacity for illusion as my choice for that purpose. Yet on reflection

I consider it more prudent not to attempt a comprehensive definition,

but rather to keep separate the two distinct departments of mental life

which the usages of language too closely associate, and which, while

they are closely interwoven in some of their aspects, are yet of so

heterogeneous a character that we may hope to distinguish between them

in all essentials.

(_a_) Playful Illusion

This heading includes all those manifold cases in which mental

presentation is accepted as actual, whether they are concerned with

genuine memory pictures or merely some mental content worked up for

the occasion. When a fever patient sees an absent friend bodily before

him, we call this imagination as well as when he seems to see absurd or

grotesque things. The distinguishing feature is whether the illusion

appears as a substitute for reality, as in dreams, delirium, hypnosis,

and insanity, or as the product of conscious self-deception (K. Lange’s

“bewusste Selbsttäuschung,” P. Souriau’s “illusion volontaire”), where

the knowledge that we have ourselves produced the illusion prevents

actual substitution, as in play and art. Transition from one to

the other of these states is easy. The dreamer or fever patient may

have the feeling that the fantasy in which he lives and suffers is,

after all, an unreal thing; and, on the other hand, illusion is often

so strong for playing children and artists that it forms a perfect

substitute for reality. Just now we are concerned with conscious

illusion only. In inquiring how far experimentation is involved in

it we must bear in mind that there are two sides to all illusion,

one which has reference to an internal image, and the other blending

with external phenomena. It is a distinction similar to that between

hallucination and illusion in the narrower pathological sense.

The illusion which depends on internal images can, as we have seen,

elevate actual memories as well as convertible mental contents to the

appearance of reality. So we see that the two kinds of mental activity

included under the name imagination are intimately and variously

related, while neither alone covers the entire ground. Enjoyment of

play with memory pictures which are more than ordinarily faithful to

fact is practised almost exclusively by adults, and more especially

by the aged. The psychological condition of this is that by means

of strong concentration of attention on the mental picture (we are

reminded again of hypnosis) the actual present is thrown very much into

the background, and the past thus conjured up loses many of the usual

characteristics of a past, since the memory picture, from lacking the

usual projection, assumes the expression of reality. The following is

a beautiful example of this distinction between mere reflective memory

and playful illusion where the differentiation was gradually built up.

When Goethe as a mature man took up his Faust manuscript, he said to

himself, “I thought over this subject a great deal ten years ago; but

that would be only a memory.” Yet as he lost himself in the joyful or

painful memories connected with that period, he came to ignore the

fact that they were long past, and more and more substituted them for

the present, which in its turn became gradually submerged. These words

reveal the play of his imagination:

“My pulses thrill, tears flow without control,

A tender mood my steadfast heart o’ersways;

What I possess as from afar I see,

What I have lost is the reality to me.”

_Miss Swanwick’s translation._

A strange characteristic of these playful reminiscences is that what

displeased us at the time of its occurrence may give pleasure when

revived by memory. When, for instance, a traveller recounts his

adventures on a mountain tour he takes pleasure in dwelling on the

hardships which he endured. Is this entirely due to the knowledge that

it is all over now? I think not. First comes self-congratulation on

having borne such grievous difficulties, i.e., the feeling of power

which we find to be the chief source of satisfaction in almost all play.

Playful pretence[293] that the personified and elaborated mental

contents are real is psychologically important to productive artists,

and still more so to the enjoyment of poetic creations. Artists often

refer to their as yet unembodied conceptions as to very real things,

and frequently these assume the rôle of relentless taskmasters or of

veritable demoniacal possessions. Then, of course, they cease to be

playful. A. Feuerbach writes: “If it were not for this Gastmahl I would

be happy; but it pervades everything and gets in my way. It haunts my

thoughts. It feeds on my heart’s blood and saps my inmost life.”[294]

Yet the artist often exults in the fact that he has a self-created

world all his own—he plays with the illusion. “It would concern the

reader little, perhaps,” says Dickens about his David Copperfield, “to

know how sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two years’

imaginative task; or how an author feels as if he were dismissing some

portion of himself into the shadowy world when a crowd of the creatures

of his own brain are going from him forever. Yet I have nothing else to

tell, unless, indeed, I were to confess (which might be of less moment

still) that no one can ever believe this narrative, in the reading,

more than I have believed it in the writing.” This sort of illusion is

essential to æsthetic enjoyment in hearing or reading poetic creations.

The child who listens absorbedly to a fairy story,[295] the boy for

whom the entire external world sinks and vanishes while he is lost in a

tale of adventure, or the adult who follows with breathless attention

the development of a captivating romance; all allow the authors’

creations to get possession of their consciousness to the exclusion of

reality, and yet not as an actual substitute for it.

In a second kind of conscious illusion the mental content blends with

actual external phenomena and shares in their reality. Here, according

to Wundt’s terminology, we have a kind of simultaneous association

which is very like the imagination that transforms reality. Each of

our ordinary concepts is a mixture of sensuous impression with its

associated memory picture, and it first becomes illusion when the

association assumes the character of hallucination, and is susceptible

of correction by an appeal to common experience. When a white spot

dimly revealed by the moonlight appears to me as unmistakably a towel,

I see more than sense-perception warrants; but when I firmly believe

that it is a white-robed figure, then I have fallen into an illusion,

and, as they say, my imagination has played me a trick. Yet there

are degrees of difference between serious illusion and the playful

kind which concerns us here. When I had fever, as a boy, I saw on the

bright coverlet the most marvellous feast spread out, and at the same

time had an amused consciousness that it was all an illusion caused by

my illness. Von Bibra’s experiences from hasheesh-smoking were quite

similar to this, as he tells us in his book previously cited. In this

are two distinct kinds of play, first the substitution of an image

for its original, and second the lending, as it were, of our own

personality. The first has been treated exhaustively by K. Lange in

his study of conscious illusion. Not only the little girl who makes a

favourite baby of a knotted handkerchief or some other formless object,

and the boy who calls a stick a horse, a pile of sand a mountain, a

collection of chairs a railroad train, etc., but also the adult in

his enjoyment of plastic art and scenic effect, using his own mental

content to verify the appearance, is making playful use of his capacity

for illusion, and he, too, takes pleasure in so doing. Lending one’s

own personality reveals illusion as operative in another direction;

here we impart our own mental states to the object under consideration;

we “lend” to it the emotions which we conceive would be ours under

like conditions (the shoe is made to fit the last). From our feeling

of sympathy or inner imitation we then experience all the resulting

states of mind, cheerfulness and brightness from what is attractive,

or solemnity from the sublime. In speaking of imitation we shall have

occasion to refer to this again.

(_b_) Playful Transformation of the Memory-Content

Simple recollective processes by no means give an adequate picture of

reality. In the tenth chapter of his book on illusions Sully gives such

a list and description of important mental illusions as is calculated

to shake our faith in the trustworthiness of memory. It seems that

our recollections are often mere fragments of a formerly well-known

whole (we may recall, for example, only one or two features of an

acquaintance), and as a result of this analytic process we are prone

to make new combinations of the detached elements. Thus, a short time

ago I thought that I could clearly picture to myself the house of my

brother-in-law by the power of association, but I afterward discovered

that I had conceived the bricks to be far too bright a red, and had

evidently substituted the colour of some other house. What we call

constructive imagination then turns out to be constantly renewed

manipulation of previously verified impressions. We need not here touch

upon the wide field of involuntary productive imagination, since it

is only play directed by the will that is engaging us; yet before

going on to concrete cases, it should be stated that in constructive

imagination as well the pictures formed are to a considerable extent

involuntary, the will aiding more by its influence in concentrating the

attention on the trend of the internal processes and in discriminating

between them, than in forming the picture itself. This is why the

efforts of great artists are so often like inspirations.

Building air castles is the simplest exercise of constructive

imagination.[296] It most commonly manifests itself as voluntary

playful forming of cheerful and ambitious images of ourselves or our

friends amid the most fortunate surroundings.[297] We may see how it

is done by watching little children who have enjoyed a new kind of

treat at a birthday party or some such occasion—how they will remember

and repeat it in their future plays. All the details will be copied

sometimes just as in the model, sometimes in new combinations, or

turned into a joke. The inestimable value of such play for making life

worth living is self-evident. It veils the sordidness of everyday

existence with a double illusion, the first being our conception of

the air castle as a reality, and so getting immediate possession of

this radiant dream (here the two kinds of imagination converge). Such

illusion supplies the psychological interest in Faust’s bargain; he

enjoys the “schönsten Augenblick,” although his present satisfaction is

merely premonitory. The second illusion is exemplified in our implicit

trust that the future will verify our hope,[298] that buoyant and

vivifying emotion which accompanies us all through life.

