Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/822

798 itself in terms of muscular activity, and that power of the will in its origin bears a relation to firmness of muscle, to power of muscular contraction.

In passing rapidly over these large subjects, I am aware that I can do nothing more than to suggest the larger outlines upon which we must work for years before securing satisfaction and final results. My immediate attempt is to put in these terms of physical training the conclusions and inferences that the modern psychology has already laid at our doors.

Your attention is particularly called to my next subject. I believe that we shall find in the play instinct a clew that shall lead us to a rational plan of physical education—a plan that will fit in as an integral part of the present-day educational movement.

6. The play instinct. By the play instinct, I mean that which prompts the young child or animal to its chief activities for the first part of its active life, as well as to those activities to which adults turn for recreation. Play is associated in the child's mind with fun, and with independent activities. The more the play is controlled and demanded of the child, the less is it play and the more is it work. It is the child's self-activity; it is the free operation of his own will or fancy; it may demand all the muscular and mental qualities of work, but it is not work so long as the child is free. The reactions of the individual vary much in free activity from what they do in enforced activity. My father used to remark upon the quick fatigue that would overtake me when laboring with a hoe, and the endurance that I had when operating with a baseball bat. This problem has been too much for most parents. The voluntary control of the will in the one case is an entirely different matter from the free play of both will and attention in the other. As soon as activities are done for profit they are no longer play, although they may be enjoyable. When an adult exercises for health, he is not playing unless there is the spontaneous enjoyment in it that is characteristic of play, and which makes it appear worth while for its own sake.

Let us ask first in regard to the facts of play. What are the plays of childhood and youth? Do they form a logical and coherent whole? Is there any orderly progression? If so, whence do they start, and to what do they lead? The facts which I shall give under these heads are drawn, first, from an observation of my own five children; second, from my own experience as a boy; third, from observation of the children of Springfield; fourth, from a study of the plays of English preparatory schools; fifth, from an examination of boys' books; sixth, reports of child study, in regard to infant activity.

For convenience, I shall divide the life of the child into periods. Hard-and-fast divisions can not be made, not only because they do