Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/203

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY. 189 Spontaneities and games are neither good nor bad be- cause they are games, and different individuals will, in their play, show traits of varying reversion to primitive types ; whilst the boy of genius will often play at his life-work. I have already considered in the chapters on Language and Art to what extent we can trust the spontaneities of play for entry into the social heritage of knowledge, so far as the average pupil is concerned. " But surely play has a vital and valuable function," an objector will remark, " and you allow that the activities of savage times may be transferred to games with a gradual loss of their former emotional con- -comitants." It is excellent to have a giant's strength, But it is tyrannous to use it like a giant. Well-conducted games may give us the first without the second perhaps. " You further say," our objector continues, " that the spon- taneities of play should be watched as indications of natural -development, as they may be useful pedagogically, though not constituting in themselves actual preparation for the work of life. Is not play ' recreation ' as well as ' recapitulation ' ? " " You seem to object to play as degrading, do you wish to abolish it?" I take it that the overwhelming importance of play lies in the value it possesses as a brake. It is a truism that civilisa- tion demands more numerous and more rapid nervous adjust- ments, at least for large classes of the community. It does not seem that what we call the physical basis of mental life is properly sustained without intervals for physical recreation by activities which make little demand on the higher nervous centres. We are hardly awake to the national importance of play as recreation. But the aimless shrieking and horse- play of so many of the girls and boys in the asphalte play- grounds of our primary schools, veritably ' play ' as it is in a biological and psychological sense, is just the sort of play which is degrading, is just that sort of primitive survival which I hope to see diminish. Guilds of play, school-clubs, and kindred agencies are based on the view, not that natural play is divine most of those in close contact with the facts of human life know it is not but that artificial play may be invented which will satisfy the desire for movement and beauty without gratifying low tastes and sentiments. And the same justification is found in belief as in action. We cannot long maintain ourselves on the heights, we descend for rest to the lower slopes, keeping, if we can, out of the valleys beneath.