THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 595 



nuts and berries is out of all proportion to the value of them when gath- 

 ered. But nuts and berries were once of vital concern to our fathers. 



It is in baseball and football, however, that we best see the historical 

 significance of play. The daily paper is a good index of popular interest. 

 Here we shall often find perhaps seven, perhaps twenty columns devoted 

 to baseball, while no other single subject whether in politics, art, litera- 

 ture or science, aspires to two columns. How shall we explain the ab- 

 sorbing interest in baseball and football as well as in horse-racing and 

 prize-fighting ? 



In baseball we have a game combining three of the most deep-seated 

 racial instincts, the instinct to throw, to run and to strike. During un- 

 told periods of the life history of our race, survival has come to him 

 who could throw the straightest, run the swiftest and strike the hardest. 

 To throw something at something is almost as natural for a boy as to 

 breathe. Throwing, batting, running are no longer of any service in this 

 age of mind, but they were the conditions of survival in the distant past. 

 Baseball reinstates those ancient attitudes and brings a thrill of cher- 

 ished memories. Any one who has ever held a bat in hand and assumed 

 the expectant attitude of the batter knows the peculiar thrill which is ex- 

 plained only by recalling that his distant ancestors in just that attitude 

 beat down with a real club many an opposing foe, whether man or beast, 

 and those who held clubs in this position and struck hard and quickly 

 survived and transmitted this instinct. Dr. Gulick says : 



Baseball is a complex of elements all of which date back certainly to our 

 prehuman ancestors. The ability to throw a stone with accuracy and speed was 

 at one time a basal factor in the struggle for survival. The early man who could 

 seize a bough of a tree and strike with accuracy and great power was better 

 fitted to survive in the brutal struggles of those early days than the man not so 

 endowed. He could defend his family better, he was better fitted for killing 

 game, he was better fitted for overcoming his enemies. The ability to run and 

 dodge with speed and endurance was also a basal factor.* 



The instinct to throw, as the same author shows, belongs to boys only, 

 scarcely appearing in the case of girls. The awkward throw of girls, like 

 the left arm throw of boys, is well-known. The plays of girls reveal their 

 own set of instincts recalling the habits of primitive woman. "We are 

 the descendants of those men who could throw and those women who 

 loved children/' 



Football excites still greater enthusiasm than baseball because it re- 

 instates still more primitive forms of activity, for instance the face to 

 face opposition of two hostile forces, the rude physical shock of the heavy 

 opposing teams, the scrimmage-like, melee character of the collision, the 

 tackling and dodging and the lively chases for goal, as for cover. The 

 spectators at a great football game go wild and behave like children, 



2 Interest in Eelation to Muscular Exercise, ' ' by Luther Gulick, M.D., 

 American Phys. Ed. Eev., Vol. VII., 2. 



