772 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



infectious matters, thus purifying our world, the substances their little 

 bodies may contain and their parasitic action when inoculated into 

 the bodies of higher living organisms by contact, inhalation, eating, 

 etc., render some kinds extremely dangerous as conveyers of the 

 various contagious diseases, hence to be strenuously avoided by strict 

 cleanliness and rigid hygienic measures of every kind. Such knowl- 

 edge has done much toward inducing modern purity, and has led to 

 our recently improved treatment of wounds and sores by the anti- 

 septic method, whereby many benefits result and great numbers of 

 lives are saved. 



THE SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF RECREATION.* 



By GEORGE J. ROMANES. 



IN all places of the civilized world, and in all classes of the civilized 

 community, the struggle for existence is now more keen than ever 

 it has been during the history of our race. Everywhere men, and 

 women, and children are living at a pressure positively frightful to 

 contemplate. Amid the swarming bustle of our smoke-smothered 

 towns, surrounded by their zone of poisoned trees, amid the whirling 

 roar of machinery, the scorching blast of furnaces, and in the tallow- 

 lighted blackness of our mines everywhere, over all the length and 

 breadth of this teeming land, men, and women, and children, in no 

 metaphor, but in cruel truth, are struggling for life. Even our smiling 

 landscapes support as the sons of their soil a new generation, to whom 

 the freedom of gladness is a tradition of the past, and on whose brows 

 is stamped, not only the print of honest work, but a new and sadding 

 mark the brand of sickening care. Or if we look to our universities 

 and schools, to our professional men and men of business, we see this 

 same fierce battle rage ruined health and shattered hopes, tearful 

 lives and early deaths being everywhere the bitter lot of millions who 

 toil, and strive, and love, and bleed their young hearts' blood in sor- 

 row. In such a world and at such a time, when more truly than ever 

 it may be said that the whole creation groans in pain and travail, I do 

 not know that for the purposes of health and happiness there is any 

 subject which it is more desirable that persons of all classes should 

 understand than the philosophical theory and the rational practice of 

 recreation. For recreation is the great relief from the pressure of life 

 the breathing-space in the daily struggle for existence, without which no 

 one of the combatants could long survive ; and therefore it becomes 

 of the first importance that the science and the philosophy of such 

 relief should be generally known. No doubt it is true that people will 



* Expanded from notes of a Lecture delivered before the National Health Society. 



