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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF 
 RELAXATION 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 RA 790.5.P31 
 
 The psychology of relaxation. 
 
 3 1924 012 503 102 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 25031 02 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF 
 RELAXATION 
 
 BY 
 
 George Thomas White Patrick, Ph.D. 
 
 Professor of Fhilokphy in the State University of Iowa 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 ^)}t ttitaer^itie T^aif Cambtib0e 
 
 1916 
 
 E.V 
 
COPYRIGHT, igi6, BY GEORGS T. W. PATRICK 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published February tQitt 
 
"I ain't givine a work till my dyin' day; 
 'F I ever lays up enough 
 I 's gwine a go off a while en stay, 
 I'll be takin' a few days off. 
 Case de jimson weeds don't bloom but once 
 En when dey 's shed dey 's shed. 
 En when you's dead, tain'tjis a few mont's 
 But you's gwine be a long time dead." 
 
 * * * 
 
 "An American was once getting some money on 
 a letter of credit in a banking office in Damascus and 
 fell into conversation with the grave Oriental who 
 was serving him, and who asked what struck him as 
 the most obvious difference between Damascus and 
 New York. The American, after a moment's hesita- 
 tion, replied that he thought life moved with more 
 rapidity in New York. 'Yes,' said the Oriental, 'you 
 call that hustle. We tried that in Damascus a thou- 
 sand years ago and found there was nothing in it and 
 gave it up.' " 
 
 The Outlook, Sept. 29, 1915. 
 
"An old negro woman had worked for years in a 
 southern family, and during that time she had been 
 uniformly patient and kind and always cheerful. 
 One day her mistress asked her, 'Aunt Mandy, what 
 makes you so cheerful all the time?' She threw back 
 her head and laughed, saying, 'Lawd, chile, I jes 
 weahs de wurl lak a loose gyarment.'" 
 
 * * * 
 
 "The racially old is seized by the individual with 
 ease and joy." 
 
 Luther H. Gulick. 
 
 * * * 
 
 *EcrTiv ovv TpaytaBia jui/u,i;(ns irpa^eus CTJrovSaias koL 
 TtXcias /xeye^os ixovo'rj's, ■^8v(T/j,iv(o Xoyio \iapli €KaoT<i> tS>v 
 (IBSiv ev Tois fiopioK, Sp<i>vTu>v KOL ov Si' aTayyeXiai, 8i' iXeov 
 KOt fjyo^ov TTipaivovcra ttjv tw toiovtiov ■naBrjp.arwv Kadapaiv. 
 
 Aristotle, Poetics, 5. 1449. 24. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO select for psychological treatment, and 
 to bring together in one book such sub- 
 jects as play, sport, laughter, profanity, alco- 
 hol, and war, may seem to some capricious — 
 to others, possibly, even sensational. Let me 
 assure the reader that nothing could be farther 
 from my purpose than to make any such 
 appeal to popular favor. I have attempted a 
 prosaic, and, so far as lay in my power, a 
 strictly scientific treatment of these subjects 
 from the psychological and psychogenetic 
 standpoint. 
 
 These subjects have been chosen, as I have 
 explained in the introductory chapter, be- 
 cause they all illustrate one fundamental law, 
 that of relief from the stress and tension 
 which characterize our modem life. The con- 
 necting idea which links together these several 
 themes is the catharsis idea, but the catharsis 
 idea itself, as it appears in Aristotle and 
 modem writers, I have found it necessary to 
 subject to a new interpretation. 
 
 Of the seven chapters in this book, four have 
 
VIU 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 appeared In somewhat different form in va- 
 rious periodicals. The chapter on Play is 
 an enlargement and revision of two articles, 
 one on the "Psychology of Relaxation," which 
 appeared in the Popular Science Monthly in 
 June, 19 14, and one on the "Psychology of 
 Play," from the Pedagogical Seminary of 
 October, 1914. The chapters on Profanity, 
 Alcohol, and War are revisions of three ar- 
 ticles, one on the "Psychology of Profan- 
 ity," published in the Psychological Review 
 of March, 1901; one entitled "In Quest of 
 the Alcohol Motive," in the Popular Science 
 Monthly of September, 191 3; and one on the 
 " Psychology of War," In the Popular Science 
 Monthly of August, 1915. My thanks are due 
 to the editors of these periodicals for permis- 
 sion to use the articles here. 
 
 I wish especially to acknowledge my In- 
 debtedness to President G. Stanley Hall, as 
 all writers must do who love to dwell upon 
 the significance of racial history in the In- 
 terpretation of the mental life of the child 
 and the man. 
 
 G. T. W. Patrick. 
 
 Iowa City, 
 January i, igi6. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. Introduction r 
 
 II. The Psychology of Play 27 
 
 III. The Psychology of Laughter 97 
 
 IV. The Psychology of Profanity 143 
 V. The Psychology of Alcohol 173 
 
 VI. The Psychology of War 217 
 
 VII. Conclusion 253 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF 
 RELAXATION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE Gospel of Relaxation was the sub- 
 ject of a speech made by Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer at a dinner given in his honor in 
 New York City in 1882. Mr. Spencer called 
 attention to the extreme form of "persistent 
 activity" which characterizes the Ameri- 
 can people. The energy of the savage, he 
 said, was spasmodic. He could not apply 
 himself persistently to work. He lived in 
 the present and did not worry about the 
 future. Civilized man more and more pur- 
 sues a future goal and applies himself to 
 work until it becomes a passion. 
 
 In America, said Mr. Spencer, this 
 strenuous and high-pressure life has be- 
 come extreme, and a counterchange — a re- 
 action — must be imminent. We take our 
 multitudinous responsibilities too seriously. 
 There are too many lines in our faces, our 
 
4 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 gray hairs appear too early, our nervous 
 breakdowns are too frequent. Damaged 
 constitutions and a danaaged posterity are 
 among the results. Emerson, with his say- 
 ing that the first requisite of a gentleman is 
 to be a perfect animal, is a safer guide for us 
 than Carlyle with his gospel of work. 
 
 More recently, Professor James, Annie 
 Payson Call, and other writers ^ have elo- 
 quently preached this same gospel of re- 
 laxation. We are told that we are too breath- 
 less; that we live under too much stress and 
 tension; that we are too intense and carry 
 too much expression in our faces; that we 
 must relax, let go, breathe deeply, and un- 
 burden ourselves of many useless contrac- 
 tions. 
 
 There seems to be a good deal of truth 
 in this. Some of us manage to escape neu- 
 rasthenia, but few of us are free from 
 fatigue, chronic or acute. We hear with 
 amazement now and again some one say, 
 "I was never tired in my life." Surely un- 
 der normal conditions we ought not to be 
 so tired as we are, nor tired so often. 
 
 * For references, see bibliography of " Play " at the 
 end of chapter ii. 
 
INTRODUCTION s 
 
 Impressed with the strenuous character 
 of American life and the need of more rest 
 and recreation, practical common sense, 
 not waiting upon theory, has turned to dis- 
 cover means for relieving the excessive ten- 
 sion incident to our present habits of living. 
 Some, as we have said, preach the gospel 
 of relaxation, content to tell us that we are 
 too intense. Others have established schools 
 with practical and helpful rules and methods 
 for relaxation and have brought comfort 
 and relief to many. Again, a new and unique 
 interest has suddenly arisen in play. Men 
 and animals have always played; but now 
 *we have first become conscious of play and 
 curious about it. We Insist on play. If chil- 
 dren do not play, we teach them to play. 
 And we are anxious to know about the 
 theory of play. 
 
 Finally, a score of movements, perhaps 
 many score, have sprung into notice, whose 
 purpose is to encourage or provide some 
 form of relaxation. We recall the recreation 
 movement; the physical-culture movement; 
 the playground movement; the Boy Scouts; 
 the Camp-Fire girls; the ever-increasing 
 interest in athletics, not only in our colleges, 
 
6 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 but also in our high schools and grammar 
 schools; the radical change in Young Men's 
 Christian Associations from devotional to hy- 
 gienic and athletic religion; the renaissance of 
 the gymnasium and the Olympic games; the 
 increased interest in outdoor life of all kinds; 
 the renewed devotion to outdoor sports, like 
 tennis, golf, baseball, and football; the rapid 
 extension of the play motive into almost every 
 branch of education; the new vacation schools 
 and school excursions; finally the supervised 
 playgrounds, supervised folk-dancing, super- 
 vised swimming, wading, tramping, garden- 
 ing, singing, and story-telling. Even with very 
 young children the Montessori system seeks 
 to relieve the tension of the old task methods 
 by making the child's activities natural and 
 interesting as well as useful. 
 
 More than twenty-five hundred regularly 
 supervised playgrounds and recreation centers 
 are now maintained in about six hundred and 
 fifty cities in this country. A brand new pro- 
 fession has appeared, that of play leader, em- 
 ploying nearly seven thousand professional 
 workers. 
 
 The legislatures of some States have passed 
 laws requiring every city of a certain size to 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 vote on the proposition of maintaining play- 
 grounds. New York City expended more than 
 ^15,000,000 on playgrounds previous to 1908. 
 The city paid $1,811,000 for one playground 
 having about three acres. Chicago spent 
 $11,000,000 on playgrounds and field houses 
 in two years. Formerly the boy could play on 
 the street, in the back alley, in the back yard. 
 Now, the alley and back yard have disap- 
 peared, the street is crowded with automo- 
 biles, and the few remaining open spaces are 
 given over to the lawn-mower and keep-off- 
 the-grass signs, while more and more the school 
 has encroached on the boy's precious period 
 of growth, filling at least nine of the twelve 
 months of the year and adding the evils of 
 evening study and the dread of examinations. 
 
 For reasons which will be shown pres- 
 ently, boys must play. Take away the op- 
 portunity for legitimate play, and the play 
 instinct, the instinct of rivalry, of adven- 
 ture, of initiation, will manifest itself in 
 anti-social ways. Hence the juvenile court 
 and the reform school. "Better, playgrounds 
 without schools," says one writer, "than 
 schools without playgrounds." 
 
 Up to the present time this is about as 
 
8 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 far as we have gone into the subject of 
 relaxation. Its psychology has not really 
 been studied at all. We have simply been 
 impressed by the tense and strenuous char- 
 acter of our manner of life and have con- 
 nected this with the increase of nervous dis- 
 orders and nervous breakdowns and perhaps 
 with the increase of insanity, and have 
 felt the need, accordingly, of more recrea- 
 tion and play, and more harmony and poise 
 in our way of living, and have taken, there- 
 fore, a few practical steps in this direction. 
 
