

THE PLEASURE OF MOTION. 829 



particular in the choice of the end we shall seek ; we niay not 

 care whether that end is worth the trouble we are taking ; but, for 

 all that, we may not be willing to have our faculties at work for 

 nothing. We fix upon some end that we shall reach. If I take a 

 walk, I say that I am going here, or there, or will walk so many 

 miles. If I play a game of skill, I want to win, to make so many 

 points, to accomplish something ; I am not, then, seeking merely 

 the pleasure of acting, but I try to reach a result agreeable in 

 itself. Games of chance have no attraction if one is not interested 

 in the play. Sometimes, this interest is conferred by the hope of 

 a material or pecuniary profit ; most frequently in the pursuit of 

 the honor of having won. But, is working for glory disinter- 

 estedness ? Pascal's analysis was more complete. The hunter 

 loves to hunt, not only for the pleasure of walking in the fields in 

 pursuit of a hare, not only for the pleasure of bringing his game 

 home, but chiefly for the proud joy of exhibiting it. It may be 

 said that this is all vanity ; that the object is not worth the pains 

 it has cost. But that matters not to the argument. I do not say 

 that play is an affair of well-defined interest ; but that we are ex- 

 cited in it by considerations of interest. At the moment when I 

 am striving to arrive at that end, I do not measure its importance, 

 I do not think of the reasons that first started me ; there is the 

 goal I have proposed to myself, and I run for it. If the thought 

 occurred to me for an instant that this was all futile, only a pre- 

 text, my ardor would be cooled down at once. It is also easily 

 seen that, when we engage in any exercise or game, we by a men- 

 tal effort exaggerate the importance of the end sought. If we 

 play billiards with a strong adversary, we call it a match, and hire 

 a hall ; and the players please themselves by imagining that they 

 are staking their reputation on each carom-shot. A game of chess 

 becomes very dramatic, and the player's hand trembles when he 

 makes a decisive movement. When we start on a canoeing ex- 

 cursion, it pleases us to imagine for the moment that we are going 

 to travel into distant regions. Walking in the forest, we say that 

 we are exploring the country, and are going to make discoveries. 

 In this way we try to satisfy the spirit of adventure that the 

 usages of our too well regulated society have not wholly stifled. 

 It is, therefore, an essential quality of play that, to take pleasure 

 in it, we must mount the imagination, and fancy that what we are 

 doing on a small scale is done on a grand one ; must substitute 

 mentally, for the futile activity in which we desire to be absorbed, 

 some mode of superior and more fascinating activity. Tell me 

 that I am willfully fooling myself, if you please. Tell me even 

 that I have a secret consciousness that it is an illusion, and that I 

 am more than half a dupe of the pretext that I have given my- 

 self. It is nevertheless true that the pleasure of action for the 



