THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 601 



preparation for life's serious duties, for the form of the latter is con- 

 stantly changing while the plays of children remain much the same from 

 year to year and century to century. Nor finally does he play because 

 it is necessary for his complete growth that he should pass through the 

 several stages of racial history. He plays because he is a child and to 

 the child's natural and active life we give the name play to distinguish 

 it from the life of conscious self-direction, of strain and effort and in- 

 hibition which evolution has imposed upon the adult human being. 



When we say that all of the child's activity takes the form of play, 

 the statement should be regarded as a general one and as such it is true. 

 As the term play is actually used there are certain minor classes of re- 

 sponses which are not included. The child's instinctive shrinking from 

 a large furry animal is as much a part of his original nature as his tend- 

 ency to run and jump and climb and wade. His responses in the tak- 

 ing of food, likewise, and in protecting himself by crying are original 

 inherited responses. But to crying and sucking and shrinking from ob- 

 jects of fear we do not give the name play, because, being of the im- 

 mediate life-serving kind, they bear a closer resemblance to those re- 

 sponses to which in later life we give the name work, and we reserve the 

 term play for that larger and characteristic class of activities which 

 are distinguished from the conscious self-directive life of the man. 

 The play reactions of children therefore belong to their original nature. 

 They are instinctive. Social heredity may account for the forms of 

 organization of many of the plays of children as well as the sham char- 

 acter which they assume when compared with their originally serious 

 form, but the elements of the great mass of the plays which are dearest 

 to the hearts of children are truly instinctive. 4 



Possibly the objection may be made that in this account of chil- 

 dren's play, our attention has been directed too much to the plays of 

 boys and that the plays of girls have been disregarded. An important 

 distinction arises here to which in this present writing only passing ref- 

 erence can be made. The life of stress and effort and self-direction of 

 which play is the antithesis is essentially masculine. Man represents 

 the centrifugal motive ; he stands for movement, change, variety, adap- 

 tation; for activity, tension and effort. Woman represents the centri- 

 petal motive; she stands for passivity, permanence, stability, repose, 

 relaxation, rest. She has greater measure and harmony. She has there- 

 fore less need of the release afforded by primitive forms of activity. 

 Girls, of course, play and their plays follow the same laws as those of 

 boys, but yet in less marked degree, while adult sports are for the most 

 part masculine sports. 



Just at present what we call civilization is tending in the direction 

 of the masculine motive — to variation, adaptation, change — to effort, 



4 Compare James's "Psychology," Vol. II., p. 429, note. 



VOL.. LXXXIV. — 41. 