 But suddenly within the most recent days 
 things have happened which have caused 
 some of us to begin to think more deeply 
 on the whole subject of work and play, and 
 have suggested that it is not a local Ameri- 
 can problem at all, but a world problem of 
 the present age, and that perhaps great 
 social questions may be involved. The 
 outbreak of recreation crazes in America 
 was the first of these events, but it was the 
 calamity of the European war which most 
 distinctly called our attention to the need 
 of a more careful study of the psychological 
 conditions of our modern life. 
 
 Just as we thought the world to be get- 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 ting very serious, and settling down to work 
 and to problems of social and individual 
 welfare and to political and moral reform, 
 it has suddenly gone amusement-mad in 
 America and reverted with unparalleled 
 ferocity to primeval bloodshed in Europe. 
 These amusement crazes have taken many 
 forms, but the most virulent form was seen 
 in the dancing mania, which has passed 
 through various stages in North and South 
 America and has been so widespread and so 
 compelling that it has reminded us of the 
 epidemics of the Middle Ages, At its height, 
 according to the newspaper reports, a tribe 
 of Indians in Nevada built a great dance- 
 hall in the midst of their village, and im- 
 ported a teacher of the tango. 
 
 Then came the moving-picture craze, 
 which has seized the world like an obsession. 
 No one can suppose that this colossal social 
 phenomenon is to be explained by the mere 
 fact of the discovery of the cinematograph, 
 and that the people were merely waiting 
 upon the invention in order to flock to the 
 spectacles. The invention was an incident. 
 The real significant fact was the psycho- 
 logical situation. 
 
lo PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 Consider the following editorial from a 
 recent number of the "Nation": — 
 
 The historian will come to grief if he attempts 
 to describe the cause of frivolity in the New 
 York of 19 1 5 A.D. as historians have depicted 
 the frivolity of Rome under the early emperors, 
 and to compare bread and the circus with lob- 
 ster a la Newburgh and the cabaret. Going back 
 to Rome, and assuming the grand manner, he 
 will speak of a city that drew to itself the 
 booty of the civilized world, of a population 
 enervated by the largess of politicians doling 
 out the plunder of three continents, of a citizen- 
 ship lulled into civic indifference by gifts and 
 amusements — in other words, an imperial city 
 gone rotten with prosperity. If the parallel 
 holds for New York, the historian would have 
 to describe a city that went mad over cabarets 
 because it had more money than it could spend 
 wisely, because it had no serious interest in the 
 problems of the civic and social life, because its 
 serenity was undisturbed by wars or the fear 
 of wars, because there was no unemployment 
 problem, no city-budget problem, no work- 
 men's compensation problem, no widows' pen- 
 sion problem, no Mexican problem, no German 
 problem. Else how account for a city gone mad 
 over the fox trot and the white lights.'' Life 
 was much simpler in imperial Rome than it is 
 in New York to-day, though even under the 
 early Caesars the picture was not so uniform 
 
INTRODUCTION ii 
 
 as the average historian has painted it. At least 
 we know to-day that the fact of 400,000 unem- 
 ployed in New York City does not militate 
 against the prosperity of the "movies," which 
 are the circenses of the masses; and the fact 
 of Wall Street's unemployed has not inter- 
 fered with the prosperity of the cabarets. 
 Quite the contrary. There is good reason for 
 believing that not all the young men at the 
 afternoon teas are professional idlers and para- 
 sites, but that a good many business men and 
 brokers have taken to dancing in the after- 
 noon because there was nothing to do down- 
 town. Perhaps the grasshopper in La Fontaine's 
 fable, who sang all summer, did so because busi- 
 ness was rotten, and when the ant told him to 
 go and dance in winter, he was only advising 
 him to do the best possible thing under the cir- 
 cumstances.^ 
 
 To be sure it is no longer possible to dispose 
 of such things as these by referring them to 
 "frivolity" or to "luxury," but neither is it 
 possible to say that they are due to idleness. 
 For instance, a correspondent in a small 
 mining-camp near the Mexican border writes 
 that the Mexican laborers, who comprise six- 
 sevenths of the population, are strictly amuse- 
 ment-mad, spending their last pennies at the 
 » Nation, June 3, 1915, p. 613. 
 
12 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 "movies" or the merry-go-round or for in- 
 toxicants. May it not be that these amuse- 
 ment crazes are a form of reaction against a 
 manner of Hfe that is too serious and tense. 
 May they not be indications of a lack of 
 physiological adjustment. We are making 
 great efforts in these days to secure better 
 social adjustment through the study of social 
 and economic conditions; but is it not possible 
 that the trouble is not in the lack of social 
 adjustment, but in the lack of physiological 
 adjustment in the individual, so that what we 
 have to strive for is not so much improved 
 social conditions, as improved health and im- 
 proved physical constitutions, to be gained by 
 a different manner of life, a different kind of 
 education, and a different proportion of work 
 and play. 
 
 Then there is another cloud which has re- 
 cently appeared on the social horizon leading 
 us to think that the problem of work and play 
 needs further study. We refer to the remark- 
 able increase in the number of deaths from 
 diseases of degeneration. A few years ago, re- 
 joicing over the discoveries of Pasteur and his 
 followers, we had great hope of increasing the 
 span of human life by the conquest of the 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 devastating parasitic diseases. These diseases 
 have, indeed, to some extent been conquered. 
 We have now less dread of typhoid, tubercu- 
 losis, pneumonia, and diseases of this class 
 due to microscopic enemies, but the expected 
 increase in racial stability has not come. Some, 
 therefore, are beginning to ask whether the 
 better way to lengthen human life is to remove 
 the enemies which threaten it, or to increase 
 our power of resistance to these enemies. 
 
 According to Mr. E. E. Rittenhouse, 
 president of the Life Extension Institute, 
 there is a marked decline in the power of 
 American workers to withstand the strain 
 of modern life. They wear out sooner than 
 they did a few years ago. The chances of 
 death after reaching the prime of life have 
 increased because of the extraordinary in- 
 crease in the death-rate from the breaking- 
 down of the heart, arteries, kidneys, and of 
 the nervous and digestive systems. Mr. 
 Rittenhouse's conclusions as to the serious 
 inroads of these diseases in modern life are 
 based not on mortality records of the idle 
 rich and such classes, but upon actual phys- 
 ical examination of a large number of 
 male workers, including officials, clerks, and 
 
14 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 employees of banks and commercial houses, 
 averaging about thirty years of age. The re- 
 sults show that these diseases of degenera- 
 tion, so-called diseases of old age, are " reach- 
 ing down into middle life and below, and 
 increasing there, and apparently at all ages." 
 These diseases, not being so quickly fatal 
 as the parasitic diseases, produce decreased 
 efficiency and increased misery, oftentimes 
 through many working years. -^ 
 
 The lesson which investigations such as 
 this teach is that the problem of public 
 health and longevity is not altogether a 
 problem of hygiene in the narrower sense 
 in which this word is commonly used. It 
 is rather the deeper question of vitality, of 
 biological adjustment, of racial stability; 
 and it involves questions of heredity, of 
 mental and physical balance, of manner of 
 life, of physical education, of work and play. 
 
 Sociologists are becoming acutely con- 
 scious of the fact that our cultured classes 
 are not self-perpetuating. The increasing 
 number of childless marriages and small 
 families in these classes indicates that a 
 
 ' E. E. Rittenhouse, Protecting the Human Machine. 
 Life Extension Institute, New York. 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 process of displacement is taking place in 
 favor of peoples of hardier stock and sim- 
 pler habits, depriving us at once of the ad- 
 vantages of physical heredity and making 
 progress depend very largely upon social he- 
 redity alone. A given stock of people may 
 cultivate its brains to the highest point of 
 intellectual and moral efficiency, but, if it 
 neglect the corresponding development of 
 somatic vitality, if it neglect strength and 
 vigor of muscles, heart, lungs, stomach, and 
 reproductive system, it is doomed to ex- 
 tinction and cannot pass on to posterity 
 the intellectual and moral power which it 
 has itself inherited. 
 
 Finally, the increased desire for narcotics 
 in the form of drugs, tobacco, and alcohol, 
 prevalent in all civilized countries, is a 
 further indication of some serious lack of 
 balance between body and brain. 
 
 There is a lack of adjustment somewhere, 
 and the problem of the day is to find out 
 where it is and how it may be remedied. 
 It is not our purpose in this book to study 
 this great problem, but rather a single phase 
 of it, namely, the relation of work and play 
 and the results both to the individual and 
 
i6 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 to society" of excessive work and insufficient 
 relaxation. 
 
 It is very probable that our modern stren- 
 uous life is bringing too heavy a strain upon 
 the brain, particularly those parts of the 
 brain immediately connected with the men- 
 tal powers which condition that peculiar 
 kind of progress which the world is now 
 making. The tendency of the times is 
 toward a very swift industrial, commer- 
 cial, professional, and intellectual activity. 
 It is an age of great effort and endeavor, 
 of stress and tension, of labor and strain, of 
 scientific and inventive ability; an age of 
 great efficiency and striving for efficiency; 
 an age of variegation; a centrifugal age. It 
 is not an age of peace, of calm, of poise, of 
 relaxation, of repose, of measure, of har- 
 mony, of conservation. It is not a centripe- 
 tal age. The spirit of the age is that of 
 Francis Bacon. It is not the spirit of such 
 greater minds as Buddha and Jesus and 
 Sophocles and Plato and St. Francis. 
 
 What is likely to be the outcome of such 
 tendencies as these? Our current sociology 
 speaks almost exclusively of the proximate 
 social results. What is perhaps more im- 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 portant is to speak of the immediate phys- 
 iological and psychological results, because 
 they throw light upon certain ultimate and 
 still more important social consequences. 
 
 The immediate social results of an age of 
 such great activity and great expenditure 
 are clearly pointed out, for instance, by 
 Professor Giddings in his "Democracy and 
 Empire." These are, in brief, (i) an increase 
 of wealth, culture, and refinement, followed 
 by a marked increase of population; (2) a 
 movement of the people toward the large 
 cities; and (3) a displacement of the higher 
 types of people by the lower, followed by 
 an increase of crime, vagabondage, suicide, 
 and feeble-mindedness. 
 