Conjuring up all sorts of hindrances, difficulties, and dangers is

a modification of this castle building, and gives more play to the

intellectual faculties as we weigh the varying possibilities of success

or failure, develop the probable consequences of a proposed step, and

try to find the best and easiest road to success. By such processes

the crude picture is moulded into shape. Here, again, the capacity for

illusion is of importance in connection with imaginative combination,

since each possibility that is considered has the appearance of

reality in its turn, but such mental activity is playful only when the

combinations as such are enjoyable. Every creative artist, statesman,

writer, or scholar must often work on an imaginative basis which he

knows he can never verify. Many persons like to take, with the help of

a Baedeker, long journeys which they can never hope to indulge in in

any other way, and to solve complicated problems based on hypothetical

games of chess.

Leaving castle building, let us see what other forms of constructive

fantasy can be practiced playfully. In speaking of illusions we have

noticed the blending of memories with external phenomena, which is

so conspicuous in child play and in æsthetic enjoyment. The process

of “assimilation” which grounds playful self-deception is so closely

related to constructive imagination that it is difficult to locate

the boundary between them. The psychic process which transforms a

splinter into a doll’s milk-bottle, a few chips stuck up into men

and trees, a cloud[299] into the greatest variety of faces, animals,

etc., which endows lifeless objects with our own spiritual capacities

of desire, emotion, and temper—all this is synthetic activity which

may quite as well be called assimilation as constructive imagination.

Its pleasurable quality is inherent,[300] especially where a perfect

imitation of reality would give us so little room for the exercise of

imagination as to be on the whole less satisfactory.

Constructiveness which is concerned purely with ideas, not blending

them with external objects, is quite as important. One of its uses,

though one not clearly defined, may be to direct the attention, when

there exists but a vague idea of the completed picture, to a choice

among the multifarious internal images which make up the material

supplied by memory. This process is of the greatest importance in

the origination of artistic compositions, but its relatively simple

beginnings may be clearly traced in the play of children. While we may

not hope to follow the imaginative process into all its ramifications

and refinements, nor to account for individual variations in memory

content, visual, motor, etc., three general, constantly recurring forms

of its constructive activity are distinguishable: 1. The conjunction

of concepts which are not connected, or not so connected in reality.

2. The abstraction of certain elements from a complex and their

transference to other combinations. 3. Exaggeration and depreciation.

It will be readily seen that these three forms of imaginative activity

are useful for playful experimentation as well as in actual artistic

production, which, however, rarely makes playful use of fantasy.

The first of these activities is often so capricious in children that

it can hardly be called experimentation; it seems a mere disconnected

succession of fancies and self-originated images, very much as in the

case of mania and other abnormal states. Strümpell’s little daughter,

aged one and a half years, is responsible for the following: “Go gramma

and buy a pretty doll gramma for me under the bed for me to play the

piano. Bring papa golden sheep; take mamma’s white sheep too. Go on,

there, driver, gramma is going. Get up, Klinglingling. Gramma comes up

the steps. Oh, oh, ah, ah, lying on the floor, all tied up, no cap on.

Theodosia [her doll] lie on the bed, bring yellow sheep to Theodosia.

Run, tap, tap, tap for Lina. Strawberries, gramma, wolf lie on bed.

Go to sleep, darling Theodosia, you are my dearest; everybody is fast

asleep. May makes the trees green—let me—on the brook violets are

blooming—I want to go to walk. A cat came in here, mamma caught it,

it had feet and black boots on—short cap, band on it. Papa ran—the

sky—gramma gone—grampa resting,” etc.[301] In this, attention seems

to be entirely lacking, so that there can not be said to be any aim,

however indefinite. Genuine constructive imagination is more apparent

in the attempts of small children to tell stories. I have the following

note on Marie G——, made at the age of three years and one month. She

insisted that I must lie on the lounge after she had gone through the

motions of “making the bed.” Then the little mother warmed the gruel

in a heavy cigar cutter, made me drink at the peril of my teeth, and

ordered me to shut my eyes. Then she seated herself, pretended to

sew, and told a story to put me to sleep: “The other day I went down

town. There were beautiful shops and there were flowers. Anna [her

doll] wanted to pick one, and a bear came up. All my six children were

dreadfully scared and hid in the bathroom stove, and I locked the door

and took out the key, and the bear went away; and I was so frightened!”

It was evidently her intention to make a connected story, although the

first situation, the scene down town, was transferred to a different

one without any proper transition. Yet the various processes are easily

traced in spite of their complexity. First, the idea of the city where

the romancer takes her doll, as she was often taken by her mother.

The memory picture of the florists’ shops which led to an overweening

desire on the part of the doll to take a flower. Then judicial wrath

appears in the frightful shape of the bear, and at once the whole

situation is changed; there are now the six children of the familiar

tale, who hide. But where? In our bathroom stove (an improvement on the

tale), which develops a lock and key for the occasion (confusion with

the attributes of a closet door). Here, then, are divisions 1 and 2

clearly defined—namely, the combining of complex presentations, and the

detachment and transposition of some features. Analogy with artistic

methods is too obvious to need enlarging upon.[302] An interesting

example of the inventiveness of an older child endowed with genius is

the voluminous romance which the young Goethe used to tell again and

again to his playmates, and has transcribed in his biography. It will

be seen that the imaginative process is much less easily traced in it

than in the earlier instance.[303]

One important branch of imaginative composition is the picturing of

the fantastic creatures of mythology, such as animals with human

heads, mermaids, and the grotesque blending of animal and vegetable

life, yet with the essential features taken from Nature. As Dickens

says of his characters, that, being made up of many people, they were

composite,[304] so with these creations. The following dialogue of

Marie G—— with her doll near the end of her fifth year will illustrate

the use of this faculty in the case of concepts which transcend the

limits of actuality. “So, little sister Olga, you have come in from

your walk. Tell me about everything that you saw. A little lamb, a cow,

a dog, a horse. Yes, and what else? Blue bells and green primroses and

red leaves—but that can not be; you are fibbing, my little sister.”

Such playful and grotesque combinations are often introduced in art,

but they no longer appeal to superstitious fear. In the temptations of

St. Anthony, in Oriental tales of strangely deformed men, in the taste

for grotesque gargoyles and other ornaments, we find instances. In some

fantastic creations the imagination is given unbridled license, with

the result that the production acquires more of the characteristics of

play.[305]

The third division of constructive fantasy, comprising exaggeration

and depreciation, is also an object of playful activity. All children

delight in giants and dwarfs, whether because they excite pleasurable

emotions by their disproportionateness, which appeals to the comic

sense, or whether it is the strong stimulus of what is unusual that

accounts for the attraction. Marie G—— improvised a rare tale when she

was five and a half years old, which well illustrates exaggeration, as

well as conscious illusion and imaginative combination. The child was

lying in bed in the early morning with a copy of Grimm’s tales, and

pretended to be reading from it. “Once upon a time there was a king

who had a little daughter. She lay in the cradle. He came in and knew

it was his daughter, and they both had a wedding. As they sat at the

table the king said, ‘Please draw me some beer in a big glass.’ Then

they brought a glass that was thirty yards high, and went to sleep;

only the king stayed up as a watchman. And if they are not dead they

are living there yet.” Of course the child had no clear idea of how

high this glass would be, but she evidently pictured one whose size

far transcended the limits of reality—of this I subsequently satisfied

myself. Adults are constantly using this sort of imaginative exercise

in a playful way in verbal exaggeration. The talk of students and of

girls abounds in superlatives, and they are employed by satirists with

telling effect—so much so that the recounter himself is sometimes

deceived by his own extravagance. Schneegans says in his interesting

book: “The grotesque satirist is often carried away by his own work,

and gradually loses sight of his original aim; ... and finally the

conclusion is forced upon us that the writer has yielded to his passion

for gross exaggeration.” This is certainly true of Rabelais, when he

says that Pantagruel had but to put out his tongue to protect his whole

army from the rain, or that his arrows were as large as the beams of

the bridge at Nantes, and yet with one of them he could shoot an oyster

from its shell without breaking the latter; or when he describes the

people who needed no tailor, since one of their ears served as hose,

doublet, and vest, while the other was used like a Spanish mantle. This

last morsel recalls some of the folk tales which have amused the masses

for more than two thousand years. While we may not lightly affirm that

the grotesque extravagance of some of these stories is always due to

imaginative play, yet we can trace it in such of them as the Greenland

myth of little Kagsagsuk, whom the men lifted by the nostrils until

they grew enormous, while the rest of his poorly fed body remained

as small as ever, and in the account of his subsequent marvellous

strength. Kagsagsuk divided the mob as though it had been made of

little fishes, and ran so vigorously that his heels hit the back of his

neck, and the snow flying up around him made shining rainbows.[306]

Playful lying should be mentioned along with other forms of

exaggeration. Children’s lies have been studied carefully of late

years, and the conclusion is general that they are usually playful.

