Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/606

602 stress and work. That it is producing anything remarkable, except in invention and the mechanic arts, is doubtful. The really great things of the world have been produced not with great effort, but with great ease. The magnificent productions of the age of Pericles in architecture, sculpture, painting and literature seem to have been more like the overflowing of a full vessel than like the laborious achievements of hard work. But the present age is the age of great effort, the age of work, and hence our growing demand for more relaxation and rest.

The educational application of this theory of play presents less difficulties than the older theories. It is not necessary that the child should live through and live out any series of savage stages. It is merely necessary that he should be kept active with the mental and physical equipment that he has, that work should not be too early imposed upon him and that his plays should be so organized and supervised that, while retaining the elementary form of his instinctive responses, they may be physically, morally and socially harmless. For instance, a boy, if he is a boy, must throw. It is just a question of whether he shall throw stones at a cat, at a street car, at little children or whether he shall throw a curved ball to the catcher. The latter is harmless, the former dangerous. Again, a boy's instinct of rivalry is very strong. He must do something daring, get ahead of some one, as those of his ancestors who survived did before him. If a proper playground is provided, all these things may be done without injury to society. Otherwise his instinct is expended in an effort "to steal on Casey's beat and get away with it." Again, at a certain age the dancing instinct is developed and the children must now be taught the graceful and healthful folk dances.

In our modern cities supervised play has become necessary for social order, for the reason that the old conditions of spontaneous, healthful play have been taken away. Says Luther Burbank quoted by Geo. E. Johnson:

As regards adults, the social applications of the theory are equally obvious. There must be large periods of relaxation from the high tension life of to-day. If they are not provided in the form of healthful and harmless sports, there will be irritability, abnormal fatigue and antisocial outbreaks. There will be tango-dancing crazes and auctionbridge crazes and there will be ever-increasing resort to the temporary harmonizing effect of alcohol, tobacco and coffee.

Even in the life of the family the harmonizing influence of games