 These social results we may leave to the 
 sociologist. But what is the effect of such 
 an age of great activity and great expen- 
 diture upon the individual.'' This we believe 
 to be just now the important question, and 
 it is to the answer to this question that we 
 hope the studies in this book may be a 
 contribution. 
 
 The result, in a word, is a rapid and ex- 
 treme fatigue of the higher brain and an 
 unusual and imperative demand for rest 
 
i8 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 and relaxation. Nature has provided various 
 means for rest and relaxation, in sleep, play, 
 sport, laughter, etc. But what will happen 
 when the claims made upon the working 
 brain are in excess of the powers of repair 
 provided by these natural means of relax- 
 ation, or when these means themselves are 
 neglected ? There will be increasing irritabil- 
 ity and probably reactions more or less vio- 
 lent and spasmodic, and if there are any 
 artificial means of relieving the strain and 
 temporarily restoring the balance, there will 
 be recourse to such aids. The craving for 
 narcotic drugs, tobacco, and alcohol, will be 
 an example of the latter, and the recurrence 
 of recreation crazes will be an illustration 
 of the former. Finally, it is altogether pos- 
 sible that society as a whole may suffer 
 from such excessive mental activity and 
 such excessive tension, and that great social 
 upheavals may follow, such, for instance, as 
 war. Thus we may understand why the psy- 
 chologist in treating the laws of relaxation 
 may bring together in one volume subjects 
 apparently so unlike as play, sport, laughter, 
 profanity, alcohol, and war. 
 The principle involved in all the forms of 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 relaxation here studied is relief from tension 
 or release from some form of restraint. Al- 
 though this tension and restraint on the part 
 of the individual are necessary conditions of 
 all social evolution, they have been greatly 
 intensified by the manner of life which char- 
 acterizes the nineteenth and twentieth cen- 
 turies. The repression of primitive impulses 
 to the end of growing social needs is the fun- 
 damental law of human progress. Such con- 
 tinual repression necessitates constant effort, 
 constant strain, and constant exercise of 
 voluntary attention. It involves those higher 
 brain centers whose development has con- 
 ditioned human progress, and brings upon 
 them a severe and constant strain, making 
 rest and relaxation imperative. 
 
 When this everlasting urge of progress is ex- 
 cessive, as it has been in recent times, we may 
 say that there is in a way a constant subcon- 
 scious rebellion against it and a constant dis- 
 position to escape from it, and the method of 
 escape is always the temporary reversion to 
 simpler and more primitive forms of behavior, 
 — a return to nature, so to speak. Sudden mo- 
 mentary and unexpected release from this ten- 
 sion, with instinctive reinstatement of prim- 
 
20 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 itive forms of expression, is laughter. Daily or 
 periodic systematic return to primitive forms 
 of activity is sport or play. War is a violent 
 social reversion to elemental and natural in- 
 ter-tribal relations. Profanity is a resort to 
 primitive forms of vocal expression to relieve 
 a situation which threatens one's well-being. 
 Alcohol is an artificial means of relieving men- 
 tal tension by the narcotizing of the higher 
 brain centers. 
 
 Thus the reader may understand why we 
 have associated in a single volume these seem- 
 ingly diverse kinds of human behavior — they 
 are all forms of relaxation. That which is com- 
 mon to all these phenomena is the relief from 
 the tension of our modern strenuous life by 
 means of a return to nature, or a return to 
 early and elemental forms of behavior which 
 offer rest or release from the burdens of life. 
 All therefore appear as forms of relaxation, 
 some helpful and normal, others abnormal 
 and brutalizing. 
 
 If we should succeed in tracing all of these 
 modes of human behavior to their psychologi- 
 cal sources, we may contribute something to 
 the clearing-up of certain difficult social prob- 
 lems of the day. We may, for instance, be 
 
INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 enabled to see very clearly that evil and de- 
 structive forms of relaxation cannot be ban- 
 ished except by substituting normal and 
 healthful forms. 
 
 The growing world-wide craving for alco- 
 hol, tobacco, and other narcotic drugs and the 
 fatal and inevitable recurrence of war, with 
 its fearful toll of human life and its still more 
 fearful toll of hajd-earned human savings, 
 perplexing though they are as social problems, 
 nevertheless might become much clearer in the 
 light thrown upon them by the study of the 
 laws of mental relaxation. 
 
 In the present stage of human culture, war 
 seems like a species of insanity. It is no longer 
 taken for granted. It no longer fits in as a part 
 of the natural order of events. It seems anom- 
 alous and grotesque. It has lost its glory and 
 seems now barbaric. We have been so long 
 accustomed to have our disputes settled by 
 courts of law, whose decisions are based upon 
 principles of justice, that an appeal to mere 
 brute force in the settlement of international 
 disputes appears to us more and more absurd. 
 Recently the reversionary character of war 
 has been startlingly revealed to us by the 
 reversionary logic and the reversionary morals 
 
22 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 which accompany it. And yet wars one after 
 another, each more terrible than the last, are 
 flaunted in the face of nineteenth and twenti- 
 eth century civilization, are flaunted directly 
 in the face of world-wide movements for in- 
 ternational conciliation. 
 
 In like manner the use of alcohol, from the 
 standpoint of modern science, appears as a 
 kind of insanity. Scientific study has now 
 shown that alcohol has none of the good 
 effects upon the body or mind which formerly 
 it was supposed to have, and that it is not even 
 a stimulant. Yet the consumption of alcohol 
 steadily increases. 
 
 Under these circumstances we should wel- 
 come any light, however small, which psy- 
 chology can throw upon these subjects. The 
 desire for alcohol and the instinct for war are 
 phenomena which lie in the field of psychol- 
 ogy, and reformers will make little headway 
 against these evils unless they take into ac- 
 count the psychological motives. 
 
 We may, if we choose, redouble again our 
 efforts against alcohol, but it would be the part 
 of reason to find out, if we can, the causes of 
 this growing desire in order that they may, 
 if possible, be removed. So we may, if we 
 
INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 choose, redouble our efforts toward universal 
 peace, but a more rational method would 
 seem to be to find out the deep-lying causes 
 of war and see whether anything can be done 
 to remove them. 
 
 In the chapters which follow, an attempt is 
 made to treat these subjects psychologically 
 and in particular to consider them from the 
 standpoint of phylogenetic experience. We 
 must call to mind not only the animal and 
 savage past from which man has emerged, but 
 also the forces or tendencies which are mani- 
 fest in his development. It is not sufficient to 
 explain war by recalling that man is a fighting 
 animal, that he has literally fought his way up 
 to manhood. It is far more important to un- 
 derstand that his constant advance has been 
 attended by conditions of tension and stress 
 which have made his periodic and temporary 
 reversion to primitive habits an actual condi- 
 tion of renewed progress. It is still more im- 
 portant to learn how the supreme intelligence 
 with which evolution has finally crowned man- 
 kind may be used to devise some means by 
 which these periodic reversions to savagery 
 may be made unnecessary. 
 
 Lately we have seemed to forget that hu- 
 
24 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 man progress is rhythmical, that mankind 
 advances by a series of relapses and recoveries, 
 and that after each recovery there is new 
 ground gained, sometimes very much new 
 ground. 
 
 It may be that we have here the explanation 
 of war, and it may be that there are conditions 
 present in the social life of our times which 
 intensify these rhythmical reversionary tend- 
 encies, so that no manner of humanitarian 
 effort can withstand the periodic demand for 
 war, just as no manner of prohibitive legisla- 
 tion and no manner of science sermons can 
 stem the desire for alcohol. Especially in the 
 last century has "progress," as it is called, been 
 very rapid, — progress in science, in industry, 
 in invention, in everything, — and the tension 
 and rapidity of our lives have become corre- 
 spondingly great. After great tension there 
 must be great relaxation. There is a limit to 
 the strain which the social mind can stand. It 
 is imperative that we study the laws of mental 
 tension and mental relaxation. The psychol- 
 ogy of play may throw much light on the 
 psychology of war. 
 
 No engineer or architect undertakes to build 
 a bridge or skyscraper without an accurate 
 
INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 knowledge of the strength of naaterial. Modern 
 life is a kind of social skyscraper. The minds of 
 the individuals who constitute society are the 
 material. This material is put under too much 
 tension. A collapse necessarily follows. In our 
 social life these collapses appear as reactions 
 or reversions, sometimes cataclysmic, as in the 
 case of the war in Europe, sometimes sporadic, 
 as in the dancing crazes and the amusement 
 crazes in America. 
 
 In the following pages an attempt has been 
 made to study the strength of this human 
 miaterial, to study the causes of the social 
 strains and the forms and directions taken by 
 the social reactions. If these studies teach us 
 nothing more, they will at least show that 
 the folly of explaining war by referring it to 
 mere political rivalries is no less than that of 
 referring amusement crazes to "frivolity" and 
 the desire for alcohol to "depravity." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PLAY 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PLAY 
 
 TT THEN we think of play, we usually have 
 W in mind the play of children. But 
 grown-ups likewise play, and to their plays we 
 sometimes apply the word " sport." Since it is 
 our purpose in this book to study relaxation in 
 its various forms, evidently it is sport, rather 
 than play in its narrower sense, that we are 
 especially interested in, for one could hardly 
 speak of the play of children as a form of re- 
 laxation. 
 
 Many books have been written about play, 
 and it is the play of children that they usually 
 deal with, a subject indeed of the greatest in- 
 terest and the most vital importance. Little or 
 no study has been made of the psychology of 
 the play of adults, and this is unfortunate for 
 two reasons : first, because of the importance 
 of the subject itself in its relation to certain 
 fundamental problems of our social life, and, 
 second, because the play of children receives 
 new and valuable light when it is studied in 
 
30 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 its relation to the play of man in the wider 
 sense. 
 
 While our interest, then, in this chapter is 
 primarily in the play of adults considered as a 
 form of relaxation, nevertheless it is very evi- 
 dent that we could make no progress in this 
 study without first examining the nature of 
 play in general and without first considering 
 the theories of play which other writers have 
 proposed. It will be interesting, then, to fol- 
 low this plan and see whether the old theories 
 of play are satisfactory, and if not, whether it 
 is possible to propose a new theory which shall 
 bring the plays of children and the plays of 
 men into harmony with each other, and at the 
 same time into harmony with the laws of 
 recreation and relaxation in general. 
 
