Chapter IX: Part I: Playful Experimentation (5)

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 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.[258] 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.”[259]

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 another,[260] 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 Leu Thoi-Kong.[261] 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.”[262] The Romans called marbles ocellata. They are frequently mentioned, too, in old German literature,[263] 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![264]

Very common, too, are the games in which small discs are thrown one after another. The Greek στρεπτίνδα was 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 a 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 as would pass in among the quoits and hit the ones aimed at.”[265]

In the Greek game κυνδαλισμός the 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 τρόπα. 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.”[266] In croquet the balls must roll through wickets. Throwing balls through the open mouth of a figure carved in wood was a mediæval 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.[267] In Genf, little metal balls were tossed through holes bored in the head of a cask.[268] We have a classic description of such a game in Storm’s Schimmel-reiter, 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 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 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 πενταλιθίζειν there were five pebbles, bits of china, or what we call jack-stones, 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.[269]—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.[270] 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.[271] In the Greek οὐφρανία σφᾶιρα the 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, 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.”[272] The game in which one boy rides on another’s back to throw the ball is illustrated in an Egyptian wall picture, and Bastion 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.[273]

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 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.

III. PLAYFUL USE OF THE HIGHER MENTAL POWERS

Rousseau, who dwells upon the fact that a man’s education begins at his birth, illustrates clearly, if somewhat exaggeratedly (being under the influence of Condillac), the threefold biological significance of youth when he says in the first volume of Émile that if man came into the world full grown he would be “un parfait imbécile, un automate, une statue immobile et presque insensible.” These words exactly fit into our subject and its classification. Having treated of the sensor and motor aspects of experimentation, we now proceed to examine its value to the higher mental life, where by its help man is rescued from the danger of remaining “un parfait imbécile.”

The influence of experimentation is felt in the activity of intellect, feeling, and will alike. Of course all play, including the limited group which we have been considering, is of great importance to the whole mental make-up, since it acts in all directions, sharpening the intellect, exercising the will, and furnishing occasion for the discharge of emotion. But the special aim of the present discussion lies in the investigation of how far these powers of the mind are themselves the subjects of experimental play, and accordingly in what follows we shall not inquire as to the advantageous effect of play on attention, imagination, reason, etc., but will examine cases where these capacities are directly experimented with.

A. EXPERIMENTATION WITH THE MENTAL POWERS

If we ask ourselves what aspects of intellectual activity are most conspicuously subjects of playful experimentation we naturally turn to memory, imagination, attention, and reason. Our first subject for consideration, then, is memory, where again we must distinguish between simple recognition and reflective recollection.

1. _Memory_

(_a_) Recognition

Recognition is the link which connects the present with what we have known in the past. The new psychology repudiates the common idea that the present impression is compared with a memory picture of the past and the two recognised as identical, since it is not borne out by the facts. Neither the emergence of a genuine memory picture nor its comparison with the present object is demonstrable. When I select my own from a number of hats I simply recognise it, and can tell no more about it. But a careful study of cases in which the recognition is hesitating clearly distinguishes the two following stages. First there is the simple knowledge: I have seen this before, the recognition having been accomplished by the “Coefficient of Recognition”[274] (Höffding) without our necessarily knowing why we recognise the object. It is difficult to say what grounds this feeling. Physiologically there may be special reasons for the accompanying nervous processes. Speaking psychologically, there seem to be certain shadowy feelings of warmth and intimacy. In any case the content of the memory picture is genuine, though it does not stand alone, but blends with the impression of the moment by the process of assimilation.[275] A second stage is reached through the fact that we are able to place the object suitably; we know that we have had something to do with it, and this is often facilitated by a hasty reversion to its earlier psychic _milieu_ of space and time relations, as well as of word and idea connections. When not too mechanical, as sometimes when dressing we put on everything in its right relation but without attention, recognition is pre-eminently pleasurable. Even the mere coefficient of recognition is accompanied with a mild satisfaction such as Faust experienced when after a foreign sojourn he found himself once more in his study. “Ah, when in one’s own narrow cell the friendly lamp is burning.” But much more intense is the effect of the second stage, for here comes in joy in accomplishing a task, in overcoming some difficulty, however slight. A short time ago I found on my table a fragment of porcelain decorated with gold. I knew it at once; the pattern was one I had often seen, but where? My glance accidentally fell on the curtain cord, and immediately I felt that the scrap must be from one of the porcelain knobs which it was looped on. The result was lively, almost triumphant satisfaction. The act of recognition being so pleasurable, we would naturally expect man to make use of it for its own sake—that is, experimentally. Aristotle, indeed, grounds appreciation of art in pleasurable recognition, and, while not going to that length, we must admit that the idea deserves consideration.

