310 THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 



enjoyed the deception, we should be very near the psy- 

 chological conditions of conscious play. 



If, then, in conscious make-believe, in the young 

 dog, for example, that begs his mistress to reach out 

 her foot and then falls upon it with every sign of rage, 

 but never really biting it, the connection between the 

 pretended I and the real I underlying it is preserved in 

 spite of the division of consciousness, the important ques- 

 tion to us is concerning the nature of this connection. 

 We might suppose it to be a kind of oscillation from one 

 sphere to the other. Using a commonplace but excel- 

 lent illustration, it would be like the circus rider who 

 stands with legs wide apart on two galloping horses and 

 throws his balance from one to the other. Lange has ex- 

 pressed the same idea in regard, primarily, to artistic en- 

 joyment, but so as to include play-illusion also; in his 

 book on Kunstlerisehe Erziehung he speaks of the " oscil- 

 lation between appearance and reality," and regards it as 

 the very essence of aesthetic enjoyment. In a passage on 

 conscious self-deception he goes still further: "Artistic 

 enjoyment thus appears as a variable floating condition, 

 a free and conscious movement between appearance 

 and reality, between the serious and the playful, and 

 since these feelings can never coincide, but must al- 

 ways be at variance, we may adopt the figure of a pen- 

 dulum. The subject knows quite well, on the one 

 hand, that the ideas and feeling occupying him are 

 only make-believe, yet, on the other hand, he continues to 

 act as if they were serious and real. It is this con- 

 tinued play of emotion, this alternation of appearance 

 and reality, or reason and emotion, if you like, that 

 constitutes the essence of aesthetic enjoyment." * 



* Die bewusste Selbsttauschung, p. 22. 