 Many theories of play have been offered, 
 but they may all be referred to three principal 
 ones, which have been named the Schiller- 
 Spencer theory, the Grops theory, and the 
 Recapitulation theory. An examination of 
 these theories will no doubt show that none of 
 them are wholly incorrect. They are rather 
 partial views, not necessarily inconsistent with 
 one another, but in need of more careful defini- 
 tion and limitation. 
 
PLAY 31 
 
 Herbert Spencer's theory is that play activi- 
 ties are those which do not directly subserve 
 life processes, but are due to an inner need of 
 using those bodily organs which are over- 
 rested and under-worked. In the lower ani- 
 mals, therefore, the occasion for play would 
 not arise, since all their energies are constantly 
 expended in the maintenance of life; but in the 
 higher animals and in man, time and strength 
 are not wholly absorbed in providing for im- 
 mediate needs. There is thus a surplus of 
 vigor and this surplus is expended through the 
 usual channels; not, however, in real activities, 
 that is, in work, but in simulations of real 
 activities, that is, in play. Play is thus the 
 dramatizing of real life. Kittens chasing balls 
 and children nursing dolls, are illustrations. 
 
 Although modern writers might state this in 
 somewhat different form, the theory is essen- 
 tially sound so far as it goes. The rather hy- 
 percritical objection which has often been 
 urged, namely, that we sometimes play when 
 we are tired, is easily answered and need not 
 be considered here. The real weakness of the 
 theory is that it is incomplete. It explains why 
 people — • that is, grown people — tend to be 
 active all the time when they are not sleeping. 
 
32 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 It explains nothing more than this and this 
 needs no explanation, since it is characteristic 
 of all animal life to be active. To explain how 
 processes of nutrition lead to the accumulation 
 of energy, which results in muscular activity, 
 and that when there is no work to do this takes 
 the form of play, is only a longer way of saying 
 that an animal is alive and necessarily active. 
 To speak of that energy which is not expended 
 in life-serving processes as "surplus energy" 
 is to assimie that man exists to work, and 
 that play is something extra, a kind of after- 
 thought, to fill up the time. 
 
 A further diiBculty with Spencer's theory is 
 that it does not apply to the play of children at 
 all, for the reason that the child is not a work- 
 ing animal, and does not provide his own sus- 
 tenance. Hence there could be no "surplus 
 energy." His whole life is a play life. Of 
 course, if the theory had been stated a little 
 differently, it would apply perfectly to the 
 play of children. Children are alive and ac- 
 tive, and their activity, not being directed to 
 immediate life-serving ends, we call play. 
 
 But the most serious difficulty with Spen- 
 cer's theory is that it does not explain the 
 form taken either by the plays of children or of 
 
PLAY 33 
 
 adults. His view is that men and animals in 
 their surplus-energy moods — that is, in their 
 play — would simply go on doing in a drama- 
 tizing way what they are accustomed seriously 
 to do in their working moods. The horse 
 would run, the tiger would jvmip, the cat 
 would chase imaginary mice, and the man 
 presumably would plough and reap and dig 
 and write books and give lectures. But this is 
 precisely what the man does not do. He goes 
 fishing, plays golf and baseball, goes to horse- 
 races, and rides in automobiles. The Spencer 
 theory, therefore, misses the whole point. It 
 is true because it is a truism. 
 
 The Groos theory of play attempts to sup- 
 ply what the Spencer theory lacks, that is, to 
 account for the actual form taken by the 
 plays of children and young animals. Unfor- 
 tunately, it gives little attention to the plays 
 of adults. 
 
 According to the Groos theory of play, the 
 plays of animals and children are instincts 
 which have arisen through the action of nat- 
 ural selection because of their usefulness as a 
 practice and preparation for life's later serious 
 duties. Professor Groos has written two volum.- 
 
34 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 inous bcK)ks on the play of animals and the 
 play of man containing a wealth of material 
 on these subjects, but the reader cannot fail 
 to be impressed by the lack of connection be- 
 tween the facts and the theory. The author 
 seems, indeed, to have arrived at his theory 
 of play through a purely deductive process. 
 Since play is an instinct, and since, as we can- 
 not admit the inheritance of acquired charac- 
 ters, every instinct has arisen in response to 
 some definite practical need, and since it is 
 evident that play has no immediate life-serv- 
 ing function, it must serve as a practice and 
 preparation for life's serious pursuits. In this 
 argument the premises may be sound, but the 
 conclusion has no necessary connection with 
 them. Plays, indeed, are instinctive, and no 
 doubt all instinctive reactions have had at 
 some time in our racial history some life- 
 serving meaning. But the fact that natural 
 selection has not yet eliminated the great 
 multitude of old racial habits with which the 
 young child's nervous system teems does not 
 prove that they have been retained because 
 of their usefulness as a practice and prepara- 
 tion for future life. In any animal species, 
 such as man, that lives in a changing environ- 
 
PLAY 35 
 
 ment and has a long period of youth followed 
 by a period of great rational power of trans- 
 formation, we may expect behavior to be 
 largely determined by inherited habit. As 
 Professor Thorndike says : "We fear, not the 
 carriers of malaria and yellow fever, but thun- 
 der and the dark; we pity, not the gifted youth 
 debarred from education, but the beggar's 
 bloody sore; we are less excited by a great 
 injustice than by a little blood." ^ We are no 
 longer so impressed by the infallible powers 
 of natural selection as when Professor Groos 
 wrote. Man's original nature is not so per- 
 fect as we once thought. We are more im- 
 pressed by its " archaic unreason." 
 
 And even in the case of instincts which are 
 now useful, it does not follow that, if they 
 appear before the time of their life-serving 
 usefulness, they must serve as a practice and 
 preparation for such later use. Nature is not 
 so parsimonious and calculating as that would 
 indicate. It is not necessary to explain the 
 doll plays of little girls as a practice and prepa- 
 ration for their future maternal duties. They 
 may be simply exhibitions of a maternal in- 
 
 ' Thorndike, Educational Psychology, "The Original 
 Nature of Man," p. 281. 
 
36 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 stinct which sometime in the life of the indi- 
 vidual may be useful, as when a tree showers 
 down ten thousand seeds, of which one only 
 may geiminate. So the fighting plays of boys 
 may be simply old racial habits, the line of 
 least resistance for boyish activities. 
 
 In one sense, to be sure, if one should wish 
 to look at the matter teleologically, play, like 
 food or sleep, or like growth itself, is a prepa- 
 ration for manhood. But it is better to regard 
 the child as a playing animal, realizing in him- 
 self his own end. Play, like growth or life 
 itself, belongs to the concept of childhood. 
 Play is just the name we give to the child's 
 activities. In the Groos theory, as in that of 
 Spencer, there seems to lurk the belief that 
 the child is naturally quiescent, and that if he 
 plays, his play must look forward to that par- 
 ticular aspect of life which we call his serious 
 or bread-winning activity. 
 
 When we consider what the plays of chil- 
 dren actually are, we discover, except in a 
 limited number of imitative plays, but faint 
 resemblance between them and the serious 
 pursuits of adult man. They resemble rather 
 the pursuits of primitive and prehistoric man, 
 and many of them are like the sports of adults 
 
PLAY 37 
 
 of the present day. The plays most dear to 
 the hearts of boys are running, jumping, 
 climbing, coasting, skating, wrestling, wading, 
 swimming, boating, fishing, hunting, shooting 
 with darts, spears, arrows, or guns, building 
 bonfires, robbing birds' nests, gathering nuts, 
 collecting stamps, eggs, beetles or other things, 
 flying kites, digging caves, making tree houses, 
 spinning tops, playing horse, playing marbles, 
 jackstones, mumblepeg, hide-and-seek, tag, 
 blackman, prisoner's base, leap-frog, baseball, 
 football, tennis, cricket, golf, etc. Children of 
 all ages have the greatest interest in pet ani- 
 mals, dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, horses, etc. 
 No small part of the child's life is occupied 
 with playing with these pets and in earlier 
 years with toy animals of all kinds. To these 
 plays should be added, of course, the countless 
 indoor games, such as checkers, chess, cards, 
 dominoes, etc. 
 
 These children's plays have so little in com- 
 mon with the later pursuits of adult life that 
 it is evident that some quite other theory is 
 needed to explain them than the practice and 
 preparation theory. When the boy is grown 
 to manhood he will not be found doing these 
 things, except in his hours of relaxation. His 
 
38 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 serious pursuits will take other forms. He 
 will be found cultivating the soil, harvesting 
 his crops, shoveling dirt, sand, or coal, blasting 
 rocks from quarries and minerals from mines, 
 building houses, buying, selling, manufactur- 
 ing or transporting goods, teaching school, 
 healing diseases, preaching sermons, practic- 
 ing law, engaging in politics or commercial 
 transactions, giving lectures or conducting 
 scientific research. This is the "serious" life 
 of to-day and the life of the ancient Greeks 
 and Romans was much the same, and it is 
 all far removed from the play life of the child, 
 which likewise is much the same in ancient 
 and modern times, and involves altogether 
 simpler forms of response. If the serious life 
 of to-day consisted in escaping from enemies 
 by foot, horse, or paddle, in living in close 
 proximity to domestic animals, in pursuit of 
 game with bow or gun, in subsisting on fish 
 caught singly by hand, in personal combat 
 with fist or sword, in throwing missiles, strik- 
 ing with a club or pursuing an enemy, in seek- 
 ing safety in trees or caves, in living in tents 
 or tree houses, and in sleeping and cooking by 
 a camp-fire, then we might venture to explain 
 the play life of the child as "an instinctive 
 
PLAY 39 
 
 activity existing for purposes of practice or 
 exercise and without serious intent." But 
 these are not the pursuits of adult men, except 
 in their hours of sport. Most of the plays of 
 children find their significance, not in their 
 likeness, but in their unlikeness to man's la- 
 borious duties. In fact, the plays of children 
 bear a striking resemblance to the sports of 
 men, and the latter would not be sports if they 
 did not stand in direct contrast to work. 
 
 As regards the imitative plays of children, 
 their resemblance to the serious activities of 
 adult life is, of course, closer, and to them 
 the Groos theory of play would seem to be less 
 strained in its application. But the imitative 
 plays themselves are not instinctive for the 
 reason that they are imitative. If it is meant 
 merely that imitation itself is an impulse 
 which has been perpetuated by natural se- 
 lection owing to its usefulness in preparing 
 children for mature life, this view might be 
 maintained, of course, if one still wished to 
 put so much emphasis upon natural selection. 
 