We have already spoken of visual recognition, which is a prominent division, and will now consider play connected with it. The earliest manifestations of pleasure in the perception of form recorded by child psychologists are no other than acts of recognition. In its second quarter the infant begins to recognise its mother and nurse. There is nothing playful about this, of course, but very soon experimentation becomes prominent as the same form appears in changed conditions with consequent uncertainty involving the stimulus of difficulty to be overcome. At six months Preyer’s baby saw his father’s reflection in a mirror, and made a sudden motion toward it.[276] The little girl observed by Pollock at thirteen months recognised pictures in a newspaper, calling out “Wah, wah” to the animals, trees, etc.[277] In Sully’s beautiful experiment, made in the seventeenth month, the playful character is more evident. “The young thinker,” he says in the diary, “achieved his first success in geometric abstraction, or the consideration of pure form, when just seventeen months old. He had learned the name of his rubber ball. Having securely grasped this, he went on calling oranges ‘Bo.’ This left the father in some doubt whether the child was attending exclusively to form, as a geometrician should, for he was wont to make a toy of an orange, as when rolling it on the floor. This uncertainty was, however, soon removed. One day C—— was sitting at table beside his sire, while the latter was pouring out a glass of beer. Instantly the ready namer of things pointed to the bubbles on the surface, and exclaimed ‘Bo!’ This was repeated on many subsequent occasions. As the child made no attempt to handle the bubbles, it was evident that he did not view them as possible playthings. As he got lost in contemplation, muttering ‘Bo, bo!’ his father tells us that he had the satisfaction of feeling sure that the young mind was already learning to turn away from the coarseness of matter and fix itself on the refined attribute of form.”[278] At this time, too, the child begins to enjoy recognising things from their mere outline. Sigismund records progress in this direction at about the end of the second year. “They already know many things by the simple outline. My boy, who, by the way, has seen few pictures, recognised my shadow in his twenty-first month, being frightened for the first moment, then clearly delighted, calling out ‘Papa!’ and has probably not been afraid of any shadow since. On the contrary, he, like other children of his age, likes to watch shadow pictures,[279] especially moving ones.” They soon learn to know the outlines of their own. How deeply must the essence of individuality be impressed upon them when these meagre outlines of a figure which they are accustomed to seeing filled out are sufficient for recognition! Perhaps for children who do not see pictures early, shadows serve to introduce the latter and explain them, just as, according to the Greek fable, they led to the art of drawing. Children are so fond of looking at pictures that they often enjoy the representation more than the reality. “A house!” exclaims the little picture gazer delightedly when he comes to one, while he would hardly notice the real thing. Does this pleasure arise from the solving of a riddle, as Aristotle seems to say?[280] This would make the enjoyment of recognition identical with that derived from overcoming difficulties, and there can be no doubt that this is an important element in all art appreciation, if it be not, indeed, the very kernel of æsthetic enjoyment. In the enjoyment of a landscape, it is safe to say that for nine tenths of the observers the chief satisfaction comes from recognising the various peaks, villages, castles, etc., in the panorama. There is one more point. As soon as anything like a contest is involved, a stronger shock, a sturdier resistance to the act of recognition, a comic colouring is given to the enjoyment. Marie G——, who from the time she was two years old had a veritable passion for having things drawn for her, considered it a great joke when she could not make out what was meant without some effort. For older children and adults puzzle pictures are skilfully prepared with a view to rendering recognition difficult, and success is followed by triumphant laughter. Finally, it may be added that primitive folk are sometimes unable to see the meaning of photographs and other pictures,[281] a fact which makes their early recognition by children the more wonderful. On the other hand, I recall Charles de Lahitte’s observation of an imprisoned Guayaké, (a little-known and utterly uncivilized tribe of southern Paraguay) which proves that the very lowest savage may recognise a photograph and be overjoyed with it. “He recognised his picture after some instruction, and broke out with expressions of pleasure and astonishment, crying repeatedly as he slapped his body, ‘Gon, gon!’ which equals ‘me!’”[282]