Untruthfulness must be playful when it is indulged in merely to tease

others or to get amusement from their credulity, or to heighten the

recounter’s sense of the marvellous.[307] Only such examples are

useful for our purpose as find their chief incentive in the enjoyment

of invention. Compayré rightly calls this experimentation, and says

that children play with words as they do with sand or blocks.[308]

The real stimulus which lying affords to imaginative activity is

best demonstrated in the progressive lie: “I have thirty marbles;

no, fifty; no, a hundred; no, a thousand!” or “Je viens de voir un

papillon grand comme le chat, grand comme la maison.”[309] One of my

nephews, Heinrich, was a great romancer, and the same peculiar, almost

divergent fixing of his eyes characterized him then as when listening

to a marvellous tale. At three and a half years north Berlin was the

scene[310] of his inventions, a name which the little Stuttgarter

had in some way picked up. There he had seen fish resembling sharks

with boots on their feet. On one occasion he related the following:

“In north Berlin hares and hounds are on the roofs; they climb up on

ladders and play together, and then—and then—comes a telephone, a

long wire, you know, and on that they come to Stuttgart. That’s the

way they get here.”[311] It is easy to see the connection between

this and rudimentary artistic production. Guyan says:[312] “The lying

of children is usually the first exercise of their imagination, the

first evidence of the germ of art.” Such playful experimentation is,

of course, quite different from actual deception. Perhaps nowhere is

finer discrimination in this direction shown than in Goethe’s remarks

on his boyish story-telling: “It greatly rejoiced the other children

when I was the hero of my own story. They were delighted to know that

such wonderful things could befall one of their playfellows, and yet

they did not seem to marvel that I could play such tricks with time

and space as these adventures implied, for they were well aware of

my goings and comings and how I was occupied all day long. None the

less I must choose the scenes of these adventures, if not in another

world, at least in a distant place, and yet tell all as having taken

place to-day or yesterday. They therefore made for themselves greater

illusions than any I could have palmed off on them. If I had not

gradually learned from my natural bent to work up these visions and

conceits into artistic forms, such a vainglorious beginning could not

have been without injurious consequences to me.” Even when the playful

lie becomes artistic production there is always a leaning toward

genuine deception. Goethe says: “I took good care not to alter the

circumstances much, and by the uniformity of my narrative I converted

the fable into reality in the minds of my auditors. Yet,” he adds—and

this is proof that the deceit was playful—“I was averse to falsehood

and dissimulation, and would by no means lightly indulge in them.”[313]

The same remarks apply to the corresponding amusements of adults, such

as fishing and hunting stories, and Munchausen tales generally.

In concluding this subject the temptation is strong to go into some of

the special forms of fantasy, such as, for instance, the association

of sensuous impressions with abstract ideas. Poetry has the task

of justifying such combination, and this quatrain affords a simple

instance:

“Woher kommt der Blutegel?

Aus der Reisfeld treibt er in den Fluss.

Woher kommt die Liebe?

Aus dem Auge senkt sie sich in’s Herz.”

“Whence comes the leech, then?

Out of the rice field it turns to the stream.

Whence comes love, then?

From the eye it sinks down to the heart.”

From this doggerel to “Warte nur, balde ruhest du auch,” suggested

by a view of wooded hills standing in evening quiet, is but a matter

of development. Metaphor ensues when abstract form is superseded

by sensuous impression. The designer and novelist Töpffer gives a

beautiful instance of such materializing of the spiritual in this

interesting contribution to child psychology when he tells us how he

always conceived of conscience in the form of his teacher. “For a long

time I did not distinguish between the inner voice of conscience and

the admonitions of my instructor. When I felt the stirrings of the

former I pictured the latter before me in his black robes, with his

scholarly air, and his spectacles on his nose.”[314]

3. _Attention_

As I have attempted to set forth in former efforts,[315] attention

is probably in its earliest manifestations rather a means for the

furtherance of the struggle for life than a so-called faculty of the

mind. The instinct of lying in wait (by which we must understand

not merely holding one’s self in readiness to seize prey, but also

a preparedness for flight) is, as I conceive, the elementary form

of attention. Some sense-perception called forth by the prey or the

enemy, as the case may be, warns the animal to brace his organism for

the utmost swiftness and accuracy of aim in view of what is coming;

secondly, to hold his muscles tense and ready for lightning-quick

reaction to the approaching stimulus; and, thirdly, to keep such

restraint on his whole body as to repress all sounds and movements

which might betray him. Among the higher animals, and especially man,

“theoretic” attention has developed from this motor attention, which

reacts to the anticipated stimulus with special external movements. In

the former the reaction is an internal, brain process, not involving

the second of the steps given above; it is sufficient to seize and

master the object—to lie in wait apperceptively, as it were. The

characteristic holding of the powers in check seems to argue the

derivation of this sort of attention from the motor, thus grounding

both on instinct. Expectancy is not then a variation, but rather a

fundamental form of attention, and concentration on an object present

before it results from a succession of constantly renewed expectations.

Both forms of attention are of real importance in the world of play,

but we will note only those cases in which the effort of attending is

itself the subject of playful exercise. Sikorski has asserted forcibly

that children frequently make use in their play of the expectation of

a familiar impression whose memory picture is already present in the

mind; what Lewes calls “preperception,” and Sikorski “reproduction

préparatoire.” He says: “It is very interesting to notice how children

use attention in their play. It is one of the most salient features

of all the mental operations of children in all their busyness and

destructiveness. It may be called a sort of mental auxiliary which

gives variety to play.”[316] He goes on to instance Preyer’s son, who

opened and closed the cover of a can seventy-nine times in succession,

and evinced the closest attention all the while.[317] The expectation

of a resulting sound is no doubt an essential part of such play as

this. Alternate stress and relaxation of attention account for the

charm of hide and seek. Darwin says that his son on the one hundred

and tenth day was delighted when a handkerchief was put over his face

or his playfellow’s and then suddenly withdrawn.[318] While surprise

was probably the principal cause of this delight at first, on its

repetition expectation and the sudden revelation must play a part.

When a child throws stones in water or at a mark, batters an old pot,

awaits the tossed-up ball or watches a rolling one, we must reckon with

the pleasure which is derived from the exercise of close attention,

as well as that in movement as such, and in this kind of play the

comparison of memory pictures with present reality. “In all such play,”

says Sikorski, after instancing several examples, “a particular result

is expected and awaited as something desirable. The sound of the stone

striking the water, the direction taken by the soap bubble the moment

it is tossed off,[319] all such consequences are pictured in advance,

and the essence of the enjoyment consists in the coincidence of reality

with the mental image.”[320]

At this point we may again take up the process of recollection which

is attended with some difficulty. The progressive power of rhythmical

repetition, especially when musical or poetic, to whose chains we are

such willing captives, is nothing else than attention fixed on what is

to come. Still stronger is the tense expectation aroused by artistic

productions which require time for their presentation. In the drama

and recitation especially must we ascribe value to continuity, for

here true art consists not so much in taking the hearer or reader by

surprise—indeed, this is an insignificant element—as in contriving

to make him suspect the coming situation and await it with intense

concentration. On this depends not only the effectiveness of tragedy

(O. Harnack has compared Ibsen’s Ghosts in this respect with the

antique Œdipus), but in large measure that of all narrative poetry.

“The poor satisfaction of a surprise!” exclaims Lessing. “I am far

from thinking that the enjoyment we get from the work of a great

artist is due to concealment of the denouement. I believe, moreover,

that it would not transcend my powers to create a work in which the

climax shall be revealed in the first scene, and from that very

circumstance derive its strongest interest.” Finally, we must notice

the interesting phenomena of attention in its connection with gambling,

for the tremendous effects of which many diverse causes must conspire.