 Other objections to the Groos theory may 
 be passed with a mere reference. Perhaps the 
 most serious of them is the failure of this 
 theory to explain adult sports and to correlate 
 
40 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 them with the plays of children. Again, one 
 is troubled by the frequent use of the word 
 "serious" as applied to the activities of the 
 adult, while the plays of children are spoken 
 of as "sham," "make-believe," or "self-illu- 
 sory." This distinction can no longer be made. 
 Child life and its plays are quite as serious and 
 quite as real as the life of the man. If we are 
 to speak of "ends," it would be difficult indeed 
 to show that the life of the grown-up is any 
 more final or purposeful than the life of the 
 child. Would it not be just as appropriate to 
 say that the man's toil and sweat are a prepa- 
 ration for the radiant childhood of the son and 
 daughter whom he may beget, as that the 
 plays of childhood are a preparation for the 
 prosaic work-life of the father.? And as for 
 seriousness, to the boy hastily swallowing his 
 dinner or rushing through some uninteresting 
 task to join his fellows in a game of ball or a 
 trip to the river, it is the latter and not the 
 former that are serious and real. It is a no- 
 table fact that most children take but a pass- 
 ing or trifling interest in what they eat, and 
 scarcely remember their food of yesterday. It 
 is a peculiarity of the adult masculine mind 
 to be very intent on the bread-winning aspect 
 
PLAY 41 
 
 of life and on the preservation of the species. 
 Perhaps nature exploits man for these particu- 
 lar aspects of life, which in themselves are but 
 partial views. They might even be looked 
 upon as necessary" evils, subordinate in "pur- 
 pose" to childhood, play, sport, art, and sym- 
 pathy, which are more real and final. 
 
 In reference to the Groos theory of play, 
 some critics have been misled by the fact that 
 certain games, like baseball, seem to provide 
 valuable training in such qualities as obedi- 
 ence, cooperation, quickness of decision, for- 
 titude in defeat, and endurance. That the 
 game cultivates these virtues to some extent 
 is doubtless true. One can hardly suppose, 
 however, that natural selection has operated 
 to form an instinct for baseball because of its 
 especial usefulness in providing such train- 
 ing. Other explanations for the fascination 
 of this game are much simpler, as we shall see. 
 Women, also, have need of these virtues, but 
 they do not care to play baseball. 
 
 Professor Groos has more recently supple- 
 mented his work by a catharsis theory of play,^ 
 already anticipated by American writers. Ac- 
 
 1 "Das Spiel als Katharsis," Zeitschrijt fur Pad. Psych, 
 u. Ex. Pad., December 7, 1908. 
 
42 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 cording to this particular form of the catharsis 
 theory, play is a kind of safety-valve for the 
 expression of pent-up emotion, as for instance 
 in the fighting plays of children, where the 
 pent-up emotion is anger. According to this 
 view, one would understand the emotions to 
 be some kind of internal forces which would 
 do damage if they could find no escape. It is 
 not, however, probable that Professor Groos 
 or any one holds this naive view of the emo- 
 tions, and the whole relation may be more 
 simply expressed if we suppose that the fight- 
 ing plays are among the natural or spontane- 
 ous activities of children and as long as they 
 are freely indulged in, the child is free from 
 hurtful emotions. If these activities are re- 
 pressed, then no doubt would occur cer- 
 tain internal disturbances of a less healthful 
 character. Where spontaneous responses are 
 inhibited, readjustments are necessary and 
 emotions are present. When the spontaneous 
 response is resumed, the emotion subsides. In 
 this way children's plays might seem to have 
 a catharsis effect. In spontaneous unrestricted 
 play, however, there would seem to be no such 
 element present or necessary. 
 
 In the sports of men, indeed, a decided 
 
PLAY 43 
 
 catharsis effect is present. They are essen- 
 tially purifying. But, as we shall learn in these 
 studies, the catharsis effect is primarily due to 
 a restoring of disturbed balance in the psy- 
 chophysical organism. It is thus more nearly 
 described as rest than as purification. Play 
 brings relief from that peculiar form of fatigue 
 which follows from our modern strenuous life. 
 It rests those parts of the nervous system 
 which our daily work most stresses. 
 
 But adult play has probably a catharsis 
 effect of another kind. It has been shown by 
 the researches of Walter B. Cannon and his 
 associates ^ that under the influence of strong 
 emotion, say of fear or anger, a whole series of 
 internal changes takes place in the organism, 
 which are adaptive in their character and pre- 
 pare the muscular system for the strenuous 
 responses which the threatening situation de- 
 mands. Of these the increased blood-sugar 
 and the increased adrenin in the blood are 
 typical. In the life history of our race these 
 internal preparations for great muscular ac- 
 tivity have been followed normally by the 
 activity itself, say flight or combat. The circle 
 
 • Walter B. Cannon, Bodily Changes in Fear, Hunger, 
 Pain, and Rage. 
 
44 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 is thus completed as nature meant it to be. 
 But in our modern life of constant inhibition, 
 where the emotions themselves are present 
 often enough and the internal preparation for 
 great muscular exertion takes place, the mus- 
 cular responses themselves, owing to social 
 restrictions and other causes, are necessarily 
 greatly limited, if not altogether repressed. 
 Hence arises a feeling of irritability, having its 
 source perhaps in the poisoning of the blood 
 by the presence of these unused activating 
 substances. All kinds of active sports, there- 
 fore, involving muscular activity serve as sub- 
 stitutes for the original responses phylogeneti- 
 cally determined. Thus it would appear that 
 sports have an actual catharsis effect in the 
 case of adults, and that in children, while this 
 effect is theoretically absent, it is, of course, 
 actually present in increasing degree as the 
 child becomes a man. This catharsis effect of 
 play, laughter, and profanity should not, how- 
 ever, be interpreted in such a way that these 
 forms of relaxation are considered to be mere 
 drainage channels for shunting off accumu- 
 lated energy.^ All forms of play and sport, as 
 
 "* Compare Dr. George W. Crile's discussion of laughter 
 in his booli, The Origin and Nature of the Emotions, pp. 
 77-1 1 1. 
 
PLAY 45 
 
 well as laughter and profanity, have them- 
 selves been phylogenetically determined. They 
 are indeed the older and more original re- 
 sponses, and their principal catharsis effect is 
 not due to their draining off accumulated 
 energy and using up the various energizing 
 substances in the blood, but rather to the com- 
 plete rest which they afford to parts of the 
 brain over-stressed in our modern life of work. 
 
 The third theory of play has been called the 
 Recapitulation theory. This takes full cogni- 
 zance of the phylogenetic significance of play, 
 and indeed is based upon it. As regards the 
 latter, all future theories of play must take 
 carefully into account the numerous and strik- 
 ing similarities between the plays of children 
 and the pursuits and customs of primitive and 
 prehistoric man as they have been pointed out 
 by President G. Stanley Hall and his associ- 
 ates.^ 
 
 But the question arises as to the reason for 
 this resemblance, and if the correct reason is 
 not found, the whole significance of play may 
 
 1 Compare especially the writings of Hall, Gulick, Guil- 
 let, Robinson, Patrick, Bolton, Johnson, Brewer, and 
 Quantz. See bibliography at close of this chapter. 
 
46 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 be lost. The theory in question does not ex- 
 plain this resemblance except by referring it 
 to a so-called law, the law of recapitulation, 
 according to which each individual passes 
 through a series of stages in his development 
 corresponding to the stages of racial develop- 
 ment. Even in the sphere of embryology the 
 validity of this law has been much questioned, 
 and it is looked upon with increasing distrust 
 when applied to the period of post-natal or 
 psychological development. It should be said, 
 however, that this theory of play is the only 
 one that has successfully attacked the specific 
 problem of accounting for the form taken by 
 children's play. Perhaps the most serious dif- 
 ficulty with this theory is its failure to explain 
 the plays of adults and to correlate them 
 properly with those of children. 
 
 Our main purpose in the present chapter is 
 to examine more carefully the grounds of the 
 resemblance between children's plays and the 
 pursuits of primitive man and, more parti- 
 cularly, to explain if possible the similarity 
 which exists between both of these and the 
 sports of the mature man of the present time. 
 To this end the following introductory defini- 
 tions and propositions may be offered, which, 
 
PLAY 47 
 
 if found useful and valid, will considerably 
 simplify the psychology of play. 
 
 I. The term "play" may be applied to all 
 those human activities which are free and 
 spontaneous and which are pursued for their 
 own sake alone. The interest in them is self- 
 developing and they are not continued under 
 any internal or external compulsion. Play 
 will thus include practically all the activities 
 of children and the larger share of those of 
 adults, such, for instance, as baseball, foot- 
 ball, tennis, golf, polo, billiards, and countless 
 other games and sports; diversions such as 
 traveling, hunting, fishing, yachting, motor- 
 ing, flying, dancing; vacation outings, games, 
 races, spectacles, fairs, tournaments, and expo- 
 sitions; the theater, opera, moving pictures, 
 lectures, and entertainments; the enjoyment 
 of music, painting, poetry, and other arts; the 
 daily paper, the magazine, the short story, 
 and the novel. 
 
 The term "work," on the other hand, will 
 include all those activities in which by means 
 of sustained voluntary attention one holds 
 one's self down to a given task for the sake of 
 some end to be attained other than the activity 
 
48 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 itself. Such activities involve mental stress, 
 strain, effort, tension, concentration, and in- 
 hibition. ^ 
 
 2. The plays of children and the sports of 
 adults are to be closely coordinated and ex- 
 plained by reference to the same general prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 3. There is a striking similarity between 
 the plays of children and the sports of men on 
 the one hand and the pursuits of primitive 
 man on the other. This similarity is due to the 
 fact that those mental powers upon which ad- 
 vancing civilization depends, especially volun- 
 tary and sustained attention, concentration, an- 
 alysis, and abstraction, are undeveloped in the 
 child and subject to rapid fatigue in the adult. 
 
 1 The question may be asked how, according to the 
 above definitions of work and play, we shall classify that 
 form of work which becomes so interesting as to be self- 
 developing and requires no effort of attention to pursue it. 
 A man may become so interested in his garden or in his 
 inventions or in his professional pursuits that his work may 
 take on some of the characteristics of play. Nevertheless, 
 this kind of work demands the exercise of mental powers 
 of a high degree of complexity, and is far more fatiguing 
 than play or sport as above defined, though far less so than 
 that kind of work which has been called toil, or drudgery, 
 where interest fails and the strain of attention is at its 
 maximum. 
 
