172 THE CONTROL OF LIFE 



chological utility of play is to remain in the background 

 of our minds, for the essence of play is that it has no 

 conscious end beyond itself. It is next door to art. 

 But it is very important that the joy of pleasurable 

 activity should possess young minds, and become a 

 need, so that in grown-up hfe a man shall insist that 

 his days shall be a pleasure to him. 



But childhood is the time of schooling as well as of 

 playing, and we venture to contribute to the discussion 

 of this pre-eminently interesting subject a few consid- 

 erations from the biologist's point of view. We do 

 this in full awareness that education is one of those 

 problems the solution of which every man with ideas 

 beheves himself to possess. 



(1) A fundamental fact — so obvious that it tends to 

 be ignored — is that the child is a developing creature. 

 It is continuing what went on in the womb and at 

 the mother's breast; it is not merely growing, it is 

 developing. That is to say, it is becoming more com- 

 plex {e.g. in the inter-relations of its nerve-cells, whose 

 numbers however do not increase after birth) ; and it 

 is becoming more of a controlled unity. In other 

 words, besides growing, it is exhibiting self-differen- 

 tiation and self-integration. Now, a developing or- 

 ganism requires, of course, food and air, but it also 

 requires a succession of liberating stimuU. So it is 

 pre-eminently with the human child, pre-eminently 

 because so many steps in Man's evolution are regis- 

 tered outside himself in the social heritage. It is in 

 this external social heritage that we must look for 