Ribot says of it, “C’est la complexité qui produit l’intensité.”[321]

The tension of interest in gaming depends on the two possibilities,

winning and losing. It must be one thing or the other, and this fact

differentiates it from our previous examples. Hope of winning usually

looms large in the foreground, the possibility of losing assuming

more the character of an auxiliary, adding intensity to the process.

“Gambling,” says Lazarus justly, “has ruined many, enriched few, yet

every player expects to be of the minority.”[322] As games of chance

will come up for more exhaustive treatment later, I merely mention here

that the effort of attention is one ground of their strong effect.

We now take up playful apperception of new impressions. The deep-rooted

impulse to bring everything within the sphere of our own powers is

especially powerful in the presence of novelty, of what is unfamiliar.

We experience an almost irresistible desire to examine closely any

strange object and make ourselves acquainted with its properties.

Curiosity is the name given to the playful manifestation of attention

which results from this tendency. Since I introduced it among the plays

in my work on animals I have been told that curiosity is no play; but

if we keep to our principle that the exercise of an impulse merely for

the sake of the pleasure we derive from it is to be called play, then

I am unable to see why curiosity should form an exception. It stands

midway between two kinds of perception as applied to what is new, but

is identical with neither. On one side is the impulse to inquire into

the practical use of the unfamiliar object, whether it is beneficial

or injurious; on the other side is thirst for knowledge, not entirely

with a view to appropriation, but more concerned with placing the

object properly in our system of things known. But curiosity, while it

does depend on the stimulus[323] of novelty, concerns itself primarily

neither with the practical value of the thing nor with its theoretic

significance. It simply enjoys the agreeable emotional effects which

arise when a new concept does not readily adjust itself to the beaten

track of the habitual, and requires paths at least partially new to be

opened before it. The interest attaching to scientific investigation

is logical and formal, but that excited by curiosity may be said to

be material. The freshness of the untried belongs to this new mental

heritage, and is as exhilarating as the mountain climber’s discovery

of a new path to some coveted summit. Where such pleasure becomes the

ground of activity, that activity is play. For illustrative purposes

let us suppose a landslide. Practical interest would at once apply to

the proper authorities to find out the extent of damage caused by the

catastrophe; scientific and learned curiosity would investigate the

causes; while the simply curious would run from all directions just to

see what was happening, using their powers of attention playfully.

In The Play of Animals I have presented quite a collection of examples,

and I insert another here, which was not at that time available. When

Nansen was on his north polar expedition a valuable gun accidentally

fell into the sea. As the water at that place was but ten metres deep

an attempt was made to recover the weapon. “While we were so engaged

a bearded seal constantly swam around us, regarding us wonderingly,

stretching his great head now to this side and now to that side of

us, and drawing nearer and nearer as if he were making efforts to

discern in what sort of nocturnal labour we were engaged.”[324] When

we read such reports and see how widespread these phenomena are in

the animal world, we naturally expect to find them universal among

men. Yet it has been maintained by some that the lowest orders of

savages have extremely little or no curiosity at all. Spencer has

published a note in his Data of Sociology to the effect that it is

entirely wanting among such peoples: “Where curiosity exists we find

it among races of not so low a grade.”[325] I do not think that this

can be substantiated. The numerous reports of travellers which seem

to give colour to it can, I believe, be explained in two ways: First,

the savage is too suspicious to show his curiosity; and, secondly,

many reporters in speaking of the lack of curiosity refer rather to

scientific curiosity, or thirst for knowledge. The Bakaïri of central

Brazil, who are certainly primitive enough, displayed, according to K.

von den Steinen, lively curiosity, while they had absolutely no desire

for knowledge. “Our clothes,” he says, “were as strange to these good

people as their nakedness was to us. I was escorted to the bath by both

men and women, and it was amusing to see with what interest my clothes

were examined. It never seemed to occur to them that I might resent the

inspection. They showed some interest in my Polynesian tattooing, but

were evidently disappointed not to find something marvellous concealed

under all this careful and unheard-of wrapping.”[326] Just as curiously

they investigated the contents of his pockets; admired his watch,

which they called “moon,” because it did not sleep at night. A genuine

desire for knowledge was nowhere shown, only a playful curiosity. K.

von den Steinen has also recognised this distinction. “Nothing could

be more mistaken,” he says, “than to suppose that frank curiosity is a

genuine desire for knowledge or a longing to understand the cause of

things.”[327] He is a firm upholder of the other view, having lived

for some time alone among the Bakaïri, and says that much which he had

observed as characteristic of them vanished when the larger company

arrived; the perfect _naïveté_ disappeared, and their manner became

more and more that of the savage as usually described to us.[328] That

the higher standing races are extremely curious is a familiar fact,

admitted and illustrated by Spencer himself. I instance only Semon’s

humorous account of the Ambonese. “A committee from the village made

visits lasting for hours on the ship where he was busy with his men.

All hints that they might be needed on shore were unavailing, and for

two days I bore it uncomplainingly when they crowded into my tiny

cabin. On the third day I thought it best to speak to them plainly,

and asked them in Malay to sit before the cabin door.... And the rest

were just as curious, although they did not come on board ship. My

morning dip in the sea was a treat to the whole village. A crowd of

spectators gathered to witness the show, observing every detail, and

not scrupling to express their criticisms.”[329]

In children, curiosity is useful as an antidote to instinctive shyness

in the presence of what is new and strange, and as an introduction

to the general desire for knowledge. It is stimulated by surprise,

but can be called true curiosity only when the perception of what

is unusual has a directly pleasurable effect, as, for example, when

an infant six months old regards a veiled face with close attention

and signs of delight. Tiedemann reports as early as the end of the

second month: “He makes more and more unmistakable efforts to add to

his store of ideas, for new objects never seen before are followed

longer with the eye.”[330] “All little children,” says Preyer, “make

ineffective sympathetic movements of various kinds when they hear new

sounds, music or songs. They like to move their arms up and down.

The child, on hearing, seeing, or tasting something new, directs his

attention toward it, and experiences a pleasant sensation of gratified

curiosity which induces motor discharge.”[331] Sully regards curiosity

as the best offset to fear in children, and considers it a fortunate

circumstance that the commonest causes of fear—namely, new and strange

phenomena—are also the originators of a feeling such as curiosity, with

its attendant impulses to follow and to examine. It would indeed be

detrimental to intellectual development if new things roused feelings

of fear exclusively. Yet in spite of these differences, fear and

curiosity are probably closely related, since the caution and suspicion

which characterize fear may be the point of departure for curiosity.

Caution impels the animal to examine with careful attention every

unusual object which makes its way into his environment, with an eye

to its possible injurious or useful character. Assuming that this

impulse is emancipated gradually from its double practical aim, we see

it converted into curiosity before our eyes, while ontogenetically it

is the antecedent of the thirst for knowledge, just as the practical

aim precedes it phylogenetically. Perez has described this evolution

beautifully. Playful exercise of the sensor and motor apparatus,

which is at first mere obscure impulse toward sensation and movement,

achieves more and more the clearness of intellectual activity as it

becomes associated with curiosity. Yet all this results “not so much

from the necessity for knowing what things are and what they can do, as

from the demand for new and fresh impressions.”[332] Veritable thirst

for knowledge, with its unappeasable questioning, gradually develops

from this, making without difficulty the transition from the realm of

play to that of genuine scientific investigation.

This demand for novelty plays a conspicuous rôle in the life of an

adult as well. The masculine half of the race exhibits a praiseworthy

self-denial in ascribing this quality to the other sex exclusively, but

the women are about right when they say that men are quite as curious

as themselves. Without going into the merits of this controversy, we

will confine our discussion to the province of curiosity in æsthetic

enjoyment. It is no doubt true that the highest and most complete

æsthetic pleasure is independent of the stimulus of novelty, as

is proved by the fact that our appreciation of a work of art is

undiminished by repeated examination, and it remains “herrlich wie am

ersten Tag.” Yet there is a peculiar charm attaching to a first view of

even the most perfect work of genius, which E. von Hartmann has likened

to that of the first kiss, and which must be at least in part due to

novelty. This advantage depends not entirely on the diminishing of the

satisfaction by use, but also on a positive, independent pleasure in

the apperception of a new thing, and new, original, in the sense of

being a revelation, are the productions of genius. In the development

of art, too, a disinclination to get into ruts, together with positive

enjoyment of original work, is a decidedly progressive force, as

opposed to the multiplication of reproductions and imitations. Before

the revolution caused by a new thing has become an accomplished fact,

behold! it is no longer new, and the danger is of achieving only the

pre-classical, as it were, and not the classical. Of following the

prophets, perhaps, but not the Messiah.