PLAY 49 
 
 Hence the child's activities and the play activi- 
 ties of the adult tend always to take the form of 
 old racial -pursuits. 
 
 If we look at the matter physiologically, it 
 is very evident, in the case of the adult, that 
 there are some brain centers, or some brain 
 tracts, or some forms of cerebral functioning, 
 that are put under severe strain in our mod- 
 ern strenuous life and that there must be some 
 kind of activity which will relieve these centers, 
 or these tracts, during a considerable portion 
 of each waking day and involve other cen- 
 ters not so subject to exhaustion. Such activ- 
 ity we call play or sport. Perhaps the word 
 "relaxation" would be a more exact descrip- 
 tion of it. For our present purpose it does not 
 m.atter in the least what these centers are or 
 what manner of cerebral functioning this is. 
 It is only necessary to note the evident fact 
 that there is some kind of cerebral activity 
 associated with those peculiar mental powers 
 the development of which has made possible 
 human progress. 
 
 Nor, again, is it necessary for our present 
 purpose to make any exact enumeration of 
 these so-called higher mental processes which 
 
50 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 distinguish the modern civilized man. Gen- 
 erally speaking, however, they include a con- 
 stantly increasing power of sustained attention 
 of the voluntary kind, controlled association, 
 concentration, and analysis, together with a 
 constantly increasing power of inhibition. The 
 individual becomes increasingly able to hold 
 steadily in view the image of a desired end, to 
 inhibit the old and habitual responses which 
 are no longer appropriate to that end, to an- 
 alyze a given situation in thought, so that 
 the response may be to certain elements in 
 the situation rather than to the situation as 
 a whole, and thus to meet a given situation 
 with a new response. Only the fully developed 
 adult mind is capable of much thinking of this 
 kind, and at best it is highly fatiguing and can- 
 not be continued through many hours of the wak- 
 ing day, so that all, or almost all, the hours of 
 the child^s day and the larger number of hours 
 of the adult's day must be filled with responses 
 of the simpler, more elemental, and racially older 
 kind. Consequently children's play and adult 
 sport tend to take the forms of old racial ac- 
 tivities, involving brain tracts that are old, 
 well worn, and pervious. 
 
 It is well known that the present tendency 
 
PLAY 51 
 
 in both historical and anthropological study 
 is to place less emphasis on the diiferences in 
 the mental constitution of different races of 
 men.^ All existing races and all historical ones, 
 so far as we can see, are much alike in their 
 mental powers. But from our present point of 
 view these races are all modern. It is clearly 
 evident that in comparing modern civilized 
 man with the highest of the lower animals or 
 with his prehistoric, if not even with his prim- 
 itive, ancestors, there has been an unmeasured 
 advance in the powers above mentioned. Even 
 this assximption, however, is not necessary so 
 far as our present theory is concerned. It is 
 merely necessary to notice that in seeking 
 relief from the fatigue involved in that sus- 
 tained and voluntary attention, controlled 
 association, analysis, and abstraction which 
 are essential to our or to any advancing civi- 
 lization, we fall back upon a set of activities 
 which no longer involve these processes, but 
 which through ages of use have become fa- 
 miliar and easy. 
 
 All the evidence that we have points to the 
 validity of the law that those peculiar forms of 
 
 ' Compare Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man, and 
 Thorndike, Ed. Psych., 1, 240. 
 
52 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 mental activity which have developed late in 
 the evolution of man are most affected by fa- 
 tigue — a law fully sustained by the study of 
 psychasthenics and their incapacity for higher 
 mental operations, as well as by the observa- 
 tion of people normally fatigued, while it is 
 known that the disintegration of the nervous 
 system in disease follows the reverse order of 
 its development. 
 
 Hence we understand why children's play 
 and adult sport take the form of hunting, 
 fishing, camping, outing, swimming, climbing, 
 and so on through the long list. The more 
 elemental these activities have been in the 
 history of racial development, the greater re- 
 lease they afford, when indulged in as relaxa- 
 tion, from the tension of our modem life. 
 
 Those forms of mental response which are 
 developed late in the history of the race, and 
 late in the life of the child, that tense and 
 strenuous activity upon which modern prog- 
 ress depends, the power to hold ourselves by 
 sustained attention and sustained effort down 
 to hard and uninteresting tasks for the sake 
 of some ultimate end, the concentration of the 
 mental forces upon problems of science, phi- 
 losophy and invention, and the inhibition 
 
PLAY S3 
 
 of old and undesirable responses, — all these 
 bring quick and extreme fatigue, and demand 
 rest for the corresponding parts of the brain. 
 In sleep these higher mental processes enjoy 
 almost complete suspension. But the exercise 
 of these powers during the long hours of our 
 waking day would result in speedy collapse. 
 It is clear therefore that our daily activity 
 must be made up quite largely of responses of 
 the simpler type, which shall give exercise to 
 our muscles and sense organs and invoke older 
 and more elemental forms of mentality, and 
 at the same time allow the higher ones to rest. 
 Such is relaxation in all its forms, and of such 
 consists almost wholly the life of the child. 
 For the brain tracts associated with the above- 
 mentioned forms of mental activity are unde- 
 veloped in the child, as they are in early man, 
 so that we may say with considerable truth 
 not that the child ought not to work, but that 
 he cannot work. 
 
 In the following pages we shall review some 
 of the instances of the striking resemblance 
 between the habits of our human ancestors 
 and the plays of children and men, beginning 
 with the simpler illustrations drawn from the 
 
54 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 plays of children and proceeding to the more 
 instructive ones connected with the sports of 
 adults. 
 
 Haddon and Tylor have studied the history 
 of the kite and the top and of marbles, and 
 have shown their very ancient character and 
 their connection with early religious and divin- 
 atory rites. The same may be said of cast- 
 ing lots, throwing dice, games of forfeits 
 and games with common playing cards. The 
 mental habits of our ancestors, as we know, 
 survive in the counting-out rhymes, in the 
 charms and talismans and superstitions of 
 children. One recalls the magic formula used 
 by Tom Sawyer for driving away warts: — 
 
 You got to go by yourself in the middle of 
 the woods where you know there is a spunk- 
 water stump, and just as it 's midnight you back 
 up against the stump and jam your hand in and 
 say: — 
 
 Barley corn, barley corn, injun meal shorts, 
 Spunkwater, spunkwater, swaller these warts; 
 
 and then walk away quick eleven steps with 
 your eyes shut, and then turn around three 
 times and walk home without speaking to any 
 one, because if you speak, the charm's busted. 
 
 The mental habits of the child seem like 
 
PLAY 55 
 
 echoes from the remote past, recalling the life 
 of the cave, the forest, and the stream. The 
 instinct exhibited in infancy, as well as in 
 boyhood, to climb stairs, ladders, trees, lamp- 
 posts, anything, reminds us of forest life; the 
 hide-and-seek games which appeal so power- 
 fully even to the youngest children recall the 
 cave life of our ancestors, or at least some 
 mode of existence in which concealment from 
 enemies, whether human or animal, was the 
 condition of survival; while the instinct of in- 
 fants to gravitate toward the nearest pond or 
 puddle, the wading, swimming, fishing, boat- 
 ing proclivities of every youngster, seem like 
 a reminiscence of some time when our fathers 
 lived near and by means of the water. 
 
 During a long period in the evolution of life 
 among the higher animals and in the early 
 history of man, the one all-important factor 
 was speed, for upon it depended safety in flight 
 from enemies and capture in pursuit. This 
 ancient trait has persisted and survives to-day 
 in a deep instinctive joy in speed, whether 
 exhibited in running or coasting or skating or 
 in the speed mania which lends such delight 
 to motoring, flying, fast sailing, and fast 
 riding. 
 
56 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION ' 
 
 Again, the ancient life of pursuit and cap- 
 ture persists upon every playground in the 
 familiar games of tag, blackman, pull-away, 
 and a hundred others. Indeed, for the exhi- 
 bition of this instinct, no organized game is 
 necessary. Sudden playful pursuit and flight 
 are seen wherever children are assembled. 
 The ancient life of personal combat is mirrored 
 in the plays of children in mimic fighting and 
 wrestling. The passion of every boy for the 
 bow and arrow, sling, sling-shot, gun, or any- 
 thing that will shoot, reveals the persistence 
 of deep-rooted race habits, formed during ages 
 of subsistence by these means. 
 
 There was a time when man lived in close 
 relation with and dependence upon wild and 
 domestic animals. This period is reflected in 
 many forms in the child's life, in his animal 
 books, his animal toys, his Teddy bears, in 
 his numerous animal plays. The former de- 
 pendence of man upon the horse is shown in 
 the instinct of the child of to-day to play 
 horse, to ride a rocking-horse, or a stick, or 
 anything. The child's first musical instru- 
 ments, the rattle, the drum, and the horn, 
 were the first musical instruments of primitive 
 man. 
 
PLAY 57 
 
 These illustrations could be multiplied in- 
 definitely. They show the limitations of the 
 Groos theory of play, for none of the plays of 
 this class have much to do in preparing the 
 child for the life of to-day, or in giving him 
 special practice for his future work. We our- 
 selves are so much slaves of the past in our 
 habits of thought that we do not easily realize 
 how far from the actual life of the present day 
 is this play-life of the child. The real world 
 of to-day is that of the laboratory, the school, 
 the library, the bank, the office, the shop, the 
 street, the factory, the farm and the railroad. 
 Notwithstanding the child's imitative bent, 
 his world, as shown in his tales, his dreams, 
 and the plays he loves best, is that of the 
 forest, the stream, the camp, the cave, the 
 hunting-ground, and the battlefield. 
 
 Those things which have such a vital and 
 absorbing interest for the boy have had at one 
 time in our racial history an actual life and 
 death interest for mankind. Take, for instance, 
 the jack-knife. How many knives has your 
 boy had and lost, and what rich joy there is in 
 every new one! We see how the practice and 
 preparation theory of play fails here. The 
 knife has no significance in society now. It 
 
58 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 has degenerated to mere finger-nail purposes. 
 But at one time it meant life in defense and 
 food in offense. Your boy's supreme interest 
 in the knife is a latent memory of those ancient 
 days. Those who could use the knife and use 
 it well survived and transmitted this trait to 
 their offspring. The same could be said of the 
 sling, the bow and arrow, and of sports like 
 boxing, fencing, and fishing. 
 