Acoustic recognition, too, is more important and significant for art than one might at first suppose. We find even in children who repeat a simple melody indefatigably that pleasure in repetition forms a psychological basis for a physiological impulse, and in the musical pleasures of adults this feeling is much stronger.[283] The playful feature is emphasized when acoustic conditions vary, as in changed pitch or some other modification, so that overcoming difficulty enters. Potpourri and variations are instances. In Wagner’s music there is a peculiar satisfaction in the emergence of a leading motive from the overwhelming mass of tones; like a friendly island rising in the midst of surging seas. All modern music, indeed, is evolved from the intricacies and modifications of such acoustic play; to follow them and identify the unity in variety is a pleasure which grows with the hearer’s technical appreciation, until at last, in fuguelike movements, actual beauty is subordinated to the artfully ordered formal features of the composition.

In poetry, playful repetition takes manifold forms,[284] such as rhyme, alliteration, and that chainlike reiteration of words referred to earlier. But still more ingenious and charming is the device of bringing the repetition so close on its own heels that the first impression still dwells in the mind when the second demands attention. Pure enjoyment of repetition as such is simplest when the same or similar forms are separated by a long interval, allowing the first impression to sink below the threshold of consciousness before its analogue appears. A passage of this kind occurs in Goethe’s poem quoted above, “O gieb vom weichen Pfuhle,” etc., and is still better illustrated by the similarity of the second and eighth verses of a triolet. Take this of Gleims:

“Ein Triolet soll ich ihr singen?
Ein Triolet ist viel zu klein,
Ihr grosses Lob hineinzubringen.
Ein Triolet soll ich ihr singen?
Wie sollt ich mit der Kleinheit ringen,
Es müsst’ ein grosser Hymnus sein!
Ein Triolet soll ich ihr singen?
Ein Triolet ist viel zu klein!”[285]

It is but a step from this to the familiar and primitive refrain.[286] To serve this purpose, interjections, single sounds, words, and sentences are repeated after so long an interval that there can be no question of sensuous enjoyment; it becomes mere repetition. As the soothing satisfaction of a melody is produced by dwelling on the keynote, so with the refrain. This principle is even more strongly brought out in the turn, which is so prominent a feature in much lyric poetry, and also in the form originating in Spain and Portugal in which a single verse of a familiar stanza is made the keynote of a new poem. This is play to the producer and hearers as well. Such analogy of lyric form to musical variation as is shown in the “freien Glosse” actually deserves to be called variation itself.[287]

In the imitation of particular sounds poetry offers further indulgence to the enjoyment of repetition, to the amusement of adults and delight of children. This is really imitative play and as such belongs to a later division of our subject; yet for the listener it is also an exercise in repetition, and is conspicuous in many refrains. Minor says: “The imitation of musical instruments by means of articulate or nondescript sounds is common in folk songs. The shepherd’s pipe, the horn, trumpet, and drum are introduced in pastoral, hunting, and military pieces.”[288] Children are especially partial to the mimicry of animals, and some of the formulæ have become traditional. The German robin sings, it seems,

“Buble witt witt witt,
I will dir e Krüi-zerrle gean.”

