Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/23

 sense. The new-born beast and the new-born babe inherit more activity than is demanded for bare existence. Subject to the care of its elders, the infant is not called on for industrial activity, for its physical wants are supplied by others. While it is yet gaining its powers for utility, they are trained and expanded for pleasure. So the whelps of the lion play in the jungle, the fawns of the stag are gleeful in the glade, and lads and lassies are merry when they join in the dance.

A controversy has grown up in relation to those athletic plays which are here called sports, for we distinguish sports from another group of plays of which we are to treat hereafter as games. Sports are athletic activities, games are intellectual activities; sports develop from mimicry to rivalry, games develop from dependence on sorcery for success to dependence on skill for success. Now, if we understand the distinction between sports and games we are better prepared to understand the nature of sports themselves. Sports and games alike are activities, and the distinction which we draw between energy and activity has been set forth in the work to which reference has already been given; but an additional remark has now to be made.

Activity is that form of force which is controlled or directed by the mind, while energy is a form of force which is controlled or directed by another form of force, which is also energy. Energy involves action and passion as well as action and reaction. Action and passion are phenomena of force; action and reaction are phenomena of causation, action being cause and reaction being effect. In energy two or more bodies external to one another impinge upon one another and produce changes in one another. In activity one body has its path directed by the internal collision of its particles; activity is thus inherent only in animal bodies in which metabolism is controlled by the mind in such manner that the body itself may change its own path. The body itself has a degree of freedom to move to and fro in its hierarchal path by its own initiative. A stone cannot move from the hill to the valley