 Consider the fascination of fishing. Tliis is 
 not a practice and preparation for the real life 
 of to-day, but a reverberation of phyletic ex- 
 perience. In a summer resort where the writer 
 was a visitor the past summer, day after day 
 the whole male population of the hotel resorted 
 to the fishing grounds. They paid two dollars 
 and a half a day for a guide, seven dollars a day 
 for a motor-boat, and a cent and a half each for 
 worms. Surely a stranger uninitiated into our 
 habits would have been amazed to see these 
 returning fishermen at night indifferently hand- 
 ing over their catch to the guide. It was the 
 fishing they desired, not the fish, and yet great 
 was their woe when one large fish was lost in 
 the act of landing. It is estimated by the New 
 York "Times" that on Sundays and holidays 
 when the weather is fine, twenty-five thousand 
 
PLAY 59 
 
 people in New York City go fishing at a mini- 
 mum cost of one dollar each, and of these no 
 doubt more than ninety-five per cent go for 
 fun and not for the fish. At some stage in the 
 history of human development fishing was 
 without doubt a general means of subsist- 
 ence. Those who could catch fish survived and 
 handed down this instinct. Likewise the fas- 
 cination of gathering wild nuts and berries is 
 out of all proportion to the value of them 
 when gathered. But nuts and berries were 
 once of vital concern to our fathers. 
 
 It is in baseball and football, however, that 
 we best see the phylogenetic significance of 
 play. The daily paper is a good index of popu- 
 lar interest. Here we shall often find perhaps 
 seven, perhaps twenty columns devoted to 
 baseball, while no other single subject whether 
 in politics, art, literature, or science, aspires 
 to two columns. How shall we explain the 
 absorbing interest in baseball and football 
 as well as in horse-racing and prize-fighting.'' 
 Here again, phylogenetic experience becomes 
 the key- to the problem of modern sports. 
 
 In baseball we have a game combining three 
 of the most deep-seated racial instincts, the 
 instinct to throw, to run, and to strike. During 
 
6o PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 untold periods of the life history of our race, 
 survival has come to him who could throw the 
 straightest, run the swiftest, and strike the 
 hardest. To throw something at something 
 is almost as natural for a boy as to breathe. 
 Throwing, batting, running are no longer of 
 any service in this age of mind, but they were 
 the conditions of survival in the distant past. 
 Baseball reinstates those ancient attitudes and 
 brings a thrill of cherished memories. Any one 
 who has ever held a bat in hand and assumed 
 the expectant attitude of the batter knows the 
 peculiar thrill which is explained only by re- 
 calling that his distant ancestors in just that 
 attitude beat down with a real club many an 
 opposing foe, whether man or beast, and those 
 who held clubs in this position and struck hard 
 and quickly survived and transmitted this in- 
 stinct. Dr. Gulick says : — 
 
 Baseball is a complex of elements all of which 
 date back certainly to our prehuman ancestors. 
 The ability to throw a stone with accuracy and 
 speed was at one time a basal factor in the strug- 
 gle for survival. The early man who could seize 
 a bough of a tree and strike with accuracy and 
 great power was better fitted to survive in the 
 brutal struggles of those early days than the 
 man not so endowed. He could defend his 
 
PLAY 6i 
 
 family better, he was better fitted for killing 
 game, he was better fitted for overcoming his 
 enemies. The ability to run and dodge with 
 speed and endurance was also a basal factor.^ 
 
 The instinct to throw, as the same author 
 shows, belongs to boys only, scarcely appear- 
 ing in the case of girls. The awkward throw 
 of girls, like the left ama throw of boys, is well 
 known. The plays of girls reveal their own set 
 of instincts recalling the habits of primitive 
 woman. "We are the descendants of those 
 men who could throw and those women who 
 loved children." 
 
 Football excites still greater enthusiasm 
 than baseball because it reinstates still more 
 primitive forms of behavior. The fascination of 
 football, like that of other sports which have 
 a deep appeal to the human mind, is explained 
 only by the facts of mental evolution. We have 
 to go back in human history to those ancient 
 scenes and those ancient pursuits which have 
 left an indelible imprint on the human brain, 
 and we have to remember that in our hours of 
 relaxation we demand a complete release from 
 those newer forms of mental activity which 
 
 ' LutherGulick.M.D.," Interest in Relation to Muscu- 
 lar Exercise," Amer. Phys. Ed. Rev., vii. 2. 
 
62 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 condition progress and civilization, and a tem- 
 porary return to the older and easier ones. 
 
 The one great elemental fact in human 
 history is the fact of war. Mankind has come 
 up through a history of warfare. It has been 
 man against man, group against group, tribe 
 against tribe, nation against nation, from the 
 beginning. Man is at home on the battlefield. 
 There he has received his training and gained 
 his strength. His soul is full of latent memories 
 of strife and conflict. The football field is a 
 mimic representation of this age-old field of 
 battle. Here again is found the face-to-face 
 opposition of two hostile forces, the rude 
 physical shock of the heavy opposing teams, 
 the scrimmage-like, melee character of the 
 collisions, the tackling, dodging, and kicking, 
 and the lively chases for goal as for cover. 
 
 Football is more fun than baseball and 
 attracts larger crowds,^ because it is more 
 dramatic, more like a fight. It awakens in us 
 deep-seated slumbering instincts, permits us 
 to revel for a time in those long-restrained 
 
 ' According to the press reports, seventythousand spec- 
 tators have witnessed at one time the Rugby game in 
 America, and one hundred thousand, the Association game 
 in England. 
 
PLAY 63 
 
 impulses, relieves completely the strain of the 
 will, and so serves all the conditions of relaxa- 
 tion. 
 
 By inner imitation the spectators themselves 
 participate in the game and at the same time 
 give unrestrained expression to their emotions. 
 If at a great football game any one will watch 
 the spectators instead of the players, he will 
 see at once that the people before him are not 
 his associates of the school, the library, the 
 office, the shop, the street, or the factory. The 
 inhibition of emotional expression is the char- 
 acteristic of modern civilized man. The child 
 and the savage give free expression in voice, 
 face, arms, and body to every feeling. The 
 spectators at an exciting football game no 
 longer attempt to restrain emotional expres- 
 sion. They shout and yell, blow horns and 
 dance, swing their arms about and stamp, 
 throw their hats in air and snatch off their 
 neighbors' hats, howl and gesticulate, little 
 realizing how foreign this is to their wonted 
 behavior or how odd it would look at their 
 places of business. So also the defeated play- 
 ers cry like babies, as did the heroes of an- 
 cient Troy. 
 
 The excitement of the spectators cannot 
 
64 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 be explained by the importance of the scenes 
 before them, for, as in the case of the horse- 
 race, they have Httle or no relation to the 
 serious life of the present; but the scenes are 
 those which were once matters of life and 
 death. 
 
 The prevalence of gambling in connection 
 with football, as well as in horse-racing, prize- 
 fighting, and other popular sports, illustrates 
 the reversion to primitive morals accompany- 
 ing the return to early pursuits.^ 
 
 This prevalence of gambling and of other 
 obvious evils^ connected with intercollegiate 
 athletics has suggested to some the desirabil- 
 ity of abolishing these sports. A very different 
 conclusion, however, seems to be forced upon 
 us by the study of the laws of relaxation in its 
 broader aspects. Not until we understand the 
 psychology of alcohol and of war and of the 
 foolish amusement crazes shall we recognize 
 the full significance and the full value of 
 athletic contests and intercollegiate rivalries. 
 The evils mentioned are real enough and most 
 
 » Compare also G. T. W. Patrick, "The Psychology of 
 Football," Amer. Jour. Psych., xiv, 104-17. 
 
 ^ For a full list of these evils, see the article by President 
 Foster, "An Indictment of Intercollegiate Athletics," in 
 the Atlantic Monthly for November, 1915. 
 
PLAY 65 
 
 deplorable, but it does not follow that they 
 would not be present in other or worse forms 
 in different connections if there were no inter- 
 collegiate athletics. 
 
 The intense interest aroused in intercol- 
 legiate sports is no doubt to some extent an 
 echo of the old ancestral rivalries between so- 
 cial groups. They appeal, therefore, to deep- 
 seated human instincts and fulfill to a marked 
 degree all the requirements of relaxation and 
 recreation. 
 
 It should, of course, be remembered that 
 the social value of these sports relates rather 
 to the spectators than to the players. For 
 the latter, indeed, they may become a form 
 of work. But the participants as spectators 
 are numbered by the thousands, and for all 
 of these the games serve as valuable forms of 
 relaxation. The substitution of intramural 
 football and baseball for the intercollegiate 
 games would result in the loss to a large ex- 
 tent of the valuable holiday and festival as- 
 pects of the latter sports. 
 
 Furthermore, the intense interest in inter- 
 collegiate football and baseball has resulted 
 in a very wide actual participation in these 
 games by the students in colleges, universi- 
 
66 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 ties, and in public and private schools through- 
 out the country.' 
 
 The law that the more elemental the char- 
 acter of our responses, the greater their value 
 as relaxation and release from the tension 
 of the strenuous life, is well illustrated in 
 the circus and amphitheater of the Romans. 
 When we recall the sports of ancient Rome, 
 we see again that in sport we have a psycho- 
 logical factor of the greatest importance and 
 a profound psychological problem. Juvenal's 
 phrase "bread and games" has become fa- 
 miliar. The popularity of any emperor was 
 nearly proportional to his liberality in the mat- 
 ter of games and spectacles. Emile Thomas 
 says : "After the sack of Rome by Alaric, the 
 miserable remnant of the original inhabitants, 
 and the peasants who flocked in from the en- 
 virons to the number of ten thousand, loudly 
 demanded games in the Circus, which had to 
 be celebrated among the smoking ruins." 
 
 The Colosseum, whose magnificence receives 
 a new meaning from our point of view, accom- 
 modated eighty-seven thousand people. The 
 Circus Maximus was one of the most imposing 
 
 ' Compare the article by Lawrence Perry, "The Ideal 
 College Game," in Scribner's Magazine for June, 1915. 
 
PLAY e^ 
 
 of Roman structures. It is said that four hun- 
 dred and eighty-five thousand spectators were 
 in actual attendance at once upon its spec- 
 tacles.^ The shouting could be heard in the 
 suburbs of Rome. The upper wooden seats 
 collapsed at one time, killing eleven hundred 
 people. Rome had theaters, too, but the larg- 
 est of these, that of Pompey, had seats for only 
 forty thousand spectators, and despite the po- 
 litical interest which attached to many of the 
 theatrical exhibitions, we must believe that 
 the interest in the theater was insignificant 
 when compared with that of the amphitheater 
 and circus. Trajan gave a single entertainment 
 lasting one hundred and twenty-three days. 
 
