324 THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 



My deed was mine, remaining in my bosom : 

 Once suffered to escape from its safe corner 

 Within the heart, its nursery and birthplace, 

 Sent forth into the Foreign, it belongs 

 Forever to those sly, malicious powers 

 Whom never art of man conciliated." * 



" Stern is the on-look of necessity," says Wallenstein, 

 and " Life itself is stern/' cries Schiller in the pro- 

 logue to the same drama. But — " art is brighter and 

 more cheerful." The effect of play is brightness and 

 freedom — so much so that we may say, in real life there 

 is freedom only so long as serious activity is not yet 

 begun — that is, while the man still plays with con- 

 flicting motives. What do the advocates of indetermi- 

 nism mean by freedom? It is to them the ability to 

 choose among various motives; but this choice is noth- 

 ing but a play in which the man represents to himself 

 now this, now that motive as realized; it is a conscious 

 self -illusion. And only when he has indulged in it 

 does he feel, after the decision is made, that he has 

 acted freely. Wallenstein's monologue has a special 

 interest in this connection; for, since he found pleasure 

 in amusing himself with the mere thought of royalty 

 and delighted in the illusion, it is clear that for him 

 the feeling of freedom consisted in this play of motives. 

 The word for play in most languages signifies only a 

 pleasurable condition, but the old German word Spi- 

 lan means a light floating movement f — that is to say, 

 free activity — giving to the modern word Spielen a 

 primary significance which bears out our analysis. 

 Freed from the causal nexus of the world's events, play 



* From Coleridge's English version of The Death of Wallen- 

 stein. 



f M. Lazarus, Ueber die Reize des Spiels, Berlin, 1883, p. 19. 