The sparrow says “Twitter, twitter”; the quail “Bob White, peas ripe?” the cackling hen in English, “Cut, cut, cadahcut,” and in German “Duck di duck Alli Stuck Unter mî Ruck.”

Finally, we must not forget a very popular game founded on recognition. A whole company will dance around a blindfolded person until he hits on the floor with a stick, whereupon they all stand still, and he touches one and attempts to identify him by the sound of his voice, having three trials. Sometimes the sense of touch is allowed to assist the recognition, as in blind-man’s-buff and the Greek μυίνδα.[289]

(_b_) Reflective Memory

Playful exercise of the recollective faculty, dependent on the enjoyment of reproduction as such rather than on any quality of the memory picture, is confined almost exclusively to children, and indeed to those not yet of the school age. From about the third year[290] to the end of the sixth, when enforced mental exercise is begun, we find in children outspoken satisfaction in the voluntary exercise of reproduction. During this time mental feats almost unachievable by adults are performed, such as learning by heart thick books of nursery rhymes, long poems, interminable stories—acquirements which stir the proud parents with hope and mistaken conclusions as to the extraordinary mental endowments of their offspring. That children of this age often burden their minds with lists of unconnected and meaningless words and take pride in reciting them, proves that enjoyment of the mere ability to do it is the chief incentive. Thus, when she was in her sixth year, Marie G—— learned to count in French from one to one hundred, and enjoyed going over the numbers when she supposed herself to be unobserved, as when lying in bed in the morning. Carl Stumpf’s report of the prodigy Otto Poehler,[291] who at two years of age had learned to read fluently without teaching, is highly interesting in this connection. Stumpf says of the boy, then four years old and in other respects normal, having, indeed, a decided disinclination for systematic education when others tried to impose it on him: “Reading is his greatest passion, and the most important thing in his life. He knows the birth and death year of every German Kaiser from Charles the Great, as well as of many poets, philosophers, etc., and can tell the birthday and place of most of them. Besides, he knows the capitals of most countries, and the rivers on which they are situated, etc. He knows all about the Thirty Years’ War from beginning to end, with the leading battles of this and other wars. According to his mother’s statement, he has acquired all this without aid, and by diligent study of a patriotic almanac and similar literature about the house, and from deciphering monumental inscriptions in the city, an amusement which he dotes on. I myself can witness to the lasting impression which such facts make on his mind. At the Seminary I showed him pictures of Fechner, Lotze, and Helmholtz, mentioning their full names. Of each he asked at once when and where he was born and died, and some days later could give not only name and surname of every one, but the full date of birth and death, mentioning day, month, year, and place.” Since Stumpf tells us that there was no trace of vanity or a desire to show off, we must explain these accomplishments as the result of the child’s desire to experiment playfully with his own mental powers.

In assigning such play chiefly to the period between the third and sixth years, I did not by any means intend to imply that it is suspended thereafter. It is, indeed, often seriously impeded by the compulsory methods common in our schools, yet it does not entirely vanish. Lessing is a brilliant example of the scholar by whom even erudition may be turned to playful account, and who is able to assimilate every kind of pabulum that falls in the way of his omnivorous brain. When the teacher is able to direct his pupils to the discharge of their tasks with interest and pleasure, there may still be something playful about the mental exercise of school work. Subordination to authority does not exclude play so long as the obedience is voluntary. Children never submit so absolutely to any one else as to a leader among their playfellows. Fénelon was not far wrong when he said: “The common way of educating is very mistaken—to place everything that is pleasant on one side and all that is disagreeable on the other, connecting the latter with industry and study and regarding the former as waste of time. How can we expect anything else than that the child will grow impatient of the restraint and run to his play with the greatest eagerness?”[292] Those who, on the other hand, protest against making play of instruction are mistaken in supposing that it is thereby turned into a jest, for we well know that play can be prosecuted with great zeal and earnestness. Yet they are not altogether wrong, for it is most important to impress the necessity for doing what is repugnant to us, and for this merely playful study, even if it accomplished all else that we want, would always be inadequate. Finally, with regard to the adult: it does occasionally happen even in our rushing times that some one commits a poem to memory with the avowed intention of giving exercise to his mind. Were this practical end the only one, play, indeed, would not be involved; but, as a rule, pleasure in acquisition as such is combined with the other motive. Such exercise was formerly much more common, and at a time when few could read surprising feats were performed. A survival of this may be found now in the Balkan countries, where the heroic songs are still orally preserved. In mental exercise of this kind it is difficult to draw the line between the emotions aroused by the content of the piece and what pleasure is derived from the act of learning, and we will not here go into that phase of the subject, only mentioning, in closing the section, that conjuring up one’s own past is another form of memory-play with the feelings.

