The Play of Man

Chapter 2: Playful Use of the Motor Apparatus

Karl Groos

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In this new section we by no means cut loose from what is sensory in a subjective sense, for of course we become conscious of our own movements only through the sensory paths of sight and what is collectively called touch, chiefly sensations of contact, and tendon and joint sensations. Yet from an objective standpoint we must enter upon the investigation of an entirely new province, where we shall be concerned not so much with the senses as with the manifold co-ordinated muscular movements of which our bodies are capable, and which are necessary or at least useful for the accomplishment of the tasks of life.

Since these movements are progressively acquired, the child's first efforts can hardly be said to be voluntary. Many that are instinctive and automatic must be repeated over and over before voluntary ones come, for will implies an image which is a memory picture of the movement to be made. Preyer thinks that no intentional movements are made before the end of the first quarter.[1] Vierordt, indeed, says that their development is gradually progressive. " All indications point to the arm as first becoming obedient to volition, and the sucking move-

(75) -ments, too, seem early to lose their reflex character. Then follow intentional movements of the head and neck and some groups of face muscles, and finally those of the lower limbs, which as late as the sixth month still move in the most haphazard manner."[2] Playful experiment then promotes this acquisition of control over the bodily movements by the will, and strengthens and renders it permanent after it has been acquired.

Playful movements naturally fall into two great subdivisions, namely, those belonging to the organs as such and those directed toward other objects in connection with such organs—a distinction already familiar to us in our study of the production of noises and tones. We will now consider the first of these divisions, the most important phenomenon of which is locomotion.

A. PLAYFUL MOVEMENT OF THE BODILY ORGANS

In other connections we have touched upon many movement plays, such as voice practice and the production of sounds by means of various bodily organs, experimentation with tactile stimuli, and watching moving objects. This sort of exercise often combines motor with sensor play, as has been frequently pointed out. Therefore, to avoid repetition, I will in this section, after a few preliminary remarks suggested by such bearings of the subject as I conceive to be essential, proceed at once to consider the most important and obvious of all movement-plays—namely, those connected with change of place.

In voice practice experiments with the larynx, tongue, lips, and breathing muscles are involved. When children whisper, for example, their enjoyment must be due as much to the lip movements as to the slight sounds produced. The fact that the blind deaf-mute Laura Bridgman[3] playfully indulged in the production of various sounds seems to confirm this, and the principle is applicable too to other noises. The child who claps his hands,

(76) splashes in the water, bangs on the table with his fist, or puffs out his cheeks to blow a horn; the grown man who shuffles his feet, drums on the table or window pane, the noisy dancer, and even the piano or violin player who indulges in movements now loud, now soft, now slow, now quick—all derive a considerable part of their pleasure in the sport from the motor discharge which is involved.

No exhaustive demonstration is needed to prove that the same conditions prevail in experimentation with touch stimuli and the observation of motion, which is so often connected with it. " In the first year," says Preyer, in speaking of the manifold and apparently aimless movements of the infant, " exercise of the muscles is the raison d'être of all this activity which appears to be aimless. An adult lying on his back could not repeat the commonest movements of a seven to twelve months child without extreme fatigue."[4] In arm movements the development of right-handedness is of especial interest. Formerly it was attributed to the mother's or nurse's method of carrying the child, to the greater weight of one side of the body, and similar pretexts; but Baldwin's investigations show that such extraneous influences have little to do with it, for he found on excluding such agencies a marked preference for the right hand in the seventh and eighth months, displayed first in strenuous grasping movements.[5] An entirely satisfactory explanation has not yet been offered, though Sticker's theory is perhaps most probable—namely, that the left brain hemisphere has a better blood supply than the right.[6] When there is some difficulty to overcome, some opportunity to display dexterity, there are heightened stimulus and greater directness in the movements of arms and hands. Older children delight to set themselves such tasks as, for instance, clasping the hands behind the back, so that one.

(77) arm crosses the shoulder, or placing the open hand on a table and raising the ring finger without any of the others, or laying the fingers over one another, etc. When such efforts are overlooked and directed by parents and teachers, we have the beginning of gymnastics, which remains a play so long as the subject enjoys it. Free-hand movements, exercises with dumb-bells and weights and the like, so far as the interest is not centred in the foreign body, all belong here. The intense desire for movement in many forms of mental disease should also be noted in this connection, since they have an indirect playful character, and by their very exaggeration are calculated to throw some light on the conduct of normal humanity. No psychic derangement shows this more clearly than does mania. The voice of such patients, says Kraepelin, " is usually high-pitched. . . . They are contented, feel inclined to all sorts of fun, and teasing, singing, and joking," yet all this is invariably followed by a sudden plunge into the contrary mood. "That grave symptom of derangement, strong propensity to movement seems to stand in the closest connection with liveliness of spirits. The patient fairly revels in emotion; he is uneasy, can not long lie or sit still, stirs about, skips, runs, dances. He gesticulates wildly, claps his hands, makes faces, scribbles and rubs on the ground, walls, and windows, beats and drums on the floor, strips off his clothes, tears them to ribbons, etc."[7] Since movement and its opposite are closely connected, the question arises whether the strange rigidity of body manifested in catalepsy is not referable to the same cause. There is certainly often a certain designedness about it. " When any attempt is made to change the position of the patient every muscle is found to be tense. If the heal isforced aside by pressure, it flies back to its former position when released. To support the head hardly requires more than the weight of a finger. We are best acquainted with the psychic organ of this stubborn resistance in the common cases where the patient responds contrarily to speech suggestions. He can be made to go forward by being

(78) ordered back, and vice versa, will take a seat when told not to, stand still when commanded to go on, etc."[8]

Finally, before going on to our principal subject, we should glance at the instinctive chewing motions which were mentioned among tactile plays. When a full-grown man going for a walk sticks a twig in his mouth and gnaws it the movements of his own jaw are of more interest to him than is the stick, except as it promotes sensations of contact. We take genuine pleasure in crunching toast and gnawing on a bone, and the unfortunate habit of biting the finger nails is one form of such play. Many smokers soon chew up the mouth pieces of their pipes and cigar holders, and others constantly bite pencil or penholder, and are unhappy when such indulgence is denied them. Betel-chewing, which, it is true, has the attraction of a narcotic, is indulged in, according to Von Bibra, by one hundred million human beings.[9] New-Zealanders use kauri, the resin of a certain tree. "In the northern part of Sweden resin obtained from the trunk of a pine tree is very generally chewed."[10] Americans who twenty-five years ago chewed prepared resin have adopted the chewing-gum habit. Material for it is brought chiefly from Mexico; in 1895 four million pounds of chicle gum was imported for this purpose. Jules Legras says of Russia: " Gnawing sunflower seeds is the favourite amusement of children and of the poorer classes. The streets are full of shops where the beloved grain is sold, and the common people stuff their pockets with it. They skilfully split open the husk with the front teeth, discard it, and mechanically chew the kernel. It is a national habit, inexplicable to an outsider, for the seeds are tasteless; but the jaws are kept busy, and their motion forms an accompaniment to the vague dreaming of the poor people." [11]

Turning now to our subject proper — namely, playful locomotion or change of place—we find the biological significance of play, the elaboration of certain imperfect

(79) instincts, brought out with marked distinctness. The child's first practice in the direction of future walking is found in the alternative kicking, which is so essential to muscular development.[12] Further progress is marked by raising the body and learning to sit, efforts marking the beginning of the struggle with weights which Souriau regards as the leading stimulus to movement-play. So long as this struggle to retain his equilibrium lasts, the child's behaviour betrays the direct intention of the play. Preyer says: "In his fourteenth week my sturdy boy easily made his first attempt to sit, having his back well propped. In his twenty-second week the child could raise himself in the effort to reach my face, but not till the thirty-ninth week could he sit alone, and still preferred a back. In his carriage it was necessary for him to hold on even in the fortieth and forty-first weeks. But when for a supreme moment he did manage to sit up unassisted he was evidently delighted, and made the greatest efforts to preserve his equilibrium." [13]

Creeping is an imperfect though genuine sort of locomotion preparatory to walking. "It is a treat," says Sigismund, " to watch a creeping child. The tiny creature, seated on the floor, longs for something beyond his reach; straining to get it, he loses his balance and falls over. In that position he still stretches his hand out, and notices that he is nearer the object of his desire, and that a few more such forward motions would attain it. Soon he becomes more active, sure, and courageous, and learns to maintain his centre of gravity on three supports while he lifts the fourth member for his next step forward, for at first the child raises but one limb at a time, though he soon learns to use the right hand and left foot together. I have never seen one so use the hand and foot on the same side. Sometimes the child crawls backward like a crab, even when there is nothing before him which lie wishes to shun."[14] Fouquières gives two beautiful an-

(80) -cient representations of creeping children, the first going toward some fruit which lies on a footstool, and the other gazing at a vase on the ground.[15]

Children who have a lively desire to roam before they are able to walk invent many expedients which afford them great satisfaction; for example, a little boy, Werner H—, has acquired remarkable skill in getting about by stiffening his arms as he stretches them down at his sides and swinging himself forward as if on crutches, as we sometimes see the unfortunates do who have had both legs amputated.

Learning to stand is an essential step preliminary to walking, and causes a child the liveliest satisfaction, giving him further control over his own body, and responding as it does to an inborn impulse. Sigismund places the first efforts in this direction in the eighteenth or twentieth week. " If the nurse holds up a child of this age on her lap, supporting it under the arms, it will dance, hop, and spring perpetually like a hooked fish, bound like a grasshopper, draw up his legs like a closed pocket knife, and twist his head and neck—in short, he will exhibit the same mercurial exuberance of motion which pleases us in young goats, lambs, and kittens. The child's movements, however, are naturally in the direction of the normal human attitude, and he will make desperate attempts to pull himself up by his nurse's dress or the edge of a chair or his bath tub, and when by the exertion of his utmost strength he succeeds he commonly breaks out into loud cries of joy."[16] The playful quality so clearly recognised here appears also in Preyer's remark that his boy in the fortieth week preferred to be exercised in standing rather than in sitting, although the former was more difficult.[17] This fact no doubt enhanced the pleas

(81) -ure. At the end of the first year or beginning of the second the child is usually far enough on to stand entirely alone. " He is amazed at his own daring, standing anxiously with feet wide apart, and at last letting himself down rather abruptly."[18]

Coming now to actual walking, it is uncertain whether the alternating kicks of the infant point to special instinctive impulses, but we may be sure that when a child pushes forward on being held with the feet touching the floor he feels the stirrings of instinct. " Champney's child," says Preyer, "was held upright for the first time at the end of the nineteenth week, so that his feet rested on the floor, and he was moved forward; his legs worked with regularity, and each step was taken accurately and without hesitation or wavering even when the feet were lifted too high. Only in this case was the alternation interrupted, and he made another effort to take the step with his feet in the air. Resting the body sideways on one foot seemed to transfer the stimulus to the other. These observations ground my belief that walking is an instinctive act."[19] This happens somewhat later if the child is not moved forward on being held up; thus Baldwin, whose experiment included no such motion, found that the " native walking reflex " suddenly appeared in the ninth month, while previous to that only a single alternation appeared, which might well be ascribed to chance.[20] Independent experimentation begins when, having drawn himself up by a chair, the child walks around it with the help of his hands, all the time resting on the seat, in which progress the achievement of a corner is as critical a movement as the rounding of a jutting crag in the path of a mountain climber. Soon after this arrives the crucial test—the terrible risk of the first step alone, which, when successfully accomplished, throws both parent and child into a transport of joy. The appreciative Sigismund gives a beautiful description of this too: " Forward steps having been practised while the hands cling to some fixed object, he is prepared to venture alone.

