LESSONS OF EVOLUTION 621 



an agreement that this is desirable, but because, machine- 

 like, we are compelled to do so ", he does not make 

 a good antithesis. It is a familiar fact that Man often 

 inhibits these organised impulses, and does so in reference to 

 ideals which mankind has built up in a manner almost as 

 far from the average animal's ways as these are from a 

 machine^s. When Le Dantec says, '' The fact of being con- 

 scious does not intervene in the slightest degree in directing 

 vital movements ", we think that he is departing from the 

 first canon of scientific work — accuracy. Often in man's 

 experience it is just the being conscious that makes all the 

 difference. 



It may be useful to give two or three examples to show 

 that proposals fundamentally biological need not be narrow 

 or materialistic. Many authorities on education have em- 

 phasised on various grounds the importance of Play, but 

 discussion passed to a firmer basis after the important work 

 of Groos on the play of animals, for he showed that play 

 was no mere safety-valve for superabundant energ\' and 

 spirits, no mere relaxation, no mere recapitulation, but that 

 it was a joyous apprenticeship to the business of life, a 

 time for replacing instinctive predispositions by learning 

 from experience, a time of elbow-room for variations, a 

 time for experimenting before criticisms prune, before casu- 

 alties induce caution, and before hard work brings on " life- 

 harming heaviness." 



Or again, it may be well for us, on our own behalf and 

 for our children, to ask whether we are making what we 

 might of the well-springs of joy in the world ; and whether 

 we have begun to know what we ought to know regarding 

 the Biology or Psycho-biology of Joy. Have we given atten- 

 tion, for instance, to the work of the famous physiologist 



