CHAPTER V. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ANIMAL PLAY. 



Although the mental accompaniments of play 

 have often been referred to in the preceding chapters, 

 that mention was but cursory, and it is necessary, in 

 summing up, to consider them more fully. First, then, 

 let us recall the position reached in the first two chap- 

 ters, where the play of young animals formed our prin- 

 cipal problem. We there said that if this should be ex- 

 plained satisfactorily, then adult play would not offer 

 any great difficulty, an assumption warranted by the fact 

 (treated of in the third chapter) that all genuine play is 

 at first youthful play. Even love play, which as we have 

 found can hardly be said to be genuine play, appears in 

 early youth, and when the word play is applied to the 

 acts of grown animals at all it is chiefly with reference 

 to those that are experimental — namely, to games of mo- 

 tion, which are really child's play furnishing practice for 

 the later exercise of important instincts. 



For adult animals which are already practised in 

 their plays, the Schiller-Spencer theory of surplus 

 energy may apply, though experience of the pleasurable- 

 ness of play gained in youth is of great importance too. 

 But in youthful play the biological significance of the 

 phenomenon — namely, that it relieves the brain from 

 the finely elaborated hereditary tracts and so furthers 



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