life to a higher plane. The Golden Age in Grecian history was possible because there was leisure for play. The modern Golden Age is being ushered in when there shall also be opportunity for play; this time-in a democracy where there shall be no slaves, but where all shall have an equal right to play. Except as a people gain and retain the play spirit which is natural to little children, they do not enter into the possibilities of social progress.

PUBLIC PROVISION AND RESPONSIBILITY FOR PLAY

GROUNDS

BY HENRY S. CURTIS,

Lecturer on Playgrounds, Worcester, Mass.

The play movement, like other social and educational movements that have come under public control, began as a private philanthropy. Five years ago, probably nine-tenths of all the playgrounds in this country were being carried on in this way; to-day a half or more are under some city department. There can be no question of the tendency all over the country, it is strongly toward public support and public control. Where this movement is to lead us the future must decide, but the indications are that the present developments are only the beginnings of a movement of nearly universal extent and very profound significance.

Before one can discuss intelligently the question of play and the responsibility of the public to furnish it, it becomes necessary to consider the nature and function of play in the life of the child, and the kind of responsibility that the government, in its larger or smaller units, owes to its constituents.

To the childlike man of Plato and Carlyle, who has not lost in the commonplace relations of everyday the ability to wonder at the really marvelous, there are few things more mysterious than play. For all this intensity of effort that leaves him breathless and exhausted, the child is no richer or wiser, no better clothed or fed; he has apparently gained nothing. Whence this abounding energy, not displayed in other things? Whence this richness of emotional content and joy without any apparent advantage? Play is the beauty of childhood and tints with its auroral hues the dawn to which we all look back at times with longing. In the bitter struggle of the ages in which every vestige of the useless was shorn away by the ruthless shears of selection, how is it that this inner spirit of poetry and joyousness has survived? For play, in fact, seems to be the expression of life itself, springing forth spontaneously everywhere as its first activity. We work because we must; we play be

cause it is our nature. I know of no better basis for a theory of optimism than this.

There have been a series of explanations of play offered. Schiller and Spencer held that play was "surplus energy." Nerve cells have a natural instability. Built up by all incoming stimuli, they at length reach a point when, like intermittent springs, they must overflow. When the engine stands still at the station, it must blow off steam or blow up the boiler, and this is the state of the boy when work does not use up his nervous energy.

Professor Groos objects to this theory that "surplus energy" only requires that something should be done. It does not require that the animal or child should play. Why does not the boy at such times go out and saw wood? How account for the forms that play assumes in different animals? He says, on the other hand, that "play is an instinct that has served the purpose of education." "The animal does not play because it is young, but rather has a period of infancy in order that it may play." Play appears in the animal series at the point where training is necessary in order that the young may pursue the activities of the adults, and it serves to give this training. He says further, "If the kitten had not practised in springing upon flying leaves and rolling balls, the cat would not be able to capture its prey." Surplus energy is not the cause, but only a favorable condition for play.

If Groos had carried his theory to its natural conclusion, he would have had a very satisfactory theory of play. There is apparently only one way that action may become instinctive, and that is by its being endlessly repeated through unnumbered ages until it is pressed back from the higher conscious levels into the lower subconscious ones and ultimately into the very structure of the nervous mechanism itself. Dr. Hall has probably given us the best statement and explanation of play in "Adolescence." All plays are remnants or survivals of the previous activities of the race. As the savage state was much the longest evolutionary period, so this has furnished in the type of the chase, the fleeing and pursuit, the finding and hiding away, the dodging and catching, the throwing and striking, which constitute the elements of all motor plays. The joy of the original was the joy of capture and escape, the joy of survival when the struggle was very bitter, and famine and violence lay in wait or savagely pursued our ferine ancestor. There

was thus connected with these movements and co-ordinations at the beginning an intense emotional content; to run fast or to hide away meant escape and life, to pursue and capture, to find and strike down with stone or club, meant relief from hunger and survival in the struggle. Hence, an intense pleasure became attached to these movements and co-ordinations at the beginning of things. The dawn of intelligence was the same. The primitive brain was lethargic, not easily stirred to action or judgment. It required the intense stimuli of danger and want to awaken it to quickness of judgment and intelligence of choice. Play has the same characteristics and has always performed the same function for the child. It is well known that the boy can run faster in playing tag than he can in going on an errand, that he will expend in a day's vigorous play far more energy than it is possible for him to develop in work. Certainly no system of education has thus far been devised that has the same value in arousing his intelligence. To play, and play alone, his whole physical, emotional, intellectual and social nature responds, and the child becomes a unit. It makes the same requirements of rapid judgments and instantaneous action then that the chase required of our ancestors. Up to a certain undetermined age play is far more educative than the conventional school, and there is far more reason for its being furnished by the community.

on.

Probably play reached almost its lowest ebb in the history of the world in America during the latter half of the past century. Vigorous motor plays require a considerable space to carry them A boy can not play ball without a ball field, swim without a swimming place or climb trees without trees to climb, and these the city has not furnished. He can shoot craps or pitch pennies on the sidewalk, he can play jackstones or tell stories on a doorstep, he can do various things in the alleys and stables, but these are not the types of play by which the race developed or by which "in distant ages children grew to kings and sages."

The world of nature holds out to the child a thousand invitations whose subtle appeal he can scarce resist. The forest calls to him from its shadowy depths and speaks of mysteries hidden within that untraveled country, and of animals and birds' nests; the brook offers its minnows to catch and its waters that he may wade and bathe in; the tree lures the ape in him to its ancestral home. Every

animal is a new person to be loved and talked to and played with, and a dog is often as good as a whole gymnasium in the physical exercise he can promote. The city world of brick and stone, of asphalt streets and rushing cars has no such appeal. The brain was not evolved through reactions to these stimuli, and it is not until later that their charm is felt.

Play for any high development always requires good camaraderie and leadership. The American city, which has mixed up Jews and Greeks and Italians and Slavs in a single community, has worked strongly against the development of that sense of trust and affection which is essential to highly organized and frequent play. There has been no community feeling, and any high degree of social leadership among children has been impossible.

These city communities, if such an aggregation of heterogeneous elements without community feeling can be so called, have had no common life and little if any sentiment in regard to play. Play has not been encouraged. Whereas, in ages past, mothers have always taught games to the little children, the crowded tenement and street have furnished no place for this, and the crowded program has left no time. The games of older children have always been handed on from one generation of children to the next by social tradition, but mixed races have no common traditions and games have not been transmitted.

I have been at the opening of many new playgrounds. The experience is the same everywhere, the children do not play much, but stand or rush about and talk or wrangle. On investigation, it will be found that, unless they have been taught them at the school, they know very few games, and these are usually not of the best type, but have often taken on vulgar expressions or a rudeness of manner from the street environment in which they have flourished.

I believe that all who have been closely associated with the playground movement are convinced that if we are to have a high type of really educative play, of sufficient quantity to give health and physical strength, and a quickening of the intelligence and the development of social habits, that the public must in some way furnish both the playground and the leadership, without which the playground is often a social menace.

The first attitude of the public mind toward this problem was that providing facilities for play was a new and very proper form