PSYCHICAL ASPECTS OF MUSCULAR EXERCISE. 799 



not exist, but because children vary so much — some are precocious, 

 others are slow. All that is attempted is to have years in which it is 

 possible to recognize certain great groups of activities. In this classi- 

 fication, it must be remembered that each group includes all the pre- 

 ceding. The individual loses nothing as he grows. Everything that 

 he has acquired remains to him as a joy and a recreation if it is in 

 the right relations. The baby will play with sand for hours, making 

 marks with his fingers, picking up a handful and letting it trickle 

 out. Such simple plays as these never lose their interest. I have 

 watched individuals sitting on the seashore playing with the sand for 

 an hour at a time; so that when I shall attempt to define the plays 

 of adolescents, let me not be understood as meaning that these are 

 the only plays of adolescents, for adolescents do all that the preced- 

 ing groups have done. That which I shall attempt to describe will be 

 the plays that the adolescents have that are not found to any par- 

 ticular extent before adolescence, and which may thus be called char- 

 acteristics of adolescence. 



The divisions that I have made are: (1) Babyhood, approxi- 

 mately from birth to three; (2) early childhood, three to seven; (3) 

 childhood, seven to twelve; (4) early adolescence, twelve to seven- 

 teen; (5) later adolescence, seventeen to twenty-three. 



It is evident by this time that I am using the word play in a 

 broad sense, including games, but not limited by games. I do not 

 care to discuss the whole subject of games, but am concerned with 

 those that involve muscular activity and co-ordination. 



How do babies play? They love to rattle paper, to take hold of 

 things, to muss paper up, to pick things up and drop them, watching 

 the result, to roll a ball, to push and pull things around with their 

 hands; they delight in playing with sand and dirt, and stones, and 

 bugs, toddling after the hens; they delight to splash water, and 

 many other such simple activities. They all seem to care for any- 

 thing involving accurate muscular co-ordination. 



During early childhood — three to seven — children enjoy build- 

 ing with blocks. At first the buildings are simple and regular — the 

 blocks stood up in rows more or less equidistant The idea of regu- 

 larity appears to be definite, but little idea of symmetry until the 

 latter part of this period, and then I suspect that it is the copying of 

 older children. Children enjoy swinging, are fond of climbing, will 

 climb low trees, will climb chairs, will climb banisters, experiment 

 with jumping from chairs, with jumping from steps. All our children 

 have gone through a stage of wishing to cut things. The attach- 

 ment for dolls comes in the latter part of this period among girls. 

 We started with the idea that, until puberty, boys' and girls' minds 

 were just alike except so far as they were trained differently by their 



