_THE THEORY OF PLAY_
Having reviewed the extensive field of play and its systems, the task
now remains of collecting the results and important conclusions thence
resulting. To this end the conception of play must be viewed from
different standpoints: on the one hand that of physiology, biology, and
psychology, and on the other a more definitely æsthetic, sociological,
and pedagogical view.
1. _The Physiological Standpoint_
In the attempt to find a “common-sense” explanation of play we are
confronted by three distinct views, none of which science should
neglect. The first says: When a man is “quite fit,” and does not know
just what to do with his strength, he begins to sing and shout, to
dance and caper, to tease and scuffle. “Jugend muss austoben, der Hafer
sticht ihn”; “He must sow his wild oats”; “Il n’a pas encore jeté sa
gourme.” All these sayings recognise the necessity for some discharge
of such superabundant vigour. The second view is diametrically opposed
to this one, regarding play as it does in the light of an opportunity
afforded for the relaxation and recreation of exhausted powers. As
the strings of a zither and the cord of a bow should not always be
taut if the instrument is to retain its usefulness, so do men need
the relaxation of play. The third view emphasizes the teleological
significance of play. Observation of men and animals forces us to
recognise its great importance in the physical and mental development
of the individual—that it is, in short, preparatory to the tasks of
life. Every effort made to arouse and foster a feeling for play among
our people is based on the conviction, _pro patria est, dum ludere
videmur_.
The physiological theory of play is derived mainly from the first of
these views—namely, that of surplus energy.[646] Schiller was its
first exponent in Germany, when he accounted for play by calling it an
aimless expenditure of exuberant strength, which is its own excuse for
action. But Herbert Spencer, in his Principles of Psychology, first
attempted a scientific formulation of the theory. It is characteristic
of nerve processes, he says, that the superfluous integration of
ganglion cells should be accompanied by an inherited readiness to
discharge. As a result of the advanced development of man and the
higher animals they have, first, more force than is needed in the
struggle for existence; and, second, are able to allow some of their
powers longer periods of rest while others are being exercised, and
thus results the aimless activity which we call play, and which is
agreeable to the individual producing it.
A further question, which is not sufficiently provided for in Spencer’s
elucidation, depends on the physiology of this theory. Since we find
that each species of higher animal has a kind of play peculiar to
itself, we must try also to explain the origin of such varied forms of
activity, all serving to relieve the tension of superfluous energy.
Spencer does indeed attempt to make his theory of imitation cover all
this, but a close examination proves it to be inadequate to the task.
His idea is that imitation of one’s own acts or of those of adults of
the race determines the channels for overflowing energy. The former
supposition might be tenable on the supposition that the child’s first
experimentation is not playful but intentional repetition, which is not
the commonly accepted meaning of imitation. Spencer himself, however,
seems to find imitation of models more general among children, since
he expressly says that their play, as they nurse their dolls, give tea
parties, etc., is a distinct dramatization of the acts of adults. This
view, as I have tried to prove in my earlier work, can be applied with
assurance to but one department of play, and consequently the origin of
special forms must find some other explanation. Imitation, then, in its
ordinary sense, can not be the universal criterion of play.
The question, therefore, as to the origin of special forms of play must
be answered in some other way, and Spencer himself points it out when
he says that the actions imitated in play are exactly those which are
important in the subsequent career of the animal, and when in pursuance
of this idea he refers to the robbing and destroying instincts which
play satisfies in a manner more or less ideal. Here we meet again
with the thought which has, indeed, hardly ever been absent in this
inquiry, and which I regard as a most fruitful one. Not imitation, but
the life of impulse and instinct alone, can make special forms of play
comprehensible to us. The surplus-energy theory assumes in the higher
forms of life a series of inborn impulses for whose serious activity
there is often for a long time no opportunity of discharge, with the
result that a reserve of exuberant strength collects and presses
imperatively for employment, thus calling forth an ideal satisfaction
of the impulse, or play.
A wide range can not be denied to the theory thus set forth, especially
when we consider youthful play with its ebullient vigour which has
scarcely any other outlet. The movements of imprisoned animals, too,
may be cited in its support, as well as the actions of men whose
business does not give them enough physical exercise. Yet I think
experience teaches us that superfluous energy, as Spencer conceives
it, is no more a universal criterion of play than is imitation, since
in many cases the inherited impulse toward prescribed reactions in
certain brain tracts seems to be in itself a sufficient cause for play
without the necessary accompaniment of superfluous energy. When a ball
of cord is rolled toward a kitten, nothing more is needed to set her
claws in motion than in the case of a full-grown cat that starts up at
the sight of a mouse. And the same is true of a child whose imitative
and fighting instincts are excited by whatever cause. When there is
absolutely no external stimulus to supplement the creature’s inborn
impulses, only long inactivity of stored-up energies would lead to
play; but, as there are thousands of such stimuli always at work,
the Schiller-Spencer superfluous energy seems not to be a necessary
or universal condition of play. It is of course a favourable but not
an indispensable one, and therefore I regard not this but the inborn
impulse as the keystone of an adequate system of play. It is true that
we must assume in that case a flood tide in the affected tract as a
result of the external stimulus, but this is quite a different thing
from the view whose validity we are contesting. If, then, a condition
of superfluous energy is a favourable though not indispensable one
for play, we must endeavour to find its supplement, and this brings
us to the second popular idea, which under the name of the theory of
recreation has found its most scientific champion in Lazarus. Its
fundamental principles are quite simple. When we are tired of mental
or physical labour and still do not wish to sleep or rest, we gladly
welcome the active recreation afforded by play. At first blush it seems
to lead to a conclusion directly opposite to Spencer’s, according to
which play squanders superfluous energy, while here it appears as
the conserver of it; there it is an irresponsible spendthrift, here
the provident householder. Yet, as I have pointed out in my earlier
book, this opposition is more apparent than real; that, indeed, the
recreation theory is often supplementary to the Spencerian. “When,
for example, a student goes to have a game of tenpins in the evening,
he thus tones up his relaxed mental powers at the same time that he
finds a means of relieving his accumulated motor impulses, repressed
during his work at the desk. So it is the same act that on the one
hand disposes of his superfluous energy, and on the other restores his
lost powers.” So far as this is the case this theory is a valuable
supplement to the Schiller-Spencer idea, but is, of course, incompetent
to explain play which transcends its limits.
Close inspection, however, will show that even this statement has
its limitations, and that the recreative theory has, after all, an
independent sphere of activity. When, for instance, the conditions
point to an active recreation, superfluous energy pressing for
discharge seems no longer indispensable; a moderate normal energy is
quite adequate for its demands. It is a striking fact that the new
recreative activity is often closely related to the work of which we
are weary. Fresh objects, varying the direction of our efforts, a
slight change in the psychophysical attitude, are often sufficient to
dispel the sense of fatigue. Thus, while it may be futile to direct
the memory, worn out with prolonged service on some difficult subject,
to other objects, yet turning it toward new circumstances connected
with the same subject may restore it to its original vigour.[647]
Recreation may even be achieved by changing from one scientific book
which wearies us to another, perhaps quite as abstruse, but dealing
with different phases of the subject; and after an interval the first
may be taken up again with renewed interest. Steinthal is right when he
says that change of occupation, involving the use of the same limbs,
rests them.[648] The mountain-climber who has toiled up steeps, gains
new strength, or at least loses his fatigue, by walking on a level.
The acrobat who has tired his arms by difficult exercise on a bar
tries pitching as a change, and presently returns to the first with
comparative freshness. The swimmer who has been swimming for a long
time in the usual position rests himself by taking a few strokes on his
back, and so on.[649]
We occasionally find, too, that the recreation theory is very useful
in determining the status of a play to which the Spencerian theory is
inapplicable. With the student playing skittles in the evening the two
theories represent the negative and positive sides, of one and the same
process; but if he feels inclined to participate in some game involving
the use of his mental powers alone, the recreation idea is noticeably
predominant. A principle is operative here which may go far to fill
the gap to which we have referred. While the theory of surplus energy
accounts for play in thousands of cases, especially in childhood, when
there is no need for recreation, this need may also produce play where
there is no surplus energy. This is chiefly illustrated by adults.
Although we are still a long way from a satisfactory explanation of
play, a step toward rendering it intelligible is gained in the fact
that play is often begun in the absence of superabundant energy. But we
find on further examination that a game once begun is apt to be carried
on to the utmost limit of exhaustion—a fact which it is superfluous
to illustrate, and which is inexplicable by either of the theories in
question. An appeal in this dilemma to the physiological standpoint
reveals two possibilities. Let us recall first the tremendous
significance of involuntary repetition to all animal life, for just
as the simplest organisms in alternate expansion and contraction, and
the higher ones in heart beats and breathing, are pervaded by waves
of movement, so also in the sphere of voluntary activity there is a
well-nigh irresistible tendency to repetition. Because of this tendency
of reactions to renew the stimuli, Baldwin calls them “circular
reactions.” Perhaps the child first produces them quite accidentally,
then he repeats his own act, and the sensuous effect of the repetition
furnishes the stimulus for renewed effort. When prohibition breaks this
chain it does not as a rule effect complete cessation at once.
In our busy life, occupied as it is with the struggle for existence,
we see substantial aims before us which we wish to realize as soon
as possible, and we have not time to yield to this impulse to
repetition; but we realize its power when a man steps aside from
his strenuous business life. Psychiatry, too, furnishes us with
pathological examples; some forms of mental disease are marked by
continual repetition of some exclamation or act. One woman murmured
constantly all day long, “O Jesus, O Jesus!” while another patient
ladled nothing indefatigably from an empty dish; and a third scratched
himself so persistently in the same spot that serious wounds resulted.
To the same category belong the automatic and persistent movements of
hypnotic subjects. If the arm of one of them is forcibly stretched
out, he shows a disposition to repeat the movement, and often keeps
on doing it, as children do, for some time after a positive command
to the contrary.[650] Something similar to this occurs when a great
grief or a great joy separates us for a time from our everyday life,
and we mechanically repeat a single exclamation or trivial act.[651]
The intoxication of love among birds is a very clear and beautiful
illustration of this phenomenon. Bell birds are said to repeat their
wooing call so long and so ardently that they have been known to fall
dead from exhaustion.
Play, too, furnishes a similar distraction from the commonplace
world, and after this inquiry we are able to understand why it is
persisted in to the point of exhaustion. Especially is this the case
with children, who more readily and completely lose themselves in
present enjoyment.[652] Every one who has had much to do with these
little people will recall with feelings of not unmixed pleasure how
everlastingly the small tyrants insist on hearing the same story over
and over, and playing the same games. Fighting and movement games are
invariably begun again as soon as the children can get their breath,
and some kinds of experimentation are even more faithfully repeated.
“When a child strikes the combination required,” says Baldwin, “he is
never tired working it. H—— found endless delight in putting the rubber
on a pencil and off again, each act being a new stimulus to the eye.
This is specially noticeable in children’s early efforts at speech.
They react all wrong when they first attack a new word, but gradually
get it moderately well, and then sound it over and over in endless
monotony.”[653]
This impulse toward repetition is doubtless the physiological reason
for carrying on play to the utmost limit of strength. The second
point to be noticed is the trance-like state resulting from such
repetition of some movements, and sometimes with the added influence
of rhythm.[654] The child who leaps and hops about or runs with all his
might, or scuffles with his companions, is seized with a wild impulse
for destruction; the skater and bicyclist, the swimmer sporting in
the waves, and, above all, the dancer, whose movements are adjusted
in harmony with the rhythmic repetition of pleasant sounds, are all
possessed by a kind of temporary madness which compels them to exert
their powers to the utmost. It is not an easy matter to determine
the physiological basis of this intoxication of movement. Violent
muscular contraction is not an essential, for in such passive motion
as coasting, for example, the effect is strong, amounting sometimes
to a sort of giddiness. Active motion is, of course, of more interest
to us, since, in conjunction with the state of trance, the principle
of circular reaction is then operative. Dancing is a kind of play
calculated to augment this condition to the verge of the pathological.
Read, for example, the description of the arrow dance of the Weddas in
Sarasin’s work and compare it with St. John’s picture of the dancing
dervishes of Cairo.[655] The harmless magic of play, however, is as
different from such mad excesses as is the exhilarating effect of a
glass of wine from the frenzy of drunkenness.
