2 THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 



exuberant strength spends itself in aimless activity. In 

 the mere joy of existence, insects swarm in the sunshine, 

 and it is certainly not always the cry of want that we 

 hear in the melodious rhythm of bird-songs. There is 

 evidently freedom in these manifestations, but not free- 

 dom from all necessity, only from a definite external 

 necessity. The animal works when some want is the 

 motive for his activity, and plays when a superabun- 

 dance of energy forms this motive — when overflowing 

 life itself urges him to action.'' * I will not assert that 

 in his choice of examples from animal life Schiller has 

 here set forth particularly clear or imchallengeable 

 cases, but that what he had to say about them is ex- 

 pressed with perfect clearness — namely, that the ani- 

 mal is impelled to serious work by an external want, 

 but to play by his own superfluity of energy. Through 

 the one he restores his depleted powers; by means of 

 the other he gives vent to superfluous ones. 



Jean Paul and J. E. Beneke express themselves much 

 as Schiller does with reference to human play. " Play," 

 says Jean Paul in Levana (§.49), "is at first the ex- 

 pression of both mental and physical exuberance. Later, 

 when school discipline has subjected all the passions to 

 rule, the limbs alone give expression to the overflowing 

 life by running, leaping, and exercising generally." And 

 Beneke says, " The child directs his superfluous energy 

 chiefly to play," f and traces this tendency back to " con- 

 servation of original powers." X 



* See also Schiller's poem, Der spielende Knabe, first published 

 in 1800 in the first volume of poems: " Yet exuberant strength 

 makes its own fancied bounds." 



■}• Erziehungs- und Unterrichtslehre, Berlin, 1885, i, 181. 



X Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturvvissenschaft, Berlin, 

 1833, p. 24. 



