Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/826

802 are not during the earlier adolescent period; they correspond more to organized savage warfare—for instance, college football. There is a depth and intensity about it that older people can hardly realize, unless they have themselves been through it. It seems to be a real thing, and not merely a game. Wrestling, fencing, and boxing have their chief attraction during this period. The whole nervous and muscular apparatus having been fairly well constructed during later childhood and early adolescence, is now tested and knitted together with vigor and given endurance and staying power.

Comparing now the three major groups—early childhood, later childhood, and adolescence—it appears that the plays of early childhood are individualistic, noncompetitive, and for the accomplishment and observation of objective results. The plays of later childhood are individualistic, competitive, involve active muscular co-ordinations and sense judgments. The plays of adolescence are socialistic, demanding the heathen virtues of courage, endurance, self-control, bravery, loyalty, enthusiasm, and the savage occupations of hunting, fishing, swimming, rowing, sailing.

How do we account for this group of phenomena, this orderly, progressive, intense series of activities of children? There appear to be four theories: (1) That of Spencer. He says that play is the superfluous activity of the cells of the body; that it represents the expenditure of that force that is not demanded by either growth or by labor. This, it appears to me, is insufficient, because feeble, exhausted, or sick children play. Children will play often when the muscles involved are so nearly exhausted that they can hardly be made to contract, when there is evidently no superfluous energy present. This theory will not account for the definite, progressive character of the plays of childhood. (2) Professor Lazarus says that play is the aversion to idleness. The question is at once suggested, Why should we object to being idle? This, like the preceding, may be true, still it is insufficient to explain the facts. (3) Mr. Karl Gross, in an eloborateelaborate [sic]study of the plays of animals, advances the theory that plays are prophetic—that is, that the young rehearses the performances that it must do when full grown. He accounts for the strength of the play instinct by the fact that those animals that have played in this particular way, rehearsing the activities of adult life, have been better fitted to perform these actions during adult life, and have thus survived the others. The theory appears to me incomplete. In civilized man the plays of adolescents and children rehearse the activities of savage man, not of the adult civilized man. This theory would fail to account for the orderly progression of the plays throughout child life. It would not explain the enjoyment of the adult in play. It does not attempt to explain the reason why play is fun.