Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/771

 THE GAMING INSTINCT 7 $7

homo sapiem. And as long as man was in a state of nature, fol- lowing his instincts, roving, fighting, hunting, wooing, contriving, he was happy, or, at least, his activities were spontaneous and not irksome. The law of mental interest seems very simple : whenever there is a problem relating to the welfare of the indi- vidual the interest is unflagging. Pleasure and pain are depend- ent on the attention, and when, in connection with conflict activities, the attention is strained in the effort to control a rapidly changing situation, the physiological changes which we feel as emotions are concomitantly violent and rapid. The prim- itive, motor type of life evidently continued for an immense stretch of time, and it was but as yesterday, especially in the white race, that population became dense or game exhausted, and man found himself obliged to adjust himself to changed conditions or perish. Instead of slaughtering the ox, he fed it, housed it in the winter, bred from it, reared the calf, yoked it to a plow, plowed the fields, sowed seeds, dug out the weeds, and gathered, threshed, and ground the grain. This was dis- agreeable, because the problematical and vicissitudinous element was eliminated or reduced to a minimum. Under the artificial system into which he was forced to obtain his food, sudden strains were not placed on the attention, emotional reactions did not follow, and the activities were habitual, dull, mechanical, irksome. This was labor. But while the labor itself was dis- agreeable, its products represented satisfactions, and the habits of the race adjusted themselves to what was from the standpoint of the emotions a bad situation. Not all social groups made this adjustment, and many groups which did not doubtless perished, either naturally or in collision with those which did, and of the races surviving the natural races are notoriously averse to work. Not all individuals of our own race have made the adjustment, either. Tramps and criminals represent a repudiation of the new arrangement, and the rich man's son often shows how superficial are the race habits of industry, failing when the pressure is with- drawn ; while the race in general, accepting labor as a fact, is nevertheless glad of the half-holiday or the evening, when in hunting or golfing, at the prize-fight or the theater, it may live