person the same activity may be
play, work, or drudgery, at different times, even within the same day.

Which of the three is the most valuable for educational purposes?
Certainly not drudgery. It is deadening, uneducative, undevelopmental.
Any phase of education, though it may be a seemingly necessary one, that
has the characteristics of drudgery is valueless in itself. As a means
to an end it may serve--but with the antagonistic attitude, the
annoyance aroused by drudgery, it seems a very questionable means.
Education that can obtain the results required by a civilized community
and yet use the play spirit is the ideal.

But to have children engaged in play, in the sense of free play, cannot
be the only measure. There must be supervision and direction. The spirit
that characterizes the activities which are not immediately useful must
be incorporated into those that are useful by means of the shifting of
association bonds. Nor can all parts of the process seem worth while to
the learner. Sometimes the process or parts of it must become a means to
an end, for the end is remote. But all this is true to some extent in
free play--digging the worms in order to go fishing, finding the
scissors and thread in order to make the doll's dress, making
arrangements with the other team to play ball, finding the right pieces
of wood for the hut, and so on, may not be satisfactory in and of
themselves, but may be almost drudgery. They are _not_ drudgery because
they become fused in the whole process, they take over and are lost in
the joy of the undertaking as a whole; they become a legitimate means to
an end, and in so far take over in derived form the interest that is
roused by the whole. It is this fusion of work and play that is
desirable in education. This is the great lesson of play--it shows the
value and encourages the logical combination of the two activities.
Children learn to work as they play. They learn the meaning and value of
work. Work becomes a means to an end, and that end not something remote
and disconnected from the activity itself, but as part and parcel of it.
Thus the activity as a whole imbued with the play spirit becomes
motivated.

The play spirit is the spirit of art. No great result was achieved in
any line of human activity without much work, and yet no great result
was ever gained unless the play spirit controlled. It is to this
interaction of work and play that each owes much of its value. Work in
an