4. _Reason_

We need no chain of reasoning to prove that the logical faculty is

involved in very many plays, even those of simple movement; but now,

as heretofore, we will strictly exclude all uses of it except those in

which it is the very object of the play, those in which it is playfully

experimented with. Two bearings of the subject will engage our

attention: first, causality; and, second, inherence. Both are prominent

in the playful use of reason, while some special forms involve the use

of judgment as well, as in the play of wit, for instance.

How far the gratification afforded by play is dependent on causality

is strikingly shown by the fact that there is not a single form of it

which does not exhibit in one shape or another the joy of being a cause

as the germ of its attractiveness. It is true that this universal fact

directs the attention more to the feeling of being a cause than to the

logical idea of causal connection, yet we find enjoyment of logical

activity prominent in the categories which we have designated as

“hustling things about,” and as destructive and constructive movement

play. The tendency toward such play was chosen for our point of

departure, and the indications are that it is of the first importance

to the child, and that only through frequent repetitions of the _post

hoc_ does independent interest in the _propter hoc_ gradually arise.

Still, it can not be denied that the true characteristics of play are

in inverse ratio to the intensity of the desire for knowledge, and it

should be clearly stated that we are now on the frontier territory of

play and earnest. The steps by which we have reached this point can be

clearly traced by every reader of what goes before; therefore, without

stopping to recapitulate, I cite this striking remark of Preyer’s as a

fitting climax. He says in reference to the evolution of a feeling of

individuality: “Another important factor is the perception of change

brought about by his own activity, in the familiar objects by which

he is surrounded, and, psychologically speaking, or, indeed, from

any standpoint, a red-letter day in the infant’s life is the one on

which he first grasps the connection between his own movements and the

sense-perceptions caused by them. The sound produced by tearing and

crumpling paper was still unrecognised by this child till in his fifth

month he discovered that it gave him a new sensation, and he repeated

the experiment day after day most energetically until the stimulus of

novelty wore away. Still, there was no clear apprehension of causality,

but the child had now had the experience of being an originator, and

of combined sight and sound perceptions, regular in so far that when

he tore paper it became smaller for one thing, and sound resulted for

another. Other such amusements were shaking keys on a ring, opening

and shutting a box or purse (thirteen months), repeatedly filling and

emptying a table drawer, piling up and scattering sand and gravel,

rustling the pages of a book (thirteenth to nineteenth month), digging

in sand, pulling footstools back and forth, laying stones, shells,

and buttons in rows (twenty-one months), pouring water in and out

of bottles, cups, and cans (thirty-first to thirty-third month) and

throwing stones in water.”[333] Miss Shinn also gives a pretty example

in the case of her little niece: “In the twentieth month (five hundred

and ninetieth day) I saw her outdoors, especially when driving, cover

her eyes several times with her hands. I thought the sunlight might be

too brilliant, but it is more likely that she was experimenting, for in

the following weeks she would often cover her eyes with her hands, and

take them away, hide her face in a cushion or on her own arms, often

saying ‘Dark,’ then look up, ‘Light now.’”[334] Tormenting animals

is another direction in which the quest for a causal connection is

evident. When André Theuriet was a four-year-old boy he threw a newborn

puppy in the water just “pour voir,” and then wept bitterly because he

could not rescue it.[335] As these demands of reason become prominent

we can clearly see that we are approaching the limits of play.

There are other cases, however, where the search for a causal

connection can more assuredly be called playful. An essential feature

of the enjoyment derived from mental contests is the calculation of the

result. Several possibilities are before the player, and he enjoys the

intellectual effort of testing each and using the most advantageous. In

the solution of whist and chess problems and such like, rivalry becomes

an insignificant feature, and logical experimentation forms the central

interest. Just so with the common and often ancient mechanical and

mathematical puzzles. Pleasure in conquering their logical difficulties

is derived from the gratification of a “general impulse or general

instinct to exercise the intelligence as such.”[336] Causality plays

a prominent part in poetry, too, since we require it to reveal to us

the inner relations of the events set forth and to exhibit cause and

effect in clearer and more orderly sequence than the complexities of

reality admit of.[337] Especially is this the case with tragedy. In my

Einleitung in die Aesthetik I expressed the opinion that the treatment

of tragical climaxes as logical necessities is an important means of

bracing us for the increasingly painful inner imitation which is so

essential, without weakening or modifying its effect. “When the course

of the tragic tale is so far developed as to suggest that a catastrophe

is imminent, it should also appear inevitable. Stern necessity must

urge the hero toward the fearful goal so persistently that escape shall

be unthinkable, a logical impossibility. This feeling of necessity is

calculated to fix the æsthetic illusion, and consequently help on the

effect by rendering more strenuous the mental tension and directing

it so forcibly toward the climax that consciousness is a captive to

inner imitation until the tragedy has culminated. In other words, fear

of the catastrophe is so absorbing as to create the illusion that the

apprehended event is just at hand, and consequently all sense of the

painfulness of the situation is merged in the stress of this illusion,

since it alone is competent to relieve the tension.”[338] I might

have continued to the effect that such manifestations of the law of

cause afford us a positive logical satisfaction, and in spite of the

impression forced upon us by the crushing blows of Fate, weave some

threads into the intricate texture of æsthetic enjoyment, because in

them we recognise a proof of the existence of a universal causal nexus.

A glance over the sphere of inherence, too, will help us to a proper

orientation for this inquiry. By the word inherence we signify the

relation of a thing to its qualities, or, abstractly speaking, the

relation of a concept to its characteristics. A common and well-nigh

universal form of play depends on this principle—namely, the making

and solving of riddles. The large majority of them involve an effort

to find the concept whose characteristics are given, and the task is

intentionally rendered difficult, with the result that the solution

is attended with a proud sense of success. The exercise easily

leads to a contest, but it is grounded in experimentation with the

logical faculty, and many persons enjoy the amusement for this reason

alone.[339]

Children as young as four years sometimes indulge in a sort of

preliminary exercise in riddle solving, such as the simple game in

which one child, noticing the peculiar colour of some object in the

room, says, “I see something you don’t see, and it’s yellow,” and

his comrade must guess it. The play here is connected with sense

perception by the relations of things to their qualities, and there

are many games for large companies much like it. In a genuine riddle

the enumeration of characteristics must be imperfect or in some way

misleading to render the solution troublesome, and still sufficiently

complete to make it possible; many are made sufficiently puzzling by

the lack of logical ὁριδκός without the introduction of other means of

mystification; such, for example, as—

“Drufg’schloh,

Ufg’ deckt,

Usse g’nô,

Dra gschmöckt,

Und dann wiederum versteckt.”

(Tabakdose.)

“Inside whole,

Outside full of many holes.”

(Thimble.)

“Two legs sits on three legs

And milks four legs.”

(Milkmaid.)

“Oben spitz und unten breit

Durch und durch voll Süssigkeit.”

(Zuckerhut.)

“First white as snow,

Then green as clover,

Then red as blood,

They taste to all children good.”

(Cherries.)

The play is more genuine, however, when the characteristics are more

veiled, as in (1) metaphor and (2) apparent contradiction. The riddles

which follow are evidently calculated to put one on the wrong scent.

On the coast of Malabar two familiar riddles are “Little man, strong

voice,” and “A little pig in the woods.” The answer to the former is

Grasshopper, and to the latter Pediculus cervicalis.

“There is a little man

With a stomach of stone;

He has a red cloak

And a black cap on.”

(Haw.)

“S’itzt etwas amme Rainle,

Es wackelt ihm sein Beinle;

Vor Angst und Noth

Wird ihm sein Köpfle feuerroth.”

(Erdbeere.)

“An iron steed with silken reins,

The faster runs the horse the shorter grow the reins.”

(Needle and thread.)

Apparent contradiction is a favourite means of mystification, as in the

questions “What teaches without speaking?” A book. “What two things

are together early and late, and yet never touch each other?” Parallel

lines. The East African Schamlala have a riddle which is metaphorical.

