The Play of Man. Karl Groos
latter view prevail, biological psychology will have before it the task of linking an ancient idea—it was developed in Ulrici’s Leib und Seele in 1866—to the body of modern science.
As it is likely to be some time yet before scientific terminology shall have attained such clearness and perfection in a sphere by no means easily accessible, that we may count on banishing all obscurity, I must content myself with the term “natural or inherited impulse”6 as the basis of my classification. In far the greater number of cases it is equivalent to simple instinct. But in the imitative impulse we have something which is analogous only to instinct, and in reference to the higher mental dispositions to activity, the term “impulse” must be expanded beyond its usual significance. I am well aware that my classification lacks precision, but I venture to think that it affords deeper insight into the problem than may be had by other means and that some aspects of the subject, not evident from other standpoints, may be brought out by this method of treatment.
The first important distinction made is that between the impulses by which the individual wins supremacy over his own psycho-physical organism without regard to other individuals prominent in his environment, and such other impulses as are directly concerned with his relations to others. To the first group belong all the manifold impulses which issue in human activity, those controlling his sensory and motor apparatus7 as well as the higher mental dispositions which impel him to corresponding acts. To the second group we assign the fighting and sexual impulses, imitation, and the social dispositions closely connected with these. Each of these manifests its own peculiar play activity. Unfortunately, an adequate terminology here, too, is wanting, and as the opposites “egotism and altruism,” “individualism and socialism,” are not admissible in our classification, it is difficult to designate the two groups with propriety. While awaiting better names for them, I am forced to the very unsatisfactory expedient of calling them impulses of the first order and impulses of the second order.8 To denote the playful exercise of the first order of impulses, I shall use the expression “playful experimentation,” which is already adopted in child-psychology, and also, by myself at least, in animal psychology.
As all further subdivisions will be effected without difficulty in the course of our investigation, I add here only a brief note on the general characteristics of the playful exercise of these impulses. The biological criterion of play is that it shall deal not with the serious exercise of the special instinct, but with practice preparatory to it. Such practice always responds to definite needs, and is accompanied by pleasurable feelings. The psychological criterion corresponds with it; thus, when an act is performed solely because of the pleasure it affords, there is play. Yet, the consciousness of engaging in sham occupation is not a universal criterion of play.
PART I
PLAYFUL EXPERIMENTATION
I. Playful Activity of the Sensory Apparatus
1. Sensations of Contact
The newborn infant is susceptible to touch sensations. Movements and loud cries can be induced directly after it has for the first time become quiet, by pinching the skin or slapping the thigh.9 Experiments with the hands and mouth are most satisfactory, as these organs are extremely sensitive from the first. During its first week the child makes many purely automatic motions with its hands, and frequently touches its face. When contact is had in this way with the lips, they react with gentle sucking movements, and later follows the playful sucking of the fingers so common among children. It is, of course, difficult to say when such movements are conscious or when they are the result of taste stimuli.10 According to Perez, a two-months-old babe enjoys being stroked softly, and from that moment it is possible that it may seek, by its own movements, to provide touch stimuli for itself. Here play begins. “Touch now controls. At three months the child begins to reach out for the purpose of grasping with his hand; he handles like an amateur connoisseur, and the tendency to seek and to test muscular sensations develops in him from day to day.”11
a. We will first notice grasping with the hand as it is connected with taste stimuli. The merely instinctive movements of the first few days are multiplied and fixed, by means of inherited adaptation, progressively from the beginning of the second quarter year. The child begins by handling every object which comes within his reach, even his own body, and especially his feet, and one hand with the other.12 In all this not only the motor element, of which we will speak later, but also the sensor stimulus becomes an object of interest, as Preyer’s observation shows. “In the eighteenth week, whenever the effort to grasp was unsuccessful its fingers were attentively regarded. Evidently the child expected the sensation of contact, and when it was not forthcoming wondered at the absence of the feeling.”13 This practice in grasping promotes the opposition of the thumb, which first appears toward the end of the first quarter, and from that time the refinement of the sense of contact progresses rapidly. At eight months Strümpell’s little daughter took great pleasure in picking up very small objects, like bread crumbs or pearls.14 This illustrates the familiar fact that play leads up from what is easy to more difficult tasks, since only deliberate conquest can produce the feeling of pleasure in success. At about this time, too, the child’s explorations of its own body are extended, and their conclusions confirmed by the recognition of constant local signs. “As soon as she discovered her ear,” says Strümpell of his now ten-months-old daughter, “she seized upon it as if she wished to tear it off.” In her third year Marie G—— found on the back of her ear two little projections of cartilage, which she examined with the greatest interest, calling them balls, and wanting everybody to feel them. The nose, too, is repeatedly investigated. Although it is seldom large enough to be grasped, still, as Stanley Hall says, it is handled with unmistakable signs of curiosity, and often pulled or rubbed “in an investigating way.”15
The value of the sense of touch for the earliest mental development is testified to by the fact that the child, like doubting Thomas, trusts more to it than to his sight. Sikorski says: “At tea I turn to my eleven-months baby, point to the cracker jar, which she knows, and ask her to give me one. I open the empty jar and the child looks in, but, not satisfied with that, sticks her hand in and explores. The evidence of her eyes does not convince her of the absence of what she wants.”16
In Wolfdietrich one verse runs:
“Die Augen in ihren (der Wölfe) Häuptern, die brannten wie ein Licht,
Der Knabe war noch thöricht und zagt vor Feinden nicht.
Es ging zu einem jeden und griff ihm mit der Hand,
Wo er die lichten Augen in ihren Köpfen fand.”17
Older children lose the habit of playful investigation quite as little as any of the other manifestations of experimentation, even when the sensations encountered are not particularly agreeable. Richard Wagner liked to handle satin, and Sacher Masoch delighted in soft fur. In later life as well, Perez continues, all the senses strive for satisfaction; when the adult is not forced by necessity to put all his faculties at the service of “attention utile” he becomes a child again. He easily falls back into the habit of gazing instead of looking, of listening instead of hearing, of handling instead of touching, of moving about merely for the sake of sensations agreeable or even indifferent which are produced by these automatic acts.18 We all know how hard it is for school children to keep their hands still during recitation. “I knew a little girl,” says Compayré, “who would undertake to recite only on condition that she be allowed to use her fingers at the same time, and she would sew and thread her needle while she was spelling.”19 The knitting of women while they listen is perhaps of the same nature. Wölfflin remarks: “We all know that many people, especially students, in order to think clearly need a sharp-pointed pencil, which they pass back and forth through the fingers, sharpening