Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/479

ON FLOATING IDEAS AND THE IMAGINARY. 465 details, which in the main are left to our pleasure. Hence we may find here the merely optional, which we may oppose to the merely necessary, and may forget that neither of these in abstraction and by itself is a human end. In short to identify the barely necessary with that which matters and is to be taken in earnest, is in principle indefensible. You cannot in life make a hard division into separate spheres of work and play, for play in a word exists everywhere so far as I am able to play there. I will point out briefly first how in principle every human activity admits of play, and in the next place how more or less all plays l in a sense are serious pursuits. (i.) It is possible first to take a serious pursuit and to amuse myself with it. I may, that is, occupy myself with this activity just so far as it amuses me, and I may treat it as something which for me falls outside of what really matters. In comparison with other things the pursuit has no serious claim on me. I am not in earnest with it, I may do with it as I please, and in a word I may play with it. But to distinguish here between mere trifling on one side and on the other side interests, which are serious though limited, is often impossible. There are again interests with which, in the case of this or that man or of every man, no trifling is permissible. But, without attempting further explanation, it is safe to conclude that within limits it is possible and right to play at a serious pursuit. What however I here desire to insist on is this, that in principle every human activity, however serious and even sacred, admits of some play. Play is here the expression of certain conquest and of absolute mastery over detail. And this joyous aspect is wholly absent from work only where, as too often happens, the conditions are inhuman. The most serious aspects of human life admit of play in this sense. In religions, not onesided, there is an element of merry-making and sport, such as comes naturally with a sense of full security and triumph. And the morality which ignores the charm of sportive well-doing, has lost sight of the full ideal of human goodness. To trifle with a principle, to make it the sport of mere self-will, is forbidden. It is another thing to be filled with an implicit sense of relative value, and in the service of a higher principle to enjoy its triumph over the fixed detail and limits of human duties. This is a gracious element seldom absent from the highest wisdom and love. 1 This use of the plural is adopted solely for the reader's convenience and I hope on that ground may be excused.