Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/480

 466 F. H. BRADLEY : (ii.) There is no serious pursuit, we have seen, which in principle excludes play. And on the other hand play hardly can maintain complete severance from earnest. Mere a^muse- ments, we have seen, as general amusement are necessary for our welfare, and in most cases perhaps they are more than mere amusements. Plays may advance some social end, or may develop some individual faculty which in its effects or in itself is really valuable. They tend in other words, so far, to pass into useful performances, or into ac- complishments worth having because adding to the sum of human perfection. And again from another side plays are something more than mere playing. They are subject in each case to special restraint by the rule of the game. They are limited not only by a more or less specified world of earnest, but they become in various degrees defined in them- selves. And so far as in playing you must not trifle with the rule of the game, your playing has so far taken on a feature of earnest. Plays contain usually a large element of chance and caprice, but apart from that, as plays, they keep essentially the following character. They have no individual worth, their detail in itself does not matter, and one of them has, in itself as against the others, no value at all. You are therefore, so far, free to choose amongst them at your caprice. If one of them is your best way of playing, that one has special value for you. But, on the other side, its value is generic merely, and it has worth only as a means to an end. In this point plays differ from accomplishments, which have value so far as they each contribute individually to human perfection. Plays on the other hand, so far as mere plays, have no end but a general end which falls out- side of all taken individually. And where this principle is ignored, and where the rule of the game perhaps gains more than a conventional value, we are too familiar with the re- sult. Plays are perverted into the serious pursuits of life, the moral perspective is distorted or destroyed, and the effect on life is, according to circumstances, more or less injurious or even ruinous. The above distinction however, between mere plays and accomplishments, though clear in principle is often in practice not easy to maintain. Play is any activity in life so far as that is agreeable, is unconstrained, and is felt here and now not to matter. 1 1 If I play because I am compelled to play, that, so far, and while the sense of compulsion lasts, is not playing. And we must even say the same thing where I play because of a want to play. My playing, that is, to the extent to which, in general or in particular detail, it is felt to