(82) This first step alone of a little child makes one involuntarily hold his breath at the sight. The small face reveals a conflict between the bold resolve to venture all and the cautious counsels of conservatism. Suddenly one little foot is shoved forward rather than lifted, and one hand at last stretched out as a balance. Sometimes that one step is all, and the little Icarus sinks down again. But often the child to whom the effort is particularly difficult makes, like a boy learning to skate or a man walking a rope, several steps in one direction, especially when the haven of safety is near at hand. Many children make no further attempts for weeks after the first; others, again, follow it up at once. Very gradually walking loses its anxious, doubtful character, and becomes an easy habit not requiring attention." Froebel has well described the pleasure in success which, together with the gratification of instinctive impulse, makes learning to walk such a satisfaction. " The fact is well established," he says, " that walking, and especially the first steps, give the child pleasure merely as a demonstration of his strength, although this is soon followed by other elements of enjoyment, such as the realization that it is means of arriving and of obtaining."[21] As it becomes mechanical, walking, of course, loses its playful character. Pleasure in simple locomotion is experienced by adults, as a rule, only when the discharge of their motor impulses has been hindered by a sedentary life, and even then motion is not the chief source of satisfaction. The regular rhythm of walking acts like a narcotic on an excited mind, which reacts to it unconsciously. I remember that Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkmann paced up and down like a sick wolf before the door of the wife from whom he was separated; and we find a fearful reminder of the restless walking back and forth of caged animals in the deep-worn footprints of the prisoner of Chillon. We find, though, for all ages games whose object is the conquest of some difficulty, great or small. We frequently see small dogs keep one leg up in the air without any apparent reason and run along on three, and in the same way children try all

(83) sorts of experiments in walking. Now one of them is lame in one foot, now one small leg is stiff, now he drags his feet, now walks with a jerk or on tiptoe. Many of these movements are turned to account in elementary gymnastics, and those pathological subjects whose mania takes a playful turn show quite similar peculiarities in walking.[22] Almost as soon as the child has learned to preserve his equilibrium in ordinary walking he proceeds to complicate the problem by trying to walk on curbstones, in a rut, on a beam, on a balustrade or narrow wall. Unusual facility in these leads on to rope walking, and afterward turns out to be of great service to the mountain climber on narrow ridges and snow-covered ledges. A famous architect was so foolhardy as to walk round the narrow leads of the Königstuhl tower in Heidelberg, and it is recorded of the ancient Norse king Olav Tryggvason that he possessed the accomplishment, among others, of being able to run across the oars of a boat while the men were rowing. Another form of selfimposed difficulty and consequent conversion of locomotion into play is the attempt to step on all the cracks in the pavement or floor or on certain figures in a carpet. Something of this kind must have led to the game of Paradieshiipfen in Germany, hop-scotch in England, la Marelle in France, in which certain spaces are marked out in the sand or on a floor, on whose outlines the foot must not be set.

Running games will form our next subject, and we find that the child's earliest efforts for locomotion are as much like running as walking. His first steps alone are, it is true, most hesitatingly made, but the nearer the goal, especially if it happens to be his mother kneeling with outstretched arms, the more rapid are his movements. Gradually the distinction between running and walking becomes more marked. For an example of genuine practice for a quick run Preyer's observations may again be cited. He says that on the four hundred and fifty-ninth day the boy stopped short several times in his rapid course and stamped. In his seventy-seventh week this child ran

(84) nineteen times without stopping around a large table, calling out "mama," and "bwa, bwa, bwa,"[23] the while. This simple running soon loses its charm, and is not much used later in play until it is transformed into a contest and acquires a new and higher meaning, of which we shall speak presently. Yet there are many running games whose attraction consists in the difficulties to be overcome, and very rapid running is a delight in itself, throwing us into a sort of transport and exciting in us "je ne sais quelle idée d'infini, de désir sans mesure, de vie surabondante et folle, je ne sais quel dedain de l'individualité quel besoin de se sentir aller sans se retenir, de se perdre dans le tout." [24]

Running down a smooth slope is a diversion which easily tempts even grown people, and boys at least find something like it in their game of snapping the whip, in which game a chain is made with the strongest boy in front. He has the task of moving the whole line in curves, so that the end ones are obliged to run in dizzy haste. In both cases natural forces, coming to the aid of the individual's own efforts, add to the enjoyment. Overcoming difficulties is prominent in the Hellenic pitulizein, which it seems consisted in running on the tips of the toes, as well as in the equally ancient ekpleqrixein, which was a peculiar varied running, without curves, in a straight line back and forth, the line growing shorter and shorter till a central point was reached, where, as only one step remained, the runner came to a standstill.[25]

Hopping and skipping are also to be classed with running plays; the body is suspended in the air for an instant in all these movements, though in hopping and skipping the motion is more vertical. They belong in the same category with the vagaries of locomotion which I have pointed out, and any lively child finds it hard to dispense with them when out for a walk, just as lambs and kids do. In the ordinary skip one foot at a time

((85) comes with a slight shoving motion on the ground and gives us the beginning of a galop and the principle of the waltz, while hopping forms the foundation for the polka. This hop on one foot is utilized in many plays, such as the hopscotch already mentioned, and in chasing and fighting games, like "Cock Fight" (German Hahnenkampf ), "Fox in his Hole," etc. In Greece the askwliazeinwas a popular game, and Grasberger says that their hopping was the same as ours, and in some games he who accomplished the task with the fewest hops won the prize. In a catching game the contestants hopped on a circular line and attempted to touch one another with the free foot. Finally, the drollest and most popular form of the game, which never failed to excite laughter in all beholders, was the genuine Askoliasmos. A skin well oiled on the outside and filled with air was stepped on by the player, who attempted to stand on it while he went through various dancing and hopping motions. The favourite circus trick of running on a rolling cannon ball is a modern form of this.

Children begin to jump by leaping downward. Before the little experimentor has halfway learned to go down steps he likes to reach the ground by a jump from the last one, at first a difficult enough exploit. But soon this palls, and something harder is at once undertaken, just as the habitual drunkard attains to stronger and stronger potations. The three-year-old can take two or three steps or boldly leap from a chair on which he has laboriously clambered with this intent. When some large stone pillars intended for a garden gate lay in the street before my house all the children in the neighbourhood collected to enjoy the pleasure of jumping off of them. Psychologically this pleasure is derived not merely from the agreeable flying motion, but from the stimulus of difficulty to be overcome and a feeling of pride in encountering risks. Chamberlain tells of two small Americans who had in their familiar speech a word for "the feeling you have just before you jump, don't you know, when you mean to jump and want to do it and are just a little bit afraid to do it," and another for "the way you feel when

((86) you have just jumped and are awfully proud of it.[26] Perhaps the liveliest feeling of pleasure is caused by the leap into water, because the soft, yielding, and yet resisting element furnishes an unusually long trajectory. Many South Sea islanders have cultivated this art to an astonishing degree. The pleasure of snowshoeing, too, consists chiefly in the circumstance that the path ends suddenly in an abrupt slope, over which the skilful sportsman flies in a tremendous leap amid a whir of soft snow." To see," says Nansen in his book on Greenland, " how the practised runner makes his leap into the air is one of the finest spectacles in the world. To see him whizzing boldly down the mountain, collect himself in a few steps before the spring, pause and take position, and then like a sea gull glide through the air, striking the ground at a distance of twenty to twenty-five metres immersed in a cloud of flying snow—all this sends a thrill of sympathetic pleasure through one's frame." Later, children learn high and long-distance jumps, the doorstep, a tiny stream and narrow ditch affording opportunity for the first practice, and an older boy leaps gaily over a low hedge, a wide brook, or his comrade's back in leap-frog. The element of danger exists here and some combativeness, as though it were a sort of conquest of the object; these features are especially prominent when the vault is made over a blazing fire, as in the custom with some mountaineers' games. It is first heard of in the Palilia, a herdsman's game of ancient Rome, commemorative of the founding of the city, and the people of the Nicobar Islands believe that leaping through fire is a sure cure for colds, fevers, etc.[27] The salto mortale marked the highest degree of difficulty and danger—a Greek vase shows it as a somersault in the midst of the high jump. Norwegian youths can spring up so high as to touch the ceiling with one foot and agilely regain their upright position. The Greeks used weights of stone or lead, which they swung violently to intensify the force of the

((87) leap, the springboard being apparently unknown to them. Grasberger regards the statement that Phayllos of Crete could cover from fifty to fifty-five feet [28] as well authenticated, but it was certainly a prodigious leap. Similar incredible feats are reported of the ancient Germans, one being that of the Viking Halfdan, who jumped over a gorge thirty yards wide.[29] From this is but a step to the world-famed contest between Brunhilde and Gunther, in which Brunhilde hurled a mighty stone and then leaped after it as far as or farther than the stone went, and Siegfried performed the same feat, carrying Gunther with him.

Climbing is probably the outcome of a special instinct. The striking fact that a newborn infant is at once able to cling with his hands certainly points to this. It has been shown by Robinson that infants may cling fast enough to a stick to be lifted from the ground and held suspended in midair.