We may now sum up: There are two leading principles which must ground
a physiological theory of play—namely, the discharge of surplus energy
and recreation for exhausted powers. They may operate simultaneously,
since acts supplying recreation to exhausted forces may at the same
time call into play other powers and thus afford the needed discharge
for them. In many cases, and especially in youth, the first principle
seems to act alone, while on the other hand play may be solely
recreative, without any dependence on a store of surplus energy.
Further, it is important to notice two other considerations which throw
light on persistence in play to the point of exhaustion. The first is
circular reaction, that self-imitation which in the resultant of one’s
own activities finds ever anew the model for successive acts and the
stimulus to renewed repetition. The second is the trance condition,
which so easily ensues from such activity, and which is practically
irresistible.
The essential thing seems to be the demonstration of a theory of play
entirely from a physiological standpoint, and not involving hereditary
impulses. No more comprehensive explanation is known to me, and yet, in
looking back over the ground covered, while it must be admitted that
we have reached an advantageous point of view, still, on the other
hand, the feeling naturally arises that these principles, loosely
strung together, as they are, do not include the whole subject.
Think of the play of children too young to go to school, for in such
spontaneous activity, not yet enriched by invention or tradition, we
have the kernel of the whole question. For a series of years we find
life virtually controlled by play. Before systematic education begins,
the child’s whole existence, except the time devoted to sleeping and
eating, is occupied with play, which thus becomes the single, absorbing
aim of his life. Can we then be content to apply to a phenomenon so
striking as this a physiological principle confessedly inadequate to
cover it, although admirably adapted for application to some features
of it? Does not its peculiar and inherent nearness to the springs of
life and life’s realities demand a complete explanation grounded on
a general principle which is applicable at once to youth and to the
play which lasts all through life? To answer this question an appeal
must be made to the third popular conception of play, for a biological
investigation alone can reveal the sources of human impulse.
2. _The Biological Standpoint_
In considering play from the biological standpoint we find two tasks
prepared for us: first, a genetic explanation of play, and second,
the appraisal of its biological value. The theory of descent whose
scientific formula bears Darwin’s name will be most useful to us in
both undertakings. There is a steady and constantly increasing current
against his teaching, and the opposition has taken a witty form, if
not one dictated by good taste, in the saying that it is high time
that biology recovered from its “Englische Krankheit.” I think that
this exaggerated depreciation is grounded in the just opinion that
Darwinism does not unlock all the secrets of evolution. Scientific
theories which explain everything they should explain are comparatively
rare, particularly in the sphere of organic life, and I regard it as
more than probable that an _x_ and a _y_ still remain to be calculated
after Darwin’s principle of evolution has done its best. But whether
we shall soon find a better working principle is another question. It
may even now be ripe or it may yet linger for centuries; perhaps it may
never come in terms of thought now known to us. For the present we have
only the choice among metaphysics, Darwinism, and resignation. I, for
one, then, regard the cavalier treatment of the Darwinian doctrine as
a mistake, and still prefer to test special problems according to its
light. Its two fundamental ideas are, first, evolution by means of the
inheritance of acquired characters; and, second, evolution by means of
survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence. The essence of
the first (Lamarckian) principle is denied by many Darwinians, but,
assuming that its influence is as strong as its advocates claim, we
should then be forced to hold that the activity of ancestors wrought
in the child hereditary predispositions. These ancestors, having made
use of their sensory and motor apparatus all through their lives in
every possible way, must have fought out many battles, conducted the
chase, and connected themselves with social groups. Accordingly,
we find in their descendants the impulses to experimentation, to
fighting, chasing, hiding, social, and other plays. Schneider believes
that the boy’s strong propensity for catching butterflies, beetles,
flies, and other insects, as well as that for robbing birds’ nests, is
attributable to the fact that his savage ancestors obtained their food
supply by such means;[656] and Hudson says, in speaking of heredity
in connection with certain bird dances, that if at first the habit
had been found of expressing feelings of gladness by means of minuet
steps, men as well as birds would be said to have an instinct for
dancing the minuet.[657]
It is just along these lines that we may hope to estimate the
biological value of play, and subsequently develop it in relation to
our own view. But the assumption of the heredity of acquired characters
and its wide application introduce a new element. It is difficult to
understand, for example, how a habit originates whose physiological
basis is confined to the acquisition of specified traits in the nervous
system, which in their turn bring about changes in the germ substance
of the organism, and appear in the offspring as hereditary paths for
the tendency to repeat the same sorts of acts. If such a process is
possible at all, it must be in the period of youth, when the organism
still possesses great plasticity. Thus A. E. Ormann says, in an
appendix to his German translation of Baldwin’s Mental Development:
“The last objection [the neo-Darwinistic], that organic structures,
such as bones, horns, teeth, etc., are fixed and unmodifiable, I am
not prepared to admit. I do not believe that these structures change
in adult animals just as I do not believe that bionomic influences can
effect important accommodations in them. Yet change and accommodation
in these very orders are quite possible in the case of young animals
still in the developmental period, and I am convinced that the
majority of effective accommodations do originate at this very time,
and that the possibility of their appearing diminishes as maturity is
approached.”[658] If this should prove to be the fact, play would then
have the task of maintaining a countless mass of hereditary impressions
important to the preservation of life, and also of supplying a means
for individual adaptation of the example of adults which through
imitation and direct transmission gradually become hereditary
possessions of the race.
But interesting as this point of view is, we find grave reason for
doubting its reconcilability with the facts that we have already
ascertained. First, there is the questionableness of the inheritance
of acquired characters at all. Götter said long ago that common
experience is all against it,[659] and Galton, too, is very skeptical
in regard to it, if he does not flatly deny the possibility.[660] A.
Weismann is, however, its chief opponent, and is therefore regarded as
the leader of the neo-Darwinian school. How the inheritance of acquired
characters can be entirely excluded from the struggle for existence is
yet undemonstrated, but Spengel[661] has recently pointed out a notable
series of adaptations which are independent of it. Indeed, in regard
to the instincts which chiefly claim our notice, such a competent
critic of neo-Darwinism as Romanes[662] is forced to admit that some
quite complicated ones have attained perfection without the aid of the
Lamarckian principle. These facts warn us not to attach too much weight
to it.
Under these circumstances we must attempt an independent basis for our
biological theory of play, since, if the Lamarckian principle is ruled
out, only natural selection remains of the scientific hypotheses. To
this as well just and weighty objections have been raised, and I may
mention that selection in the Darwinian sense does not account for
the origin of structures which are at first useless, nor how it comes
about that the right selection occurs in the right place. To meet these
objections Baldwin has advanced his Organic Selection and Weismann his
Germinal Selection.[663] According to the former, the inheritance of
acquired accommodations is unnecessary, their task being sufficiently
accomplished if they keep the creature afloat in its natural
environment until selection has time through favouring accidental
variations tending in the same direction (coincident variations) to
build up hereditary adaptations.[664] Osborn and Lloyd Morgan have
reached a similar standpoint independently of Baldwin. Weismann, who
in a surprising change of base abandons his former position on the
all-sufficiency of Darwin’s individual selection, extends the selective
principle to the germ substance, which, in his view, does not consist
of similar life-units, but possesses a sort of structure, the elements
of which (the “determinants”) already represent the respective parts
of the future individual. Each “determinant” struggles for sustenance
against its neighbours, so producing a sort of germinal selection,
in that the stronger among them has its development furthered at
the expense of the weaker, transmits the force so acquired to the
offspring, furnishes them in the very beginning of their career with
a favourable footing in the struggle for life, and insures further
progress in the same direction. Here, then, is the possibility of a
specially determined variation grounded in the very existence of the
germ substance,[665] and through the interaction of individual and
germinal selection much is accomplished which the former could not
alone achieve.[666]
The future must finally judge between these rival efforts to improve
the old theory. Baldwin’s organic selection, which has now been
accepted by Wallace Poulton and others, may possibly be applicable to
all cases of adaptation, though it has not yet been so widely developed
by its author. The chief value of Weismann’s new hypothesis is perhaps
its luminous portrayal of the interaction of individual selection
with special developmental tendencies in the germ substance, but the
explanation of these tendencies themselves by means of a struggle
for sustenance seems to find little confirmation. Here is probably
an _x_, or possibly several unknown values. Yet the important part
which selection plays in this exceedingly complicated process should
not be underestimated. Nägeli has likened selection to a gardener who
cuts away the superfluous growth of a tree, which then by its own
inner processes forms its crown. But when we consider, for example,
the wonderful mimicry, for whose striking external resemblances
“inner” developmental tendencies could hardly suffice (whether with
metaphysical hypotheses of pre-established harmony or of unity of will
or consciousness), the skill and power of this “gardener” appear to be
sufficient.
In the attempt to form a biological estimate of play independently of
the Lamarckian principle we must constantly bear in mind the value and
origin of youthful play, and therefore we must begin, with instinct in
its more limited sense. We find in all creatures a number of innate
capacities which are essential for the preservation of species. In
many animals these capacities appear as finely developed reflexes and
instincts, needing but little if any practice for the fulfilment of
their function. With the higher animals, and above all with man, it is
essentially otherwise. Although the number of his hereditary instincts
is considerable—perhaps larger than with any other creature—yet he
comes into the world an absolutely helpless and undeveloped being
which must grow in every other sense, as well as physiologically, in
order to be an individual of independent capabilities. The period of
youth renders such growth possible. If it is asked why an arrangement
apparently so awkward has arisen, we may reply that instinctive
apparatus being inadequate for his life tasks, a period of parental
protection is necessary to enable him to acquire imitatively and
experimentally the capacities adapted to his individual needs.
The more complicated the life tasks, the more necessary are these
preparations; the longer this natural education continues, the more
vivid do the inherited capacities become. Play is the agency employed
to develop crude powers and prepare them for life’s uses, and from our
biological standpoint we can say: From the moment when the intellectual
development of a species becomes more useful in the “struggle for life”
than the most perfect instinct, will natural selection favour those
individuals in whom the less elaborated faculties have more chance of
being worked out by practice under the protection of parents—that is to
say, those individuals that play. Play depends, then, first of all on
the elaboration of immature capacities to full equality with perfected
instinct, and secondly on the evolution of hereditary qualities
to a degree far transcending this, to a state of adaptability and
versatility surpassing the most perfect instinct.
Our attention so far has been given mainly to special instincts, and
their effects are extraordinarily widespread in both human and animal
play. We have dwelt upon instinct as it is manifested in fighting,
love,[667] and social plays, and in experimentation with the motor
apparatus we are pre-eminently on instinctive ground. In sensory
experimentation, however, the practice of inborn reflexes (they
are gradually differentiated from instincts) is in the background.
Ribot, however, designates both these processes as instinctive.
Even in experimentation with the higher mental powers, practice in
fixing the attention, which is an indispensable prerequisite of all
experimentation, and indeed of all play, may be regarded as a motor
reaction allied to instinct. On the other hand, as I have pointed out
in the preface, the narrower conception of instinct is not suited to
our purpose, and we therefore took the more comprehensive idea of
hereditary impulse as the ground of our classification. We found the
imitative impulse especially important here, and its far-reaching
biological significance was dwelt upon in the beginning of the section
on imitative play, and need merely be recapitulated.
The imitative impulse is an inborn faculty resembling instinct[668]
whose first effect is to supplement instinct by means of individual
acquirements; secondly, it preserves those race heritages which
survive only through tradition. The first of these functions falls in
the biological domain, while the second belongs to social play. The
former may be advantageously observed in the world of birds, which
learn the characteristic song of their kind by the help of playful
experimentation to a great degree, but never get it so perfectly as
when they hear the song of older birds as a model. Children, too,
exemplify it clearly in the transition from their lall-monologue to
speech; in their tussling, where many of the movements are instinctive,
but are materially assisted by imitation of older boys; in the nursing
of dolls by little girls, who would probably not make any use of the
instinct during childhood but for imitation; and in many other cases.
Imitation is clearly playful in such instances, so far as it is both
unconscious and unpractical.
From the biological standpoint, too, imitative play is an important
agent in supplementing instincts, usually tending to render them
more plastic, and thus further the opening of new paths for the
development of intelligence. Therefore I believe that a general theory
of play should keep this thought in the foreground; though under some
conditions contrary effects ensue, since, under Baldwin’s principle,
imitation gives selection the opportunity to strengthen the hereditary
foundations of the activity imitated. It seems to me that in imitative
play of avowedly social character the impulse probably aids selection
in its gradual upbuilding by means of the furtherance of coincident
variations. I touch again upon this point (pp. 395 _f._), and will only
say here that the two views are not necessarily contradictory, since,
while a weakening may take place in the details of the activity, there
may be a strengthening of the accompanying feelings—these two elements
being very different.
