2 6o TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



and it embraces a considerable portion of our daily activity. It is most 

 perfectly typified in play and sport, but includes many other forms of 

 human interest and activity, such, for instance, as the enjoyment of 

 music, of the drama and of other forms of fine art, the reading of 

 fiction, and countless other kinds of amusement and entertainment not 

 commonly included under the terms play or sport. 



But it is in children's play and in adult sport that we find the 

 principles of relaxation best exhibited as they will be found presently 

 to bear upon our problem. The active life of the child is almost wholly 

 a life of play. The brain centers developed late in the history of the 

 race come to maturity late in the life of the child. Hence he rebels 

 instinctively against work, for it involves yet undeveloped centers, 

 those connected with spontaneous and sustained attention. Play is 

 self-developing and supplies its own interest. Furthermore, a study of 

 children's plays shows that they are largely reversionary in form, fol- 

 lowing the old racial activities of our remote ancestors. The boy, 

 therefore, runs, races, rolls, wrestles, wades, swims, climbs trees, shoots 

 with sling or with bow and arrow, goes hunting, fishing, canoeing, 

 camping, builds tree houses, cave houses, wigwams and pursues a hun- 

 dred occupations recalling the life of primitive man and far removed 

 from the serious life of modern man, the life of the farm, the shop, 

 the office, the factory, the bank or the schoolroom. The brain paths 

 involved in children's play are the old time-worn easy paths requiring 

 no new associations, no abstractions, no strong and sustained effort of 

 will or attention. 



In adult sport we have a still better illustration of the principles of 

 relaxation. If we recall those forms of sport which afford the most 

 perfect rest and relaxation, we shall see how true it is that they are of 

 a character to use the old racial brain paths and rest the higher and 

 newer centers. The tired teacher, lawyer, doctor, preacher or business 

 man, when his vacation comes, reverts to the habits of primitive man. 

 He takes his tent, rod, gun or canoe and goes to forest, lake or moun- 

 tain, wears more primitive clothes, sleeps on the ground and cooks 

 over a camp fire. Hunting, swimming, yachting, dancing, wrestling, 

 prize-fighting, horse racing — all these are illustrations of the rest af- 

 forded by primitive activities. As forms of relaxation they seem so 

 natural to us that often we do not realize how primitive they are and 

 how far removed from the real work-a-day world of modern life, the 

 world of mental concentration, of pen and ink and books, of clerks and 

 stenographers, of office and court room, of flats and congested cities, of 

 business and finance. A football game, which resembles the rough and 

 tumble physical contests of former days, brings together fifty thousand 

 wildly enthusiastic spectators, while an intercollegiate debate com- 

 mands at most only a handful of hearers with mild enthusiasm, so 

 great is the need of some form of relaxation that shall completely re- 

 lieve the tension of modern life. The gladiatorial exhibitions of old 