The first attempts at actual climbing occur in the second year in conjunction with creeping, and are usually efforts to go upstairs. Young animals whose future life demands skill in climbing also manifest this upward tendency. Where Lenz says that the two-weeks-old kid enjoys neckbreaking adventures and makes remarkable leaps, that he always wants to go upon piles of wood or stone, on walls and rocks, and that climbing upstairs is his chief delight,[30] he gives at the same time a faithful picture of dawning human impulses. Little George K-, a year and a half old, made his way in an unguarded moment from the garden to the third story of his father's house. Numberless accidents have resulted from the climbing upon chairs and tables, which is so indefatigably persisted in, and there are few plays which afford so much pleasure to older children as climbing trees. It is probable that, in spite of the danger of the situation, there is an instinctive feeling of security and comfort when they are cosily settled among the branches. We naturally attribute this to the habits of their progenitors, but a simpler explana-

((88) -tion of their enjoyment of the situation may be that their elders can not get to them. That girls gladly participate in this supposedly masculine indulgence is noteworthy. Marlitt and Mrs, Hungerford give amusing instances of trying situations in which older girls have been placed through this propensity. The tall and glossy beech tree, with all sorts of beauties luring one to its topmost branches, presents special difficulties to adventurers. Climbing steep cliffs, too, is a favourite pastime; one of the pleasantest recollections of my own youth is of climbing a wooded slope in the neighbourhood of St. Blasien in the Black Forest, where I spent half a day with two other children building a moss but on an almost inaccessible crag. The modern fad of making foolhardy excursions to the highest peaks is too familiar to need enlarging on. It clearly shows that the most difficult movement plays are combative. Th. Wundt, the famous climber, is quite right when he says in his book on the Jungfrau and the Bernese Oberland that the mountain climber "takes Nature by storm; he does not expect that she will present a smiling aspect; he measures strength with her; he seeks a contest which will try him to the uttermost, and the longing for adventure is much stronger than any mere passive enjoyment." We find traces of this same spirit in old German records, as witness thus: King Olaf Tryggvason, to prove his prowess, climbed the Smalsarhorn, hitherto regarded as unscalable, and fixed his shield to its summit.[31]

With only a passing mention of swimming movements, in which the South Sea Islanders excel, I turn at once to the dance, or what may be called the artistic form of locomotion, confining myself, however, strictly to those forms of it which have to do with pure movement-play. We must, I think, assume that elementary ideas of dancing are present in childhood, but the developed art belongs to adults. Besides the walking, running, hopping, and skipping of which we have spoken, the child makes use of every imaginable turn and attitude of the head, trunk, and limbs, and a careful study of the various gym-

((89) -mastic motions of all times and peoples could hardly reveal greater variety than is found among these little ones. certain rhythm, too, is noticeable in their ordinary hopping and skipping, but the essential feature of the dance, the regulation of bodily movement by measured music, must be acquired. Preyer's statement that his child in its twenty-fourth month danced in time with music,[32] it seems to me, is an exception to the rule, for among the large number of small children whom I have seen dancing to music I can not recall a single one who kept time regularly and with assurance without some teaching and example. I myself learned the polka step, moving forward in a straight line, when I was a ten-year-old boy, and I can remember feeling that it was something new and peculiar, and that many of my comrades had great difficulty in achieving it. I am told by a woman teacher that she attempted to teach some little girls between five and eight years old to walk in time to a march played on the piano, and that not a single one of them could do it successfully on the first trial. Yet, on the other hand, it is certain that children learn dancing very quickly through imitation, especially among savages. It is amazing to see with what assurance these little ones can participate in the complicated dances of their elders. I shall return to this in speaking of imitative plays. The ring dances of European children, which we shall shortly refer to under social plays, are derived from mediaeval and ancient dances of adults.

To find the sources of pleasure in dancing we must go back to the common ground of satisfaction in obeying the impulse for motion, yet it is not easy to assign a general explanation for the peculiar charm of rhythmical movement. Spencer holds that passionate exeitoment naturally manifests itself in rhythmic repetition; while Minor, on the contrary, sees in it the expression of a prudential instinct to restrain the fury of passionate feeling.[33] As Schiller, too, says

((90)

" Es ist des Wohllauts mächtige Gottheit,
Die zum geselligen Tanz ordnet den tobenden Sprung,
Die der Nemesis Gleich, an des Rhythmus goldenem
Zügel Lenkt die brausende Lust and die verwilderte zälunt.'' [34]

This view is quite plausible when applied to the social effect of dancing, as Grosse has pointed out. Rhythm does subdue and order " riotous lust," and afford a harmless outlet to the general need for some expression of it. Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that its effect is always subduing, since, as a matter of fact, it often leads to the wildest tumult. " Oh, thou bold gamester," an old song runs, " Make for us a long row, Hip, hip, hurrah! how he can go! Heart, lungs, and liver he will overthrow." [35]

Spencer's remark makes it clear, from the other point of view, that rhythm is a most suitable instrument for the expression of passionate emotion, be it sad or joyful, but fails to explain why it is in itself intensely exciting and pleasurably so. Grosse justly says of Spencer's view: "According to this theory the rhythm of dancing movements seems to be only a sharply and strongly intensified form of locomotion. It does not at all explain the pleasurable quality of rhythm, and if we are unwilling to accept description in lieu of explanation we can only regard this statement of fact as introductory to further investigation."

Since Darwin's theory, mentioned above, has as yet found little substantial proof, the intoxicating effects of rhythmic motion must find some other explanation here. Such movements are employed among most peoples as a means of producing ecstatic conditions. Selenkas gives a simple instance from Borneo: " The candidate [for the office of doctor] was led before the Manangs as they squatted on the ground. The Dekan, or spokesman, addressed him, and, rising, anointed his forehead with oil and ordered him to go around the ring bearing a lance

((91) to which was hung a medicine bag. The Dekan followed him at a trot, and their speed was constantly increased as the accompanying song of the others grew louder, until at last the novitiate, gasping and stumbling as if hypnotized, broke down." [36]

Here we have in elementary form the kind of intoxication which is so fruitful in the production of religious ecstasy as it is indulged in by many Christian sects, notably the American Puritans in their rolling exercise. Numerous descriptions, however, show that some dance movements may produce the same effect; indeed, some investigators have been led to the belief that all dancing was originally religious, but this view is as one-sided as is the attempt to refer dancing exclusively to courtship. It is safer to regard it rather as an exciting movementplay which possesses, in common with other narcotics, the magic power of abstracting us from commonplace existence and transporting us to a self-created world of dreams. When accompanied by special influences, which relate to fighting or love, the agitation produced is sufficient to stir the soul to its depths; but even without these associations the intoxicating power of movement is apparent, its simplest effects being a kind of anaesthesia, relaxation of all tension, unconsciousness of fatigue, and the illusion of being free from bodily weight, like a spirit floating about in space. As Schiller says, " Befreit von der Schwere des Leibes." This illusion, in itself productive of great enjoyment, explains our pleasure in such dances as we are considering. Much has been said in criticism of the modern round dance. Apart from sexual considerations, to which, after all, I do not attach much weight, present-day dancing, is said to lack the social effect of mass plays and the stimulus of mimic dances. But if we look upon it as a simple movementplay, and consider it more from the standpoint of the dancer than of the spectator, that criticism loses its force. The slower time of old-fashioned waltzing was certainly more effective, and made a much more dignified spectacle, but from the dancer's point of view it was a distinct

((92) advance when the tempo was quickened, for the present method plunges the dancing pair more surely and quickly into the delicious tumult and madness of motion.[37]

Since it would take too long even to glance at all the gymnastic dances of times gone by, it will serve our purpose to point out those which were controlled by rhythm. The wild leaping of mediaeval ring dancing, where it is said that even the ladies jumped a distance of six feet, and flew through the air like birds; the Spartan bibasiV, kept up until exhaustion ensued; the forward, sideward, and backward springing, and the measured tramping of the Australian corroborris; the squatting and kneeling of the Nicobar Islanders; bowing the body, swinging the arms, and nodding the head in the Dajak war dance; the clapping and "Haxenschlagen " of Europeans—all these are typical phenomena. Sometimes, in the midst of the general agitation of the body, one part will remain rigid, as in this instance, described by Man: " The dancer bent his back and threw his whole weight on one leg, whose knee was crooked; the hands were stretched out before his breast, one thumb held between the other thumb and forefinger while the other fingers were strained forward. In this position the dancer turned round, hopping forward on the suporting leg, and with every hop stamping on the floor with the free foot.[38] Similar spreading out of the fingers is mentioned in Selenkas's picture of a Malay woman's dancing in Sumatra,[39] and I saw a comic European dancer hold his arm out horizontally, but turned up from the elbow in a stiff manner, which made the immobility of the upper part of his body appear in ridiculous contrast to the lively motion of his legs. It would seem that the inhibition of all involuntary muscular innervation produces more absolute surrender to the prescribed movements of the dance. . . ."

Before entering on the second half of this section we must devote a few words to artificial methods of moving

((93) the body, which are divided into two classes, those which are passive and those employed in active locomotion. Naturally the first implement of this kind to be mentioned is the cradle, of whose use among the Greeks we find no evidence, but the Romans had them since the time of Plautus. The oldest German record of them is in the Saxon manuscript at Heidelberg.[40] Of course, the cradle's rocking motion and its soothing effect should be included in our enumeration of agreeable movements. The same may be said of swinging, which we find practised by many birds and by the ape; indeed, one case is recorded where a monkey himself attached a rope to the projection of a roof and swung himself on it. The human race, too, probably without exception, enjoy the sport. The hammock is in some cases the prototype of the swing. Von den Steinen relates of the Brazilian Bakairi that the men when at home spend most of their time swinging in hammocks.[41] Parkinson describes a still more primitive sort of swing. It seems that the Gilbert Islanders select a stout, well-grown cocoanut tree and attach a cord to it, on the other end of which is a club. A young woman climbs on the trunk, and taking her seat there is swung by a youth, who, watching his chance when the motion is well under way, catches hold with his hands and swings with her.[42] The Greeks had several forms of the swing, among them the joggling board, consisting of a flexible plank supported at its ends on fixed beams, and the rope swing which with its comfortable seat supported by four cords was used by adults. The Berlin Museum possesses a bowl ornamented with the figure of a fawn running under a young girl in such a swing and sending her high in the air. Athens celebrated a special holiday called after the swing, aiwrai.[43]

Pleasure in riding and driving being partly due to

((94) the control we have over the horses, such enjoyment is a combination of active and passive. Even when we are only steering a boat the illusion is easily supported that we are to some extent responsible for its progress. Riding has other elements of attraction: besides the forward motion and lofty seat there is some peculiar enjoyment of each particular gait, the sensuously agreeable canter and the hard shake of the trot, which, so far as it can be pleasurable, furnishes an instance of more vehement enjoyment. Among artificial means of locomotion, those are most agreeable which afford a swift and yet smooth gliding or rocking motion. Souriau says in his Esthétique du Mouvement that the chief attraction of movementplays lies in the overcoming of gravitation. But in that case, as I pointed out in my earlier work, downward movement would have no charm, since gravitation is there triumphant. The child's first jump is, as we have seen, downward, and the downward rush of a sled fills us with exquisite delight. Souriau's other supposition, that perhaps it is the exemption from friction, from the slight hindrances and detentions which commonly attend our movements, which accounts for our pleasure,[44] seems more probable. It is to be hoped that among the sports of the future, flying either in balloons or with flying machines will be included. Lilienthal, in recounting his experiences in these arts, assures us that gliding through the air in a slanting direction affords a new and delightful sensation.

