16 THE PLAT OF ANIMALS. 



ness of life, but securing rather the end of recreation.* 

 Lazarus directs us, when we need restoration, to flee 

 from empty idleness to active recreation in play.f The 

 Jesuit Julius Caesar Bulengerus begins his book on the 

 games of the ancients with these words: " Neque homi- 

 nes neque bruta in perpetua corporis et animi conten- 

 tione esse possunt non magis quam fides in cithara aut 

 nervus in arcu. Ideo ludo egent. Ludunt inter se catuli 

 equulei, leunculi, ludunt in aquis pisces, ludunt homines 

 labore fracti, et aliquid remittunt, ut animos reficiant." X 

 But the most attractive exposition of the theory of recre- 

 ation is given in an old legend quoted by Guts Muths.* 

 John the Evangelist was once playing with a partridge, 

 which he stroked with his hand. A man came along, 

 in appearance a sportsman, and beheld the evangelist 

 with astonishment because he took pleasure in a little 

 creature which was of no account. " Art thou, then, 

 really the evangelist whom everybody reads and whose 

 fame has brought me here ? How does such vanity com- 

 port with thy reputation? " " Good friend," replied 

 the gentle John, " what is that I see in your hand? " 

 " A bow," answered the stranger. " And why do you 

 not have it always strung and ready for use? " " That 

 would not do. If I kept it strung it would grow lax, and 

 be good for nothing." " Then," said John, " do not 

 wonder at what you see me do." 



Here, then, there seems to be an irreconcilable con- 

 flict. The Schiller-Spencer theory allows the accumu- 

 lated surplus of energy to expend itself in play; the rec- 



* J. Schaller, Das Spiel und die Spiele, Weimar, 1861. 



f M. Lazarus, Ueber die Reize des Spiels, Berlin, 1883, p. 48 fl. 

 X De Ludis privatis ac domesticis Veterum, 1627, p. 1« 



* Guts Muths, loc. cit, 22 f. 