2. _Imagination_

The phenomena which the exigencies of language compel us to include under the words imagination or fantasy naturally fall into two quite clearly differentiated groups, namely, illusion, either playful or serious, and the voluntary or involuntary transformation of our mental content. Considerable controversy has arisen as to which of these groups shall be taken as the basis of a definition, and it is in opposition to the prevailing view that I have designated the capacity for illusion as my choice for that purpose. Yet on reflection I consider it more prudent not to attempt a comprehensive definition, but rather to keep separate the two distinct departments of mental life which the usages of language too closely associate, and which, while they are closely interwoven in some of their aspects, are yet of so heterogeneous a character that we may hope to distinguish between them in all essentials.

(_a_) Playful Illusion

This heading includes all those manifold cases in which mental presentation is accepted as actual, whether they are concerned with genuine memory pictures or merely some mental content worked up for the occasion. When a fever patient sees an absent friend bodily before him, we call this imagination as well as when he seems to see absurd or grotesque things. The distinguishing feature is whether the illusion appears as a substitute for reality, as in dreams, delirium, hypnosis, and insanity, or as the product of conscious self-deception (K. Lange’s “bewusste Selbsttäuschung,” P. Souriau’s “illusion volontaire”), where the knowledge that we have ourselves produced the illusion prevents actual substitution, as in play and art. Transition from one to the other of these states is easy. The dreamer or fever patient may have the feeling that the fantasy in which he lives and suffers is, after all, an unreal thing; and, on the other hand, illusion is often so strong for playing children and artists that it forms a perfect substitute for reality. Just now we are concerned with conscious illusion only. In inquiring how far experimentation is involved in it we must bear in mind that there are two sides to all illusion, one which has reference to an internal image, and the other blending with external phenomena. It is a distinction similar to that between hallucination and illusion in the narrower pathological sense.

The illusion which depends on internal images can, as we have seen, elevate actual memories as well as convertible mental contents to the appearance of reality. So we see that the two kinds of mental activity included under the name imagination are intimately and variously related, while neither alone covers the entire ground. Enjoyment of play with memory pictures which are more than ordinarily faithful to fact is practised almost exclusively by adults, and more especially by the aged. The psychological condition of this is that by means of strong concentration of attention on the mental picture (we are reminded again of hypnosis) the actual present is thrown very much into the background, and the past thus conjured up loses many of the usual characteristics of a past, since the memory picture, from lacking the usual projection, assumes the expression of reality. The following is a beautiful example of this distinction between mere reflective memory and playful illusion where the differentiation was gradually built up. When Goethe as a mature man took up his Faust manuscript, he said to himself, “I thought over this subject a great deal ten years ago; but that would be only a memory.” Yet as he lost himself in the joyful or painful memories connected with that period, he came to ignore the fact that they were long past, and more and more substituted them for the present, which in its turn became gradually submerged. These words reveal the play of his imagination:

“My pulses thrill, tears flow without control,
A tender mood my steadfast heart o’ersways;
What I possess as from afar I see,
What I have lost is the reality to me.”

