60 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



Play is instrumental biologically and sociologically in the elim- 

 ination of instinct and in the increase of social adaptability. Play 

 activities supervene upon and supplant instincts. Social activities 

 in the form of adult ancestral or present day occupations, modified 

 and socialized to fit youthful needs, are grafted on the instinctive im- 

 pulses. These forms of play produce much greater adjustability to 

 the environment and hence tend to survive in preference to the 

 instincts. The instincts are particular reactions to particular stimuli; 

 play organizes reactions which, in later life, may be attached to 

 numerous objects of ambition. Instincts are, for our practical pur- 

 poses, invariable. Play may be organized in countless forms to suit 

 the existing social requirements. Instincts are racial and hereditary 

 and reveal the past; play is acquired and educational and is prophetic 

 of the future. Thus the organism, instead of evolving by increase of 

 congenitally inherited adaptations (instincts), evolves much more 

 rapidly through the acquirement of a much greater number of adapta- 

 tions acquired through play. Civilization is thus made possible 

 through play. Freedom from the incidence of natural selection, as 

 provided for in youth and play, also allows disadvantageous varia- 

 tions arising in the individual's lifetime to drop out and of course 

 permits the increase of the advantageous ones. Thus the increase of 

 parental care during the ages has led to increase of natal weakness, 

 increase of plastic capital, abbreviation of the instincts into impulses, 

 substitution of play reactions for the instincts and thus to the gen- 

 eral result of increased adjustability. 



The social aim of play is, however, attained largely along the 

 lines determined by the vis a tergo of organic and social heredity. 

 Neither phylogeny nor ontogeny set the standards of youthful activ- 

 ities and attainments, yet they are often the guide-posts and furnish 

 the grooves and tracks along which progress takes its way to the 

 ideal. Weak as the human child is through the conditions incident to 

 the law of increase of plastic endowment, he is fashioned in his actions 

 by the instinct-impulses of his organic past and by the stimuli of socially 

 inherited forms of activity. Along these lines he will build according 

 to the architect's plan as laid down by the society in which he lives. 



