A boy can no more help running after another boy who runs provokingly near him, than a kitten can help running after a rolling ball.A child trying to get into its own hand some object which it sees another child pick up, and the latter trying to get away with the prize, are just as much slaves of an automatic prompting as are two chickens or fishes, of which one has taken a big morsel into its mouth and decamps with it, while the other darts after in pursuit.All simple active games are attempts to gain the excitement yielded by certain primitive instincts, through feigning that the occasions for their exercise are there.They involve imitation, hunting, fighting, rivalry, acquisitiveness, and construction, combined in various ways; their special rules are habits, discovered by accident, selected by intelligence, and propagated by tradition; but unless they were founded in automatic impulses, games would lose most of their zest.The sexes differ somewhat in their play-impulses.As Schneider says:
"The little boy imitates soldiers, models clay into an oven, builds houses, makes a wagon out of chairs, rides on horseback upon a stick, drives nails with the hammer, harnesses his brethren and comrades together and plays the stage-driver, or lets himself be captured as a wild horse by some one else; The girl, on the contrary, plays with her doll, washes and dresses it, strokes it, clasps and kisses it, puts it to bed and tucks it in, sings it a cradle-song, or speaks with it as if it were a living being....This fact that a sexual difference exists in the play-impulse, that a boy gets more pleasure from a horse and rider and a soldier than from a doll, while with the girl the opposite is the case, is proof that an hereditary connection exists between the perception of certain things (horse, doll, etc.), and the feeling of pleasure, as well as between this latter and the impulse to play.
There is another sort of human play, into which higher aesthetic feelings enter..I refer to that love of festivities, ceremonies, ordeals, etc., which seems to be universal in our species.The lowest savages have their dances, more or less formally conducted.The various religions have their solemn rites and exercises, and civic and military power symbolize their grandeur by processions and celebrations of divers sorts.We have our operas and parties and masquerades.An element common to all these ceremonial games, as they may be called, is the excitement of concerted action as one of an organized crowd.The same acts, performed with a crowd, seem to mean vastly more than when performed alone.A walk with the people on a holiday afternoon, an excursion to drink beer or coffee at a popular 'resort,' or an ordinary ball-room, are examples of this.Not only are we amused at seeing so many strangers, but there is a distinct stimulation at feeling our share in their collective life.The perception of them is the stimulus; and our reaction upon it is our tendency to join them and do what they are doing, and our unwillingness to be the first to leave off and go home alone.This seems a primitive element in our nature, as it is difficult to trace any association of ideas that could lead up to it; although, once granting it to exist, it is very easy to see what its uses to a tribe might be in facilitating prompt and vigorous collective action.The formation of armies and the undertaking of military expeditions would be among its fruits.In the ceremonial games it is but the impulsive starting-point.What particular things the crowd then shall do, depends for the most part on the initiative of individuals, fixed by imitation and habit, and continued by tradition.The co-operation of other aesthetic pleasures with games, ceremonial or other, has a great deal to do with the selection of such as shall become stereotyped and habitual.
The peculiar form of excitement called by Professor Bain the emotion of pursuit, the pleasure of a crescendo, is the soul of many common games.
The immense extent of the play-activities in human life is too obvious to be more than mentioned.
Curiosity.Already pretty low down among vertebrates we find that any object may excite attention, provided it be only novel, and that attention may be followed by approach and exploration by nostril, lips, or touch.Curiosity and fear form a couple of antagonistic emotions liable to be awakened by the same outward thing, and manifestly both useful to their possessor.The spectacle of their alternation is often amusing enough, as in the timid approaches and scared wheelings which sheep or cattle will make in the presence of some new object they are investigating.I have seen alligators in the water act in precisely the same way towards a man seated on the beach in front of them -- gradually drawing near as long as he kept still, frantically careering back as soon as he made a movement.
