PLAY 61 



Play is a serious occupation with the child and adolescent. 

 There are moments, it is true, occurring with greater frequency the 

 nearer the adult stage is reached, in which there is a consciousness 

 of the simulation of adult activities; yet, on the whole, play is taken 

 in an objective and business-like way. It is not so much a pretense 

 or a preparation for life to them as it is life itself. The objects of 

 the play-world are as important to them as are our business aims. 

 They also Hve in a business world. If it were not so there would be 

 no place for them in the so-called serious world of their later adult 

 life. Shielded as they are from the incidence of natural selection, 

 they are nevertheless subject to a natural selection of their own, 

 typical of a struggle yet to come. Mistakes in this preparatory 

 school may be made, and yet a place be still left them for repentance. 



Undue influence and interference from the adult-world in this 

 serious play-world may often throw an air of unreality over it, caus- 

 ing the players to live in a world of simulation and engendering 

 confusion and disorder in the growing habits very detrimental in 

 after life. James' statement concerning egoism applies equally 

 to play: "Strong feeling about one's self tends to arrest the free asso- 

 ciation of one's objective ideas and motor processes." ^ Too much 

 reflection, too much interference, will induce egotistic preoccupation 

 and thus impede the social value of action. The nestling is not the 

 nightingale — why tell him so? "Play," says F. W. Klumpp, "is 

 earnest for the youth. The clever boy conducts his play with a zeal 

 and a devotion of his whole being, such as a man hardly devotes to 

 his most important business."^ 



Too rapid precipitation into adult activities of work and busi- 

 ness produces premature mental, moral and physical ossification. 

 The same is of course true in the ordinary school work, owing to the 

 tendency to enormous overpressure due to the accelerated advance of 



'James' Talks to Teachers on Psychology, p. 219. 



''In the preface to the 4th ed. of GutsMuths' "SpielenzurUebungund Erholungrdes Koerpers 

 und Geistes," quoted by Groos. Groos says: (Spiele der Thiere. p. 69) "That the char- 

 acteristic difference in the contrast between earnestness and play is the fact that in 

 play, instincts function without earnest stimulus." This, however, seems somewhat 

 defective, inasmuch as one of the terms to be defined enters into the definition just at 

 the point most needful of elucidation. Earnestness or serious occupation and play 

 may after all be characteristic of the same activity. The difference between play and 

 work, for such is the truer contrast, will be alluded to later. 