_Miss Swanwick’s translation._

A strange characteristic of these playful reminiscences is that what displeased us at the time of its occurrence may give pleasure when revived by memory. When, for instance, a traveller recounts his adventures on a mountain tour he takes pleasure in dwelling on the hardships which he endured. Is this entirely due to the knowledge that it is all over now? I think not. First comes self-congratulation on having borne such grievous difficulties, i.e., the feeling of power which we find to be the chief source of satisfaction in almost all play.

Playful pretence[293] that the personified and elaborated mental contents are real is psychologically important to productive artists, and still more so to the enjoyment of poetic creations. Artists often refer to their as yet unembodied conceptions as to very real things, and frequently these assume the rôle of relentless taskmasters or of veritable demoniacal possessions. Then, of course, they cease to be playful. A. Feuerbach writes: “If it were not for this Gastmahl I would be happy; but it pervades everything and gets in my way. It haunts my thoughts. It feeds on my heart’s blood and saps my inmost life.”[294] Yet the artist often exults in the fact that he has a self-created world all his own—he plays with the illusion. “It would concern the reader little, perhaps,” says Dickens about his David Copperfield, “to know how sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two years’ imaginative task; or how an author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself into the shadowy world when a crowd of the creatures of his own brain are going from him forever. Yet I have nothing else to tell, unless, indeed, I were to confess (which might be of less moment still) that no one can ever believe this narrative, in the reading, more than I have believed it in the writing.” This sort of illusion is essential to æsthetic enjoyment in hearing or reading poetic creations. The child who listens absorbedly to a fairy story,[295] the boy for whom the entire external world sinks and vanishes while he is lost in a tale of adventure, or the adult who follows with breathless attention the development of a captivating romance; all allow the authors’ creations to get possession of their consciousness to the exclusion of reality, and yet not as an actual substitute for it.

In a second kind of conscious illusion the mental content blends with actual external phenomena and shares in their reality. Here, according to Wundt’s terminology, we have a kind of simultaneous association which is very like the imagination that transforms reality. Each of our ordinary concepts is a mixture of sensuous impression with its associated memory picture, and it first becomes illusion when the association assumes the character of hallucination, and is susceptible of correction by an appeal to common experience. When a white spot dimly revealed by the moonlight appears to me as unmistakably a towel, I see more than sense-perception warrants; but when I firmly believe that it is a white-robed figure, then I have fallen into an illusion, and, as they say, my imagination has played me a trick. Yet there are degrees of difference between serious illusion and the playful kind which concerns us here. When I had fever, as a boy, I saw on the bright coverlet the most marvellous feast spread out, and at the same time had an amused consciousness that it was all an illusion caused by my illness. Von Bibra’s experiences from hasheesh-smoking were quite similar to this, as he tells us in his book previously cited. In this are two distinct kinds of play, first the substitution of an image for its original, and second the lending, as it were, of our own personality. The first has been treated exhaustively by K. Lange in his study of conscious illusion. Not only the little girl who makes a favourite baby of a knotted handkerchief or some other formless object, and the boy who calls a stick a horse, a pile of sand a mountain, a collection of chairs a railroad train, etc., but also the adult in his enjoyment of plastic art and scenic effect, using his own mental content to verify the appearance, is making playful use of his capacity for illusion, and he, too, takes pleasure in so doing. Lending one’s own personality reveals illusion as operative in another direction; here we impart our own mental states to the object under consideration; we “lend” to it the emotions which we conceive would be ours under like conditions (the shoe is made to fit the last). From our feeling of sympathy or inner imitation we then experience all the resulting states of mind, cheerfulness and brightness from what is attractive, or solemnity from the sublime. In speaking of imitation we shall have occasion to refer to this again.

