CHAPTER VI.
II. SOCIOLOGICAL CHARACTERS—continued.
2. PSYCHIC LIFE: Games and Recreations—Their importance—Games of children and adults—Sports and public spectacles—Masks—Fine Arts—Graphic arts—Ornamentation—Drawing—Sculpture—Dancing—Its importance among uncultured peoples—Pantomime and dramatic art—Vocal and instrumental music—Instruments of music—Poetry—Religion—Animism—Its two elements: belief in the soul, and belief in spirits—Fetichism—Polytheism—Rites and ceremonies—Priesthood—International religions—Myths—Science—Art of counting—Geometry—Calculation of time—Clocks and calendars—Geography and cartography—Medicine and surgery.
2. PSYCHIC LIFE.
Games and Recreations.—In two works based on carefully observed facts, Groos has shown that animals do not expend all their muscular and psychic energy in procuring the means of material existence, but, further, expend this energy in games, which are really a process of training, of education. In a greater degree is this the case with man, that animal whose psychical life has expanded so enormously.[218] In fact, games are the first manifestations of the psychical life not only of man individually but of mankind as a whole.
It is necessary to distinguish between the games of children and those of adults. The former are above all imitation, while the latter aim at either gaining an advantage or demonstrating muscular or mental strength and skill.
The boys of “savages” handle tiny bows and lassoes made by themselves, and hunt toy guancos, birds, and turtles made of clay and wood, in imitation of their fathers; while the little girls treat their rag dolls as actual children, repeating the gestures and words of their mothers. It is the imitative game of the young.
But if the object of the game is to exercise the strength and skill, it becomes common to children and adults. It is such with the game of hand-ball, known to all peoples with the exception perhaps of the Negroes; and stilts, which are met with in Europe, China, Eastern Africa, and Polynesia. Side by side with these games in which muscular skill plays the principal part, there are others in which attention and quickness of the senses are put to the test. To guess in which hand some object is hidden is a recreation among the Tlinkits, as among Europeans. Among the Hottentots this game is complicated, inasmuch as it is necessary to point out by a special position of the fingers the hand of the partner which is supposed to conceal the object, thus recalling the very ancient game known to the Egyptians, and called by the Romans mirare digitis, which survives at the present time under the name of “Morra” in Italy.
This is how it is played:—Simultaneously each partner, putting out his hand, shows whatever number of fingers he may think fit, bending the others, and at the same moment mentioning a number; he whose figure equals the sum of the fingers stretched out by the two partners wins the game. It is evident that this game, known in absolutely the same form in China, is already a game of chance. It is the same with most games played with dice, whether the latter be represented by true dice (China, prehistoric Europe), or by otter’s teeth, seeds, etc., variously marked or coloured (Indians of North America), or by sheep’s astragali (Central Asia, Persia, etc.). Lotto is known to the Chinese, the Siamese, etc., and it was the Celestials who introduced roulette or the thirty-four animal games into Indo-China.[219]