736 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



last chapter with the following allusion : " Many years ago I met 

 with a quotation from a German author to the effect that the 

 aesthetic sentiments originate from the play-impulse. I do not 

 remember the name of the author ; and if any reasons were given 

 for this statement, or any inferences drawn from it, I can not 

 recall them. But the statement itself has remained with me, as 

 being one which, if not literally true, is yet the adumbration of a 

 truth." The author referred to is the poet Schiller, and the writ- 

 ing in which the idea cited by Spencer occurs is Schiller's Letters 

 on the .^Esthetic Education of Man. What Schiller is attempting 

 to explain is not the origin of the " sesthetic sentiments," but the 

 nature of man as an art-producing being. This nature, he thinks, 

 grows out of the union of two impulses : (1) The sense-impulse 

 (Stofftrieb), which determines that there shall be constant change, 

 that time shall have a content; and (2) the form-impulse (Form- 

 trieb), which determines that time shall be abolished, that there 

 shall be no change. From the union of these two impulses in man 

 results the play -impulse (Spieltrieb) , which tends to abolish time 

 in time, and to unify becoming with absolute being, change with 

 identity. But we must not expose ourselves too long in the rarefied 

 air of even a poet's metaphysics. Spencer, without knowing his 

 teacher, and kindling his torch with the stray spark of Schiller's 

 flash upon the clouds, has shed more light upon the origin of art 

 than the poet himself. 



"The activities we call play," he says, "are united with the 

 sesthetic activities, by the trait that neither subserve, in any 

 direct way, the processes conducive to life. . . . Inferior kinds of 

 animals have in common the trait, that all their forces are ex- 

 pended in fulfilling functions essential to the maintenance of life. 

 They are unceasingly occupied in searching for food, in escaping 

 from enemies, in forming places of shelter, and in making prepa- 

 rations for progeny. But, as we ascend to animals of high types, 

 having faculties more efficient and more numerous, we begin to 

 find that time and strength are not wholly absorbed in providing 

 for immediate needs. Better nutrition, gained by superiority, 

 occasionally yields a surplus of vigor. The appetites being satis- 

 fied, there is no craving which directs the overflowing energies to 

 the pursuit of more prey, or to the satisfaction of some pressing 

 want. The greater variety of faculty, commonly joined with this 

 greater efficiency of faculty, has a kindred result. When there 

 have been developed many powers adjusted to many requirements, 

 they can not all act at once ; now the circumstances call these 

 into exercise and now those ; and some of them occasionally re- 

 main unexercised for considerable periods. Thus it happens that, 

 in the more evolved creatures, there often recurs an energy some- 

 what in excess of immediate needs, and there comes also such 



