4. Playful Exercise of Endurance
The play which we have been considering gains, as other kinds do, a further charm when difficulties are associated with it, and it becomes more like fighting play. When Strümpell’s little daughter learned to grasp easily she was no longer satisfied with holding ordinary things, and took to picking up objects so small as to be difficult to get hold of.[221] When she was two and a half years old she enjoyed opening the door of a little clock, and never tired of fitting the small snap into its slot; she could also thread the finest needle. Animals, too, seem to enjoy overcoming difficulties. Parrots like to take out screws, and Miss Romanes says that her monkey tried with indefatigable perseverance to put back the handle on a hearth brush which he had taken apart, and turned away from it at once as soon as he succeeded.[222] There are all sorts of puzzles which indulge this fancy, such as untying apparently fast knots with a single jerk, disentangling intertwined rings, taking balls or rings off an endless cord, taking two corks, held between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, with the thumb and forefinger of the other without leaving the hands joined, and many such things. The Greek χαλκισμός is explained for the first time by Becker in the fifth scene of his Charikles: “It was an attempt to bring a coin spinning on its edge to a standstill by touching it from above with the finger.” Rochholz thus describes the Swiss “Fadmen”: “A boy sitting in a basket which is swung to and fro in the air gets a prize if he succeeds in threading a needle during the process.... In Aargau the contestants sit on a stout bottle with their feet crossed.”[223] Strutt gives two English examples from the fourteenth century. A youth standing on a light flexible pole stretched over water, attempted to put out one candle with another.[224] The familiar Chinese game which we call jackstraws was mentioned by Amaranthus in 1715.[225] The Berlin Museum has many such puzzles from remote parts of the world. O. Finsch mentions two (probably imported) much used in India: the Chut-jueh-mudra, in which a cube is put together from tiny bits, and the “five-horse game,” where two wooden rings strung on a cord are to be removed without loosening the knot, and other such sports as are common among ourselves.[226] The difficult task of forming various figures with a string held stretched between the two hands (cat’s cradle) affords entertainment for hours at a time to the Eskimos in Baffin Land. They call the game ajarorpoq.[227] It is found also in Australia, Borneo, New Guinea, New Zealand, and Java, where, Schmetz says, the children play it too. Finally, I may add that von Hartmann classes much of the ladies’ fancy work with such play, inasmuch as it does not possess artistic value, and its intrinsic worth is out of all proportion to the effort expended.[228]
5. Throwing Plays
Whereas the forms of movement-play which we have been considering are more or less connected, throwing is regarded by many as a special instinct. Preyer says that it is “undoubtedly instinctive.” When monkeys get excited they throw anything they can get hold of; and a five-year-old idiot whose brain structure was much like that of a monkey did the same thing when he was teased.[229] In any case, throwing is certainly an interesting phenomenon, which, if monkeys did not indulge in it, we should claim as a prerogative of the human race. At first it was defensive, the missile serving at a distance as a substitute for one of the bodily members, and consequently first gave the idea of a machine, if we take the word μηχανή in its more general sense. The next step, and one which monkeys can not attain, is the fashioning of the projectile into a work of art.
