72 UNIVERSITY OF COLOKADO STUDIES 



they are too familiar to need mention. It has also been pointed out 

 that the games of the Roman people adumbrated the principles of 

 their civilization. This, too, was the case among the Greeks.^ 



(III). The third form which play tends to assume is that of 

 the usual social adult occupations performed with pleasure and in the 

 spirit of mastery. 



All traditional forms of play are not play to those acting in 

 them. Under certain circumstances they may be matters of hard, 

 joyless work. Moreover, some forms of what is ordinarily called 

 work are often play. In short, play is characterized not by the orig- 

 inal form of activity, but by the attitude of the mind. Earnestness 

 and business-like attention to the matter in hand are characteristics 

 of play as well as of what is ordinarily called work. The spirit of 

 joyful mastery is the preeminent spirit of play. Thus regarded, 

 one's occupation or profession may be play. Joyless toil is the 

 true antithesis of play. The physicist, for example, who has his 

 whole heart and soul in his occupation, who delights in his work, 

 who spends his nights and days willingly in the solution of perplex- 

 ing problems, regards his work as play. He follows his imperious 

 interests, is a slave to his ruling inclinations and feels himself a joy- 

 ful master in a joyful subject. A truly religious man is he who can- 

 not help doing good for the very love of it. He has the Aristotelian 

 e|t9 rather than the Kantian conscience. The inexorable categorical 

 imperative has become an overmastering inclination. The Mosaic 

 Ten Commandments are more than fulfilled by that greatest of all 

 inclinations — love. The opposite of play is toil — the via dolorosa 

 with nothing but a cross in view. 



Viewed in this way we see that play and art are synonymous; 

 that is, when art is regarded from the subjective standpoint, the 

 standpoint of the doer and maker. Regarded from the subjective 

 standpoint art is doing the best one can under the highest motives 

 of which the doer is capable and with a spirit of joyful mastery. 

 Art is the feeling of best-doing in every way. The best may be a 

 daub, a blotch, a shapeless mass of clay, a discordant cry, but it is 



W. T . Harris, Psychologic Foundations of Education, pp. 283-286. 



