nder and loving satire.

Sec. XXVII. Secondly: The men who play necessarily. That highest species
of playfulness, which we have just been considering, is evidently the
condition of a mind, not only highly cultivated, but so habitually
trained to intellectual labor that it can bring a considerable force of
accurate thought into its moments even of recreation. This is not
possible, unless so much repose of mind and heart are enjoyed, even at
the periods of greatest exertion, that the rest required by the system
is diffused over the whole life. To the majority of mankind, such a
state is evidently unattainable. They must, perforce, pass a large part
of their lives in employments both irksome and toilsome, demanding an
expenditure of energy which exhausts the system, and yet consuming that
energy upon subjects incapable of interesting the nobler faculties. When
such employments are intermitted, those noble instincts, fancy,
imagination, and curiosity, are all hungry for the food which the labor
of the day has denied to them, while yet the weariness of the body, in a
great degree, forbids their application to any serious subject. They
therefore exert themselves without any determined purpose, and under no
vigorous restraint, but gather, as best they may, such various
nourishment, and put themselves to such fantastic exercise, as may
soonest indemnify them for their past imprisonment, and prepare them to
endure their recurrence. This sketching of the mental limbs as their
fetters fall away,--this leaping and dancing of the heart and intellect,
when they are restored to the fresh air of heaven, yet half paralyzed by
their captivity, and unable to turn themselves to any earnest
purpose,--I call necessary play. It is impossible to exaggerate its
importance, whether in polity, or in art.

Sec. XXVIII. Thirdly: The men who play inordinately. The most perfect
state of society which, consistently with due understanding of man's
nature, it may be permitted us to conceive, would be one in which the
whole human race were divided, more or less distinctly, into workers and
thinkers; that is to say, into the two classes, who only play wisely, or
play necessarily. But the number and the toil of the working class are
enormously increased, probably more than doubled, by the vices of the
men who neither play wisely nor necessarily, but are enabled by
circumstances, and permitted by their want of principle, to make
amusement the object of the