Accidental dropping of objects seems to introduce the idea of throwing to the infant mind, and what we have called visual play furthers its development, since the child from watching the falling object comes to repeat the process intentionally, and so learns to throw. The following report of Preyer’s traces this progression: “Thirtieth week: Frequent dropping, but still not noticed. Thirty-fourth week: The child looks after the object dropped, but indifferently. Forty-seventh week: The child throws down anything that is given him after playing with it a little, and often looks after it. On one occasion he threw a book on the floor eight times in succession, and his pursed-up lips indicated serious determination.”[230] Further developments were hampered by the interference of his parents. Sigismund, too, gives valuable notes, and adds some luminous remarks on the biological and psychological significance of such play. “All children like to throw,” he says, “and are often blamed for it very unjustly. We should remember that although some window panes may be endangered by such play, it lays the foundation for man’s supremacy over the other animals, and that by means of it muscles are gradually developed and strengthened. We should rejoice, then, with the children when a stone goes a long way or bounds into the water with a splash. When children get out of doors the desire to throw something takes possession of them; even the yearling picks up pebbles and delights to roll them. The older boys stand on the coping or carriage block, and are engrossed in testing the force and directness of their aim. They are trying the power of will over matter.”[231] This is the correct designation of the peculiar satisfaction derived from throwing. It is that which comes from sending the object from us and, as it were, projecting our individuality into a wider sphere of action. Souriau says: “We take a special interest in the extension of motion originated by ourselves. It becomes a part of us. The force which we behold at work outside of us is our own.”[232]
If we include rolling or sliding in our definition of throwing, we are confronted by a bewildering variety of games;[233] but since the ends of a general psychology of play would not be furthered by an enumeration of these, we will try to single out such as illustrate the varied forms of satisfaction which throwing in general affords. First of all let us keep in mind our principle, that inventive play presupposes a complication of instinctive tendencies through the satisfaction of which enjoyment is greatly enhanced. Usually it is impulses for fighting and imitation which ally themselves with that toward movement and render the play more varied and pleasurable. There are, indeed, very few throwing plays that have not culminated in contests of one kind or another, and many are at the same time imitative, though whether they were originated by children or adults it is difficult or even impossible to say. Our study of primitive acoustic instruments showed that the child is sometimes actively inventive. Trying, then, to keep clear as much as possible of fighting and imitative play, we distinguish several kinds of throwing plays which we may briefly characterize as follows: (a) Simple throwing, upward, downward, or horizontally; (b) propulsion by means of a blow (c) rolling, spinning, shoving, and skipping; (d) throwing at a target.
(a) Simple Throwing
Downward throwing is, as already said, the easiest and most natural movement of the kind to a child, from the fact that he learns it by letting things fall. It appeals at the same time to his sight, and quite as much perhaps to his hearing. To send toys, spoons, trays, and books rattling, crashing, and slamming on the floor is a pastime which children will keep up as long as they dare, as the young Goethe tossed the dishes and pots out of the window into the street and enjoyed the clatter. A friend of mine was one day holding his two-year-old nephew in his arms near an open window, and gave the child a silver cigarette case to play with. He hurled it to the street below, to the alarm of passers-by, and called out a loving farewell after it. Older children enjoy throwing something down from a bridge or tower, and sometimes in default of other ammunition make use of Nature’s supply of saliva, as many of us perhaps remember from having our ears boxed for such indulgence. The fascination of sending stones over a precipice appeals to adults as well. Throwing forward is learned almost as early as the other; as soon as he can toddle every child tries to throw pebbles across a brook or into a neighbour’s yard, the larger the shot the greater his satisfaction. Most of the toys, borrowed from long-disused practices of adults, which cater to this impulse belong under another head—Throwing at a target.
Among the earliest of these were the catapult, the ancient discus, something like the English quoit, and the sling. We often find grown men testing their strength and skill in throwing. Once when I was on the banks of the Lünersee a young traveller used to try to throw stones into the lake, which appeared to be but a few paces from the house but was in reality much farther. Following his example, other tourists would join in the game in spite of their fatigue, though generally with but little success. At Swiss festivals the herdsmen keep up an ancient Aelplerspiel, which consists in throwing heavy stones as far as possible.[234]
That wonderful passage in the Odyssey where the godlike sufferer threw the discus, the stone hummed loudly as the spectators bent to the earth under the force of the blow, is a classic example of instinctive æsthetic appreciation, and serves as a match for Gretchen’s remark, “Then quivered at every throat the blade which I felt at mine.” Upward throwing is acquired somewhat later, perhaps, because children easily lose sight of the missile which goes far above them. Their first efforts are usually to toss a ball a very little way up, but boys soon acquire the uncomfortable but effective method of bending backward before making the throwing motion. Homer refers to this too: “Behold! He has hurled it [the ball] aloft to the shadowy clouds, bending backward.” As a little fellow I often tried to throw over tall trees, and my grandfather used to tell me how, when he was a young painter in Rome, he used to vie with the street urchins in throwing stones over the Arch of Titus. A favourite game of this kind is played by placing a ball or pebble in a sling which is whirled so rapidly that it hums. In Heidelberg, where many grounds are planted with plane trees, autumn invites the children to a game with the long fruits which hang by threads from their branches, a natural toy which the little ones are quick to take advantage of. Among toys originating in imitation the bow is sometimes used for sending arrows aloft for the simple pleasure of watching their upward flight, though, of course, its chief use is for aiming at a target.