DEMONSTRATION PLAY SCHOOL—-HETHERINGTON, 685 
no matter what the powers used, the energy expended, or the duration 
of the effort, is play if it is internally impelled and satisfies the de- 
veloping life hungers and instincts of the age period. 
From the standpoint of the adult, or objectively considered, the 
activities of the child that are sustained and have a purpose or future 
aim are apt to be called work; but, obviously, this is an interpreta- 
tion of child life in adult terms. The adult, if he is an efficient social 
being, must work and he must recreate. No such situation exists 
normally in child life. The child gains his economic adjustment 
through the home. His play is both recreation and work and it is 
neither recreation or work; it is life. Before maturity his play 
activities are differentiated into the capacity for work and the need 
for recreation. The child’s play is not recreation as usually under- 
stood and we can not insist on that too strenuously. Play is the 
child’s chief business in life. In these internally impelled activities 
he lives and learns how to live. In them he should gain his primary 
development and life adjustment. 
Play is as broad as the child’s developing life. The activities 
frequently take forms that are not efficient from the adult or educa- 
tional standpoint; but to identify the child’s play with ‘‘fooling” or 
‘futility’ only, shows a twisted understanding of child nature that 
is a very subtle survival of medievalism in modern educational 
thought. This is exhibited in the shrinking from the idea of play 
as an educational force. 
There need be no quibbling about the fact that a high capacity 
for work can be developed, has been developed generally in the past 
through work, though the efficiency of the majority of individuals 
developed by this method alone can be questioned. But the essen- 
tial point to be recognized is that, all through childhood, play is 
superior to work as a developer of the nervous and mental powers 
used in work because of its emotional content. Moreover, the 
degree of development of the power for work depends upon the 
breadth and richness of the play experience. 
Play is more intense, varied, and of greater duration because of 
the sustaining power of enthusiasm which postpones the onset of 
fatigue and reduces the consciousness of effort which characterizes 
the volitional attention of work. Therefore, as power is a product 
of activity, play is a better developer of nervous energy and volitional 
attention than work. It is essentially the developer of enthusiasm, 
which is the very essence of play. 
Enthusiasm is expectancy: the emotional side of the instinct of 
attention, long drawn out or combined with the idea of an activity 
that will satisfy a hunger or developed desire. It is developed like 
any other capacity—through exercise in activities that feed the 
nervous and mental hungers and exercise the impulses characteristic 