Besides imitation, many other natural impulses come into play, as
we discovered in studying experimentation and the higher mental
capacities. That the practice theory, too, is applicable we can
plainly see. Practice in recognition, in storing up the material
collected by memory, in the rise of imagination, reason, and the will,
together with the ability to surmount feelings of pain, are all of
the greatest, indeed of incalculable, value in the struggle for life.
There is some difficulty in meeting the question of the relationship
of experimental impulse in the higher psychic life, since, as I
pointed out in the introduction to the first chapter, it is still a
mooted question whether the assumption should be made of one general
impulse to action which, according to circumstances, is directed now
to this and now to that psychic discharge; or whether, by reviving the
faculty theory, to speak of many central impulses, grounded in our
psychophysical nature and pressing for expression as instincts do.
For my part, I incline to the opinion that such central impulses
actually exist, though they are probably but vaguely defined. Long
ago the attempt was made, especially by Reimarus and Tetens,[669] to
include the idea of impulse among the higher mental processes, and the
future may yet see this effort renewed. However that may be, there is
unquestionably one such impulse which in its motor expression directly
suggests instinct, and which in my opinion is directly derived from
it—namely, attention. But attention is an essential factor in all
experimental play, and indeed in all play, of whatever character, and
can therefore, in conjunction with the causal needs which so much
resemble instincts, bring about results which would appear to require
especial incentive to activity.
Raising this question brings me to another point which I have touched
upon in my earlier work. While Schiller speaks of a single-minded play
impulse, my own view is that there is no general impulse to play,
but various instincts are called upon when there is no occasion for
their serious exercise, merely for purposes of practice, and more
especially preparatory practice, and these instincts thus become
special plays. It seems to me unnecessary to suppose a particular play
instinct in addition to all the others, and the fact that selection
favours a long period of youth bears this out. When that is assured,
and special physiological provision is made to secure it, then the
merely ordinary instincts and impulses are quite sufficient to account
for the phenomena of play. Still, if the demand is made for the same
sort of impulses for all play, I point to attention and causality as
expounded by Sikorski, and familiar to us in the joy in being a cause.
The actual act of attention is, as before said, very close to instinct,
and so-called voluntary attention is not widely different, since we
find connected with many instincts phenomena which are influenced by
the intelligence and will. Attention, too, is an impulse in that it
urges to activity so long as it is not hampered by fatigue. When we
complain of being bored, it is not because we have no experiences, but
because the experiences are not sufficiently interesting to occupy
our attention, and, since it is an active principle in all play, we
naturally think of it in connection with the impulse to any sort of
activity. Following attention we have pleasure in the production or
effects appearing as another element in the general impulse to activity
and exhibited more or less clearly in all plays that are connected
with external movement. Nor is it wanting either in those which are
ostensibly merely receptive, as we shall see. As the categorical
standing of causality depends in all likelihood on hereditary
capability, and as it first becomes prominent in a motor form—namely,
in the active production of effects—we have here a further means of
giving to the conception of a general play impulse a concrete form.
In conclusion, adult play must be considered from a biological
standpoint. That the grown man continues to play long after he
has outgrown the childish stimuli to play has been sufficiently
shown in the foregoing chapters. Much of his play, and especially
the sensorimotor experimental kind, is of but slight biological
significance, though the practice theory is often applicable even in
later life to movement and fighting play, and still more so to social
play, since the latter serves not merely as ontogenous practice, but
is indispensable as well to phylogenetic development of the social
capacities. Artistic enjoyment, too—that highest and most valuable
form of adult play—is, as Konrad Lange has demonstrated, extremely
influential biologically and socially. “Man’s serious activity,”
he says, “has always a more or less one-sided character. His life
consists, as Schiller has shown in his letters on æsthetic education,
in a progressive alternation between work and sensuous pleasure.
Indeed, in the various occupations of mankind, as a rule, but a limited
number of the mental powers are employed, and these not fully so.
Innumerable springs of feeling are hidden in the human breast untested
and untried. It is plain that this would have a most disastrous effect
on the whole race did not art supply the deficiency of stimulus.... Art
is the capacity possessed by men of furnishing themselves and others
with pleasure based on conscious self-illusion which, by widening and
deepening human perception and emotion, tends to preserve and improve
the race.”[670] Schiller’s famous saying—that a man is fully human only
when he plays, thus acquires a definite biological meaning.
One word more: If the Lamarckian principle be adopted, the play of
adults has a still more specialized significance, since, as it would
be essential to a well-rounded culture, its office as preserver of
hereditary race capacities[671] is obvious, especially as these require
a gentle fostering, not to hamper individual adaptation, and yet
preserve the fundamental aim of all adaptation. Since, however, caution
forbids our using the Lamarckian principle, I content myself with the
mere mention of this possible effect of it.
3. _The Psychological Standpoint_
Here in the first place we are called upon to apply a psychological
criterion to playful activity. Wundt, in his lectures on the human
and animal soul, suggests three such criteria: first, the pleasurable
effect; second, the conscious or unconscious copying of useful
activities; and third, the reproduction of the original aim in a
playful one.[672] As I have said before, I do not regard the second of
these—namely, imitation—as universally a mark of play. Wundt says that
an animal can play only when certain memories which are accompanied
by pleasurable feeling are renewed, yet under aspects so transformed
that all painful effects vanish and only agreeable ones remain; the
simple and spontaneous play of animals being, so to speak, association
plays. Thus the dog, at the sight of another dog which displays no
unfriendly feeling toward him, just as naturally feels a disposition
to the agreeable exercise of his awakened powers as to fight with his
fellows.[673] Kittens which for the first time try to catch a moving
ball, are not playing according to this view, and only play when the
action is repeated for the sake of the pleasure it gives. I shall
return to this conception, which includes more than simple imitation in
its ordinary sense. I feel that I have not succeeded in conveying all
that Wundt means in the passage cited from. However, if I understand
him aright, he attempts in the last edition of his published works to
explain imitation in quite another way. Thus he gives that name to
the play of young dogs, which, without having seen it done, seize a
piece of cloth in the teeth and shake it violently, because such play
exhibits the playful activity of former generations.[674] This is a
hardly justifiable use of the word, and I think it better to admit at
once that imitation, as commonly understood, is not a criterion of play.
The case is entirely different with the “apparent aim” or sham
activity. It is undeniable that, objectively considered, such play
appears to be detached from the real, practically directed life of the
individual, and Wundt, too, understands it so. No one plays to attain
what is a real object of effort outside of the sphere of play. All the
objects of play lie within its own bounds, and even games of chance
keep in view the aim to promote strong excitement in the parties to the
wager until the decision. Since, then, we must consider sham activity
as a genuine projection from earnest life, it becomes a universal
criterion. This is not contradicted by the fact that playful activity
is of great value to the individual, since the value of the play is not
the player’s motive.
The question respecting the illusion-working character of playful
activity is much more difficult to meet, if the psychical processes of
the playing subject are kept in view, and the inquiry is pressed as to
whether the actual sham quality of the play is reflected in his mental
states.[675] Here it must be emphasized that actual consciousness of
fulfilling a merely ideal purpose, of being engaged in sham occupation,
is not at all essential to imitative play, and is wanting altogether
in experimentation and fighting plays. Consequently it too fails as
a universal criterion of play. Later we shall inquire whether in
much play the objective sham character may not influence the psychic
condition of the player in another way.
There remain, then, as general psychological criteria of play, but
two more of the elements popularly regarded as essential—namely, its
pleasurableness, and the actual severance from life’s serious aims.
Both are included in cally speaking, in activity performed for its own
sake.
I proceed after this introduction to inquire into the character of
the pleasure derived from play. It is the most universal of all the
psychological accompaniments of play, resting as it does on the
satisfaction of inborn impulses. The sensorimotor and mental capacities
(of the latter, attention pre-eminently) fighting and sexual impulses,
imitation, and the social instincts press for discharge, and lead to
enjoyment when they find it in play. To this simple statement of fact
we must subjoin the not unimportant consideration which Baldwin has
suggested in his preface to The Play of Animals. He distinguishes two
distinct kinds of play: one “not psychological at all,” and exhibiting
only the biological criterion of practice for, not exercise of, the
impulse; and the other, which is psychological as well and involves
conscious self-deception.[676] The situation, he says, is like that
displayed in many other animal and human functions which are at once
biologic and instinctive, as well as psychologic and intelligent;
for example, sympathy, fear, and bashfulness. This last statement is
unquestionable, but there is room for doubt whether the previously
assumed difference exists. Baldwin’s grounds for the distinction seem
to me to be inconclusive, in that conscious self-deception is by no
means the only nor the most universal psychic accompaniment of play,
the most elementary of them all being the enjoyment derived for the
satisfaction of an instinct, which makes play an object for psychology,
where conscious self-deception is out of the question.[677] But the
further question is suggested whether the biological conception of play
has not a still deeper grasp than the psychological, and to this extent
the proposed distinction is of value.
It may be assumed of young animals, and probably of children, that the
first manifestations of what is afterward experimentation, fighting and
imitative play, etc., is rarely conscious, and consequently we can not
assert with assurance that it is pleasurable. Therefore the biological
but not the psychological germ of play is present. It was in this sense
that I intended my previous remarks to the effect that actual imitation
was not an indispensable condition of play, while repetition possibly
could be considered so, since the impulsive movements must be repeated
frequently and at last performed for the sake alone of the pleasure
derived from them, before play ensues. This marks the psychological
limits of play.
To make the relation clearer, let us take the grasping movement as
an example. The child at first waves his hands aimlessly, and when
his fingers chance to strike a suitable object they clutch at it
instinctively. From a purely biological point of view this is practice
of an instinct, and play has already begun. Psychologically, on the
contrary, it is safer to defer calling the movements playful until,
through repetition they acquire the character of conscious processes
accompanied by attention and enjoyment. This distinction, I think, is
a proper one, and it enables the biologist to pursue the idea further
than the psychologist would be justified in doing. Therefore I can not
recognise any activity as playful in the most complete sense which does
not exhibit the psychological criterion as well. Examples of such plays
may be found scattered all through the systematic parts of this work,
and at the beginning of the section on contact plays.
In examining somewhat more closely the nature of the feeling of
pleasure which springs from the satisfaction of an inborn instinct
we may assume as a general law that it is threefold: first, there
is pleasure in the stimulus as such; then in the agreeableness of
the stimulus; and, third, in its intensity. The first is due to the
fact that a set of hereditary impulses press for such expression; it
is superfluous to attempt to prove that there are special stimuli
inherently pleasurable; it is only the third class, then, that need
demand our attention, and this we have repeatedly encountered in our
excursions into the various departments of play. It would be well
worth while to devote a monograph to the investigation of its meaning
and grounds in the light of the literature of the past. Probably a
variety of causes would be brought to light, among which, however,
the influence of habit would be prominent, since attention and
enjoyment would need constantly stronger stimuli. The most valuable
contribution to the subject seems to me that of Lessing in pursuance
of Du Bos’s idea. He says that the violent emotion produced by the
feeling of heightened reality is the occasion of the pleasurable
effect. But whence comes this feeling? Its origin is sufficiently
clear in movement-play, where intense stimulus is connected with the
violent exertion of physical powers; but how is it with receptive
play? In the eighteenth century it was said, on the ground of
Leibnitz’s psychology, that what we regard as receptive play was the
soul’s spontaneous activity. The strong emotion resulting betokened a
development of force which is always a satisfaction. This view quite
naturally lends itself to modern psychological terms now that we can
put our finger on the strong internal motor processes involved; yet
it is limited by observation, which shows that intensive stimuli
taking possession of us, so to speak, in spite of ourselves, are not
invariably cherished as pleasures. Only when we voluntarily seek the
strong feeling, and gladly yield ourselves to it so that the emotion
it produces is in a measure our own work, do we enjoy the result. The
conditions are the same as with the pleasure in power displayed in
violent movement plays, and they may be treated together.