(_b_) Playful Transformation of the Memory-Content

Simple recollective processes by no means give an adequate picture of reality. In the tenth chapter of his book on illusions Sully gives such a list and description of important mental illusions as is calculated to shake our faith in the trustworthiness of memory. It seems that our recollections are often mere fragments of a formerly well-known whole (we may recall, for example, only one or two features of an acquaintance), and as a result of this analytic process we are prone to make new combinations of the detached elements. Thus, a short time ago I thought that I could clearly picture to myself the house of my brother-in-law by the power of association, but I afterward discovered that I had conceived the bricks to be far too bright a red, and had evidently substituted the colour of some other house. What we call constructive imagination then turns out to be constantly renewed manipulation of previously verified impressions. We need not here touch upon the wide field of involuntary productive imagination, since it is only play directed by the will that is engaging us; yet before going on to concrete cases, it should be stated that in constructive imagination as well the pictures formed are to a considerable extent involuntary, the will aiding more by its influence in concentrating the attention on the trend of the internal processes and in discriminating between them, than in forming the picture itself. This is why the efforts of great artists are so often like inspirations.

Building air castles is the simplest exercise of constructive imagination.[296] It most commonly manifests itself as voluntary playful forming of cheerful and ambitious images of ourselves or our friends amid the most fortunate surroundings.[297] We may see how it is done by watching little children who have enjoyed a new kind of treat at a birthday party or some such occasion—how they will remember and repeat it in their future plays. All the details will be copied sometimes just as in the model, sometimes in new combinations, or turned into a joke. The inestimable value of such play for making life worth living is self-evident. It veils the sordidness of everyday existence with a double illusion, the first being our conception of the air castle as a reality, and so getting immediate possession of this radiant dream (here the two kinds of imagination converge). Such illusion supplies the psychological interest in Faust’s bargain; he enjoys the “schönsten Augenblick,” although his present satisfaction is merely premonitory. The second illusion is exemplified in our implicit trust that the future will verify our hope,[298] that buoyant and vivifying emotion which accompanies us all through life.

Conjuring up all sorts of hindrances, difficulties, and dangers is a modification of this castle building, and gives more play to the intellectual faculties as we weigh the varying possibilities of success or failure, develop the probable consequences of a proposed step, and try to find the best and easiest road to success. By such processes the crude picture is moulded into shape. Here, again, the capacity for illusion is of importance in connection with imaginative combination, since each possibility that is considered has the appearance of reality in its turn, but such mental activity is playful only when the combinations as such are enjoyable. Every creative artist, statesman, writer, or scholar must often work on an imaginative basis which he knows he can never verify. Many persons like to take, with the help of a Baedeker, long journeys which they can never hope to indulge in in any other way, and to solve complicated problems based on hypothetical games of chess.

Leaving castle building, let us see what other forms of constructive fantasy can be practiced playfully. In speaking of illusions we have noticed the blending of memories with external phenomena, which is so conspicuous in child play and in æsthetic enjoyment. The process of “assimilation” which grounds playful self-deception is so closely related to constructive imagination that it is difficult to locate the boundary between them. The psychic process which transforms a splinter into a doll’s milk-bottle, a few chips stuck up into men and trees, a cloud[299] into the greatest variety of faces, animals, etc., which endows lifeless objects with our own spiritual capacities of desire, emotion, and temper—all this is synthetic activity which may quite as well be called assimilation as constructive imagination. Its pleasurable quality is inherent,[300] especially where a perfect imitation of reality would give us so little room for the exercise of imagination as to be on the whole less satisfactory.

Constructiveness which is concerned purely with ideas, not blending them with external objects, is quite as important. One of its uses, though one not clearly defined, may be to direct the attention, when there exists but a vague idea of the completed picture, to a choice among the multifarious internal images which make up the material supplied by memory. This process is of the greatest importance in the origination of artistic compositions, but its relatively simple beginnings may be clearly traced in the play of children. While we may not hope to follow the imaginative process into all its ramifications and refinements, nor to account for individual variations in memory content, visual, motor, etc., three general, constantly recurring forms of its constructive activity are distinguishable: 1. The conjunction of concepts which are not connected, or not so connected in reality. 2. The abstraction of certain elements from a complex and their transference to other combinations. 3. Exaggeration and depreciation. It will be readily seen that these three forms of imaginative activity are useful for playful experimentation as well as in actual artistic production, which, however, rarely makes playful use of fantasy.

