78o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



not work with perfect ease or cooperation. Its position appears to be 

 that of a helpless spectator of but a minute fraction of a huge amount 

 of automatic brain-work. The unconscious operations of the mind may 

 be likened to the innumerable waves that travel by night, unseen and 

 in silence, over the broad expanse of an ocean. Consciousness may 

 bear some analogy to the sheen and roar of the breakers, where a sin- 

 gle line of the waves is lashed into foam on the shores that obstruct 

 their course. — Nineteenth Century. 



HEALTH AXD EECKEATION. 



By Db. benjamin W. KICHAEDSON, F. E. S. 



THAT all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy is one of those 

 common sayings which we seem bound to accept, whether wc 

 like it or not. It is a truthful saying and an untruthful, a wise saying 

 and an unwise, according as one word in it is interpreted, and that 

 word \s, play. If play really means play in the strict sense of the term, 

 as it is defined for us in the dictionaries, viz., " as any exercise or series 

 of exercises intended for pleasure, amusement, or diversion, like bhnd- 

 man's-buff"; or as " sport, gambols, jest, not in earnest" — then truly 

 all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and Jill a dull girl. 



But in these days there is a difficulty in accepting the saying as 

 true, because ithe idea of play, especially when it is expressed by the 

 term " recreation," is not always represented in the definition I have 

 given above. We now often really transform play into work ; and our 

 minds are so constituted that what is one person's work is another per- 

 son's play. What a backwoodsmaji would call his horse-lika labor, a 

 foremost statesman may call his light of pleasure. How shall we define 

 it ? What is play or recreation ? 



Men diifer, I think, on the definition of work and play more than 

 on almost any other subject : difi"er in practice as much as in theory 

 in regard to it. I have' had the acquaintance, and I may say the friend- 

 ship, of a man who lives, it is said, for nothing but recreation, or 

 pleasure, or play. Such a man will rise at ten in the morning, and 

 after a leisurely, gossiping, paper-reading, luxurious breakfast will 

 stroll to the stables to look after the horses, of each one of which he is 

 very fond. He delights in horses. Thence he will away to the club, 

 will gossip there, read the reviews or the latest new novels, and regale 

 at luncheon. After luncheon he will play a rubber, winning or losing 

 several shillings — it may be pounds. He may then take a ride, or 

 drive, or walk in the park, and have a chat there ; or canter over to 

 Kew and look round the gardens, or attend a drum, or visit the Zo- 