Among the many inborn necessities which ground our pleasure in play we
find again that three is the number emphasized by psychology—namely,
the exercise of attention, the demand for an efficient cause, and
imagination. As regards attention, I have already said in the
biological discussion that it seems calculated to lend a definite
meaning to the vague idea of a general need for activity. The examples
of practice in attention which were introduced in the section on
experimentation with the higher mental powers were chosen with a view
to illustrating mental tension, and special stress was laid on the fact
that, apart from these limitations, attention is of the widest and
most comprehensive significance. Indeed, fully developed play in the
psychological sense is scarcely conceivable without the simultaneous
exercise of motor or theoretic attention. From the first sensory and
motor play of infants, straight through to æsthetic enjoyment and
artistic production, its tension is felt, and when the opportunity
is not afforded for its satisfactory exercise a pitiable condition
of boredom ensues, the unendurableness of which Schopenhauer has so
exhaustively described.
The desire to be an efficient cause also has a motor and a theoretic
form. We demand a knowledge of effects and to be ourselves the
producers of effects, and it is through this motor form that the
theoretic, if not exactly originated, is at least perfected. Hence the
root idea of causal connection depends on volition, and Schopenhauer,
in referring force to the will, has but expressed in his metaphysical
way an established psychological fact. This motor impulse finds
expression in the joy in being a cause, which I regard as so essential
to play, and in conjunction with attention is probably the source of
the impulse for activity of which I have spoken. We must bear in mind
all the forms of pleasure connected with movement, and especially motor
experimental play, where, besides the mere enjoyment of motion in
itself, there is the satisfaction of being one’s self the originator
of it, the joy-bringing sense of being a cause. Use of the sensory
apparatus is a source of the same pleasure, since here, too, a motor
condition is involved, and is accompanied with consciousness of its
own activity; and when the inner imitation which we have described is
also included, the connection with external movement is of course still
closer. And in any case joy in being a cause is well-nigh universal,
since in play no purpose is served apart from the act itself as
impelled by inner impulse, which thus appears in the character of an
independent cause more than in any other form of activity.
This joy in being a cause is susceptible of varied modification. In
violent movements, and even in the receptive enjoyment of intense
stimuli, it is converted into pleasure in the mere possession of power,
and is proportionate to the magnitude of the results. It appears also
in the form of emulation when a model is copied, and in imitative
competition, the pleasure of surpassing others arises with enjoyment
of pure success and victory, which, as we have seen, results as well
from overcoming difficulties as from the subjugation of foes. All
these ideas have been so often encountered in the systematic part of
our work that merely directing them to their natural conclusions is
all-sufficient here.
Of imagination, however, we must speak in greater detail in regard to
its illusion-making power, which again brings us to the sham occupation
recognised as such by the doer in a partly subjective manner. I am
careful to limit this statement because it is evident that only a
simple form of the phenomenon, and not its whole content, is present in
such reflex forms of consciousness.
In many games there is a veritable playing of a rôle in which the
players, like actors, are quite conscious all through the pretence
that they are only “making believe.” It is a genuine conscious state
in which, on the one hand, the illusion is perfect, while on the
other there is full knowledge that it is an illusion. Konrad Lange
has called this condition one of conscious self-deception, a term
which most aptly conveys the idea of the strange contradiction of
inner processes. He limited the use of the term, however, to plays
that depend on the imitative arts, while I have advanced the view in
my Play of Animals, that it is even more clearly exhibited in such
fighting and hunting plays as are conducted independently of models,
than in actual imitative play. But when it comes to human play I am
forced to admit that speech discloses conscious self-deception in the
imitative play of children where it might be doubtful in the case of
animals.[678] Still, I have other points of controversy with Lange. If
imitation includes the conscious repetition of our own previous acts,
as it may by an extension of the definition, then we are warranted in
assuming conscious self-deception only with it. Thus, in fighting play,
for instance, clear consciousness of playing a rôle can ensue only
when previous experience has taught the players what are the serious
manifestations of the fighting instinct. If, however, the narrower use
of the word is adopted, illusion is more extensive than imitation, and,
furthermore, the latter may exist without the former.
When, as I said before, there is a clear consciousness of sham
activity, we may subscribe essentially to Lange’s theory, with its
oscillation between reality and appearance, since the enjoyment of
illusion does alternate with the impression of reality. His figure of
the swinging pendulum should not be taken too literally as implying
measured regularity in the succession of states.[679] The essence of
his meaning is that in self-illusion which is conscious, even the
moments of most absolute abandon are followed by other moments of
readjustment, and this is undeniably the case. Think, for instance, of
the laughter of romping boys which serves to reassure the combatants
by its implication that, in spite of appearances to the contrary, the
fight is only playful.
But this does not fully explain the illusion of the players. Just as in
æsthetic enjoyment we are for a long time entirely surrendered to the
illusion without consciously recognising the fact, so we find in play,
and especially that of children, absorption and self-forgetfulness so
complete that no room is left for the idea of oscillation. And when the
illusion is so strong and so lasting, as is sometimes the case with
little girls nursing their dolls, or with little boys playing soldier
or robber, they can no more be said to see through the illusion than to
alternate between it and reality. My own contribution to the solution
of the problem is set forth in my earlier work in the section on
hypnotic phenomena, more exhaustively than is possible here, where the
points of view are so much more varied. I therefore content myself with
the following partial elucidation:
If we may not assume consciousness of the illusion in complete
absorption, nor yet any true alternative with reality, we are forced to
the conclusion that the appearance produced by play differs essentially
from the reality which it represents, and is incapable of producing
genuine deception. Now this postulate seems to be borne out in a very
obvious and striking manner by the fact that sham activity and the
pretended object are evidently symbolic, since they are never perfect
duplicates of reality. Toward the most perfect imitation the playing
child entertains feelings quite different from those called forth by
a living creature. How, then, is there positive deception? But closer
examination shows us that the solution is not so simple. If such
external distinctions alone separated playful illusion from actual
deception, the force of the former would inevitably decline as this
difference increased. But the facts indicate exactly the contrary, as
we may see illustrated by the little girl who takes a sofa pillow for
a doll; the illusion is at least quite as great as when the toy is a
triumph of imitative art. The child actually approaches the hypnotic
state when she says that the pillow is a lady on the sofa, and chats
with her. Though there is of course no actual deception, the reason for
it must be looked for elsewhere than in any external difference from
reality.[680]
I believe its true basis to be the feeling of freedom which is closely
connected with joy in being a cause. Not the clear idea, “This is
only pretence,” but a subtile consciousness of free, voluntary
acceptance of the illusion stamps even the deepest absorption in it
with the seal _ipse feci_ as a safeguard from error. If we accept E.
von Hartmann’s æsthetic principle that to the consciousness which
is sunk in illusion the apparent I is different from the real I of
ordinary waking consciousness, then in illusion play the real I is
supplanted by the apparent I. Yet pleasurable feelings which belong
properly to the obscured real I may come over into the sphere of the
apparent I and lend to it a specific character. As in the contemplation
of beauty, enjoyment of sensuous pleasure passes into the sphere
of apparent feeling, and lends to the object that regal brilliance
which characterizes pure beauty, so in the wider field of illusion
play, genuine pleasure in the voluntary transference to that world of
appearances which transcends all the external aims of play, enters
into the sham occupation and converts it into something higher, freer,
finer, lighter, which the stress of objective events can not impair.
This effect of the feeling of freedom may advantageously be made the
subject of personal observation. Before going to sleep at night it is
easy to call up all sorts of faces and forms before the dosed eyes and
play with them, but as soon as the wearied consciousness lets slip the
sense of being the cause of it all, we shrink from these phantoms, and
playful illusion takes a serious turn.
Finally, through the feeling of freedom, the recreation theory attains
a special psychological significance which is quite generally
recognised. As soon as the individual has progressed far enough to
realize the seriousness of life (and this probably happens in an
unreflective sort of way to children too young to go to school) the
liberty of play signifies to him relief from this pressure. The more
earnest is a man’s life, the more will he enjoy the refuge afforded
by play when he can engage in sham occupations chosen at will, and
unencumbered by serious aims. There he is released from the bondage of
his work and from all the anxieties of life.
4. _The Æsthetic Standpoint_
While it is true that undue emphasis of the overflow of energy reduces
play to self-indulgence, at the same time it is unfair to art to make
too prominent its kinship with play. This is just the position of Guyau
in his æsthetic writings; yet he is far from denying the kinship, and I
think that he would have concurred to a great extent in Schiller’s view
if he could have convinced himself of the biological and sociological
importance of play by adequate investigation of its phenomena. I at
least have been confirmed in my conviction of the close connection
between play and æsthetics by the perusal of his book, and there,
too, my view stated in the very outset—namely, that this connection
obtains in a higher degree than does that between play and artistic
production—is also supported by his more thoroughgoing investigation of
the facts.
The following points present themselves as the most general results
of our observation of æsthetic enjoyment. We have found that all
sense organs display numerous impulses to activity, and consequently
enjoyment of the response to stimuli is a universal basis of play,
varying as to conditions and the quality of the stimuli. Now, since
every æsthetic pleasure (except the appreciation of poetry) is
connected with sense-perception, we find in it a genuine source of
enjoyment, depending on the origin and quality of such perception.
Observation merely for its own sake is the lowest form of æsthetic
enjoyment, and is so far identical with sensuous play.
On this foundation arises enjoyment of special stimuli. Confining
ourselves to sensory play, we can distinguish two groups—namely,
sensuously agreeable stimuli and intensive ones. The former, provided
higher æsthetic observation does its work of personification, finds
its sole object in beauty. Pleasure in intense stimuli is strong
enough to subdue the pain which is commonly associated with it, and
forms an introduction to enjoyment of what is grotesque, striking, and
tragic. It is especially prominent in the trancelike state so common in
movement-play as well as in æsthetic enjoyment.
Before going further we must pause to consider the idea so often
advanced that such enjoyment is peculiarly the prerogative of the
higher senses. Is the pleasure which I feel when I inhale a perfume as
much æsthetic as is the perception of beautiful colour? I think the
case is like that of the common idea of play. From a psychological
standpoint we recognise as such any act that is practised purely for
its pleasurable effect, and sham occupation in the higher forms of play
may be subjective. Therefore we can affirm that pleasure in perception
as such, and not necessarily in agreeable perception, grounds it, and
to this extent no one can demur if the beautiful colour is classed with
the pleasant odour. For the utmost æsthetic satisfaction, however,
more than this is requisite—first, definite form, and second, richer
spiritual effect—and since these are perceptible only to the higher
senses, it becomes their exclusive prerogative to take in the utmost
effects of artistic effort.
To resume our review, we observe that æsthetic enjoyment is not merely
a playful sensor experience, but manifests as well the higher psychic
grounds of perception. What we said of the pleasure of recognition,
the stimulus of novelty, and the shock of surprise need not here be
repeated. Illusion remains the most certain mark of higher æsthetic
enjoyment, and the important psychological problem connected with it
which was referred to in the preceding section has its application here
as in other illusion play. The first thing to notice about it here is
that it consists partly in the transference of thought from the copy
to an original,[681] and that sympathy and the borrowing of qualities
which are connected with imitation have also their parts to play.
Bearing all this in mind, we are in a position to put the question next
in order, What is the principal content of illusion?
Thus we arrive at a point similar to that reached in our study of
sensory plays. As the pleasure in stimulus as such surpasses the
pleasure in any particular form of stimulus, so here the subjective
activity of inner imitation as such is a source of pleasure quite apart
from the qualities inherent in the thing copied. Lipps says, in his
notice of my Einleitung in die Aesthetik, that for me the æsthetic
value of the object under observation and personification is not that
it is personified, but that it is I who personify it. Part III of
the book proves the injustice of this to my general view, yet I do
maintain that inner imitation is as such accompanied by pleasurable
feelings,[682] and consequently that æsthetic satisfaction possibly
finds its first limit when any painfulness connected with the subject
outweighs the enjoyment derived from inner imitation.
