Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/595

Rh Young Men's Christian Associations from devotional to hygienic and athletic religion; the renaissance of the gymnasium and the Olympic games; the increased interest in outdoor life of all kinds; the renewed devotion to outdoor games, like tennis, golf, baseball and football; the rapid extension of the play motive into almost every branch of education; the new vacation schools and school excursions; finally the supervised playgrounds, supervised folk dancing, supervised swimming, wading, tramping, gardening, singing and story telling. Even with very young children the Montessori system seeks to relieve the tension of the old task methods by making the child; More than twenty-four hundred regularly supervised playgrounds and recreation centers were maintained last year in 342 cities in this country. A brand new profession has appeared, that of play leaders, employing 6,318 professional workers.

The legislatures of some states have passed laws requiring every city of a certain size to vote on the proposition of maintaining playgrounds. New York City expended more than $15,000,000 on playgrounds previous to 1908. The city paid $1,811,000 for one playground having about three acres. Chicago spent $11,000,000 on playgrounds and field houses in two years. Formerly the boy could play on the street, in the back alley, in the back yard; now the alley and back yard have disappeared, the street is crowded with automobiles and the few remaining open spaces are given over to the lawn mower and keep-ofi-the-grass signs, while more and more the school has encroached on the boy's precious period of growth, filling nine of the twelve months of the year and carrying the dreaded examination even into his evenings.

For reasons which will be shown presently boys must play. Take away the opportunity for legitimate play, and the play instinct, the instinct of rivalry, of adventure, of initiation, will manifest itself in antisocial ways. Hence the juvenile court and the reform school. "Better playgrounds without schools," says one writer, "than schools without playgrounds."

Our purpose, however, in this article is not to consider the practical and sociological aspects of play, important and interesting as they are, but rather its psychological aspects, the object being to determine if possible what play is and why it is necessary. We shall have in view not children's play merely, but play in its wider sense and especially the play and sport of adults.

Herbert Spencer was the first writer to propose a theory of play. Spencer's theory, which came perhaps from a suggestion of the poet Schiller, was that play is due to the overflow of energy, superabundant energy. It expends itself, therefore, in activities having no further end than the activities themselves, while work is due to the attainment of some en