A long list of inventions, for the most part recreative, meet the demand for aids to active locomotion, notably appliances for rowing and the bicycle. Among ancient implements of this character I mention but two: stilts and snowshoes. Running on stilts is a favourite sport of children, both on account of the difficulties it presents and because of the elevation it affords. It was practised by both Greeks and Romans, and Pollux mentions a Spartan dance which was performed on stilts, probably the kind which is bound to the foot.[45] In speaking of

((95) the ethnological distribution of this custom Andree says that stilts are found all over the world. " In China they are very skilfully used, and are not unknown to Africa among many African tribes. The negro boys left of the Congo bind stilts to their ankles to appear taller. They are well known to the Malays and the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands. In Tahiti a limb of a tree is used, having a smaller branch projecting at about a metre from the ground, and in this fork the foot is placed. The beautifully carved stilts of the Marquise Islanders have attained a certain celebrity."[46] The snowshoe, which has recently become popular once more, seems to be as ancient as the skate.[47]

" In skating," says Weinhold, " the men and boys emulated the example of Ullr and Skadi, who must have been very gods of snow and ice. But they did not use steel skates like ours, but stood on long boards and held a staff to steady them. Many Norsemen became famous for this kind of running; such sagas of their skill have come down to us. . . . The Finns were teachers of this art, which was carried to great perfection among them. In their peace treaties any violator of them was menaced with being called a traitor as far as ships sailed or shields glittered, as the sun shone or snow fell, or the Finn could skate." [48]

B. PLAYFUL MOVING OF FOREIGN BODIES

The primitive impulse to extend the sphere of their power as far as possible leads men to the conquest and control of objects lying around them. We can distinguish six different groups of movement-plays resulting from this impulse: 1, Mere " hustling " things about; 2, destructive or analytic play; 3, constructive or synthetic play; 4, plays of endurance; 5, throwing plays; 6, catching play.

1. Hustling Things about

By this rather inelegant but expressive term we designate a kind of play which belongs to early childhood.

((96) From the grasping impulse the tendency is developed in the second quarter to push and pull things about in all directions, to shake and test them with hands and lips, to seize and to push away. External objects are all playthings to the child, says Perez, all objects of his investigating tendencies. " Il les manie, les tourne, les abat, les redresse, les jette, les reprend, les poursuit à quatre pattes, quand il ne peut les atteindre, les attire à lui, les frappe, les uns contre, les autres, fouille dans leurs profondeurs, les entasse et les sépare, enfin joue ou s'instruit par eux de mille manières"[49] Tearing paper gives particular pleasure. The child " seizes it with avidity, crumples it up in his hand as if pleased to find that there is power enough in the tiny fist to change the form of anything, or he polishes the tables with it as zealously as a Dutch woman."[50]

" A child delights to play with things that can be put in motion, takes pleasure in shaking a well-filled purse, turning the handle of a coffee mill, pulling out drawers, dabbling in water, and for the same reason older children are fond of handling smooth sand and clay."[51] Autenrieth gives a good instance of what we call joy in being a cause, which is conspicuous in all play of this class.

All small boys regard it as a treat to be allowed to paddle in street puddles, where they can produce a great effect with little effort." [52]

Much that might suitably be classed here has already been mentioned in connection with seeing, hearing, and tactile plays, since the impulse to set surrounding objects in motion is very closely connected with the desire for sensuous excitement. To avoid repetition I will simply refer to what has been said, and content myself here with adding one more play to the list, as it has special claim to be classed with them—namely, flying kites and similar play with captive insects. Although a little child can have but a very imperfect conception of the difference between animate and inanimate objects, yet living crea-

((97) -tures certainly have a paramount interest for him. Everything which flies or crawls is watched and questioned with an almost passionate interest, and the desire to follow a flying insect and to possess it leads the child to tie a string to some part of its body. K. von den Steinen saw two Bororó boys in Brazil, one of whom had a bee and the other a butterfly fluttering on a cord.[53] In Greece such sport was called mhlolondhor mhlolandh. Gold beetles were attached to cords three yards long, with pieces of wood on the end, and unmercifully pulled about in the air—veritable " hustling " indeed.[54] Children sometimes treat little birds in the same way. " When a boy catches a sparrow," says Geiler von Kaisersberg, " he ties a thread one or two ells long to it, letting the bird fly while he holds the cord in his hand. If it darts off and tries to get away the boy jerks the string, and the poor little creature falls down again."[55]

Paper kites in the form of birds and animals afford similar entertainment, and have a remarkably lifelike appearance as they sail aloft. They impart to their owners a pleasant sense of a widely extended sphere of control. This fine sport originated in China, where it is the national game. Bastian saw Siamese children [56] playing with kites, and the Berlin Museum has paper ones from the Soudan. They are in use also in the South Sea Islands as far down as New Zealand.

In concluding, I remark it was this faculty of busying one's self with all sorts of objects in this kind of play which first suggested to me the term experimentation which I have found useful in a much wider sense.

2. Destructive (Analytic) Movement-Play

The simplest and earliest handling of external objects exhibits the fundamental principle which differentiates the forms of our conscious activity, showing them to be such as make for division or for concentration. Play which separates or analyzes easily acquires a special char-

((98) -acter which allies it with the fighting instincts and converts it into wild destructiveness. The veriest infant shows its beginnings in his desire to tear paper, pull the heads off of flowers, rummage in boxes, and the like; and as the child grows older he displays more clearly this analytic impulse boys as a rule more than girls, be it noted. They are constantly taking their toys to pieces, dissecting tools, weapons, clocks, toys, etc.; and since the child, like the savage, has not our clear perception of the difference between what is living and the lifeless, he will pull to pieces a beetle, a fly, or a bird with the same serenity which accompanies his demolition of a flower. Perez tells this of a child hardly ten months old. " His nurse put him on the grass and gave him a turtle to play with, and as he seemed to be absorbed in watching it, left him for a moment. When she came back one of the creature's legs was torn half off, and the zealous investigator was applying his powers to another."[57] As far back as Fischart's time this was known to be different from actual cruelty, and Keller in his Romeo and Julia auf dem Dorfe gives us a classic instance. The boy and girl were playing together with a doll which he suddenly jerked away from the little girl and mischievously tossed up in the air. The doll came to grief in his hands, for a little hole appeared in one of her knees and some bran was escaping. The little girl did not seem to notice the hole, so the boy kept quite still busily making it larger with his finger and increasing the flow of bran. His silence at last aroused her suspicion, and she came closer and beheld his wickedness with horror. " Just look at that! " he cried, holding the leg so that some bran fell in her face; and when she tried to reach the doll, he leaped away, and would not stop until the whole leg hung limp and empty as a husk. Then follows a description of how the offended child was finally won over to join the boy in the work of destruction, helping to bore hole after hole in the body of the martyr. Other examples of the workings of the destructive impulse will be adduced under fighting plays.

((99)

3. Constructive (Synthetic) Movement-Play

Constructive play bears about the same relation to imitation that analytic play bears to the fighting instinct. Circumstances under which this relation can not be traced are comparatively rare and very primitive. However, it is important to bear in mind that back of the mimhsiV, in which Aristotle finds the essence of artistic effort, and back of the overflow of dammed-up energies which the new psychology emphasizes, there is still something primeval. Ribot calls it " Le besoin de créer," or a demand for some external result of our instinctive movements, which is, after all, but a specialized form of joy in being a cause.[58] Pleasure in the work of our own hands, which takes a negative form in destructive sport, here becomes positive creation, the instinct for building, for uniting scattered elements into a new whole. Its simplest form is found in the child's moulding new forms from some suitable material, their chief charm being their newness. Moist sand is heaped up or dug away, snow tunnelled through or rolled into a great ball, sticks of wood piled, water collected in a pond, etc. Such things are always going on where there are children. " I have a boy in mind," says Michelet, " hardly eighteen months old, who claps his hands joyously when he succeeds in laying one little stick upon another. He admires his work, and, like a small creator, seems to say: `See that? It is very good."[59] Marie G— affords the following pretty instance: One day, when she was about three, she sat on the floor in great distress, with tears pouring down her cheeks. Soon she noticed that the drops rolled down like silver balls on her woollen dress, and at once began to collect the transparent pearls in a fold, and so accumulated as she sobbed a little "heap of woe" in her lap.

We readily see how imitation brings about great variety in the manifestations of the constructive tendency. The fun is not at its height until the sand is converted into mountains, tunnels, moats, and walls, the snow into the figure of a man, the mud to a similitude of dolls,

((100) the woodpile to buildings, water to lakes, streams to waterfalls, etc. Arranging the same or similar objects in rows is a more advanced and yet primitive kind of constructiveness. Preyer reports such arrangement of shells, pebbles, and buttons in the twenty-first month.[60] Where this is not imitation of elders it may be regarded as the forerunner of that preference for regular succession which is so prominent in decoration.