If, then, the act of inner imitation is in itself pleasurable, it
strikes me as self-evident that the degree of satisfaction attained
must be proportional to the value of its object. This is clearly
illustrated by the highest character of æsthetic intuition, the
impression of vital and mental completeness; and inner imitation shows
this, for it delights to act in response to the functions of movement,
force, life, and animation. Therefore Lotze is right when he says,
after approving the limitations which we have pointed out, “No form is
too chaste for the entrance and possession of our imagination.” On the
other hand, it is evident that the value of this indwelling depends
essentially on the peculiarities of the subject. If, for instance, I
transform myself into a shellfish and enter into its sole method of
enjoyment, opening end shutting its shell, I experience a far narrower
sort of æsthetic satisfaction than when I feel with a mother who is
caressing her child. It is just because inner imitation is involved
that the value of the æsthetic effect is determined by the qualities
of the object. But what are the qualities, it may be asked, which
augment or detract from this effect? An exhaustive and satisfactory
answer to this question is impossible here; such is the extraordinary
variety of the contributory factors. It properly belongs, too, to
specialized æsthetics. In general, however, it is safe to say that
we enjoy imitating what produces agreeable, and intense feelings,
and we thus find again on higher ground the same conditions which we
encountered in sensory play. This distinction is clearly brought out
by Lipps in his article on the impression made by a Doric column:
“The mechanical effects which are ‘easily’ attained remind us of such
acts of our own as are accomplished without effort or impediment, and
likewise the powerful expenditure of active mechanical energy recalls a
similar output of our will power. In the first case a cheerful feeling
of lightness and freedom results; in the other no less agreeable
sensations of our own vigour.”[683] In other spheres the value of
such indwelling seems to me to be chiefly in the two directions which
Schiller has indicated in his comparison of “grace” and “dignity.” I
would refer again in this connection to what has been said about the
importance of poetic enjoyment; if we are right in assigning love and
conflict as its chief motives, then here too enjoyment of agreeable and
intense stimuli is prominent.
If we ask, finally, how æsthetic enjoyment extends its sway beyond the
entire sphere of play, we encroach on the ethical bearings of art.
With the introduction of an element of moral elevation and profound
insight into life, æsthetic satisfaction ceases to be “mere” play and
transcends our present subject. But we must be careful to maintain that
it is transcendence and not exclusion, for even when (as is possible
to a Shakespeare and a Schiller) the intent toward moral elevation and
profound insight is prominent, our enjoyment remains æsthetic only so
long as these effects are developed and set forth in connection with
playful sympathy.
Our second leading question is that of the relation between play and
artistic production. Let us set out by announcing at once that the
latter, especially in highly developed art, is further removed from
play than is æsthetic enjoyment. This is implied in the fact that, for
the genuine artist, practical application of his aptitude is, as a
rule, his life’s calling; not necessarily his only means of support, of
course, but sufficiently absorbing to force the man of creative ability
to devote most of his life to an end which to the mass of mankind seems
unworthy of serious effort. In such a case art ceases to be playful.
But this transformation is not unique. That absorption in an apparently
useless form of activity which is so incomprehensible to the average
man, but which easily lures its votaries to rapt enthusiasm for their
art, is displayed in many forms less exalted than the striving for
an ideal. Plays not connected with art hold despotic sway over their
victims. Many devote their life’s best effort to some forms of sport,
and others to mental contests, such as those of chess, whist, etc.
E. Isolani says that when Zuckertort was a medical student in Berlin
he accidentally became a witness of a match game between two fine
chess players, and, although unfamiliar with the rules, he detected a
false play. This interested him in the game, and he became a pupil of
Anderson. Soon chess instead of medicine became his chief business in
life; he thought of nothing but how to improve his play. It kept him
awake at night, or, if fatigue overcame him, its problems pursued him
in dreams. At twenty-four he was a worn-out man. The demoniac power
with which art drives a man so predisposed resides in other games as
well; and in this both activities cease to be pure play.
Another basis for our subject is found in the fact that art presupposes
a useful field of application for technical skill whose acquirement and
improvement are no longer ends in themselves. The acquisition is often
a long and painful process, with little that is playful about it. But
this is common enough in other play as well when the technical side of
any sport is made the subject of serious study and effort.
Our third ground is to be sought in a very real aim, which is ever
beckoning to the artist. It may be designated in a general way as the
sympathetic interest of others, manifested in admiring recognition
and appreciation of the powers displayed, or in subscribing to the
convictions, views, and ideals of the artist. In so far as this is an
effective motive, art is no play. Strictly artistic temperaments are
especially liable to its influence at the beginning of their career.
Indifference, when sincere, is usually a later development, the product
of experience.
Having thus fortified our position against misconstruction, we
are prepared to proclaim the proper relationship between artistic
production and play. It seems to me to be more and more conspicuous as
we approach the springs of art. The primitive festival, combining as it
did music and poetry with dancing, had indeed a tremendous effect on
its witnessers, and its manifestations were essentially playful. Skill
acquired in childhood through playful practice was playfully exhibited
with original variations. The epic art, too, was playfully employed by
the primitive recounter, with no indication of toilsome preparation
or serious treatment, and the case is not widely different with what
we know of the beginnings of pictorial art. So long as primitive
sculpture served no religious purpose, simple delight in its use was
much more prominent, since all inherited the capacity, and none was
opposed to the mass as the exponent of a specialty. We meet the same
conditions in studying the child’s artistic efforts; his poetic and
musical efforts as well as those in drawing are essentially playful.
The idea of making an impression on others does appear, but it is still
very much in the background; enjoyment of his own productive activity
predominates in the infantile consciousness. Although highly developed
art does so transcend the sphere of play, it too is rooted in playful
experimentation and imitation, and we can detect their later growth
of joy in being a cause in the work of fullfledged artists of our own
day. Indeed, it is present in all creative activity, gilding earnest
work with a sportive glitter. In artistic production, however, it has
the special office of differentiating it from ordinary toil and making
appreciation of the thing created go hand in hand with its production.
Each new-found harmony of tone or colour or outline appealing to
criticism of its creator causes him intense enjoyment all through the
progress of its production, and the indifference sometimes felt toward
the finished work results from frequent repetition which has dulled the
edge of appetite.
5. _The Sociological Standpoint_
A still more summary method may be adopted in treating of the social
significance of play, since the section already devoted to it is of a
more theoretic character. The practice theory, as we have seen, makes
youthful play intelligible, but finds no lack of application to adults
as well. When we reflect on the unavoidable limitations and mechanical
routine of a regular calling we see how valuable is the cheering and
humanizing effect of play, both physical and mental, and especially
of those games which are calculated to strengthen the social tie. The
practice afforded by these is more important to the adult than to the
child, since the latter has always a certain social sphere in his
relations with his elders, while the wider demands of an adult are not
always so well provided for.
Two distinct impulses underlie the foundation of society—namely, the
desires for aggregation and for communication. Both are probably
derived from the parental relation, which expands as the culture of
the group develops. For this reason it is probable that Baldwin’s
principle of organic selection may take effect in this special case.
In general I hold to the view that play makes it possible to dispense
to a certain degree with specialized hereditary mechanism by fixing
and increasing acquired adaptations. On the social side we find much
the same conditions, though we may perhaps assume that comradeship
in play has an orthoplastic influence on the intensity of the social
impulse. When a society (a primitive race, for example, which is forced
by circumstances to wander about a great deal, or to conduct a war)
undertakes new tasks which lead to stronger and more extended social
organization, play alone can supply the necessary conditions. Under
its “screening” influence natural selection has time to eliminate the
variations which are not coincident, to further those which are, and so
to strengthen gradually the social impulses.
These two original social impulses find satisfaction in the social
circle as soon as the individual has outgrown the narrow limits of the
family, and the first social group into which he voluntarily enters is
that of his playmates. This is the social school for children; here,
says Jean Paul, “the first social fetters are woven of flowers,” and
here, too, does the adult find the perennial spring for renewing the
influence of the “socius”[684] in himself. Where association presents
only its more pleasing features, the voluntary subordination which
is sometimes irksome is natural enough both to the recognised leader
and to abstract law. Kant’s moral requisite that a person shall never
be made use of as a means is applicable to public life only when
individuals voluntarily fit themselves into the social mechanism. In
clubs for amusement, social sympathy and good comradeship undergo a
sort of artificial expansion which society could hardly attain without
the games and festivities that characterize them. This fact is apparent
among savages as well as in the most advanced social group of modern
times. The union of early tribes for their dances and feasts made it
possible for them to work together for serious purposes, and, to take
an illustration from the other extreme, a group of university teachers,
in spite of their peaceful calling, is best preserved from disastrous
dissension when their good comradeship is promoted by frequent and
regularly recurring social gatherings.
The effect of ordinary play is supported by social imitation. To do
what the others do, and so get the advantage of the stimulus which
belongs to collective activity; to thrill with the feeling that moves
the masses; to get out of the narrow circle of one’s own desires and
efforts—these the child learns with his playmates, and the grown man
in æsthetic sports and in festive gatherings. Thus play contributes to
the “experimental verification of the benefits and pleasures of united
action,”[685] and such experience must advance the ends of society,
since it forms habits which extend beyond the sphere of play. Hence
arises, too, the imitation of individuals who are especially prominent
in the social group. When among children or grown people some master
spirit takes the lead by virtue of his courage, wisdom, presence of
mind, or quick adaptability, his example is of quite incalculable
influence on his fellows. The effects of æsthetic sympathy when the
model is one of social excellence takes deep hold on the life around
it. In modern poetry, too, we have a powerful means of bringing the
social and ethical ideal home to each appreciative soul in the privacy
of his own home.
We have found, too, that the various aspects of the impulse of
communication which ground the inner spiritual association of the group
are also available for play. While in the animal world self-exhibition
may serve sexual purposes almost exclusively, such is not the case
with man. As his personality develops in response to his everchanging
relations to his social environment, he feels the need of finding all
that moves him, his joys and sorrows, his strivings and attainments,
reflected in the consciousness of other men. This is why I have
insisted that the various forms of rivalry which are so essential to
the preservation of the species are only in part derived from the
fighting impulse. The higher motive of proving to one’s associates what
one is capable of, is also operative, and play which exhibits it not
only serves to develop the social impulses, but also assists materially
in the struggle for life. Besides giving expression to individual
importance, the desire for self-exhibition includes a disposition to
depreciate others, and the friction which ensues is a most effectual
corrective of the vanity and overweening pride which are so easily
associated with it, giving rise at last to a just estimate of the value
and limits of our capacities.
The second and higher form of the communication impulse also—namely,
the desire to influence other wills and to direct and control public
action; in short, to become a social leader—finds full scope in play,
which affords good preliminary practice of the art of ruling, just
as it is the first school for voluntary subordination to social law.
Here the masterful mind learns how to control milder spirits and to
identify his own with the common interest, and here awakens the feeling
of responsibility and the wish to become by his example an inspiration
to his fellows. Any form of activity which develops sturdy independent
leaders is to be encouraged, for it is these that society is most in
need of.
Finally, we discover that imitation, where not mere collective play,
is eminently promotive through tradition of various departments of
culture. Few of our acquisitions in that line are due to physical
heredity. Time may increase the intensity of the social impulse, and
possibly diminish the force of our pugnacious tendencies (although to
my mind a comparison with the so-called lower-standing peoples offers
little encouragement to the hope), and intelligence may be further
refined if the limit has not already been reached; still this store
of culture must be acquired by each individual anew. Play does much
to make its attainment possible, and, above all, dramatic imitation
play. I would refer the reader again to Signe Rink’s description of
the children brought up in Greenland. If parental interference could
have been obliterated and imitation allowed free play, while the child,
it is true, would not have become exactly like a Greenland woman, she
would have come very near to it in her thoughts and feeling, and it is
doubtful whether any subsequent training in European customs could have
wholly extinguished this influence.
6. _The Pedagogical Standpoint_
The fact that the natural school of play affords a necessary complement
to pedagogics was recognised by educators of old, with some notable
exceptions, however. For example, the pietist Tollner uttered this
sentiment at a conference: “Play of whatever sort should be forbidden
in all evangelical schools, and its vanity and folly should be
explained to the children with warnings of how it turns the mind away
from God and eternal life, and works destruction to their immortal
souls.”[686] On the whole, however, the educational value of play has
been recognised from the time of Plato to the present day.[687] It
affords a reaction from the stress and strain of work. It satisfies the
natural demand for pleasure so impressively set forth by Luther, giving
opportunity for free, self-originated activity and practice to the
physical and mental capacities.[688] A discerning educator could not
afford to ignore so important a coadjutor.
There are two ways of regarding the relation of play to education.
