300 THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 



same with a pebble or ball of yarn. Dogs that are vio- 

 lently excited at the opening of an umbrella or the 

 sight of an empty mouse-trap must experience emo- 

 tions similar to those of the child at play with his doll 

 or a man at a theatre or admiring a work of plastic art. 

 It is impossible to be certain how far the stimulus to 

 such play is purely sensuous and how much conscious- 

 ness of illusion is present. But it seems to be the gen- 

 eral opinion of scholars that there is less of uncon- 

 scious reflex movement in it than in a recognised illu- 

 sion play. To establish this would be to gain a very 

 important argument for the significance of conscious 

 illusion in the enjoyment of art; for it is clear that 

 a developmental force that was operative before the evo- 

 lution of man has a greater claim to be considered the 

 central cause of the gratification that art gives than any 

 number of forces that are not common to the lower 

 animals, however large their part in such gratification 

 may be." * 



But before going on we must inquire more particu- 

 larly what plays this conscious self-deception appears 

 in. Lange, in his fine work Die kiinstlerische Erzie- 

 hung, here distinguishes four classes of plays among chil- 

 dren — movement plays, sense plays, artistic plays, and 

 rational plays. Artistic play is the only one in which 

 conscious self-deception appears, and there it forms an 

 analogue to artistic creation and aesthetic enjoyment. 



The artistic plays of children are principally dra- 

 matic, the child personating its parents or others; even 

 lifeless objects may take part: the table will do for a 

 house, while the footstool is a dog, and so on. Other 

 forms, such as the epic play, where stories or pictures 



* K. Lange, an article in Die Aula, 1895, p. 89. 



