THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ANIMAL PLAY. 315 



is the theory of regular oscillation. Neither in intense 

 artistic enjoyment nor in genuine play does the con- 

 scious thought, " This is only a sham," present itself 

 to us. When I said above, in agreement with many 

 others, " I see through the deception, and yet give my- 

 self up to it," the actual working of consciousness was, 

 by the bluntness of logical expression, very imperfectly 

 described. For when self-observation assures me that I 

 have given myself up to the illusion, and yet there was no 

 alternation with reality, the logical conclusion arrived 

 at afterward must be that I consciously saw through 

 the sham while I was enjoying it. 



The influence proceeding from the real ego is, then, 

 something quite different from this. The fact that in 

 play the apparent does not alternate with the real does 

 not prove that we have a conscious knowledge of the 

 pretence. The solution of the problem seems to me to 

 lie in the simple fact that consciousness of the apparent 

 is from the outset, and, in spite of all similarity, quite 

 different from consciousness of the real; and I find 

 the final ground for this difference in nothing less than 

 the fact that we recognise ourselves as the cause of the 

 pretence.* This brings us again to the idea of joy in 

 being a cause ; the real I feels itself to be the originator 

 of the make-believe images and emotions which it calls 

 forth voluntarily, and this feeling of being a cause glides 

 over unconsciously to the world of illusion and gives to 

 it a quality not possessed by reality. Eeality oppresses 



* In my Einleitung in die Aesthetik (p. 82) I have emphasized 

 this, and have encountered the criticism of having expressed opin- 

 ions concerning the essence of the soul that are not susceptible of 

 proof. Here we are only concerned with the fact that we un- 

 doubtedly feel ourselves to be the cause ; whether we really are 

 so is indifferent for the purposes of a psychology of play. 



