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THB PLAY OF ANIMALS. CHAPTER I. THE 8UKPLU8 ENERGY THEORY OF PLAY. The most influential theory of play explains it by means of the surplus energy principle. In what follows I shall attempt to demonstrate that this theory has not the scope usually attributed to it. It owes its development and extension principally to Herbert Spencer, but it Ib based on a principle of Schiller's, in whose philosophy, however, it holds but a subordinate place. It ia necessary here in the beginning of the inquiry, to set Schiller's priority in the right light, as it does not seem to be generally known. Schiller's treatment of play and the play instinct is to be found in his excellent letters On the Esthetic Education of Mankind. Later I shall enter more fully into their contents, confining myself here to the passage on which the theory of surplus energy is especially based. It is in the twenty- seventh letter, and reads as follows: " Nature has indeed granted, even to the creature devoid of reason, more than the mere necessities of existence, and into the darkness of animal life has allowed a gleam of freedom to penetrate here and there. When hunger no longer torments the lion, and no beast of prey appears for him to fight, then his unemployed powers find another outlet. He fills the wilderness with his wild roars, and his exuberant strength spends itself in aimless activity. In the mere joy of existence, insects swarm in the sunshine, and it is certainly not always the cry of want that we hear in the melodious rhythm of bird-songs. There is evidently freedom in these manifestations, but not freedom from all necessity, only from a definite external necessity. The animal works when some want is themotive for his activity, and plays when a superabundance of energy forms this motive when ov...
