THE PARLOR-GAME CURE. 



529 



food ; if they are conquered, it was poison ; but if it is a drawn 

 battle, the article is medicine. To a certain extent, this theory 

 certainly embraces truth; although it is equally certain that it 

 does not cover the whole ground of therapeutics and hygiene. 



Pastimes and games are justified to the moral sense by their 

 sanitary value. Cards, dominoes, and the backgammon-board are 

 as manifestly means of health as hair mattresses and ventilat- 

 ing-flues. The dice-box, as used in backgammon, is often more 

 valuable to an invalid than the pill-box. But the very fact that 

 games are thus valuable as medical agents, proves that they can 

 not be a wholesome article of diet ; they are not valuable enough 

 to be made a continual occupation ; they do not furnish sufficient 

 food to the mind. So far as that, we might apply the Liebig 

 theory to them. If a man were, for example, to take up chess 

 after the manner of Paul Morphy, master all the possible com- 

 binations so thoroughly as to be able to checkmate every adver- 

 sary, and that, with any pawn designated by lot, at the beginning 

 of the game, such a man would evidently have made more than a 

 pastime of chess. It would have been food for his mind ; just as 

 really food, although not so valuable, as Euclid's "Elements," 

 or Legendre's "Theory of Numbers." If, on the other hand, a 

 man, without Morphy's talent for chess, should become infatuated 

 with the ambition of gaining Morphy's skill, and should spend a 

 disproportionate amount of time playing, his right hand against 

 his left, then to him the game would be poison. Its sanitary use, 

 as a recreation, is evidently attained only when a man pursues it 

 just far enough to divert his mind completely from the thoughts 

 which were injuring him, and not far enough to make it in itself 

 an absorbing occupation. 



The late Prof. Peirce once said that no game, and no toy, ever 

 became permanently popular unless it involved some deep and 

 peculiar mathematical or mechanical principle. He asserted it as a 

 fact of observation, but we never heard him attempt to account for 

 it. The theory which we are ascribing to Liebig furnishes a partial 

 explanation. The presence of this deeper principle, underlying 

 the game, prevents it from being digestible by any except those of 

 strong power. To all others the game may be considered either as 

 a poison, when it is utterly beyond their reach to do anything 

 with it, or else it is a recreation of permanent sanitary value ; that 

 is, when the patient can acquire skill in it, but is not tempted to 

 try to fathom its mathematical principle. Pierce's meaning may 

 be illustrated by familiar examples. The child's top, his hoop, 

 his bandelor, his devil on two sticks, all involve the same funda- 

 mental doctrines of rotation on an instantaneous axis, which task 

 the mightiest powers of the geometer in their application to celes- 

 tial mechanics. Ball-playing, quoits, hurling of spears, throwing 



TOL. XXXIII. — 34 