“My grandfather’s cattle low when they are driven away, and are quiet

coming home.” This refers to the water gourds carried by the women,

which clatter when taken away empty, and are silent as they come back

filled.[340] A German riddle of this kind is:

“Ich hab’ einen Rücken und kann nicht liegen;

Ich hab zwei Flügel und kann nicht fliegen;

Ich hab ein Bein und kann nicht stehen;

Ich kann wohl laufen, aber nicht gehen.”

(Nase.)

I can not here examine other forms of logical experimentation with

the exception of the phenomena of wit, which are too important to be

omitted from our review. Primarily wit should be classed with the

comic, of which we shall speak in another connection, but at times it

overreaches these limits, and more general grounds must be assigned

for it in logical experimentation. When wit is free from sarcasm and

assumes the form of playful judgment, as Kuno Fischer says, then

its most natural expression is in the riddle and the proverb. The

evolution of such serious wit as Jean Paul’s is possible only to a

highly cultured people, and Nietzsche, the most brilliant German

exponent of modern witticism, displays a certain tendency to proverb.

“To be stiff to his inferiors is wisdom for the hedgehog” has the

true flavour of the terse sayings found among all primitive people.

The satisfaction afforded by true wit is due to the playful conquest

of logical difficulties; some statement is made which confuses by its

unusual conjunction of ideas, and we hail as a victory the sudden

emergence of the hidden meaning. Therefore it would be a mistake to

call the pleasure produced by wit exclusively a play with reason, since

constructive imagination and the formulation of the abstract are also

involved. When the negro produces this—“God keeps the flies off the

ox that has no tail”—he gives us an expression of wit illustrating

abstract judgment which may be accompanied by the stronger emotion.

B. EXPERIMENTATION WITH THE FEELINGS

That a man may play with his emotions is a well-known fact, but one

which has not to my knowledge been adequately investigated in all

its ramifications. While the “luxury of grief” is often referred to,

the interesting distinction of its varying degrees has not been gone

into. It can not be labelled, I think, simple play with pleasurable

sensations, partly because the concentration of attention on the

feeling itself instead of on the accompanying sensations and ideas

tends to weaken the very feeling in question, and also because the

division of consciousness which attends such a survey of one’s own

emotional life is less operative in the sphere of pleasure.[341] There

must be a distinct recognition that it is genuine pain which we are

enjoying before the sense of being a spectator arises, and we can

become conscious that we are playing with our emotions. The various

feelings which may be involved in this process are physical pain,

mental suffering, surprise, and fear. Besides these four, the mixed

feeling of suspension between pain and pleasure might be mentioned, but

as it has already been referred to it will be included in our treatment

of surprise.

1. _Physical Pain_

I have frequently had occasion to note that we commonly enjoy stimuli

whose effect is distinctly disagreeable because they are calculated

to satisfy our craving for intense impressions. A sensitive tooth

is constantly visited by the tongue, a stiff neck is constantly

experimented with, any slight wound is repeatedly pressed and rubbed,

etc. Hall[342] and Allin testify that this is especially the case in

childhood. We have already noticed the shock of a cold bath and the

sting of sharp drinks. The pleasure which we derive from eating pungent

horseradish, which brings tears to the eyes, is a relative, distant and

humble it is true, but still unmistakably a relative of our enjoyment

of tragedy. Our satisfaction in strong, self-produced excitement is

so intense as to make physical pain to a great extent enjoyable. It

is true that while these phenomena are so far quite normal, secret

but direct paths connect them with the realm of pathology. While some

individuals display this in a somewhat anomalous desire for taste

stimuli, in others pleasure in petty self-torture develops into a

sort of sport, having as its object not merely a test of their power

of endurance (of that we shall speak in the section on will) but some

obscure delight in actual suffering as well. Cardanus confesses in

his autobiography to a diseased condition which could not dispense

with pain, so that if he found himself perfectly comfortable he was

at once moved by an irresistible impulse to torture his body until

tears came. Mantegazza tells of a veteran who took a strange delight

in scratching the inflamed edges of an old wound in his leg.[343] In

some forms of insanity the patient maltreats his person, inflicting the

most frightful wounds and mutilations, which would be incredible if

his sensibilities were not to a great degree blunted. In the attempt

to explain these phenomena some have thought them an exception to the

rule that pleasure accompanies only what is in some way useful, but

it seems to me that a sufficient explanation of normal cases is found

in the utility of the experimental impulse, which in seeking strong

stimuli takes a certain amount of pain with the rest. So long as

pleasure predominates over pain in the experience, play is possible.

In pathological cases sexual excitement is often aroused sufficiently

to neutralize the suffering, and where this is not the case we must

suppose a perverse directing of the fighting instinct against one’s own

body, furthered by the deadening of sensibility to pain.

2. _Mental Suffering_

Psychologists have given special attention to the enjoyment which is

derived from contemplating unpleasant images and subjects. Perhaps

the most familiar passage on the subject is that of Spencer’s on the

luxury of grief, yet, as he himself admits, his idea of self-pity does

not clear it up, and he goes on: “It seems possible that the sentiment

which makes a sufferer wish to be alone with his grief, and makes him

resist all distraction from it, may arise from dwelling on the contrast

between his own worth as he conceives it, and the treatment he has

received—either from his fellow-beings or from a power which he is

prone to think of anthropomorphically. If he feels that he has deserved

much while he has received little, and still more if instead of good

there has come evil, the consciousness of this evil is qualified by the

consciousness of worth, made pleasurably dominant by the contrast....

That this explanation is the true one, I feel by no means clear.

I throw it out simply as a suggestion, confessing that this is a

peculiar emotion which neither analysis nor synthesis enables me to

understand.”[344] This is indeed an unsatisfactory explanation, and the

play idea seems to bring us nearer to one, for here, as in the case of

physical pain, it is the deep-rooted need of our nature for intense

stimuli which enables us to enjoy our own suffering. That unassuageable

longing of Faust which had exhausted the meagre emotional recourses of

study, and now dragged him out in search of life and experience, was

a longing for both pleasure and pain, since both could stir up life’s

deep sea, which now lay stagnant:

“Sturzen wer uns in das Rauschen der Zeit,

Ins Rollen der Begebenheit!

Da mag denn Schmerz und Genuss,

Gelingen und Verdruss

Mit einander wechseln, wie es kann

Nur raselos bethätigt sich der Mann.”

Contemplative natures, not given to activity, have a tendency to play

with their suffering, and by a strange division of consciousness stand

as on some rocky height, beholding with pleased appreciation the

foaming torrent of their own feelings. In the closing chapter of my

Play of Animals I treated the subject of divided consciousness at some

length, and will not here repeat what is said there. For a specific

instance we need only point to the artist who brings a tragic tale to

a close with real regret, and, in spite of the suffering it has caused

him, is filled with the joy in being a cause, in his power to create.

When Kleist finished Penthesilia in Dresden he went to his friend

Pfuel in tears. “She is dead!” he wailed, and yet, in spite of his

deep and genuine grief over the death of his heroine, in the depths

of his soul he was conscious of joy in his creation. This is a good

example of play with mental suffering, and Marie Bashkirtseff furnishes

another illustration which I have cited in my earlier work. “Can one

believe it?” she writes in her journal, at the age of thirteen; “I find

everything good and beautiful, even tears and pain. I love to weep,

I love to despair, I love to be sad. I love life in spite of all; I

wish to live. I must be happy, and am happy to be miserable. My body

weeps and moans, but something in me that is above me enjoys it all.”

By these words she reveals most clearly that division of consciousness

in which, behind the suffering I, another seems to stand, which has

the power to change the grief to bliss. Goethe, too, seems often to

have felt the same. His Werther blames himself because he is prone to

cower before petty ills. Further than this there is such a thing as

emotional pessimism founded on temperament. For Schopenhauer it was an

evident satisfaction to work himself up to a condition of the utmost

indignation over the evils of the world. Kuno Fischer has sharply

exposed this playful characteristic of his pessimism. It is true, he

says, that Schopenhauer takes a serious and even tragic view of the

world, but, after all, it is only a view, a spectacle, a picture.

