The child : a study in the evolution of man / by Alexander F. Chamberlain.

  • Alexander Francis Chamberlain
Date:
1900
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The child : a study in the evolution of man / by Alexander F. Chamberlain. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    sings) without the modest Graces even the gods begin neither festival nor dance. Take away from Hfe what is the enforced service of iron necessity, and what is all that is left but play ? Artists play with Nature, poets with their imagination, philoso- phers with their ideas, the fair sex with our hearts, and kings, alas ! with our heads !' The role of ennui in the stimulation of play, according to his theory, is well illustrated by Gutsmuths's observation that when ennui entered the hut of primitive man, pleasure took him by the hand and, the dance begun, movement-play solaced the first men; but when huts had changed to palaces and ennui again appeared, movement being forbidden, pleasure muzzled her mouth and cards were resorted to. The general necessity for play is evidenced by the widespread character of plays all over the globe, and plaj'S more than anything else reveal national and racial character, the touch of the people is upon them, and ' by their plays shalt thou know them'—the childish negro, the Frenchman always paying court, the super- stitious Spaniard, the warlike American Indian all reveal themselves in their plays. Gutsmuths cites Wieland again on this point (259, p. 13): 'And where is man less upon his guard than when he plays? Wherein is the character of a nation more genuinely reflected than in its ruhng amusements ? What Plato says of the music of any people holds also of its plays : ' There is no alteration in them that is not the herald or the result of a change in its moral or political condition.' Play is a revealer of character, and is never seen to better advantage than in childhood, when, as Home says (305^, p. 215), there is little or no disguise, 'for a child, in all things obedient to the impulse of nature, hides none of its emotions; the savage and the clown [/.(?., rustic] who have no guide but pure nature, expose their hearts to view by giving way to all_ the natural signs.' In the playing child we ' recognise the anxious care of nature to discover men to each other.' Gutsmuths came very near the heart of the question when he said (259, p. 22): ' Work, serious occupations, and converse with adults are artificial roles of youth, in which they gradually make \\i€vc debut on the grand stage of life; plays, however, are natural roles in their own youthful Paradise.' Nowhere else are the young so little limited in their actions and con- duct by adults—nowhere are they freer, more natural, more