8o2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are not during the earlier adolescent period ; they correspond more to 

 organized savage warfare — for instance, college football. There is 

 a depth and intensity about it that older people can hardly realize, 

 unless they have themselves been through it. It seems to be a real 

 thing, and not merely a game. Wrestling, fencing, and boxing have 

 their chief attraction during this period. The whole nervous and 

 muscular apparatus having been fairly well constructed ^during later 

 childhood and early adolescence, is now tested and knitted together 

 with vigor and given endurance and staying power. 



Comparing now the three major groups— early childhood, later 

 childhood, and adolescence — it appears that the plays of early child- 

 hood are individualistic, noncompetitive, and for the accomplishment 

 and observation of objective results. The plays of later childhood 

 are individualistic, competitive, involve active muscular co-ordina- 

 tions and sense judgments. The plays of adolescence are socialistic, 

 demanding the heathen virtues of courage, endurance, self-control, 

 bravery, loyalty, enthusiasm, and the savage occupations of hunting, 

 fishing, swimming, rowing, sailing. 



How do we account for this group of phenomena, this orderly, 

 progressive, intense series of activities of children? There appear 

 to be four theories: (1) That of Spencer. He says that play is the 

 superfluous activity of the cells of the body; that it represents the 

 expenditure of that force that is not demanded by either growth or 

 by labor. This, it appears to me, is insufficient, because feeble, ex- 

 hausted, or sick children play. Children will play often when the 

 muscles involved are so nearly exhausted that they can hardly be 

 made to contract, when there is evidently no superfluous energy pres- 

 ent. This theory will not account for the definite, progressive char- 

 acter of the plays of childhood. (2) Professor Lazarus says that plaj 

 is the aversion to idleness. The question is at once suggested, "Wliy 

 should we object to being idle? This, like the preceding, may be 

 true, still it is insufficient to explain the facts. (3) Mr. Karl Gross, 

 in an eloborate study of the plays of animals, advances the theory that 

 plays are prophetic — that is, that the young rehearses the perform- 

 ances that it must do when full grown. He accounts for the strength 

 of the play instinct by the fact that those animals that have played 

 in this particular way, rehearsing the activities of adult life, have 

 been better fitted to perform these actions diiring adult life, and have 

 thus survived the others. The theory appears to me incomplete. In 

 civilized man the plays of adolescents and children rehearse the 

 activities of savage man, not of the adult civilized man. This theory 

 would fail to account for the orderly progression of the plays through- 

 out child life. It would not explain the enjoyment of the adult in 

 play. It does not attempt to explain the reason why play is fun. 