Closely connected with all this is the disposition to make collections. The disposition to appropriate and cling to whatever attracts the attention (James [61] makes it a special instinct, which he calls appropriation or acquisitiveness) is a feature of constructive activity. Animals as well as children try to accumulate whatever pleases them. Viscachas, woodrats, various members of the crow family, and many other birds, have the habit of hoarding especially bright objects. The inclination first shows itself in children in their collecting in one place various things of only ordinary interest, as in the pockets of a small boy,[62] or a girl's bureau drawers; and adults too often retain this habit. G. Keller, whose metier for the grotesque is well known,[63] gives exaggerated instances of the mania for collecting, as in the case of the lacquered cabinet belonging to Züs Bünzlin, one of his heroines. It contained a gilded and painted Easter egg, a half dozen silver teaspoons, the Lord's Prayer printed in gold on a red transparent substance which she said was human skin, a cherry stone on which a crucifix was carved, a broken ivory box lined with red silk and containing a small mirror and a thimble, another cherry stone inside of which a miniature game of skittles was going on, a nut with a Madonna in it under glass and a silver heart inside, and so on. But the passion for collecting reaches its height only when some particular kind of thing forms its object. It is natural to us all to get together as many things as we can of a kind which especially attracts us. When the four-year-old girl who never tires of picking

((101) flowers ties those she had plucked into a bouquet to carry home, we have the beginning of discriminating collection; when she searches for and hoards shells or coloured pebbles of unusually perfect shape, she is really within the charmed circle. Munkacsy tells us of his childhood: " Strange as it may seem, my chief enjoyment was in gathering stones on the street, and many a box on the ear has the habit earned for me. I stuffed my pockets so full that the integrity of my trousers was seriously threatened; and besides, my father had frequently forbidden it."[64] Boys will collect anything, says James, which they see other boys collect, "from pieces of chalk and peach pits up to books and photographs."[65] Of the hundred students whom he questioned, only four or five had never collected anything. The words " which they see other boys collect " intimate that imitation and rivalry have much to do with this impulse. Any boy is admired and envied who has very rare butterflies, beetles, eggs, stamps, etc., or a large number of them; as indeed is any man, for the same principle applies to adults. There are other manifestations, too, of the combative emulative spirit which is active in almost all play. The search for more specimens often leads to contests which place even those who are otherwise honourable in an attitude of open hostility, and admits the practice of deceit, treachery, and robbery. Kleptomania is frequently nothing else than an overwhelming and imperative impulse for collecting. Yet the fact that adults collect things which have no intrinsic value shows that imitation and the combative spirit are here only incidental, in spite of their seeming weight. In impulsive insanity the patient carefully saves the refuse from his own body, hair that has been cut off, finger nails, bits of skin, and even more unpleasant things. This must have its origin in a deeprooted demand for synthetic activity.

4. Playful Exercise of Endurance

The play which we have been considering gains, as other kinds do, a further charm when difficulties are

((102) associated with it, and it becomes more like fighting play. When Strümpell's little daughter learned to grasp easily she was no longer satisfied with holding ordinary things, and took to picking up objects so small as to be difficult to get hold of.[66] When she was two and a half years old she enjoyed opening the door of a little clock, and never tired of fitting the small snap into its slot; she could also thread the finest needle. Animals, too, seem to enjoy overcoming difficulties. Parrots like to take out screws, and Miss Romanes says that her monkey tried with indefatigable perseverance to put back the handle on a hearth brush which he had taken apart, and turned away from it at once as soon as he succeeded.[67] There are all sorts of puzzles which indulge this fancy, such as untying apparently fast knots with a single jerk, disentangling intertwined rings, taking balls or rings off an endless cord, taking two corks, held between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, with the thumb and forefinger of the other without leaving the hands joined, and many such things. The Greek calkvmosis explained for the first time by Becker in the fifth scene of his Charikles : "It was an attempt to bring a coin spinning on its edge to a standstill by touching it from above with the finger." Rochholz thus describes the Swiss " Fadmen ": " A boy sitting in a basket which is swung to and fro in the air gets a prize if he succeeds in threading a needle during the process. . . . In Aargau the contestants sit on a stout bottle with their feet crossed."[68] Strutt gives two English examples from the fourteenth century. A youth standing on a light flexible pole stretched over water, attempted to put out one candle with another.[69] The familiar Chinese game which we call jackstraws was mentioned by Amaranthus in 1715.[70] The Berlin Museum has many such puzzles from remote parts of the world. O. Finseh mentions two (probably imported) much used in India: the Chut-jueh-mudra, in which a cube is put together from tiny bits, and the "five-horse game," where two wooden rings strung on a cord are to be removed

((103) without loosening the knot, and other such sports as are common among ourselves.[71] The difficult task of forming various figures with a string held stretched between the two hands (cat's cradle) affords entertainment for hours at a time to the Eskimos in Baffin Land. They call the game ajarorpoq.[72] It is found also in Australia, Borneo, New Guinea, New Zealand, and Java, where, Schmetz says, the children play it too. Finally, I may add that von Hartmann classes much of the ladies' fancy work with such play, inasmuch as it does not possess artistic value, and its intrinsic worth is out of all proportion to the effort expended."[73]

5. Throwing Plays

Whereas the forms of movement-play which we have been considering are more or less connected, throwing is regarded by many as a special instinct. Preyer says that it is " undoubtedly instinctive." When monkeys get excited they throw anything they can get hold of; and a five-year-old idiot whose brain structure was much like that of a monkey did the same thing when he was teased.[74] In any case, throwing is certainly an interesting phenomenon, which, if monkeys did not indulge in it, we should claim as a prerogative of the human race. At first it was defensive, the missile serving at a distance as a substitute for one of the bodily members, and consequently first gave the idea of a machine, if we take the word mhcanin its more general sense. The next step, and one which monkeys can not attain, is the fashioning of the projectile into a work of art.

Accidental dropping of objects seems to introduce the idea of throwing to the infant mind, and what we have called visual play furthers its development, since the child from watching the falling object comes to repeat the process intentionally, and so learns to throw. The follow-

((104) -ing report of Preyer's traces this progression: "Thirtieth week: Frequent dropping, but still not noticed. Thirtyfourth week: The child looks after the object dropped, but indifferently. Forty-seventh week: The child throws down anything that is given him after playing with it a little, and often looks after it. On one occasion he threw a book on the floor eight times in succession, and his pursed-up lips indicated serious determination."[75] Further developments were hampered by the interference of his parents. Sigismund, too, gives valuable notes, and adds some luminous remarks on the biological and psychological significance of such play. "All children like to throw," he says, "and are often blamed for it very unjustly. We should remember that although some window panes may be endangered by such play, it lays the foundation for man's supremacy over the other animals, and that by means of it muscles are gradually developed and strengthened. We should rejoice, then, with the children when a stone goes a long way or bounds into the water with a splash. When children get out of doors the desire to throw something takes possession of them; even the yearling picks up pebbles and delights to roll them. The older boys stand on the coping or carriage block, and are engrossed in testing the force and directness of their aim.

They are trying the power of will over matter."[76] This is the correct designation of the peculiar satisfaction derived from throwing. It is that which comes from sending the object from us and, as it were, projecting our individuality into a wider sphere of action. Souriau says: "We take a special interest in the extension of motion originated by ourselves. It becomes a part of us. The force which we behold at work outside of us is our own."[77]

If we include rolling or sliding in our definition of throwing. we are confronted by a bewildering variety of games;[78] but since the ends of a general psychology of play would not be furthered by an enumeration of these,

((105) we will try to single out such as illustrate the varied forms of satisfaction which throwing in general affords. First of all let us keep in mind our principle, that inventive play presupposes a complication of instinctive tendencies through the satisfaction of which enjoyment is greatly enhanced. Usually it is impulses for fighting and imitation which ally themselves with that toward movement and render the play more varied and pleasurable. There are, indeed, very few throwing plays that have not culminated in contests of one kind or another, and many are at the same time imitative, though whether they were originated by children or adults it is difficult or even impossible to say. Our study of primitive acoustic instruments showed that the child is sometimes actively inventive. Trying, then, to keep clear as much as possible of fighting and imitative play, we distinguish several kinds of throwing plays which we may briefly characterize as follows: (a) Simple throwing, upward, downward, or horizontally; (b) propulsion by means of a blow (c) rolling spinning, shoving, and skipping; (d) throwing at a target.

(a) Simple Throwing

Downward throwing is, as already said, the easiest and most natural movement of the kind to a child, from the fact that he learns it by letting things fall. It appeals at the same time to his sight, and quite as much perhaps to his hearing. To send toys, spoons, trays, and books rattling, crashing, and slamming on the floor is a pastime which children will keep up as long as they dare, as the young Goethe tossed the dishes and pots out of the window into the street and enjoyed the clatter. A friend of mine was one day holding his two-year-old nephew in his arms near an open window, and gave the child a silver cigarette case to play with. He hurled it to the street below, to the alarm of passers-by, and called out a lobing farewell after it. Older children enjoy throwing something down from a bridge or tower, and sometimes in default of other ammunition make use of Nature's supply of saliva, as many of us perhaps remember from having our ears boxed for such indulgence. The fascination of sending stones over a precipice appeals to adults as well.

((106) Throwing forward is learned almost as early as the other; as soon as he can toddle every child tries to throw pebbles across a brook or into a neighbour's yard, the larger the shot the greater his satisfaction. Most of the toys, borrowed from long-disused practices of adults, which cater to this impulse belong under another head.Throwing at a target.

Among the earliest of these were the catapult, the ancient discus, something like the English quoit, and the sling. We often find grown men testing their strength and skill in throwing. Once when I was on the banks of the Lünersee a young traveller used to try to throw stones into the lake, which appeared to be but a few paces from the house but was in reality much farther. Following his example, other tourists would join in the game in spite of their fatigue, though generally with but little success. At Swiss festivals the herdsmen keep up an ancient Aelplerspiel, which consists in throwing heavy stones as far as possible.[79]

That wonderful passage in the Odyssey where the godlike sufferer threw the discus, the stone hummed loudly as the spectators bent to the earth under the force of the blow, is a classic example of instinctive aesthetic appreciation, and serves as a match for Gretchen's remark, "Then quivered at every throat the blade which I felt at mine." Upward throwing is acquired somewhat later, perhaps, because children easily lose sight of the missile which goes far above them. Their first efforts are usually to toss a ball a very little way up, but boys soon acquire the uncomfortable but effective method of bending backward before making the throwing motion. Homer refers

to this too: " Behold! He has hurled it [the ball] aloft to the shadowy clouds, bending backward." As a little fellow I often tried to throw over tall trees, and my grandfather used to tell me how, when he was a young painter in Rome, he used to vie with the street urchins in throwing stones over the Arch of Titus. A favourite game of this kind is played by placing a ball or pebble

((107) in a sling which is whirled so rapidly that it hums. In Heidelberg, where many grounds are planted with plane trees, autumn invites the children to a game with the long fruits which hang by threads from their branches, a natural toy which the little ones are quick to take advantage of. Among toys originating in imitation the bow is sometimes used for sending arrows aloft for the simple pleasure of watching their upward flight, though, of course, its chief use is for aiming at a target.

