Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/603

Rh parts or centers of the brain. In sleep these higher mental processes enjoy almost complete suspension. But the exercise of these powers during the long hours of our waking day would result in speedy collapse. It is clear therefore that our daily activity must be made up quite largely of responses of the simpler type, which shall give exercise to our muscles and sense organs and invoke older and more elementary forms of psychosis, and at the same time allow the higher ones to rest. Such is relaxation in all its forms and of such consists almost wholly the life of the child. For the brain centers associated with the above-mentioned forms of mental activity are undeveloped in the child as they are in primitive man, so that we may say with considerable truth not that the child ought not to work, but that he can not work.

So we understand why adult sport resembles the activities of primitive man. The older, the more basal, the more primitive, so to speak, the brain centers used in our hours of relaxation, the more complete our rest and enjoyment. Just in proportion as the sport is primitive, so much greater is the sweet peace which it seems to bring to the troubled soul, simply because it involves more primitive brain tracts and affords greater release from the strenuous life. So while we find one hundred and fifty spectators at an inter-collegiate debate, we find a thousand at an automobile race, five thousand at a horse-race, twenty thousand at a great baseball game, fifty thousand at a great football game and 385,000 at a gladiatorial show. The nervous tracts which function in such activities as hunting and fishing and swimming and boating and camping and in football and baseball and golf and polo, in horse-racing and bull-fighting, are deep worn, pervious and easy. During countless centuries the nerve currents have flowed through these channels. Witnessing these rude contests, pictures of former ages, or taking part in these deep-seated, instinctive actions brings sweet rest and refreshment. "The racially old is seized by the individual with ease and joy."

The game of golf has a peculiar restorative power surpassing all medical or other therapeutic arts. We may be physically and mentally weary from a morning's work. Despite the strenuous physical exertion of an afternoon at golf, our fatigue is lessened, not increased. Fresh air does not explain it. It is a return to the primitive outdoor life. We stride over hill and through ravine; we stumble into ditches; we carry a club and strike viciously at the ball; we follow the ball with the eye and search for it in the grass as our forefathers searched for their arrows and missiles; we use our legs and our arms; we let the nerve currents course through the more ancient channels; we revel unconsciously in latent memories and old race habits and come back to our work rested, renewed and refreshed.

But you may say golf and bowling and baseball and