“The world tragedy is played in a theatre; he sits in the audience on

a comfortable divan commanding the stage, using his opera glass with

discretion. Many of the spectators forget the suffering world at the

buffet, none follow the tragedy with such close attention, such deep

earnestness, such a comprehensive glance as his. Then, deeply moved and

soul-satisfied, he goes home and writes down what he has seen.”[345]

Melancholy, too, in the ordinary sense, not the pathological, belongs

here, the melancholy of lovers, poets, and artists, the condition

typified by the phrase “dégustation complaisante de la tristesse.”[346]

Finally, pleasure in the tragic, of which we have spoken in another

connection, should be mentioned here. Augustine, the great prober into

the problems of the soul, has set forth this question with inimitable

clearness in the third book of his Confessions. “Why,” says he, “should

a man sadden himself by voluntarily witnessing what is painful? The

spectator does undeniably feel sad, and the very sadness is a pleasure.

How can we explain this sympathy with unreal, theatrical sorrows? The

hope of ultimate rescue is not the only thing that appeals to him—it

is the actual accumulation of misery as well, and he praises the play

in proportion as it moves him. When common woes are so represented as

not to affect the hearer, he goes away dissatisfied and complaining.

If he is affected, on the contrary, he listens attentively, and weeps

with delight.” If I understand Augustine aright, he finds the solution

of the puzzle in the idea of a sort of sympathy which he distinguishes

from real or moral sympathy, and which is at bottom nothing else than

the play of inner imitation, that æsthetic feeling of fellowship

of which we shall hear more later. He puts his finger on the real

reason why fellow-feeling for the sufferer has a special charm when

he admits that tragic representation affected him with sharp, creepy

sensations, like the scratching of a finger nail. Thus he concludes,

as we have done, that the foundation of enjoyment of tragedy is the

result of intensive stimuli. As Du Bos[347] remarks, we take the pain

accompanying the emotion in the bargain because we like the emotion,

the agitation of feeling, so well. This recalls the Aristotelian dogma

of the catharsis, but the objection to this theory lies, as its name

implies, in the fact that it seeks a practical end for the play of

æsthetic pleasure. For Aristotle the question is to establish the

purifying effects of a thunderstorm, not the enjoyment of its grandeur,

and for this reason the doctrine of the catharsis, however clear it

may be, does not directly answer our question. Delight in the tragic

element is not concerned with the lull after the storm, but only with

the surging might of the tempest itself, in which we are playfully

involved. Weil and Bernays seem to me to have the right idea when they

speak of the need for violent emotional play, and of enjoyment of

ecstatic conditions. And Lessing also, when he says that strong passion

gives more reality to feeling. But it is doubtful whether Aristotle

considered this side of the question in forming his theory.

3. _Surprise_

Surprise is connected with fear, and for this reason is in itself a

disagreeable sensation; yet, on account of its strong psychophysical

effect—namely, the shock which it produces—it becomes highly enjoyable

in play, and displays, perhaps more clearly than any of the other

cases, the charm of strong stimuli. Children indulge very early in play

involving the shock of surprise, and its effectiveness as a means of

giving pleasure becomes more and more intense. Darwin relates that his

son, from the one hundred and tenth day, was wildly delighted when a

handkerchief was laid over his face and then suddenly withdrawn, or

when his father’s face was hidden and revealed in this way. “He then

uttered a little noise, which was an incipient laugh.” I referred

to this in speaking of expectancy, which, indeed, goes hand in hand

with surprise, however opposed they may appear, since surprise which

is entirely unexpected is of course no part of play. There is always

playful experimentation with the shock when we expect it, but do not

know when or in what form it will appear. It is just this combination

which makes the emotional effect of surprise greater than it would

otherwise be. When, for example, we hold a lighted match over a lamp,

we are the more startled by the slight explosion because we have

attentively awaited it; and there are many games for children in which

the combined effect of expectation and surprise furnish an essential

part of the pleasure, such as those where persons or objects are

hidden. The excitement, too, which is caused by loud and sudden sounds

is of the same character. M. Reischle, in his fine paper on child’s

play, distinguishes a special group of expectation and surprise games,

and points out that the little ones peek while their comrades are

hiding, and yet are overjoyed to find them, and apparently surprised.

In many throwing and catching games both elements are influential in

heightening the stimulus, and special plays grow out of them, such

as “Hide-and-Seek,” “Blind-Man’s Buff,” “Drop the Handkerchief,” as

well as many games of chance. Indeed, in the last named the stimulus

of surprise is often of special importance,[348] and one of the chief

sources of pleasure is the tension of expectancy followed by the

sudden decision on the fall of dice.

Yet more interesting is the significance of surprise in relation to the

comic. While the latter is more than a play with surprise, this feature

becomes a factor that should by no means be overlooked in studying

comic effects, especially when we reflect that previous efforts to

explain this modification of aesthetic enjoyment have proved abortive,

possibly through failure to give due weight to this very element. E.

Hecker advances the theory, it is true, that laughter from tickling

accounts for the origin of enjoyment of the comic, but in this purely

physiological explanation he seems to overlook the fact that as a rule

we laugh only when we are tickled, not when we tickle ourselves—that

is to say, that contact with finger tips becomes tickling only when

the hand is a strange one. Even in physical tickling, then, there must

be some psychic factors, of which surprise may be one, even though it

is inadequate alone to explain the phenomena. The fact that surprise

not carried far enough to frighten is one of the first causes of

laughter in children gives colour to this idea. Zeising has shown

conclusively that there is a double surprise in the comic, the first

being the intuitive start at something unusual, and contrasted with

what is normal and typic, be it occasioned by some anomaly in the

object itself or depending only on the momentary _milieu_—such, for

instance, as the ridiculous appearance of a tiny cottage in a row of

palatial residences.[349] This first shock is followed by a moment of

suspense. “When the entirely unexpected happens,” says Goethe in Tasso,

“the mind stands still for a moment,” which again is interrupted by

the new surprise of finding the first one negatived or reversed.[350]

Here we have the counter shock, whose pleasurable effect is strong

enough to more than neutralize the first, and render their combined

result agreeable.[351] As Kant, with his unrivalled penetration, has

remarked, we play with the error as with a ball, tossing it back

and forth and looking after it each time; in this way we are hurried

through a succession of tensions and relaxations.

While this illustration shows clearly how the essence of comicality is

due to the peculiar character of the double shock, yet it remains true

that even in this case surprise as such is pleasurable, and plays its

part in the complicated effect.

4. _Fear_

That even fear, the most abject of all affections, may become the

object of playful experimentation is one of the riddles of soul

life. Here, too, we can only apply the theory of pleasure in intense

stimulus to that of divided consciousness. When Lukrez dwells upon

the pleasure of gazing on a stormy sea from the vantage ground of

a rocky crag he illustrates this state, only here the soul is both

in the midst of the storm and on the rocks as well. Apart from and

above the terror-stricken personality stands another, safe and free,

and enjoying the fascination of painful excitement. For the power

of fear is fascinating, even benumbing in its effect. Souriau says:

“I remember, as a child, seeing a snake, cut in two by a spade,

convulsively writhing on the garden walk. The sight filled me with

terror, which rooted me to the spot. Fascinated, I stood perfectly

still, my eyes following the agonized twisting of the creature while

I felt waves of pain surging through my own body.”[352] Of course,

such a condition can be playful only in case of an æsthetic illusion

when the fear is but apparent, and may be dispelled at will, and when

pleasure is stronger than pain in the experience. Nevertheless, there

are transitions between real and apparent fear which are particularly

operative when curiosity becomes the counter irritant. Every one’s

childhood will furnish an example of this. George Sand tells us how

she as a little girl tried with a playmate to get a glimpse into the

spirit world by means of mystic oaths and incantations. The children

waited long in fear and trembling, for blue flames, protruding devil’s

horns, etc. This was only a play, “but a play that set our hearts

beating.”[353] Although fear in this instance has more the character of

a necessary accompaniment than of an object of play, real delight in

the gruesome is undeniably evident in the world of art. In the first

place, there are legends and stories with horrible fantasies. The

child is wrapped in breathless interest in accounts of ghosts, wicked

magicians, werewolves, etc., and while safe in his own home enjoys

the terrors which these ideas excite. As a small boy I listened with

nameless horror to the crude account of the fate of Faust secretly

read to me by our gardener out of a popular book. I remember how, when

the devil led Faust through the ceiling, his skull was broken and his

brains spattered on the wall. For some time after that I was afraid to

pass shady places in the garden, even in the daytime. With older boys

descriptions of battles and adventures, and, above all, Indian stories,

take the place of fairy tales. The Leather Stocking Tales were my chief

delight, especially The Pathfinder, and I can still recall the rapt

attention with which I followed the frightful perils which threatened

my hero, whenever I could get a quarter of an hour off. How meagre is

our capacity for æsthetic enjoyment in later years compared with the

absolute, unconditional surrender to it of a youthful soul! Adults

enjoy the gruesome in poetic creations such as those of Hoffman and

Victor Hugo. When we read of the struggle with the polypus in Toilers

of the Sea the strong stimulus imparted by fear is certainly the chief

source of pleasure. My grandfather in extreme old age liked nothing

better than to read such thrilling tales of hairbreadth escapes, and

the strong preference for detective stories evinced by the masses is

based on the same grounds. Savages, too, like children, always prefer

tales which deal with demons and magic.

