INSTINCT. 427 



of the most complicated kind are reared upon it. But 

 even in the midst of these habits we see the blind instinct 

 cropping out ; as, for example, in the fact that we feign a 

 shelter within a shelter, by backing up beds in rooms with 

 their heads against the wall, and never lying in them the 

 other way — just as dogs prefer to get under or upon some 

 piece of furniture to sleep, instead of lying in the middle 

 of the room. The first habitations were caves and leafy 

 grottoes, bettered by the hands ; and we see children to- 

 day, when playing in wild places, take the greatest delight 

 in discovering and appropriating such retreats and * play- 

 ing house ' there. 



Play. The impulse to play in special ways is certainly 

 instinctive. A boy can no more help running after another 

 boy who runs provokingly near him, than a kitten can help 

 running after a rolling ball. A child trying to get into its 

 own hand some object which it sees another child pick up, 

 and the latter trying to get away with the prize, are just as 

 much slaves of an automatic prompting as are two chickens 

 or fishes, of which one has taken a big morsel into its mouth 

 and decamps with it, while the other darts after in pursuit. 

 All simple active games are attempts to gain the excitement 

 yielded by certain primitive instincts, through feigning that 

 the occasions for their exercise are there. They involve 

 imitation, hunting, fighting, rivalry, acquisitiveness, and 

 construction, combined in various ways; their special rules 

 are habits, discovered by accident, selected by intelligence, 

 and propagated by tradition ; but unless they were founded 

 in automatic impulses, games would lose most of their zest. 

 The sexes differ somewhat in their play-impulses. As 

 Schneider says : 



"The little boy imitates soldiers, models clay into an oven, builds 

 houses, makes a wagon out of chairs, rides on horseback upon a stick, 

 drives nails with the hammer, harnesses his brethren and comrades 

 together and plays the stage-driver, or lets himself be captured as a 

 wild horse by some one else. The girl, on the contrary, plays with her 

 doll, washes and dresses it, strokes it, clasps and kisses it, puts it to 

 bed and tucks it in, sings it a cradle-song, or speaks with it as if it 

 were a living being. . . . This fact that a sexual difference exists in 

 the play-impulse, that a boy gets more pleasure from a horse and 



