14: THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 



lire that animals almost universally take in movement. 

 One of them is found in the fact that the animal is 

 obliged to have a great capacity for movement in all 

 the tasks of its life^ for obtaining food, fleeing from its 

 enemies, etc., and accordingly is endowed by nature 

 with a corresjDondingly great feeling of the necessity for 

 movement. When there is no occasion to give free play 

 to this feeling, of necessity the confined impulses seek 

 to break through all restrictions, even without serious 

 motive, and so play arises, " Hence the movements of 

 captive animals, of the lion who walks up and down his 

 cage, of the canary bird that hops from perch to perch." 

 So the necessity for movement controls even an in- 

 active existence. For Souriau, too, there are inherited 

 instincts that lead to play when superfluous nervous 

 energy is present and the occasion for serious activity 

 wanting.* 



Such a conception as this, which does not need the 

 principle of imitation, seems to me to be much nearer 

 the truth. If we glance backward from this point of 

 our inquiry we perceive that the essential points of the 

 whole question have shifted considerably. At first the 

 idea of the overflow of energy stood predominantly in 

 the very centre of our mental horizon. But soon it ap- 

 peared that for a full estimate of play it was necessary 

 to consider something else. 'Now that we have found 

 this something else to be instinct, the principle of sur- 

 plus energy begins to lose some of its original impor- 

 tance. For it is now apparent that the real essence of 



* Gr. H. Schneider expresses a similar view. He, too, places in- 

 stinct more in the fore<2:round. bnt without recoo:nising the fact 

 that the chief sic:nificance of the Spencerian principle would thus 

 he imperilled. Der thicrische Wille, 1880, p. G8. Der raenschliche 

 Wille, 1882, p. 201 f. 



