Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/482

468 F. H. BRADLEY: theme if I add some words on the supposed connexion of make-believe with play. Play has been held to contain essentially the presence of make-believe and illusion. It has been alleged in short to depend upon a sense of the imaginary in its contrast with the real. This doctrine to my mind is in such obvious collision with plain fact, that I think it better to begin by asking how it can come to be adopted. And there is (i.) the undoubted presence of make-believe in some playing. This feature, having been wrongly generalised and taken as essential, is then postulated in spite of appearance as existing everywhere. We have again (ii.) the so-called imitative actions iu young animals. These, or many of these, it is natural to call playing. And our minds are thus insensibly led to regard such actions as performed in imitation and with a conscious- ness of unreality. And (iii.) there is finally the more or less specified sense of limitation and restraint, which, we have seen, is essentially involved in playing. Hence, where the erroneous division of the world into imaginary and real is accepted, the former of these tends to be taken as that which in playing is limited by the latter. Thus we conclude that in play we essentially have a sense of the imaginary as opposed to matter of fact. We shall realise both the character and the extent of this mistake when we ask as to the nature of that restraint which, we agree, is present in play. But it is better first to illustrate briefly the collision of the above doctrine with fact. When two young dogs are chasing one another or biting, when boys let out of school behave in much the same manner, when a man aimlessly strikes at this or that with his stick, or falls into some other trifling activity where, as we say, he has nothing to do it seems obvious that make-believe here has no concern in the matter. And when we take part in the athletic pastimes of boyhood or manhood, and play at hockey, foot-ball or cricket, or again at such games as cards or chess how can it be maintained seriously that illusion is present always and essentially ? The opposite conclusion, to my mind at least, seems too clear for argument. When for example I play at cricket, what am I pretending to do other than the thing which I do ? An outsider doubtless can insist that everywhere we have a mimic battle of this or that kind, but the mimicry surely exists only in the mind of the outsider, and for my mind, as I play, has no existence at all. And if it is objected that in play we have a sense of limit, and that the restraint must come from a sense of the real as against the imaginary, that