(b) Throwing with the Help of a Stroke or Blow

Here we must consider the transference of motion to the missile by means of a sudden blow, a method closely allied to simple throwing, though in some of its modifications, as, for instance, when the radius of the bodily movements is artificially lengthened and the communicated force correspondingly increased, introducing a large circle of new plays in most of which the arms are the only bodily organs employed. I notice first the various games of skill played with rubber balls, principally by girls. The descending ball is met and again impelled upward by the open palm, the closed fist, or even one stiffened outstretched finger. There are similar games requiring more powerful strokes and better suited to masculine taste. Thus the Romans had two kinds of balls, one very large, the follis, and the other smaller, the folliculus, which were struck, the former with the forearm protected with bandages or a wooden ring, and the latter with the fist.[80] The first is still much liked in Italy under the name of giuoco del ballon grosso, the player sheathing his arm in a sort of muff; the other game is preserved in the English handball.[81] For an ethnological example we may turn to the Gilbert Islands; in their game for men, " Oreanne," they use a cocoanut shell bound with cords, tossing it lightly into the air and propelling it by a blow from the hand.[82] And we may also cite the game carried to perfection in China, and called by the Greeks kwrukobolia,

((108) in which a huge suspended ball is kept in motion by blows from a number of players. A pretty contrast to this is found in the Samoan game, where an orange instead of a ball is hung in the middle of a room, about sixty centimetres from the floor. The players sit in a circle around it, each being provided with a small pointed stick with which in his turn he gives the orange a blow as it circles past.[83]

The human leg, with its fine muscular development and its long radius, is a favourite and variously used propelling implement. Kicking is a primitive method of fight which children make early use of, and the famous incident in the French Council Chamber is sufficient to establish its adaptability to the requirements of the highest culture. The game of football proclaims its triumph as an instrument for play, where, too, the value of movement-play is obvious. This game, which AngloSaxons are wont to regard as their peculiar property, is claimed by Mosso to have originated in Italy in the time of the Renaissance, when physical exercise was a fad with high and low. It is true that such a game was described in great detail in 1555 by Scaino in his celebrated Trattato della Palla under the name of giuoco del calcio, and the writer insists that shoes with soles of buffalo hide are indispensable for the players. While our game of football is a hotly fought contest, Forbes describes a form of it popular in Sumatra which is nothing more than a skilful movement-play. During the dance festivals, which last for several days, "the young people amuse themselves on the village green with a ball game called Simpak, in which they vie with one another in the display of measured and elegant movements in the presence of the girls and the public generally. About twenty youths arrange themselves in a circle and keep a large hollow ball skilfully wrapped with ratan in the air by hitting it as it descends with the aide of the foot; they are not allowed to touch it with anything else. In delivering the blow the leg is thrown almost perpendicularly into the

((109) air, while the body assumes a horizontal position, and the beauty of the movement consists in the fine swing which restores the body to an upright position without upsetting the player."[84]

An innumerable variety of games depend on the principle of increasing the arm radius, including many of the favourite amusements of young and old. Golf,[85] cricket, tennis, and croquet may be mentioned as types. Buildings [86] put up especially to play in, witness how much such exercise—which, by the way, develops the body much more systematically than any regular gymnastics can—was formerly valued in Germany. In these buildings games using rackets and bats were most common; one, which was hardly more than mere knocking the ball back and forth was very popular and was called " Pelotieren."[87]

The citation of primitive examples is more to our purpose, and I select first two games in which bits of wood are employed in lieu of balls. One in the Holstein Klinkor Klischspiel. A chip of a peculiar shape is balanced on the end of a stake driven diagonally into the ground and then hit from below with a sort of club. The other is simpler still: it is called Porscheck in the game books.[88] A cigar-shaped bit of wood is so placed that one end is free, and a blow on this free end sends it whirling in the air. In Heidelberg, where this game is much cultivated, and is dignified by frequent contests, the man about to strike asks " Tenez ? " whereupon his antagonist answers " Oui," neither party having the slightest suspicion that they are speaking French—a proof of the power of tradition.[89] Similar games are played by children, one being accompanied by singing as the piece of wood or arrow is shot into the air, and Rochholz suspects that this is a survival of a religious ceremony symbolic of the flight of winter before the fiery darts of spring. If so, it is one

((110) of many games which originated in this way. But how did the religious custom arise? Does not tracing its origin lead us in a circle back to playful experimentation, as we found to be in all probability the case with the discovery and application of some musical instruments? It is most likely.

(c) Rolling, Spinning, Shoving, and Skipping Foreign Bodies In this division I group together such plays as lend a special character to the movement of the object, including them all, however, in the general class of throwing play, since it would unnecessarily complicate matters to make a separate class of them. In all plays with rolling balls, such as tenpins and billiards, pleasure in motion as such forms the undercurrent of the satisfaction afforded, even when they develop into important contests. The thundering roll and crash of the heavy wooden ball, and the noiseless, lightning-quick motion of the elastic ivory one, each has its charm. In a billiard room it is amusing to note how irresistible is the impulse to most players to take the balls from their pockets and roll them on the green surface after the game is over. Primitive forms of such games no doubt originated in experimentation with the round or disc-shaped stones found in every river or brook bed. Many fruits, too, are used in the same way—the horse chestnut, for example, being a favourite plaything wherever it grows. Yet the manufacture of artificial balls is no doubt very ancient, but inquiry into that must not detain us here. After the first years of life, when rolling in itself is an object, such balls are used in relation to some goal, perhaps partly because they are constantly getting lost when knocked aimlessly about, and the children do not wish to risk their precious possessions.

Other rolling toys, such as wheels and hoops, whose motion is kept up by means of continuous striking, offer a very different kind of amusement. The violent running, combining as it does something of the zest of the chase with the pleasure of overcoming a difficulty, forms a delightful compound with the enjoyment of the rolling as such. The Greeks called the hoop trocoVor krikoV.

((111) They were rather large, and made of metal studded with tinkling bells and propelled by a metal rod. Ganymede is often represented with such a hoop. The Romans had an extraordinary fondness for this sport, and Ovid, who refers to a teacher of the art of hoop rolling, says in one of his enumerations of the spring games

" Usus equi nunc est, levibus nunc luditur armis, Nunc pila, nunc celeri volvitur orbe trochus." Fouquières cites a passage from Martial about youths rolling hoops on frozen streams. Another play with wheels consists of whirling a small one on a string passed through its axis, a practice both ancient and modern; and, too, there is the beautiful sport of rolling blazing wheels downhill at night, as is the custom with many mountaineers. Here, of course, the element of pursuit is wanting.

Single discs, such as coins, are used for the spinning of which we have already spoken. Sometimes it was spun horizontally on a peg fixed at its axis, forming the toy called by the Greeks stobiloV, and by the Romans turben. But much more important is the conical top, whose dance can be indefinitely prolonged by skilful whipping. There are few plays which foster the illusion of our having a living thing at our pleasure as effectually as this does. H. Wagner tells of a small boy who liked to keep several tops spinning together. " Each had its name, and he talked to them all. The one which spun longest was his favourite, and he tested them by setting them all in violent motion and leaving them while he ran down in the yard. When he came back he rejoiced over those that were still spinning.[90] This is a good deal like a little girl's behaviour to her dolls, though the boy's relation to his toys is rather that of a teacher than parent. This difference comes out strongly when the children play with a puppy: the girl wants to wash and pet it, while the boy will teach it tricks. The widespread popularity of the top is an indication of its importance, and its variety of names among the ancients witnesses to its high favour

((112) with them (bembhx, bebix, romboV, stromboV, etc.). It was found in the third city in the Trojan excavations. Boys threw their tops in the courts and streets by a leather string, and accompanied with a monotonous cry thn kata sauton elaor strefou, mh istasai.[91] Tibullus likens his lovesick heart to a top "which a restless child spins on smooth ground with a jerk of the cord." [92] Its German names are even more numerous than are the antique (Ganzknopf, Topf, Topsch, Triesel, Drudelmadam, Habergais, Krüselding, Schnurrprusel, etc.). In early writings a top humming on ice was used as a figure of rapid motion, and such comparisons are quite frequent with old German poets. This one, which incidentally proves that top cords were used at the time, is particularly striking

" Ez gewan ine topfe
Vor geiseln solhen umbeswane,
Als si mich kne minen danc
Mit slegen umb and umle treip." [93]

In the Indian archipelago many stone [94] as well as wooden tops are used. Ten Kate gives illustrations of massive yellow painted wooden ones from there. The conical shape is about the same as with our own tops, but it lacks the horizontal grooves.[95] We have Andrée's authority for the statement that children in Egypt, China, Siam, and Burmah are fond of spinning tops,[96] some Indians having top cords with three thongs.[97[

Skipping stones on ice, as all boys love to do, is dignified in Bavaria and Austria into a game called " Eisschiessen," in which heavy and carefully polished stone discs with a handle on top are slid over the frozen surface. Gutsmuths says:[98] " This game is played zealously

((113) in town and village, and the sturdy sportsmen allow no stress of weather,.no untoward circumstance, to interfere with this their winter's fun. Even the boys have their ice sticks to beguile the way to school. High and low take part in the healthful sport; and as in the Tyrol the village pastor must not fail in archery, so here he enters the lists as a matador of the icy course." The Scotch use for the same purpose semispherical curling stones from twenty to thirty kilogrammes in weight, and provided with an iron or wooden handle.*[99]

Skipping and bouncing, which again call forth the impression of life depending on our own exertions, are prominent in the two very popular and primitive games in which the ball and disc show us another side of their Protean adaptability. One consists of throwing the ball to the floor with such force that it rebounds, and meeting it with a blow as it comes up so that it is struck back again, and the process is repeated indefinitely. Swiss girls sing a little verse in time with the strokes

" Bälleli ufe, Bällile abe
Gump mir nit in nasse Grabe !
Gump mir an en trockne Fleck,
Gump mir nit in nasse Dreck," etc. [100]

Niebuhr saw the children on the Euphrates playing the same game. The other amusement of this kind is skipping stones on water; the Greeks called it epostrakismos. Minucius Felix describes it graphically and with sympathetic insight: " Is lusus est : testam teretem j actatione fluctuum levigatam, legere de litore; eam testam plano situ digitis, comprehensam, inclinem ipsum atque humilem, quantum potest, super undas inrotare; ut illud jaculum vel dorsum maris raderet; vel enataret, dum leni impetu labitur; vel summis fluctibus tonsis emicaret dum assiduo saltu sublevatur. Is se in pueris victorem ferebat, cujus testula et procurreret longim et frequentibus exsiliret."[101] As many as fifty German names for this sport might be enumerated, some of them showing pretty fancies and aesthetic personification. Fischart, of course,

((114) makes his Gargantua a master in this art too. He says in his quaint German, " Gargantua warff breyde Kiesesi-ein am Gastaden schlimms aufs Wasser, dass es ob dem Wasser weiss nicht wie viel Sprung thaten."[102]

(d) Throwing at a Mark

If throwing is, as many believe, an inherited impulse at bottom, then it must belong with the fighting instincts, since it gives a man the power to slay his enemy or his prey without actual contact with either. However that may be, throwing at a mark must have originated in such hostile use of the ability to throw at all, and it is significant that by far the most numerous and popular games of the kind require a target, and belong essentially to the male. Thus it may be questioned whether the whole subject would not better be treated in connection with fighting play; but it seems to me that consciousness of the fact that the target is a symbol of an opponent or of prey hardly forms any considerable element in the satisfaction derived from the sport, and for that reason I deem it fitting to notice it briefly in this connection. Moreover, its biological significance is more extensive than is that of mere belligerence, for it promotes to a higher degree than almost any other play the concentration of attention and the capacity of the organism for swift and sure reaction.

