functions sometimes of and always akin to rudimentary organs. The best index
and guide to the stated activities of adults in past ages is found in the instinctive,
untaught, and non-imitative plays of children which are the most spontaneous
and exact expressions of their motor needs. The young grow up into the same
forms of motor activity, as did generations that have long preceded them, only to
a limited extent; and if the form of every human occupation were to change to-
day, play would be unaffected save in some of its superficial imitative forms. It
would develop the motor capacities, impulses, and fundamental forms of our
past heritage, and the transformation of these into later acquired adult forms is
progressively later. In play every mood and movement is instinct with heredity.
Thus we rehearse the activities of our ancestors, back we know not how far, and
repeat their life work in summative and adumbrated ways. It is reminiscent albeit
unconsciously, of our line of descent; and each is the key to the other. The
psycho-motive impulses that prompt it are the forms in which our forebears have
transmitted to us their habitual activities. Thus stage by stage we reënact their
lives. Once in the phylon many of these activities were elaborated in the life and
death struggle for existence. Now the elements and combinations oldest in the
muscle history of the race are rerepresented earliest in the individual, and those
later follow in order. This is why the heart of youth goes out into play as into
nothing else, as if in it man remembered a lost paradise. This is why, unlike
gymnastics, play has as much soul as body, and also why it so makes for unity of
body and soul that the proverb "Man is whole only when he plays" suggests that
the purest plays are those that enlist both alike. To address the body
predominantly strengthens unduly the fleshy elements, and to overemphasize the
soul causes weakness and automatisms. Thus understood, play is the ideal type
of exercise for the young, most favorable for growth, and most self-regulating in
both kind and amount. For its forms the pulse of adolescent enthusiasm beats
highest. It is unconstrained and free to follow any outer or inner impulse. The
zest of it vents and satisfies the strong passion of youth for intense erethic and
perhaps orgiastic states, gives an exaltation of self-feeling so craved that with no
vicarious outlet it often impels to drink, and best of all realizes the watchword of
the Turners, frisch, frei, fröhlich, fromm [Fresh, free, jovial, pious.].
Ancient Greece, the history and literature of which owe their perennial charm for
all later ages to the fact that they represent the eternal adolescence of the world,
best illustrates what this enthusiasm means for youth. Jäger and Guildersleeve,
and yet better Grasberger, would have us believe that the Panhellenic and
especially the Olympic games combined many of the best features of a modern
prize exhibition, a camp-meeting, fair, Derby day, a Wagner festival, a meeting