Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/401

 WORK AND PLAY 385

although the emotional tone of consciousness is not just the same in both instances in the performance of the immediate activities involved. If the young man could get food, clothing, and shelter ready to hand, he would put forth no effort to obtain them ; as it is, he is driven by necessity to exert himself to get them ; but he can be depended upon to go awooing without any other incentive than the pleasure of the thing itself.

Yet there is really not so much greater freedom in the latter than in the former case, as is illustrated in the instance where a youth is informed by the guardian of his fiancee that he must accumulate a competence before the wedding may take place. He gives himself now to hard labor, which is drudgery in itself, and which he would avoid if he could, just as he is willing to have his father or someone else provide him with food, cloth- ing, and shelter. In neither case do the intermediate activities, themeans, give pleasure; but it is the products of these activities that are desired. If certain activities bring valuable products directly, the activities themselves will be endowed with a certain amount of pleasure, and be undertaken in the spirit of play ; but if one's efforts are rewarded only at some remote period, they do not partake of any of the pleasurable feeling connected with the rewards, and so they are prosecuted in the spirit of work. A hungry man will set out for his boarding place with as much of spontaneity and joy as he will go awooing, because food is right at the end of the journey ; and so, if he could come into the presence of the one he loves without walking five miles of a night, or if he could gain her affections without going to great pains about his attire, it is certain he would give himself no unneces- sary trouble. The point is that it is the reward alone in both cases that keeps the attaining activities going; but in desk work this reward usually seems so distant that there is little pleasure in the performance of the drudgery leading thereto ; while in the matter of courtship the reward is gained, at least in part, upon the expenditure of comparatively little effort. If interest should be lost in the thing to be achieved, endeavor would cease in the one case as readily as in the other, showing that it is not the endeavor itself that gives the pleasure, but the end to be realized