THE FESTAL DEVELOPMENT OF ART. 737 



rest, now of this faculty and now of that, as permits the bringing 

 of it up to a state of high efficiency by the repair which follows 

 waste. . . . Every one of the mental powers, then, being subject to 

 this law, that its organ when dormant for an interval longer than 

 ordinary becomes unusually ready to act — unusually ready to have 

 its correlative feelings aroused, giving an unusual readiness to 

 enter upon all the correlative activities ; it happens that a simula- 

 tion of those activities is easily fallen into, when circumstances 

 offer it, in place of the real activities. Hence play of all kinds — 

 hence this tendency to superfluous and useless exercise of faculties 

 that have been quiescent," for the mere pleasure that attends this 

 exercise. He goes on to say : " A cat, with claws and appended 

 muscles adjusted to daily action in catching prey, but now leading 

 a life that is but in a small degree predatory, has a craving to 

 exercise these parts ; and may be seen to satisfy the craving by 

 stretching out her legs, protruding her claws, and pulling at some 

 such surface as the covering of a chair or the bark of a tree. . . . 

 This useless activity of unused organs, which in such cases hardly 

 rises to what we call play, passes into play ordinarily so called 

 where there is a more manifest union of feeling with the action. 

 Play is equally an artificial exercise of powers which, in default 

 of their natural exercise, become so read} 7 " to discharge that they 

 relieve themselves by simulated actions in place of real actions. 

 For dogs and other predatory creatures show us unmistakably 

 that their play consists of mimic chase and mimic fighting — they 

 pursue one another, they try to overthrow one another, they bite 

 one another as much as they dare. And so with the kitten run- 

 ning after a cotton ball, making it roll and again catching it, 

 crouching as though in ambush and then leaping on it, we see 

 that the whole sport is a dramatizing of the pursuit of prey — an 

 ideal satisfaction for the destructive instincts in the absence of 

 real satisfaction for them." The plays of children carry these low 

 beginnings to a higher state. Spencer thinks that gratification 

 from a victory at chess is a substitute for ruder victories of an 

 earlier time. The banter of a playful conversation is also a mimic 

 battle, in which words take the place of coarser weapons. 



It would be absurd, of course, to pretend that such play is in 

 any sense fine art, but we may see in it the impulse that sets the 

 faculties in motion for the highest artistic productions. This we 

 shall presently undertake to illustrate in tracing the development 

 of the arts. As a preliminary to this, we may note the marks of 

 differentiation which distinguish the arts of pleasure from the 

 arts of life : 1. The practice of the useful arts is accompanied by 

 a sense of necessity, growing out of the constant feeling that the 

 process is a serious one. That of the arts of pleasure is attended 

 with a sense of freedom, resulting from the surcharge of energy 



VOL. XLII. 50 