Finally, we must notice an æsthetic phase which is related to

fear—namely, exaltation. Since Kant’s thoroughgoing elucidation the

principle is fixed that exaltation is the result of a rebound from

fear. First depression, then exaltation. At first, the object of our

reverence oppresses us, and for a moment we are painfully conscious of

our impotence and nothingness; then comes a reaction; we throw off the

oppression and begin to study the revered object with serious pleasure.

In my Einleitung in die Aesthetik I did not attribute the first part of

this process to æsthetic pleasure, because I found that inner imitation

on which I based my investigation only in the second stage.[354]

While I still regard it as the highest and most important element in

æsthetics, yet I am aware that my view as there presented was somewhat

one-sided, as is almost unavoidably the case if one attempts to

carry out a theory systematically. As I shall return to this point,

let it suffice to say here that probably the depression itself is

pleasurable, and so forms a part of the æsthetic satisfaction. It is

characteristic of our complex natures that along with our demand to

control our surroundings we also feel the need of the domination of a

higher power. When we encounter an incontestably overpowering force we

gladly surrender unconditionally, and take pleasure in acknowledging

that we are insignificant and helpless. The significance of this spirit

for religion is apparent. Schiller has designated awe as the noblest

human trait, and Schleiermacher found the springs of religion in the

feeling of dependence. The first stage in the satisfaction derived from

exaltation is akin to this when we enjoy our self-abasement in order to

render more conspicuous the subsequent expansion of an individuality,

in the second stage when by the exercise of inner imitation we identify

ourselves with the revered object, thus partaking of the greatness

which at first overawed us. While it is true that only the second

part of this process attains the summit of enjoyment, the first, too,

is playful. “How felt I myself so small—so great?” asks Faust, and

attributes both sentiments to the selfsame moment. This play with

depression is facilitated by repeating the whole process frequently.

The mind is not only attracted to the object, but alternately repelled

from it, and in this process of repetition depression assumes more and

more the character of play.

C. EXPERIMENTATION WITH THE WILL

Since our inquiry in this closing section is not as to the general use

of the will in play, but rather into playful experimentation with the

will itself, we must direct our attention to the control of movement.

Play requires that those movements which depend on both inherited and

acquired brain paths shall be under voluntary control. The pleasure

accompanying this control is founded on the feeling of freedom and of

mastery over self; and it is to be specially noted that almost all the

related phenomena take the form of contests and appeal to the fighting

instincts. The majority of cases require the suppression of emotional

expression or of such reflexes as are connected with them. Thus, for

example, winking is not an expression of emotion in the ordinary sense,

and yet when it follows closely on the sudden presentation of some

object before the eyes it seems to indicate that the person is startled

or even terrified. Children often play with this refractory reflex, one

moving his hand rapidly before the eyes of another, who makes desperate

efforts to keep them open, and a forfeit game is played as follows: Two

persons sit or stand opposite one another; one moves his hand close to

the other’s eyes while the following colloquy takes place: “Are you

going in the woods?” “Yes.” “Going to take some bread with you?” “Yes.”

“And you want some salt on it?” “Yes.” “Are you afraid of the wolf?” If

he holds his eyes open all the time he is not afraid, but if he winks

he must pay a forfeit.[355] The attempt is often made, too, to resist

the impulse to laugh while two persons gaze into each other’s eyes.

Indeed, such games are too numerous to mention. The effort to repress

the expression of pain is still more interesting. Self-control during

the suffering of physical pain is everywhere regarded as a proof of

manliness, and is earnestly cultivated by savages as by our own boys.

The quiet submission to painful tattooing, the endurance displayed by

Indian children often in gruesome ways, the effort of our schoolboys to

bear corporal punishment unflinchingly, the self-control of students

who joke while their wounds are being sewed, and—to carry the struggle

against self-betrayal into the field of mental suffering as well—the

apparent indifference of gamblers to the reverses of fortune; while

all of these can by no means be called playful, still the cases are

sufficiently numerous in which there is actual playful experimentation

with the powers of endurance. For example, Rochholz describes this

test: Two persons strike the knuckles of the doubled-up fists together,

and measure their will power by the length of time that they can

endure the pain. Another is to strike the first and middle fingers

against those of the other person. A friend of mine told me that as a

boy (probably after reading some Indian tales) he once wagered with

a comrade as to how long they could hold lighted matches in their

fingers. He won the bet, but had to go with a bandaged hand for a long

time.

A playful exercise of the will which suppresses not only every

admission of suffering, but the fighting instinct as well, is related

by Goethe of his youth. After remarking that “very many sports of youth

depend on a rivalry in such endurance, as, for example, when they

strike with two fingers or the whole hand until the limbs are numb,” he

goes on: “As I made a sort of boast of this endurance, the others were

piqued, and as rude barbarity knows no limits, they managed to push me

beyond my bounds. Let one instance serve to illustrate. It happened one

morning that the teacher did not appear at the hour of recitation. As

long as all the children were together we entertained ourselves very

well, but when my friends left after waiting the usual time, the others

took it into their heads to torment and shame me and to drive me away.

Leaving the room for a moment, they came back with switches from a

broom. I saw what they meant to do, and, supposing the end of the hour

to be near, I at once resolved to resist them until the clock struck.

They lashed my legs unmercifully, and in a way that was actually

cruel. I did not stir, but soon found that I had miscalculated the

time, and that pain greatly lengthened the minutes. My rage swelled

the more I endured, and at the first stroke of the clock I grasped my

most unsuspecting assailant by the hair, hurled him to the floor in an

instant, pressing my knee upon his back. The second, who was younger

and weaker, and who attacked me in the rear, I held with his head under

my arm. The last, and not the weakest, remained, and only my left hand

was free, but I caught hold of his clothes, and by a dexterous twist on

my part and an awkward slip on his, I brought him down too, striking

his face on the floor.”

Another impulse whose suppression is sometimes an end in play is

imitation. Perhaps the most familiar game illustrating it is “All

Birds Fly,” in which one of the children says “Pigeons fly, ducks fly,

bears fly,” etc., and raises her hands in the air each time, while

the others must follow her example only when a bird is mentioned. The

Mufti-comme-ça described by Wagner is similar. All stand in a circle

except the one who is in the centre making various motions. When he

calls out “Mufti,” all stand still; but when he continues “comme ça,”

they imitate him. In the English “Simon says,” the players make all

the gestures that he commands, regardless of those which he may be

making.[356]

All these examples are concerned with the repression of inborn

reflexes, expressive movements, and instincts, but acquired habits

are no less difficult to withstand. Many games are founded on the

assumption that the ability to do so is a proof of will power,

and emphasizes the freedom and self-control of the subject. It is

particularly well illustrated in vocal exercises. To omit a particular

syllable in a familiar rhythmic verse, or possibly several verses,

requires a sudden check to the accustomed movements. A well-known

German example is the song—

“Europa hat Ruhe,

Europa hat Ruh’,

Und wenn Europa Ruhe hat,

So hat Europa Ruh’”—

in which the first, second, or third syllable of the word Europa, or

even the word or all the other words, are omitted. Kreis mentions a

similar play for children. It consists simply in substituting other

meanings for the words (stretching for bending, for example), so that

when the order is given “Bend,” the arm is stretched out, etc.[357]

There is such a thing, too, as playful resistance of old habits. How

many smokers resolve as a sort of jest to do without cigars for a week!

It is the merest playful experimentation; they want to see if they are

really absolute slaves of the pleasant vice, or whether the habit is

still under the control of their will. If the experiment succeeds, they

contentedly go back to their cigars; it is not at all a serious effort

to reform. Many frivolous persons play thus with their habits, and take

a childish delight in the little conquests achieved by their will, yet

without permanently or seriously altering their manner of living.