It is easy to see how, with children, throwing at a mark naturally follows simple forward throwing. Perhaps we get a hint of how this comes about from their intentional throwing of objects to the floor with a view to producing a noise, for the floor is then in some sense a goal, though there is as yet no specialization. From my own observation I should say that the first suggestion of the possibility of striking intentionally often arises from the pretence of some older person that he is badly hurt by the falling or rolling object, whereupon the heartless little creature at once tries to repeat the attack, this time with malice aforethought. Further development of this capacity is rather hindered than furthered by the child's

((115) learning to run about; indeed, it is commonly the sixth year or later before he begins to be interested in such games, a manifold variety of which is handed down by tradition.

In this case, too, I can but touch upon a few principal groups, and illustrate them with examples chosen from the wealth of material at hand. In many games the object is to hit a comrade with a ball. In one very popular at Heidelberg all the boys' caps are placed in a straight row on the ground, and the chosen king throws his ball on one of them, whereupon its owner must instantly seize the ball and hurl it after his fleeing comrades. This comes very near to fighting play, as does another game, which takes the form of pelting some object set or hung up for the purpose, or something in motion.[103] Many games are founded on this principle, from throwing stones at a flowerpot or fruit hanging on a tree up to tenpins, which has been introduced of late into Egypt, and shooting at a target with blowpipe, lance, bow, crossbow, or rifle. An early developed, though, it is true, not purely playful, form of this sport is set forth in a beautiful Greek epigram called the Plaint of the Fruit Tree, which may be thus paraphrased: " Truly they have planted me here by the roadside as an unhappy target for all the playful boys to throw stones at! And how the destroying shower has rained down and torn my blooming crown and broken all my branches! The tree can be of no more use to you with all its harvest ruined. Alas! here have I, most miserable one, borne all this fruit to my own undoing." [104]

A modification of such plays consists in throwing one missile after another of the same kind, as a ball after a ball, a quoit after a quoit, etc. Thus Burmese children play Tschapieh-Kasah by throwing flat seeds on one an-

((116) other,[105] and many of our own games are essentially the same, especially those played with marbles. These little toys are very generally used, and are quite ancient. Bastian saw them in Burmah and Siam, where the game is called Len Thoi-Kong.[106] It is popular all through the Orient, and extends to Africa. In old German burial urns, "with the bones of children are found polished round stones, such as modern children play with."[107] The Romans called marbles ocellata. They are frequently mentioned, too, in old German literature,[108] one instance being of pedagogical interest. In the sixteenth century the sumptuary laws of Zurich included one forbidding marbles among other plays, under penalty of the "Gätterei." And what was this punishment? The youthful criminal was placed in a revolving wooden machine and whirled until the crisis of dizziness and nausea was reached![109]

Very common, too, are the games in which small discs are thrown one after another. The Greek streptidawas an attempt to propel a quoit or coin lying on the floor by means of another thrown toward it. Forbes describes a peculiar form of the game as practised in Sumatra: "All day long the boys under my window amused themselves with a game called Lepar, which interested me very much. . . . Each player had a sort of quoit made of cocoanut shell, which he threw from a special stand and tried to hit one or more (according to the number of players) of the other quoits lying at a distance of forty or fifty feet. . , . The manner of propelling the missiles was remarkable. The player turned his back to the goal, laid his quoit flat on the ground, seized it firmly between his heels, and with rotary motion of his legs shot it forward so that its rim described a cycloidal curve. It was amazing to see with what certainty the best players reckoned on the amount of force necessary for perfecting such a curve

((117) as would pass in among the quoits and hit the ones aimed at.[110]

In the Greek game kundalismoVthe object was to dig up with one pointed stick another which was fixed in the ground, and to do it in such a manner that the first stick was left standing up where the other had been. Fischart and Rabelais mention this game.

Still another kind of play belonging to this class (and at this point all connection with fighting play is severed) consists in rolling or throwing the projectile into or through a hole. The familiar game of marbles with holes was known to Greek children, and was called tropa. The same principle, too, is employed in the old-fashioned billiards in those games requiring a ring into which the ball is rolled. For other games the ring is made on the ground, as in this described by Nordenskiöld : " Several stand in a circle and take turns at throwing a short tapering iron rod, the object being to cause the iron to fall on its sharp end within the circle and stand upright.[111] In croquet the balls must roll through wickets. Throwing balls through the open mouth of a figure carved in wood was a mediaeval diversion, and Eneas Silvius wrote in 1438 that the youths of Basel hung an iron ring on their playground and amused themselves with batting balls through it.[112] In Genf, little metal balls were tossed through holes bored in the head of a cask.[113] We have a classic description of such a game in Storm's Schimmelreiter, where Hauke Haien wins the victory under the eyes of his beloved: "Then it flew like lightning to Hauke's arms. He stooped a little, turning the ball two or three times in his hand, and as he took aim deathlike silence reigned. All eyes followed the flying ball as it hummed along, cutting the air. Suddenly, far away, the silvery wings of a seagull gleamed, and her thrilling cry sounded from the dikes, but in the same instant the

((118) ball crashed into the cask, and all the people cried out `Hurrah for Hauke ! ' while the word ran through the crowd, `Hauke Haien has won the game.' But he, as they all crowded toward him, reached out for but one hand. She cried, `What is the matter, Hauke? The ball is in the cask!' He only nodded, and did not stir from the spot. It was not till he felt the little hand fast clasped in his own that he spoke. `You must be right,' he said, ` I do believe I have won."' Finally, I will recall Ulysses's marvellous feat in the presence of the drunken suitors, when on his return home he sent an arrow through the ears of twelve oxen standing in a row.

In our last division of this class of games the projectile must cling to the target. Everybody has tried to throw his cap on his head or a peg, and jugglers and clowns give us numberless examples of feats belonging here. One game is played with rings hung on a stick, or caught with a hook, or thrown on an upright stake. At fairs the lucky player gets a prize for tossing rings on knives. Play of this kind has been used by a brilliant American journal to point a satire on American bidding for European titles. The ambitious damsels stand in front of a brightly lighted booth, in which numerous manikins of repulsive appearance, with their armorial bearings suspended round their necks, are ranged on exhibition, and attempt to throw engagement rings over the heads of these figures.

6. Catching

Catching and holding moving objects is the direct opposite of throwing, and the two are best understood by being contrasted. Catching, too, is the complement of throwing; the object which has been set in motion, animated, as it were, by human power, comes to our hand to get new life. In no way can our supremacy over matter find more satisfactory expression. It is with difficulty that children learn to catch, for the direction of their necessary motions by means of sight requires so much time that the moving object passes to another place before the hand is ready to seize it. The child usually practises catching a ball rolling on the floor first, then holds up its

((119) dress or apron or two hands placed together to form a cup into which the ball thrown skilfully through the air will drop. Many such attempts are required before the art is acquired of controlling the muscular innervation to meet the still distant moving object.

While there are various objects employed in such play—as, for instance, in the Greek pentaliqixeinthere were five pebbles, bits of china, or what we call jackstones, thrown up with one hand and caught on its back, and in the beautiful game of magic rings, and trials of skill with sticks, knives, watches, etc.[114]—still the ball is the most perfect and suitable plaything, partly because it is easy to grasp from any direction and partly on account of its lightness and elasticity. It is equally well adapted to solitary or social play. When alone, the player throws it with a view to its return to the starting point, whether its course be perpendicular or a rebound. A game of skill popular with girls consists in throwing the ball, and before it has time to descend taking another ball from a table, then catching the first one with the same hand.[115] In bilboquet, which was played by Henry III of France, and is known to many primitive peoples, as, for instance the Eskimos, the ball is caught in a cup, to which it is attached by a string. The games are much more varied when two or more play together at throwing and catching, though in that case experimentation is usually transformed into a contest. The kadokadoka of the Gilbert Islanders illustrates a simple and universally known form. Women play it by standing in two opposing lines and throw the ball, which must never be allowed to drop, back and forth.[116] In the Greek oufrania sfairathe ball was thrown as high as possible, and the contest was over who should catch it, or, if only two were playing, in the agility of the leap for it,

((120) as in the Odyssey. The victor must throw the ball aloft again before his feet touch the earth. A game practised by the Indians is apparently of a similar character. " The beginner of the game holds a rather hard ball in his hand, throws it directly up, and attempts to catch it. This is by no means an easy task, for around him stands an eager circle each with hands outstretched to seize the ball. The successful one rushes to an appointed goal, while

the others try to hinder him."[117] The game in which one boy rides on another's back to throw the ball is illustrated in an Egyptian wall picture, and Bastian saw it also in Burmah. In this, imitation becomes prominent, as does the element of rivalry, where the boys vie with one another in clapping, kneeling, and going through various motions before catching the ball. In most games where the ball is struck the contest develops after it is caught. In playing trapball, the ball is placed on a springboard and sent aloft. All try to catch it, and the victor must bounce the ball until he is supplanted by another. In England, trapball can be traced back to the fourteenth century. Strutt gives an illustration of the spoon-shaped board then used.[118]

In closing these remarks on movement-play we will notice briefly the distinction implied in our use of the word "sport," since many of the games which we have been considering are so designated and practised by adults. What is it that converts play into sport? Preeminently the seriousness, the stress of earnestness with which it is pursued. Yet this statement is too general, for children too, as every one knows, are deeply earnest about their play, which does not on that account become a sport; and a man may play billiards or chess with such perseverance and zeal that his game becomes the principal event of his daily life, and yet he is not called a sportsman. We must evidently find a more specific definition. The fact that in the merest play all sorts of acts and achievements are involved which are not, as such, playful, but rather preparatory for play, may help us to this. In the eyes of adults the interest of a game lies in the

((121) construction of a theory for it; they busy themselves with perfection of form in play, with the rules of the game, with practice and training, with the proper outfit and suitable costume, etc. Only he who does so assiduously busy himself is a genuine sportsman, according to this theory. We may then define sport as play pursued reflectively, scientifically. This accounts for the fact that children are never sportsmen, despite the immense importance of their play to them, and that the mountain climber whose highest ideal is to conquer the heights, or the chess player who devotes all his spare time to the game, is still not a sportsman.

