useless action,
work is a eulogistic term and play a disparaging one. It would be
better for us that all our energy should be turned to account, that
none of it should be wasted in aimless motion. Play, in this sense,
is a sign of imperfect adaptation. It is proper to childhood, when
the body and mind are not yet fit to cope with the environment, but
it is unseemly in manhood and pitiable in old age, because it marks
an atrophy of human nature, and a failure to take hold of the
opportunities of life.

Play is thus essentially frivolous. Some persons, understanding the
term in this sense, have felt an aversion, which every liberal mind
will share, to classing social pleasures, art, and religion under the
head of play, and by that epithet condemning them, as a certain
school seems to do, to gradual extinction as the race approaches
maturity. But if all the useless ornaments of our life are to be cut
off in the process of adaptation, evolution would impoverish
instead of enriching our nature. Perhaps that is the tendency of
evolution, and our barbarous ancestors amid their toils and wars,
with their flaming passions and mythologies, lived better lives than
are reserved to our well-adapted descendants.

We may be allowed to hope, however, that some imagination may
survive parasitically even in the most serviceable brain. Whatever
course history may take, -- and we are not here concerned with
prophecy, -- the question of what is desirable is not affected. To
condemn spontaneous and delightful occupations because they are
useless for self-preservation shows an uncritical prizing of life
irrespective of its content. For such a system the worthiest function
of the universe should be to establish perpetual motion.
Uselessness is a fatal accusation to bring against any act which is
done for its presumed utility, but those which are done for their
own sake are their own justification.

At the same time there is an undeniable propriety in calling all the
liberal and imaginative activities of man play, because they are
spontaneous, and not carried on under pressure of external
necessity or danger. Their utility for self-preservation may be very
indirect and accidental, but they are not worthless for that reason.
On the contrary, we may measure the degree of happiness and
civilization which any race has attained by the proportion of its
energy which is devoted to free and generous pursuits, to the
adornment of life and the cult