Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/600

596 shouting, gesticulating and throwing their hats into the air, because before them is enacted again the ancient, familiar scene.

Success in modern life does not depend upon swiftness of foot or swiftness of horse, yet our sports take the form of foot races and horse races. There was a time when swiftness of foot and swiftness of horse were vital. So in our sports these old scenes are reenacted. Few of us can read a vivid account of a horse race or chariot race without profound emotional disturbance, out of all proportion to the actual significance of these things in the life of to-day. In fact they have no significance whatever now. They belong to the past. So it is of hurdle jumping, hammer throwing, shot putting, trapeze performing, and all the events of the circus ring, the athletic track, the stadium or arena. They reenact ancient scenes and old forms of racial activity. The boy swinging on a trapeze or hanging by his toes from the limb of a tree is not practising the things he will have to do in later life, and this activity is of no value to him as "a practise and preparation for life," except so far as any physical activity contributes to his bodily development. A boy must be active, and activity is essential to his development, but the form of his activity is to a great extent determined anthropologically and his delight in it is directly proportional not to its future usefulness, but to its historic truthfulness.

The sports of the ancient Romans illustrate, just as ours do, this character of play. There is authority for the statement that 385,000 spectators were present in the Circus Maximus at one time. The spectacle that fascinated them was the age-old spectacle of man fighting with man in deadly combat, and man with beast, and beast with beast.

Such, then, are some of the facts illustrating the curious resemblance between the habits and pursuits of early man, on the one hand, and the plays of children and the sports of men, on the other. Is it possible to explain this resemblance and arrive at a satisfactory theory of play? An attempt has been made to show a kind of parallelism between the mental development of the child and the historical development of man and to include this parallelism under the so-called biological law of recapitulation. But this theory, sometimes called the recapitulation theory, encounters no less difficulties than the Spencer theory or the Groos theory. Even if the law of recapitulation were generally accepted by biologists, it would not explain the plays of children to refer them to it. There would still be only a resemblance—or at the most a parallelism. But more serious difficulties arise. This theory makes no attempt to explain the sports of adults and it is becoming increasingly evident that the plays of children and of men are to be explained on the same principle.