Instruction may take the form of playful activity, or, on the other
hand, play may be converted into systematic teaching. Both methods are
natural to us, and may be carried to extreme lengths. The history of
pedagogics gives much interesting information as to experiments with
the first; for example, Joachim Böldicke, inspired by reading Locke and
Baratier,[689] set forth his method in the following programme in 1732,
as “an attempt to educate by the help of games, music, poetry, and
other entertainment through which important truths may be imparted.”
Thanks to the originators of the plan, ten intelligent children, twelve
years of age when they began, could understand in their fifteenth year
German, Latin, French, Italian, and English, and were well grounded in
all useful general knowledge. The writer proceeds to give an example of
the riddle games as follows: “I know an animal which eats grass, has
two horns on its head, a tail, and four cloven feet. What can it be?
When in need of anything, it lows. It has calves, suckles them, and
allows itself to be milked.” Whereupon the penetrating youth promptly
responds in Latin: “Non est, quod nomen addas; de vacca emin cogitasti,
quae est herbatica, cornuta, quadrupes, biscula, mugire, vitulos
parere, lactari et emulgeri potest.”[690]
Against such trifling it is sufficient to repeat the warning that J.
G. Schlosser published in 1776. At school one should learn to work,
and he who does everything playfully will always remain a child. Other
things being equal, it is most natural and advantageous to distinguish
clearly between play and study work.[691] Among primitive races, where
the life work is for the most part guided by natural impulse, at least
in the case of males, boys may get sufficient preparation from play
for their later life, though even they usually have some instruction
at the outset. But with civilized peoples usage to earnest, persistent
effort that is not dependent on caprice or impulse is an indispensable
condition of success in the struggle for life, and for this reason
school life should promote a high sense of duty as opposed to mere
inclination.
Yet this distinction should not be so stringent as to exclude
entirely the play impulse. We have repeatedly found in the course of
this inquiry that even the most serious work may include a certain
playfulness, especially when enjoyment of being a cause and of conquest
are prominent.[692] Between flippant trifling and conscientious study
there is a wide chasm which nothing can bridge; but not all play is
such trifling. Who would forbid the teacher’s making the effort to
induce in his pupils a psychological condition like that of the adult
worker, who is not oppressed by the _shall_ and _must_ in the pursuit
of his calling, because the very exertion of his physical and mental
powers in work involving all his capabilities fills his soul with
joy? Since play thus approaches work when pleasure in the activity
as such, as well as its practical aim, becomes a motive power (as in
the gymnastic games of adults), so may work become like play when its
real aim is superseded by enjoyment of the activity itself. And it can
hardly be doubted that this is the highest and noblest form of work.
Another question is how far the teacher’s effort should go in this
direction, and to answer this definitely something more than a purely
theoretic inquiry is needed, since many points are involved which have
more to do with the art than the method of education. On the whole, we
must concur with Kraepelin that in view of the danger of overstrain
and overfatigue it is probably fortunate that the majority of teachers
do not possess the faculty of turning study into an amusement, and
that those who do possess it make a great mistake in employing it
constantly. Yet, while disapproving totally of all trifling in
education, we still maintain that the school which is conducted
exclusively by an appeal to the stringent sense of duty, with no
incentive to the higher form of work in which the deepest earnestness
has much of the freedom of play—that such a school does not perfectly
fulfil its task.
In passing to our second question we must touch upon that connecting
link between work and play which we call occupation. The hobbies of
adults furnish voluntary activity like play, which is undertaken
chiefly from the pleasure it affords, but often has aims outside the
sphere of play. Pedagogical occupation is, on the contrary, playful
practice in the line of the child’s instruction, and forms an adaptive
means of transition from the freedom of the first years of life to
school work. Froebel’s kindergarten system is most valuable in this
way. Its occupations suggest to the children something beyond mere
play, and supply definite aims for their activity and study, but they
should always be kept near the limits of play; forced occupation
against the child’s will does not fulfil the purpose of such exercise.
Since in what follows I shall be limited to the consideration of
actual play, I take occasion to mention here that there is a certain
analogy to pedagogic occupation among savages. Brough Smith sends from
Australia an account of an old woman’s direction of the occupation of
young girls: “The old woman herself collected the material, built a
skin hut, and taught each of the little ones with great care to make
small ones like the large model. She showed them where to get the gum
and how to use it. She sent the girls to gather rushes, and taught
them to weave baskets over round stones, etc.”[693] This is not exactly
systematic education like that of our schools, but it may properly be
classed with kindergarten work.
After this digression we now proceed to our second leading question:
How far may a teacher direct play to pedagogic ends without destroying
its freedom and genuineness? In this direction, too, many teachers err.
Campe thought that the irrepressible tendency to popular sport should
be allowed to indulge in only those of its inventions which developed
the reason, perception, judgment, etc., and even those persons who
recognise the value of Froebel’s system bring the charge, which for a
teacher is a damaging one, that by his methods, and especially by the
songs he uses so much, spontaneity and _naïveté_ are almost totally
destroyed. Every user of the system should be cautioned against a
careless or thoughtless application of it. Jean Paul says strikingly,
“I tremble when any grown-up, hardened hand meddles with these tender
buds from childhood’s garden, rubbing off the bloom here and marring
the delicacy of tint there.”
Yet it would be unfortunate and in a sense unnatural for the teacher,
and even more so for the parent, to leave the playing child entirely to
his own devices. Adults have three important tasks in this direction
which are imperative—namely, general incitation to play, encouragement
of what is good and useful, and discouragement of injurious and
improper forms of play. Animals teach their young to play, and for this
reason I have said it would be unnatural for parents to be unconcerned
about their children’s games. While all animals show a greater or less
disposition for sportiveness, it is strongest in the mother with her
young, and gives rise to some of the most attractive phases of animal
life. Love toward the small, helpless creatures manifests itself as
well in playing with them as in nursing and caring for them. The mother
not only submits to their tumbling all over her and pulling at her
as their movement and fighting instincts impel them to do, but she
encourages them to active play. This instinct is much stronger in our
own race. Not the mother alone, but every normal woman feels again a
child at the sight of children, and the father, too, is conscious of an
irresistible drawing toward the nursery in his leisure moments, there
to indulge in a short excursion to the lost paradise of childish play.
His parents are a child’s natural playmates for the first years of his
life, since, as has been said, a too early introduction to a wider
social circle can but have a baneful effect. Consequently, it is
important that the inward impulse, as well as the outward stimulus, to
play should be present, and when it is lacking the after impression
of the early home throws a shadow over all the future life. The same
remark, with some modifications, applies to teachers, when the child
grows older and goes to school. It is, of course, not necessary for a
teacher to join in the games of the merry urchins out of doors, yet
in the lower grades especially it is a fortunate circumstance when he
possesses the faculty of becoming a child again with the children in
their plays and walks. He must be able, however, to resume the sceptre
firmly when need arises.
This naturally opens the way for the second duty of the child’s
instructor—directing his play toward what is good and useful. The two
ends do not necessarily coincide, for there is an egotistical sort of
playing with children which is more for the amusement of adults than
anything else. Better no play than this. Herbert once said, “Let no
man use his child as a plaything.” There are numerous ways to direct
the child’s play to useful purposes. We may provide him with toys and
tools which suggest their own use, as animals show us how to do when
they bring a living victim to their young as a plaything. The objection
that in providing playthings the child’s inventiveness as well as
his enjoyment of illusion is interfered with needs but brief notice.
Reischle rightly says that the most ancient tradition justifies the
use of toys, and has chosen wisely among them. The physical and mental
capacities of children are furthered, too, by the use of many plays
which require no tools or toys. Recollection of our own childhood and
a glance at the conditions will aid us in directing their play by
advice or example. Influence in this direction is less apparent at
school, but as the population of our cities grows more crowded the
need for intelligent direction is becoming evident. City children grow
up under unnatural conditions, and opportunities for play, especially
health-producing movement-play, should be provided artificially, space
devoted to it, needed aids furnished, and the effort made to introduce
the most useful and attractive gymnastic plays to the children. The
growing interest of all classes in such efforts encourages the hope
that the damaging consequences of our modern methods of living may be
effectually counteracted in this way.
As to the positive ethical development of the child by play, we may
premise that play in itself contributes materially to the establishment
of ethical individuality. This, as we have before insisted, is properly
developed only in the give and take of social intercourse which with
children is found almost entirely in play. “Development of ethical
character,” says Reischle, “requires on the one hand social influences
preparatory for service in human society, and on the other individual
culture. Any supposed antagonism between these is only apparent. In
reality they are the two including poles. Human society reaches its
fulness only among well-rounded individualities, since they alone are
properly fitted for service to the whole; and be it noted that such
characters do not develop in solitude, but in the stress of social
life. Play has its uses in both directions. How else can individual
qualities be so well brought out and developed as in the free,
untrammelled use of all one’s powers? Here are brought into contact
contemplative, quiet natures with active, forceful ones, the stubborn
with the pliant will. Play reveals the breadth or limitation of the
child’s horizon, the independence of his character, or his need of
support and direction.”[694]
In spite of all this, many are opposed to any attempt on the part
of educators to introduce the ethical element into play. It is
undoubtedly a mistake to smuggle moral reflections in whatever form
into play (songs furnish a case in point), nor is it wise to single
out for praise those who display skill, courage, self-control, a
self-sacrificing spirit, or any other excellence of character in play.
Such a practice tends to destroy its spontaneity and ideality. There
seems, then, to be but one legitimate means for promoting development
of ethical character in play. Those who with me regard æsthetic
enjoyment of poetry as a play will recognise in it a wide field for
positive influence. From the first nursery rhymes to the reading
provided for those nearly grown, a discriminating hand should choose
those works which are calculated to supply ethical ideals to the
plastic mind. Yet attractiveness should always be considered, and any
obscuration of poetic charm with moral reflections be avoided.
Much more obvious is the educational value of the negative task, the
third, which consists in the avoidance of what is evil, and the effort
to check wrong tendencies. The struggle with open iniquity goes hand
in hand with avoiding more insidious moral danger. Let us try to
distinguish the more salient points by the following method: First,
the child should not play too much. In the physiological investigation
I spoke at some length of the law of repetition, and the trancelike
or ecstatic state induced by many plays, together with the fact that
they are often pursued to the point of exhaustion. If the instructor
insists on rest before this comes to pass he would seem to be imposing
a proper restriction, which is most valuable to ethical education, for
at this point the moral law of temperance can be made most impressive
to the child. Second, play which has become or threatens to become
violent may be restrained to proper bounds, and the important ethical
lesson of self-control be inculcated. Third, it may be required that
everything dangerous to life or health shall be excluded or carefully
regulated. Here the teacher must avoid overanxiety, for courage, which
is itself of at least equal ethical value, can only be developed in the
growing character by the encounter of actual risks and learning to meet
them with self-reliance. Fourth, guardians must sometimes interfere
when fighting impulses are manifested in a rude or ill-natured manner,
as it is apt to be in the various forms of teasing. Misuse of this
valuable impulse may cause deep spiritual injury to both the aggressor
and his victim. When children have fallen under the power of a bad,
tyrannous, or low-minded leader, they should be interfered with, and
if possible by some method which will show up the unworthy leader in
his true colours. Fifth, and finally, it should be emphasized that
the beautiful task of play, the development of the individual to full
manhood or womanhood by means of an all-round exercise of his or her
capacities, is retarded by restriction to one particular form of
play. The prevalence of daydreaming is an instance of such injurious
one-sidedness.[695] When a child becomes absorbed in solitary musing
(see the youthful reminiscences of George Sand), he should be aroused
by application to useful occupation or by social stimuli which bring
him in every possible way into contact with the external world. Even
the noble gift of imagination may from overindulgence degenerate into a
deadly poison.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] L. Grasberger, Erziehung und Unterricht im klassischen Alterthum,
Würzburg, 1864, vol. i, p. 23. See also Colozza’s compilation Il Guioco
nella Psicologia e nella Pedagogia, Turin, 1895, p. 36.
[2] Die Spiele der Thiere, Jena, 1896. English translation by E. L.
Baldwin. D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1898.
[3] This is a modification of my former view. For particulars, see the
section on Imitative Play.
[4] Jodl, Lehrbuch der Psychologie, Stuttgart, 1896, p. 425.