The first of these activities is often so capricious in children that it can hardly be called experimentation; it seems a mere disconnected succession of fancies and self-originated images, very much as in the case of mania and other abnormal states. Strümpell’s little daughter, aged one and a half years, is responsible for the following: “Go gramma and buy a pretty doll gramma for me under the bed for me to play the piano. Bring papa golden sheep; take mamma’s white sheep too. Go on, there, driver, gramma is going. Get up, Klinglingling. Gramma comes up the steps. Oh, oh, ah, ah, lying on the floor, all tied up, no cap on. Theodosia [her doll] lie on the bed, bring yellow sheep to Theodosia. Run, tap, tap, tap for Lina. Strawberries, gramma, wolf lie on bed. Go to sleep, darling Theodosia, you are my dearest; everybody is fast asleep. May makes the trees green—let me—on the brook violets are blooming—I want to go to walk. A cat came in here, mamma caught it, it had feet and black boots on—short cap, band on it. Papa ran—the sky—gramma gone—grampa resting,” etc.[301] In this, attention seems to be entirely lacking, so that there can not be said to be any aim, however indefinite. Genuine constructive imagination is more apparent in the attempts of small children to tell stories. I have the following note on Marie G——, made at the age of three years and one month. She insisted that I must lie on the lounge after she had gone through the motions of “making the bed.” Then the little mother warmed the gruel in a heavy cigar cutter, made me drink at the peril of my teeth, and ordered me to shut my eyes. Then she seated herself, pretended to sew, and told a story to put me to sleep: “The other day I went down town. There were beautiful shops and there were flowers. Anna [her doll] wanted to pick one, and a bear came up. All my six children were dreadfully scared and hid in the bathroom stove, and I locked the door and took out the key, and the bear went away; and I was so frightened!” It was evidently her intention to make a connected story, although the first situation, the scene down town, was transferred to a different one without any proper transition. Yet the various processes are easily traced in spite of their complexity. First, the idea of the city where the romancer takes her doll, as she was often taken by her mother. The memory picture of the florists’ shops which led to an overweening desire on the part of the doll to take a flower. Then judicial wrath appears in the frightful shape of the bear, and at once the whole situation is changed; there are now the six children of the familiar tale, who hide. But where? In our bathroom stove (an improvement on the tale), which develops a lock and key for the occasion (confusion with the attributes of a closet door). Here, then, are divisions 1 and 2 clearly defined—namely, the combining of complex presentations, and the detachment and transposition of some features. Analogy with artistic methods is too obvious to need enlarging upon.[302] An interesting example of the inventiveness of an older child endowed with genius is the voluminous romance which the young Goethe used to tell again and again to his playmates, and has transcribed in his biography. It will be seen that the imaginative process is much less easily traced in it than in the earlier instance.[303]

One important branch of imaginative composition is the picturing of the fantastic creatures of mythology, such as animals with human heads, mermaids, and the grotesque blending of animal and vegetable life, yet with the essential features taken from Nature. As Dickens says of his characters, that, being made up of many people, they were composite,[304] so with these creations. The following dialogue of Marie G—— with her doll near the end of her fifth year will illustrate the use of this faculty in the case of concepts which transcend the limits of actuality. “So, little sister Olga, you have come in from your walk. Tell me about everything that you saw. A little lamb, a cow, a dog, a horse. Yes, and what else? Blue bells and green primroses and red leaves—but that can not be; you are fibbing, my little sister.” Such playful and grotesque combinations are often introduced in art, but they no longer appeal to superstitious fear. In the temptations of St. Anthony, in Oriental tales of strangely deformed men, in the taste for grotesque gargoyles and other ornaments, we find instances. In some fantastic creations the imagination is given unbridled license, with the result that the production acquires more of the characteristics of play.[305]