EDITORS PREFACE. yii 



65. Following up his kindly reference, I venture, with 

 his concurrence, to reprint as an Appendix to this trans- 

 lation a short article of my own on Organic Selection. 



The difficulty which I see to this conception of play 

 as a pure instinct is that which is sometimes urged also 

 against considering imitation an instinct — i. e., that it 

 has no definite motor co-ordinations, but has all the va- 

 riety which the different play-forms show. If the defi- 

 nite congenital plays are considered each for itself, then 

 we have a great many instincts, instead of a general play 

 instinct. But that will not do, for it is one of Professor 

 Groos' main contentions, in the chapter on The Psy- 

 chology of Animal Play, that they have a common gen- 

 eral character which distinguishes them from other 

 specialized instinctive actions. They are distinguished 

 as play actions, not simply as actions. This difficulty 

 really touches the kernel of the matter, and serves to 

 raise the question of the relation of imitation to play; 

 for imitation presents exactly the same conditions — a 

 general tendency to imitate, which is not exhausted in the 

 particular actions which are performed by the imitation. 

 I shall remark on the solution of it below, in speaking of 

 Professor Groos' psychology of play. It will be inter- 

 esting to see how he treats this problem in his promised 

 work on Die Spiele der Menschen, for the imitative ele- 

 ment is very marked in children's plays. In view of 

 this objection to the use of the term " instinct " for 

 play — ^^ impulse " possibly being better — I venture to 

 suggest that the theory which regards play as a native 

 tendency of the animal to practise certain special func- 

 tions, before they are really required of him, be called 

 the " practice theory '' of play. 



Other matters of interest in this biological part are 

 the gi-eat emphasis which Groos finds it necessary to 