[5] He speaks (Psychology des Sentiments, Paris, 1896, p. 195) of an
instinctive impulse “à depenser un superflu d’activité.” If, as I
believe, this does not mean actual superfluity (Spencer’s “surplus”
energy), then it must refer to our natural impulse to seek action and
experience. See also Paolo Lombroso, Piacere di esplicare la propria
activita. (Saggi di Psicologia del Bambino, Turin, 1894, p. 117.)
[6] Acquired impulses are all developed from natural ones.
[7] In Ribot’s classification these impulses become instincts belonging
to the second group (Psychologie des Sentiments, p. 194).
[8] The terms “private” and “public” (or “social”) are used by Baldwin,
Social and Ethical Interpretations, section 30, to cover a similar
distinction. The terms “autonomic” and “socionomic” impulses would
possibly answer.—ED.
[9] W. Preyer. Die Seele dee Kindes, 4^{to} Auf., Leipsic, 1895, p. 64.
[10] See the writings of J. Mark Baldwin on the importance of
repetition for development. They are frequently cited in what follows.
[11] B. Perez. Ses trois premières années de l’enfant, fifth edition,
Paris, 1892, pp. 38, 45.
[12] See G. Stanley Hall, Some Aspects of the Early Sense of Self.
American Journal of Psychology, vol. ix, No. 3, 1898.
[13] _Op. cit._, p. 162.
[14] L. Strümpell, Psychologische Pädagogik, Leipsic, 1880, pp. 359,
360.
[15] _Op. cit._, p. 357.
[16] Dr. Sikorski, L’évolution physique de l’enfant, Revue
Philosophique xix (1885). p. 418.
[17]
“The wolves’ eyes burned in their heeds like fire,
But the boy in his folly fled not before the foe;
He went up to one of them and seized it with his hand
Where he saw the glittering eyes glowing in its head.”
I. V. Zingerle, Das Deutsche Kinderspiel, second edition, Innsbruck,
1873. p. 51.
[18] Les trois premières années, etc., p. 46. In regard to the words
“sensations agreeable or even indifferent,” I would say that this
distinction between pleasure in sensation as such, and pleasure in
agreeable sensation, recurs again and again. In the most advanced play,
æsthetic enjoyment, it appears as the difference between æsthetic
effect and beauty.
[19] G. Compayré, L’évolution intellectuelle et morale de l’enfant,
Paris, 1893.
[20] H. Wölfflin, Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur,
Munich, 1886, p. 47.
[21] W. Joest, Allerlei Spielzeug, Internationales Archiv für
Ethnographie, vol. vi (1893).
[22] Deutsche Colonialzeitung, 1889, No. 11.
[23] Croker’s Boswell’s Johnson, p. 215.
[24] _Op. cit._, p. 65.
[25] Perez, Les trois premières années, p. 16.
[26] _Op. cit._, p. 87.
[27] Compayré, indeed, maintains that kissing in no more than a
“ressouvenir” of the lip movements on the maternal breast.
[28] L. Grasberger, _op. cit._, Part I, p. 35. Fig. 282 in Maurice
Emmanuel’s book. La danse Grecque antique (Paris, 1896), furnishes a
pictorial representation of this movement.
[29] Miss Romanes’s account of the capuchin ape perhaps furnishes an
example from the animal world: “He pulls out hot cinders from the
grate, and passes them over his head and chest, evidently enjoying the
warmth, but never burning himself. He also puts hot ashes on his head”
(Animal Intelligence, fifth edition, London, 1892, p. 493). The context
favours the supposition of playful experimentation.
[30] “Un aveugle, voulant exprimer la volupté que lui causait cette
chaleur du soleil invisible pour lui, disait quil croyait entendre le
soleil comme une harmonie” (M. Guyan, Les problèmes de l’esthétique
contemporaine, third edition, p. 61).
[31] A. Kussmaul, Untersuchungen über das Seelenleben des neugeborenen
Menschen, 1859, p. 16.
[32] Les yeux et les narines étant fermés, dit Longet, on ne
distinguera pas une crème à la vanille d’une crème au café; elles ne
produiront qu’une sensation commune de saveur douce et sucrée (Perez,
Les trois années, etc., p. 14).
[33] R. Semon, Im australischen Busch und an den Kusten des
Korallenmeeres, Leipsic, 1896, p. 512.
[34] _Op. cit._, p. 18.
[35] _Op. cit._, p. 66.
[36] Mario Pilo, La psychologie de beau et de l’art, Paris, 1895, p. 15.
[37] This section has been published under the title Ueber Hör-Spiele,
in the Vierteljahrsschrift f. wiss. Philos., xxii.
[38] Descent of Man, vol. ii, p. 228.
[39] E. and L. Selenka, Soninge Welt, Wiesbaden, 1896, p. 55. The cry
is said to be less like a melody than a sort of exulting call. One of
the Swiss hunters in the expedition said that the ape _jodeled_ back to
him.
[40] W. Preyer, Die Seele des Kindes, p. 56. See Miss Shinn’s Notes on
the Development of the Child, p. 115.
[41] J. Sully, Studies of Childhood, London, 1896, p. 409.
[42] B. Perez, Ses trois premières années des enfant, p. 34.
[43] E. Gurney, The Power of Sound, London, 1880, p. 102.
[44] B. Sigismund, Kind und Welt, 1897, p. 60.
[45] Miss Shinn’s small niece displayed very little appreciation for
rhythm. _Loc. cit._, 120.
[46] This instance is subsCituted for a parallel one of Professor
Groos’s, as the point of the latter would of course vanish in the
attempt to translate it.—TR.
[47] See Gurney, _op. cit._, pp. 35, 306.
[48] Darwin, _op. cit._, vol. ii. p. 321.
[49] Streifzüge eines Unzeilgemässen, vol. viii, p. 122.
[50] P. Souriau, La Suggestion dans l’art, Paris, 1893. Of course this
means only a more or less remote approach to narcosis on the one hand,
and hypnosis on the other. Perhaps the idea of ecstasy meets our case
even better, as Mantegazza has figured it:
Ecstasy.
/\
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ \
/----------\
Hypnosis. Narcosis.
[51] Karl Büchner’s pregnant hypothesis is that acquaintance with
rhythm is chiefly derived from physical labour (Arbeit und Rhythmus,
Leipsic, 1896).
[52] See B. O. Stoll, Suggestion und Hypnose in der Völkerpsychologie,
and J. Lippert, Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit, vol. i, p. 632, where
this idea is set forth with great clearness.
[53] Schopenhauer says, Rhythm (and rhyme) is “partly a means of
keeping our attention—since we gladly follow it—and partly the occasion
of a blind unreasoning submission in us to leadership, which by this
means attains a certain authoritative and apparently unaccountable
power over us.”
[54] _Op. cit._, p. 67.
[55] According to R. Wallaschek, it is the demand for distinct rhythm
which first elevates the state of transport to the appreciation of
melody, and leads to the proper valuation of the interval (Primitive
Music, London, 1893, p. 232).
[56] E. Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen, Leipsic, 1896, p. 153.
[57] _Op. cit._, pp. 168, 171.
[58] Stumpf has treated the question most exhaustively (Tonpsychologie,
vol. i. p. 202).
[59] H. Siebeck, Das Wesen der Aesthetischen Anschauung, Berlin, 1875,
p. 153.
[60] Köstlin, Aesthetik, p. 560.
[61] “Primitive music can not have grown out of the voice modulation in
excited speech, because in many cases it has no modulation of tone, but
is simply rhythmic movement in a single tone” (Wallaschek, Primitive
Music, p. 252).
[62] _Op. cit._, p. 272.
[63] In a celebrated Chinese poem the effect of music is thus
described: “Now soft as whispered words, now soft and loud
together—like pearls falling on marble—now coaxing as the call of
birds, now complaining like a brook, and now like a mountain stream
bursting its icy bounds.” When we recall the great difference in form
between Chinese music and our own, the similarity of emotional effect
is astonishing.
[64] Compayré, _op. cit._, p. 41.
[65] H. Gutzmann (Das Kindes Sprach und Sprachfehler, 1894, p. 7) shown
that crying is good practice for talking, because, in contrast to the
habitual method of breathing, a short, deep inhalation is followed by
lingering exhalation, as in speech.
[66] _Loc. cit._, p. 368. It is, of course, difficult to say at what
moment the automatic babbling attains the dignity of speech.
[67] Somewhat akin to inspiratory sounds are the clicking noises which
children often produce. These are well known to play a considerable
part in the language of the Hottentots. For the influence of the
self-originated language of children on the speech of adults, and for
the analogy between child-language and that of the lower races, see H.
Gutzmann, Die Sprachlaute des Kindes und der Naturvölker, Westermann’s
Monatshefte, December, 1895.
[68] Lubbock and Tylor have pointed out that reduplication is used much
more in the speech of savages than in that of civilized peoples.
[69] _Op. cit._, p. 311. These citations are somewhat curtailed.—TR.
[70] L. Beeq de Fouquières, Les jeus des anciens, Paris, 1869, p. 278.
[71] Croker’s Boswell’s Johnson, p. 215.
[72] See K. Bücher, Arbeit und Rhythmus, p. 75.
[73] In subjective rhythm, a scale which is properly without accent
is, as a rule, conceived of as having some tones emphasized to mark
time. See E. Meumann, Untersuchungen zur Psychologie und Aesthetik des
Rhythmus (Philos. Studien, vol. x, p. 286).
[74] _Loc. cit._, p. 301.
[75] R. M. Meyer, Ueber den Refrain, Zeitschrift f. vgl. Litt-Gesch.,
i, 1887, p. 34. Marie G——, for example, sang in her seventh year,
when first awakened, _wólla_, _wólla_, _budscha_, incessantly and
melodiously.
[76] _Loc. cit._, p. 62.
[77] “Le rythme ... vant surtout par son effet d’entrainement,”
Souriau, La suggestion dans l’art, p. 47.
[78] W. Joest, Maylayische Lieder und Tänze aus Ambon und den Uliase
(Molukken), Internat. Arch. f. Ethnogr., v, 1892, p. 23.
[79] The application of the principle of thirds to rhyme is
interesting, since the echo-like ring of the triple rhyme has an effect
very similar to that of chain rhymes.
[80] Miss Shinn, _loc. cit._, p. 134. With the mentally deranged the
stringing of senseless rhymes is very common. One patient wrote on a
sheet of paper. “Nelke, welke, Helge; Hilde, Tilde, Milde; Hand, Wand,
Sand.” Kräpelin, Psychiatrie, Leipsic, 1896, p. 599.
[81] Rochholz, Alemannisches Kinderlied und Kinderspiel, Leipsic, 1857,
p. 124.
[82] J. Mark Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and the Race,
1895, p. 132.
[83] Rather a free translation of the verse in J. D. Georgens’s Mutter
Büchlein. p. 170.
[84] F. M. Böhme, Deutsches Kinderlied und Kinderspiel, 1897, p. 302.
[85] A. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, vol. iii, 1867, p. 227.
[86] See H. Ploss, Das Kind in Brauch and Sitte der Völker, 1882, vol.
ii, p. 285.
[87] _Op. cit._, p. 57.
[88] L. Strümpell, Psychologische Pädagogik, p. 358.
[89] Sully, _loc. cit._, p. 415.
[90] _Op. cit._, p. 58.
[91] _Op. cit._, p. 33.
[92] _Op. cit._, p. 212.
[93] “Cracking the fingers,” writes Schellong from Kaiserwilhelmsland,
“is a familiar practice with the little Papuan.” Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie, xxi (1889), p. 16.
[94] G. A. Colozza does not sufficiently consider this versatility when
he says in his interesting hook on play, “I giocattoli dei bambini
poveri non sono che delle pietre; esse si divertono non poco nel
sentire il rumore che si ha battendo pietra contra pietra.” Il Gienoco
nella Psychologia e nella Pedagogia, p. 70.
[95] E. Grosse, Die Anfänge der Kunst, 1894, pp. 275, 277.
[96] G. Reischel, Aus allen Welttheilen, 1896, No. 2. Wallaschek did
not believe that the drum is a primitive instrument chiefly because
of our failure to find them among prehistoric relics, though the fife
is frequently found among those of the stone age. Here we have an
instance, however, which, while it belongs to the close of the period,
is of such a complicated and well-developed form as to point to long
use. Moreover, as Grosse points out in a letter to me, Wallaschek’s
argument is not conclusive, inasmuch as the material used for primitive
drums was perishable.
[97] Our bells, too, may be derived from the rattle.