Notes

  1. Die Seele der Kindes, pp. 211, 216.
  2. Karl Vierordt, Physiologic des Kindesalters, Gerhardt's Handbuch der Kinderkrankheiten, vol. i, p. 181.
  3. Preyer, Die Seele des Kindes, p. 139.
  4. Preyer, Die Seele des Kindes, p. 139.
  5. Mental Development, etc., chap. iv, the Origin of Right-handedness See, too, Vierordt, Physiologie des Kindesalters, p. 187. [Baldwin explains it genetically as an "expressive function" which afterward culminates m speech, which is located in an adjacent centre in the same hemisphere.—TR].
  6. See O. Behaghel, Etwas vom Zuknöpfen, Frankfurter Zeitung,1897, No. 329
  7. Op. cit., pp. 444, 600.
  8. Op. cit., pp. 444, 600.
  9. Die Narcotic Genussmittel and der Mensch, preface, and p. 378.
  10. Ibid.
  11. Jules Legras, Au pays Russe, Paris. 1895, p. 18.
  12. "The reprehensible confining of the child's legs," says Vierordt, in reference to kicking, "retards the development of the muscles not a little." Psychologie des Kindesalters, p. 186.
  13. Op. cit., p. 174.
  14. Kind and Welt, p. 70. Sigismund tries to explain the backward creeping as due to the fact that the child gets on its dress and is impeded by it. But it is noteworthy that Baldwin's little daughter, who for a time preferred to creep backward, had previously exhibited the reverse of natural walking movements—namely, such as would carry her backward —when held over a table so that she could just feel it with her soles. Mental Development, etc., p. 82.
  15. Les jeux des anciens, pp. 16, 21.
  16. Sigismund, op. cit., pp. 56, 74.
  17. Die Seele des Kindes, p. 175.
  18. Sigismund, op. cit., pp. 56,74.
  19. Die Seele des Kindes, p. 179.
  20. Mental Development, ete., p. 81.
  21. Pädagogische Schriften, 1833, vol. ii, p. 333.
  22. Kraepelin, Psychiatric, p. 445.
  23. Op. cit., cit., p. 182.
  24. M. Guyau, Les Problèmes dc l'Esthétique contemporaine, p. 48.
  25. L. Grasberger, Erziehung and Unterricht im klassischen Alterthum, pp. 32, 318.
  26. A. F. Chamberlain, The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought, p. 263.
  27. See W. Seoboda, Die Bewohner des Nikobar-Archipels. Inter. Arch. fur Eth., vol. vi (1893), p. 32.
  28. Grasberger, op. cit., p. 300.
  29. Weinhold, Altnordisches Lehen, Berlin, 1856, p. 308.
  30. H. O. Lenz, Gemeinnützige Naturgeschichte, 1851, vol. i, p. 612.
  31. K. Wienbold, Altnordisches Leben, p. 307.
  32. Die Seele des Kindes, p. 183.
  33. J. Minor, Neuhochdeutsche Metrik, Strassburg, 1893, p. 11,,
  34. It is the godlike power of harmony
    Which orders wild motions to the quiet social dance,
    And like a Nemesis, with the golden reins of rhythm,
    Harnesses riotous lust. and tames its madness?'
  35. "O, Du frecher Spielmann. mach uns den Reihen lang! Juckheia! Wie er sprang! Herz, Milz, Lung and Leber rich rundum in ihm Schwang." K. Weinhold, Die deutschen Frauen in Mittelalter, p. 373.
  36. Sonnige Welten, p. 77.
  37. Our waltz was originally the final movement in a complicated dance "which represented the romance of love, the meeting, the pursuit, the painful doubts and difficulties, and at last the wedding jollity." Schaller, Das Spiel and die Spieler, 1861, p. 219.
  38. Grosse, op. cit., p. 203.
  39. Sonnige Welten, p. 338.
  40. H. Ploss, Das Kleine Kind vom Tragbett bis zum ersten Schritt, 1881, p. 98. From this exhaustive treatise on the cradle it appears that most primitive peoples do not use our cradles with rockers, but prefer the swinging kind.
  41. K. v. d. Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Centralbrasiliens.
  42. R. Parkinson, Beiträge zur Ethnologie der Gilbert Insulaner. Internat. Archiv fur Ethnologic, vol. ii, p. 92.
  43. Becq dc Fouquières, Les Jeux des Anciens, p. 54.
  44. See especially op. cit., 205, where Souriau seems to undervalue the attraction of the backward glide.
  45. See Grasberger, op. cit., p. 128.
  46. Op. cit p. 99.
  47. See Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, p. 153.
  48. Weinhold, Altnordische Lehen. p. 306.
  49. Perez, Les trois premières années, etc., p. 80.
  50. Sigismund, op. cit., p. 40.
  51. Ibid., p. 53.
  52. I. H. Autenrieth, Ansichten über Natur and Seelenleben, p. 163.
  53. Unter den Naturvölkern Centralbrasiliens, p. 383.
  54. Grasberger, vol. i, p. 14.
  55. Rochholz, p. 464.
  56. Die Völker des östlichen Asien, vol. iii, p. 323.
  57. Les trois premières années, p. 84
  58. Psychologie des Sentiments, p. 323.
  59. Compayré, p. 271.
  60. Die Seele des Kindes, p. 383.
  61. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, p. 422.
  62. See Compayré, p. 191.
  63. See Baechtold, Gottfried Keller's Leben, vol. iii, p. 273.
  64. Michael Munkacsy, Erinnerungen, Berlin, 1897, p. 4.
  65. Op. cit., vol. ii, p. 423.
  66. Op. cit., p. 9.
  67. The Play of Animals, p. 93.
  68. Op. cit., p. 456.
  69. Op. cit.. p. 103.
  70. Alwin Schultz, op. cit., p. 11.
  71. O. Finsch, Reise nach Westsibirien im Jahre 1876, Berlin, 1879, p. 520.
  72. F. Boas, Internat. Arch. fiir Ethnol., vol. i, 1888, p. 229. See, too, H. W. Klutschak, Als Eskimo unter Eskimo, pp. 136,139, where are to be found illustrations of such figures.
  73. E. v. Hartmann, Das Spiel. Tagesfragen, Leipsic, 1896, p. 146.
  74. Die Seele des Kindes, pp. 183, 257.
  75. Op. cit., p. so.
  76. Kind and Welt, p. 115.
  77. L'esthetique du Mouvement, p. 202.
  78. Even in skittles one speaks of a good throw.
  79. H. A. Berlepseb, Die Alpen in Natur and Lebensbildern, Jena, 1871, p. 415.
  80. See Fouquières, p. 209.
  81. Gutsmuths, Spiele zur Uebung and Erholung des Körpers and Geistes, eighth edition. pp. 122,139,169.
  82. R. Parkinson, Beitr. zur Ethn. der Gilbertin, p. 92.
  83. Gutsmuths, Sicle zur Uebung and Erholung des Körpers and Geistes, eighth edition, pp. 122, 139, 169.
  84. H. O. Forbes, Travels of a Scientist in the Malay Archipelago, vol. i, p. 159.
  85. William Black's Highland Cousins gibes a fine description of this national game of Scotland.
  86. See Fischart's descriptions in his Gargantua.
  87. See Vieth's Encyklopädie der Leibesübungen, bol. iii, p. 296.
  88. Another game like this is the so-called Prellballspiel. Gutsmuths, p. 101.
  89. See Floss, Das Kind, vol. ii, p. 292.
  90. H. Wagner, Illustrirtes Spielbuch für Knaben, Leipsic, 1895, p. 132.
  91. Grasberger, p. 78.
  92. See Fouquière, p. 173.
  93. Zingerle, p. 27.
  94. Jour. of Anthro. In., vol. xvii (1887), p. 88, on stone spinning tops.
  95. Ten Kate, Beiträge zur Ethnographic der Timorgruppe. uternat. Arch f. Ethn., vol. vii (1894), p. 247.
  96. Ethnographische Paralle en and Vergleichen, p. 93. See, too, R. Andrée, Das Kreiselspiel and seine Verbreitung. Globus, vol. lxix (1896), p. 371.
  97. Gutsmuths, pp. 232, 358.
  98. Ibid.
  99. H. Wagner, Spielbuch für Knaben, p. 114.
  100. Rochholz, p. 391.
  101. Grasberger, p. 60.
  102. "Gargantua threw flat stones carelessly on the water so that they skipped I don't know how many times."
  103. A beautiful example of this may be found in Schweinfurth's lm Herzen von Afrika, Lei 'c, vol. i, p. 329.
  104. Grasberger gives this version in German verse:
    "Wahrlich ein arges Ziel für den Schwann der spielenden Knaben,
    Und für des Steinwurfs Wucht pflanzten sic mich an den Weg.
    Wie hat die wüste Hagel getroffen, die blühenden Krone
    Mir zerschlagen, and ach, wie sind die Zweige geknickt !
    Nichts mehr gilt nach der Ernte der Baum Euch : zur eigenen Schändung
    Hab' ich Unseliger hier alle die Früchte gezeugt"
  105. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, bol. iii, pp. 328, 324.
  106. Ibid.
  107. Ploss, Das Kind, vol. ii, p. 291.
  108. See A. Richter, Zur Geschichte des deutschen Kinderspieles. Westermanns Monatshefte, 1870.
  109. Rochholz, p. 421.
  110. Forbes, op. cit., vol. i, p. 234. See also vol. ii, p. 45, where a simpler game is described which is played by boys also, and is more like European quoits.
  111. Nordenskiöld, Die Umsegelung Asiens and Europas auf der Vega, Leipsic, 1891-'82, vol. i, p. 70.
  112. Gutsmuths, p. 69.
  113. Ibid., p. 198.
  114. A peculiar and difficult game of catching is played by the Gilbert Islanders. A light feather ornament is loosely attached to a stick which is thrown into the air. As the stick descends the ornament floats away, and the players' task is to fish for it, as it were, with a stone fastened to a long line and bring it down. This game is called " Tabama." S. Parkinson, Beiträge zur Ethnologic der Gilbert Insulaner.
  115. See Ernst Meier, Deutsche Kinderreime and Kinderspiele aus Swaben, p. 145.
  116. R. Parkinson, op. cit. 9
  117. H. Wagner, lllustrirtes Spielbuch für Knaben, p. 92.
  118. Op. cit., p. 177.

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