PLAY AN INSTINCT.

Bruce Herald, Volume L, Issue 32, 30 April 1914, Page 3

PLAY AN INSTINCT.

+++ : Tho moro highly developed the species is the longer is the period of youth, simply in order that the individual may have *. a longer time to acquire and •adapt the larger number of more complicated faculties and qualities essential to their future well-being. If this be so, we may well ponder whether we aro nob doing our children a cruel wrong in curtailing their period of play aG we do, cither to put .them to work or to force other less natural forms of education on them. The play of humans, whether young or adult, follows precisely the same rules as those of subhuman animals. It is in its essence aui instinct, and did wo realiso more fully how much our acts are dictated by instinct, and how very little reason has to do with the behaviour most people, we should sooner attain to wisdom ■and understand our own natures and many social problems. With children play is wholly instinctivo, and though tho development in artificial toys and complicated games has to some extent taken the play away from tho cultivation of faculties useful in after-life, anyone who studies children must notice how it is not the mechanical toy—for they soon grow tired of it —but the playthings—bricks, balls, dolls, carts, etc., which call out the exercise of faculties, practical, inventive, or imitative, that pleaso them, most. Tho play of men, including socalled "sport," is only a development, though tho instinct may havo become •almost unrecognisable. It well illustrates tho influence of tho intellect on tho instincts on other departments of our being. Tho original instinct is lost sight of, and men, having found that there is pleasuro to be gained from it, cultivate the pleasure for its own sake, often l even in direst contradiction of tho original instanof, 'and thus with perverted instincts, exploited for immediate gratification, they not. seldom fall below the animals in other matters besides play.—From "The Animals' Friend."