[98] Les jeux des anciens, pp. 6, 12.
[99] See Rich. Andree, Ethnog. Parallellen und Vergleichen, 1889, p. 86.
[100] Alwin Schultz, Alltagsleben einer deutschen Frau zu Anfang des 18
Jahrhundert, 1890, p. 207.
[101] A formidable objection seems to me to lie in the fact that manual
labour is almost entirely wanting among the tribes who subsist by the
chase, and that what little they have is conducted by the women, while
it is the men who indulge in the song and dance. Grosse, moreover,
assures me that even their swimming and marching are not calculated
to support this theory. It should be added that Bücher has now
considerably modified his view by deriving work itself from play (Die
Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, 1890, p. 92). “The order formerly laid
down must be directly reversed; play is older than work, art older than
production for utility.”
[102] This is too baldly stated.
[103] _Op. cit._, p. 91.
[104] E. Raehlmann, Physiol.-psychol. Studien über die Entwickelung der
Gesichtswahrnehmungen bei Kindern und bei operirten Blindgeborenen.
Zeitsch. für Psychol. und Physiol. der Sinnesorgane, vol. ii (1891), p.
69. Raehlmann maintains in this article that those who are born blind
and attain the power of vision by operation pass through a process of
development quite like that of the child.
[105] It is otherwise with those born blind. Johann Ruben, who was
nineteen when operated on, at once made distance the subject of his
investigation. “For example, he pulled off his boot and threw it some
distance, and then tried to estimate how far off it was. He walked some
steps toward it, and tried to pick it up; finding that he could not
reach it he went a little farther, until he finally got it.” Raehlmann,
ibid., p. 81.
[106] Die Seele des Kindes, p. 4.
[107]
“Then he forgot how cold he was, and played with the ring. The little
child forgot all his woe. He seized upon the ring and said, ‘What is
this?’”
—Zingerle, p. 51.
[108] Kind und Welt, pp. 58, 61.
[109] In Nacht und Eis, vol. i, p. 222.
[110] J. G. Romanes, Animal Intelligence, p. 493. See, too, Ellendorf’s
beautiful description of the monkey playing with matches, Gartenlaube,
1862, p. 300.
[111]
“There, see, the curtain dark already rolls away!
The night must fly, now dreams the glorious day;
The crimson lips that lay fast closed so long,
Breathe now, half ope’d, a sweet, low song;
Once more the eye gleams bright, and, like a god, the day
Bounds forward to begin again his royal way.”
[112] W. James, Principles of Psychology, vol. i, p. 268.
[113] Die Anfänge der Kunst, p. 99.
[114] O. Külpe, Grundriss der Psychologie, 1893, p. 126.
[115] “Shade,” says Schelling, “is the painter’s stock in trade, the
body into which he must try to breathe the fleeting soul of light; and
even the mechanics of his art show him that the black which is at his
service comes far nearer to the effect of darkness than does white to
that of light.” Leonardo da Vinci has said, “Painter, if you desire the
brilliance of fame, do not shrink from the gloom of shadow.” Sammtl.
Werke, vol. v, p. 533.
[116] Die Seele des Kindes, p. 6.
[117] Studies in Childhood, pp. 402, 300.
[118] Ibid.
[119] _Op. cit._, p. 67.
[120] See also Miss Shinn, _op. cit._, pp. 29, 33, and F. Tracy, The
Psychology of Childhood, Boston, 1897, p. 14.
[121] Mental Development, p. 50.
[122] See also Baldwin’s reply to Preyer in the German and French
translations of his book.—ED.
[123] _Op. cit._, 13. Sully’s boy, on the contrary, in the eighth month
of his third year at once called a light greenish gray, green. Studies
of Childhood, p. 437.
[124] _Op. cit._, p. 68.
[125] Grosse, _op. cit._, p. 53.
[126] O. Frass, Beiträge zur Culturgeschichte den Menschen während
der Eiszeit. Nach den Funden von der Schussenquelle. Archiv für
Anthropologie, vol. ii.
[127] Grosse, p. 100.
[128] It should, however, be mentioned that the Brazilian Indians
observed by v. d. Steinen wore green and blue feathers also.
[129] It is undeniable that they sometimes use shades of blue in their
ornaments, when they have seen Europeans do so.
[130] _Op. cit._, pp. 170, 171.
[131] La suggestion dans l’art, p. 95.
[132] _Op. cit._, pp. 170, 171.
[133] Die Seele des Kindes, p. 40.
[134] That the child first acquires a clear perception of form by means
of experimentation is proved by the uncertainty of those blind persons
whose sight is restored, in recognising form by the eye (even weeks
after the removal of the bandages), although they already have a clear
idea of the forms, acquired by touch.
[135] Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, p. 13.
[136] A collection of such patterns may be found in the work of L. V.
Frobenius, Die Kunst der Naturvölker. 1. Die Ornamentik, Westermanns
Monatshefte, December, 1895.
[137] W. Joest, Ethnolographisches und Verwandtes aus Guayana, p. 90.
[138] Die Anfänge der Kunst, p. 111.
[139] Vierteljahrsschr. für wissensch. Philos., vol. xx (1896).
[140] _Op. cit._, p. 14.
[141] See G. H. Schneider. Why do we notice things which are moving
regularly more easily than those at rest? Vierteljahrsschr. für
wissenschaft. Philos., vol. ii (1878), p. 377.
[142] L. Edinger, Die Entwickelung der Gehirnbahnen in der Thierreihe,
Allgemeine medicinische Central-Zeitung, 65. Jahrgang (1896).
[143] The most thrilling ghost stories are those in which a cold hand
rests on the back of the neck, or where the victim sees in a mirror
the ghost behind him. Dogs, too, who are quietly lying down react with
greater excitement to light touches on the hair of their backs. The
opposite to this feeling is the pleasure we feel in bestowing our backs
in a safe corner—of a restaurant, etc.
[144] L. William Stern, Die Wahrnehmung von Bewegungen vermittelst des
Auges, Zeitschr. für Psychol. u. Physiol. d. Sinnesorgane, vol. vii
(1894), p. 373.
[145] _Op. cit._, p. 64.
[146] Die Seele des Kindes, p. 27. _Cf._ Baldwin’s remarks on the
child’s interest in movement in Mental Development in the Child and the
Race, p. 336.—TR.
[147] See Ploss, Das Kind, etc., vol. ii, p. 313.
[148] Grasberger, vol. i, p. 75.
[149] The Play of Animals, p. 225.
[150] Alwin Schultz, _op. cit._, p. 169.
[151]
“Stay now thine heart, O wanderer, held fast in powerful hands!
Mine own breaks forth in trembling joy.
Thundering masses roll, on thundering masses hurled,
How can the eye and ear escape the tumultuous roar?
“War horses of the gods at play, leaping over one another.
Dashing downward and strewing to the winds their silver manes;
Exquisite forms unnumbered follow them, never the same,
Ever the same—who can wait till the end shall be?”
[152] This is the case with our round dances, and is, perhaps, the
greatest objection to them.
[153] Die Anfänge der Kunst, pp. 202, 215.
[154] Ibid.
[155] Perhaps the world-wide demand for some sort of intoxicant is
another kind of sensory play, since it is calculated to excite and
intensify the social feelings. Kruepelin says (Psychiatrie, p. 361)
that there is scarcely a single people which does not possess some
popular agency for getting rid of the petty cares of life, and that the
variety of these poisonous springs of pleasure is surprisingly great.
I will note only alcoholism and the morphine habit. Mild intoxication
by the former creates in the subject pleasant internal temperature
sensations, combined with greater facility in all motor exertion. We
become freer, gayer, and braver, and feel that life has no cares or
anxieties for us, our strength and ability seem enhanced, and we behave
and speak with candour and commonly without caution. The effect of
morphine, on the contrary, seems to be rather a pleasant deadening of
the motor impulses and a quickening of the intellect and imagination.
In Paris there are said to be at least fifty thousand morphine takers,
and the manufacture of gold hypodermic syringes of elegant design
has become an important branch of the goldsmith’s business. That
this intoxication is indulged in like play is shown, by Kraepelin’s
statement that in a Russian regiment, to which a young friend of his
belonged, nearly all the officers used the syringe. A still more
evident play with the social feelings is displayed by many hysterical
subjects, who take a certain satisfaction in imagined or real bodily
sufferings. These become the central fact in their lives, and are even
regarded with a sort of pride as an absorbing topic of conversation
(Kraepelin, Psychiatrie, p. 782). These extravagances go to show that
men in a normal state also play with their social emotions, even when
these are in a way distasteful.
[156] Die Seele des Kindes, pp. 211, 216.
[157] Karl Vierordt, Physiologie des Kindesalters, Gerhardt’s Handbuch
der Kinderkrankheiten, vol. i, p. 181.
[158] Preyer, Die Seele des Kindes, p. 139.
[159] Preyer, Die Seele des Kindes. p. 189.
[160] Mental Development, etc., chap, iv, the Origin of
Right-handedness See, too, Vierordt, Physiologie des Kindesalters, p.
187. [Baldwin explains it genetically as an “expressive function” which
afterward culminates in speech, which is located in an adjacent centre
in the same hemisphere.—TR.]
[161] See O. Behaghel, Etwas vom Zuknöpfen, Frankfurter Zeitung, 1897,
No. 329.
[162] _Op. cit._, pp. 444, 600.
[163] _Op. cit._, pp. 444, 600.
[164] Die Narcotic Genussmittel und der Mensch, preface, and p. 376.
[165] Ibid.
[166] Jules Legras, Au pays Russe, Paris, 1895, p. 18.
[167] “The reprehensible confining of the child’s legs,” says Vierordt,
in reference to kicking, “retards the development of the muscles not a
little.” Psychologie des Kindesalters, p. 186.
[168] _Op. cit._, p. 174.
[169] Kind und Welt, p. 70. Sigismund tries to explain the backward
creeping as due to the feet that the child gets on its dress and is
impeded by it. But it is noteworthy that Baldwin’s little daughter, who
for a time preferred to creep backward, had previously exhibited the
reverse of natural walking movements—namely, such as would carry her
backward—when held over a table so that she could just feel it with her
soles. Mental Development, etc., p. 82.
[170] Les jeux des anciens, pp. 16, 21.
[171] Sigismund, _op. cit._, pp. 56, 74.
[172] Die Seele des Kindes, p. 175.
[173] Sigismund, _op. cit._, pp. 56, 74.
[174] Die Seele des Kindes, p. 179.
[175] Mental Development, etc., p. 81.
[176] Pädagogische Schriften, 1883, vol. ii, p. 333.
[177] Kraepelin, Psychiatrie, p. 445.
[178] _Op. cit._, p. 182.
[179] M. Guyau, Les Problèmes de l’Esthétique contemporaine, p. 48.
[180] L. Grasberger, Erziebung und Unterricht im klassischen Alterthum,
pp. 32, 319.
[181] A. F. Chamberlain, The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought, p.
268.
[182] See W. Seoboda, Die Bewohner des Nikobar-Archipels. Inter. Arch.
für Eth., vol. vi (1893), p. 32.
[183] Grasberger, _op. cit._, p. 300.
[184] Weinhold. Altnordisches Leben, Berlin. 1856. p. 308.
[185] H. O. Lenz, Gemeinnützige Naturgeschichte, 1851, vol. i, p. 612.
[186] K. Wienhold, Altnordisches Leben, p. 307.
[187] Die Seele des Kindes, p. 183.
[188] J. Minor, Neuhochdeutsche Metrik, Strassburg, 1893, p. 11.
[189]
“It is the godlike power of harmony
Which orders wild motions to the quiet social dance.
And like a Nemesis, with the golden reins of rhythm,
Harnesses riotous lust, and tames its madness.”
[190] “O, Du frecher Spielmann, mach uns den Reihen lang! Juchheia! Wie
er sprang! Herz, Milz, Lung und Leber sich rundum in ihm Schwang.”
K. Weinhold, Die deutschen Frauen in Mittelalter, p. 373.
[191] Sonnige Welten, p. 77.
[192] Our waltz was originally the final movement in a complicated
dance “which represented the romance of love, the meeting, the
pursuit, the painful doubts and difficulties, and at last the wedding
jollity.”—Schaller, Das Spiel und die Spieler, 1861, p. 219.
[193] Grosse, _op. cit._, p. 203.
[194] Sonnige Welten, p. 838.