316 THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 



us with a sense of helplessness, while in the world of illu- 

 sion we feel free and independent. There is no need 

 to say, " This is not real/^ for every idea and feeling 

 that forms part of the illusion bears the stamp ipse 

 feci, and can not be confused with reality. Only when 

 the consciousness of being a cause leaves the obscured 

 real ego does such confusion take place, and then the 

 mind's condition ceases to be playful and becomes 

 pathological. 



Let us take an instance of the dangerous trifling with 

 the emotional nature, so common in our day, when a 

 nervous and excitable person arouses his emotions with- 

 out any real cause. Marie Baschkirtzew writes at the 

 age of thirteen years: " Can it be true? I find every- 

 thing good and beautiful, even tears and pain. I love 

 to weep, I love to despair, I love to be sad. I love life 

 in spite of all, I wish to live. I must be happy, and am 

 happy to be miserable. My body weeps and cries, but 

 something in me that is above me enjoys it all." Can 

 we suppose that the unhappy young girl had the clear 

 idea amid her storm of emotion, " These feelings 

 have no real cause," and that she created from this 

 knowledge this strange ecstasy of pain? Is it not 

 much more probable that this feeling was wanting dur- 

 ing the rush of emotion, and that what produced the 

 ecstasy was the feeling of pleasure in being a cause 

 that came over from the real I, the feeling that all this 

 agitation was not contrary to her will but produced by 

 herself; in other words, the feeling of being active and 

 not passive, the feeling of having produced a sublimated 

 kind of reality through her own psychic activity? 

 Only afterward comes the logical formulation, " My sor- 

 rows, my joys, and my cares have no existence" — an 

 id^a that is not present in the first gush of feeling, and 