 Now, what was the character of these 
 amusements which so fascinated the Roman 
 populace? They were horse-races, gladiatorial 
 combats, and the exhibition and contests of 
 wild animals. Man's racial history has been 
 one long battle with the lower animals, defen- 
 
 ' The seating capacity of the Circus was probably about 
 three hundred thousand. Some manuscripts of the Notitia 
 give the number as four hundred and eighty-five thousand. 
 Some modern critics believe that the actual seating capac- 
 ity of the Circus was only about two hundred thousand at 
 its greatest enlargement. Great crowds, however, wit- 
 nessed the events from the surrounding hills and houses. 
 
68 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 sive for life and safety, offensive for food and 
 sustenance. So far as the workaday world of 
 the Romans is concerned, it was much the same 
 as ours, taxing the same higher mental pow- 
 ers and demanding relaxation in the form of 
 older and simpler pursuits. In the gladiatorial 
 combats we see the hand-to-hand encounters 
 of early man, almost as far removed from 
 the actual daily life of the Romans as it is 
 from ours. In the display of wild animals 
 and in their deadly combats with each other 
 and with man, we see mirrored in Roman 
 sports the old life of the forest and plain. 
 The mood of the spectator at the Colosseum 
 changes also to suit the character of the 
 spectacle, and for the time he is no longer the 
 civilized Roman of the second century, but 
 boisterous, cruel, intoxicated with the sight of 
 blood. So strong was the craving for the old 
 feral scenes that professional hunters were 
 kept in the remotest parts of Asia and Africa 
 to capture alive every species of beast to be 
 exhibited and killed for the amusement of 
 Rome. Eleven thousand animals were pro- 
 duced by Trajan at a certain spectacle. Much 
 has been said about the brutalizing effect of 
 these games upon the Romans; but if we have 
 
PLAY 69 
 
 correctly outlined the psychology of sport, we see 
 in such games as these not a brutalizing agency, 
 but an afterglow of brutality left behind. The 
 modern circus, menagerie, and zodlogical gar- 
 dens offer similar entertainment on a smaller 
 scale, and appeal to the same instincts. 
 
 The human race has reached a stage of 
 evolution in which such sports as gladiatorial 
 shows, prize-fights, and bull-fights hark too far 
 back and are no longer endured, but before we 
 condemn them too harshly it would be well 
 to compare the number of men and animals 
 killed in these ancient exhibitions with the 
 number of men and horses killed in a modern 
 war. 
 
 Success to-day does not depend upon swift- 
 ness of foot or swiftness of horse, yet our 
 sports take the form of foot-races and horse- 
 races. There was a time when swiftness of 
 foot and swiftness of horse were vital. So in 
 our sports these old scenes are reenacted. 
 Stage managers, story-writers, and moving- 
 picture shows seek always for a new thrill. It 
 is sometimes thought that the new and un- 
 expected is thrilling. The reverse is true. The 
 thrilling is the old and elemental. When love 
 and warfare fail, the story-writer can always 
 
TO PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 fall back on the horse-race for thrills. The 
 horse has little significance for the life of to- 
 day and it is fast becoming less, but he has 
 had an intimate relation with the life history of 
 the race. It is difficult to read any well-told 
 story of a horse-race or chariot-race, or any 
 account of human rescue by means of equine 
 or canine intelligence, without an emotional 
 disturbance out of all proportion to the im- 
 portance of the events. In fact they have no 
 significance now. They belong to the past.^ 
 
 In this connection it is interesting to recall 
 that some years ago an English magazine pub- 
 lished the results of a census which it had 
 made of the order of popularity of Browning's 
 shorter poems. The list contained about fifty 
 of these poems, including such matchless gems 
 as "Evelyn Hope," "Abt Vogler," "My Last 
 Duchess," "Rabbi Ben Ezra," etc. But the 
 first place of all the fifty was given to the poem 
 entitled, "How they brought the Good News 
 from Ghent to Aix," a poem without signifi- 
 
 * A fine linguistic record of the importance of the horse 
 in one branch of our Aryan ancestors is seen in Greek 
 family names, of which a great number contain the 
 root-word for horse; e.g., Philip (horse-lover), Hippocrates 
 (horse-tamer), Leukippus (white horse), Chrysippus (gol- 
 den horse), etc. 
 
PLAY 71 
 
 cance of thought or sentiment, but depending 
 for its interest upon the incident of a desperate 
 horseback ride from Ghent to Aix. The com- 
 pelling force of this poem will be felt by the 
 reader, if we quote some of the first and last 
 lines: — 
 
 I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; 
 
 I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; 
 
 "Good speed!" cried the watch as the gate-bolts 
 
 undrew; 
 "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through; 
 Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, 
 And into the midnight we galloped abreast. 
 
 And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight 
 Of the news which alone could save Aix from her 
 
 fate, 
 With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim. 
 And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim. 
 
 Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall, 
 Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all, 
 Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear. 
 Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without 
 
 peer; 
 Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, 
 
 bad or good, 
 Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood. 
 
 And all I remember is — friends flocking round 
 
 As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground; 
 
72 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine, 
 As I poured down his throat our last measure of 
 
 wine, 
 Which (the burgesses voted by common consent) 
 Was no more than his due who brought good news 
 
 from Ghent. 
 
 From the phylogenetic standpoint which we 
 have thus gained, both children's play and 
 adult sport come into clearer light. Thus we 
 understand why adult sport resembles the ac- 
 tivities of early man. The older, the more 
 basal, the more primitive, so to speak, the 
 brain patterns used in our hours of relaxation, 
 the more complete our rest and enjoyment. 
 Just in proportion as the sport is primitive, so 
 much greater is the sweet peace which it seems 
 to bring to the troubled soul, simply because 
 it involves more primitive brain tracts and 
 affords greater release from the strenuous life. 
 
 So while we find one hundred and fifty spec- 
 tators at an intercollegiate debate, we find a 
 thousand at an automobile race, five thousand 
 at a horse-race, thirty thousand at a great 
 baseball game, seventy thousand at a great 
 football game, and three hundred thousand at 
 a gladiatorial show. The nervous tracts which 
 function in such activities as hunting and fish- 
 
PLAY 73 
 
 ing and swimming and boating and camping, 
 in football and baseball and golf and polo, 
 and in horse-racing and bull-fighting, are deep 
 worn, pervious, and easy. During countless 
 generations the nerve currents have flowed 
 through these channels. Witnessing these rude 
 contests, pictures of former ages, or taking 
 part in these deep-seated, instinctive actions 
 brings sweet rest and refreshment. "The ra- 
 cially old is seized by the individual with ease 
 and joy." The soothing restfulness of the open 
 grate fire is thus probably due to latent or 
 subconscious memories of the camp-fire, which 
 so long brought rest and comfort to the early 
 man. 
 
 From this point of view, the dancing craze is 
 less difiicult to understand. In explaining such 
 phenomena it will not do to rely too much on 
 the behavior of the crowd, as some writers 
 have done. To call it a craze, a fashion, an 
 epidemic, and to refer it to the laws of imi- 
 tation which govern a crowd, is not to explain 
 it. Imitation alone is a very feeble social force. 
 It becomes a powerful force only when the 
 imitated action satisfies some need. The de- 
 sire to dance, whether it be conscious or un- 
 conscious, may be very strong, but, as long 
 
74 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 as it is under the ban of social disapproval, 
 the desire may be largely repressed. When 
 these social restrictions are removed, then the 
 practice may become general, and if the desire 
 is strong enough, it may spread like an epi- 
 demic. This is about as far as the law of 
 imitation helps us in explaining a dancing 
 craze. 
 
 Dancing is a pastime as old as the human 
 race. The muscles involved are the larger 
 muscles of the trunk and legs, — fundamental, 
 as they have been called. The brain patterns 
 concerned are, therefore, the oldest and ear- 
 liest in racial development. Progress has been, 
 first, in the direction of the finer and more dif- 
 ferentiated movements of the arms, hands, 
 eyes, and vocal organs, and then, in our own 
 times, more and more toward purely intellec- 
 tual activity. Rest and relaxation, therefore, 
 always tend to take the form of exercise of 
 the fundamental muscles. As compared with 
 other forms of relaxation which we have 
 been studying, such as hunting, fishing, horse- 
 racing, ball-playing, etc., dancing is ultra- 
 primitive, both in respect to the fundamental 
 character of the muscles involved, and also in 
 respect to the simple rhythmical form of the 
 
PLAY 75 
 
 movements. It affords, therefore, a complete 
 rest of the higher brain and provides a very 
 perfect means of relaxation. 
 
 If we consider the manner of life of civi- 
 lized man of the twentieth century and com- 
 pare it with that of one hundred years ago, 
 we shall understand the peculiar fascination 
 of the dance at the present day. From the 
 beginning of his racial history, there has been 
 one set of muscles which man has contin- 
 uously used, however intermittent the use 
 of the others has been, and these are the 
 muscles of the legs. Until recent years he has 
 been on his feet most of the time when not 
 asleep — standing, walking, running, climb- 
 ing. Now he sits in a chair, working his brain 
 or his eyes or his hands, or else he rides in a 
 carriage, automobile, street-car, or train. It 
 is doubtful whether this sudden and radical 
 change can take place without disastrous con- 
 sequences. At any rate, we can understand 
 why dancing as a mode of recreation should 
 in these circumstances appeal to us so power- 
 fully as to take the form of an epidemic when 
 once fashion has given its sanction. 
 
 When we speak of dancing as a very perfect 
 means of relaxation, we refer, of course, to 
 
-j^ PYSCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 healthful forms of the dance as exhibited in 
 the folk-dances and in the dances of children. 
 The modern social dance as it exists in Amer- 
 ica, in which the sex element has become too 
 prominent, associated also as it is with night 
 hours, electric lights, dust, and bad air, has 
 slight recreational value as compared with 
 the earlier and healthier forms of folk-danc- 
 ing. To understand the truth of this, it is 
 only necessary to ask ourselves whether the 
 dancers of to-day are likely to be the fathers 
 and mothers of the future citizens of America. 
 Sociologists are already well aware that we 
 must look in quite another direction for these. 
 The game of golf, again, has a peculiar 
 restorative power surpassing all medical or 
 other therapeutic arts. We may be physically 
 and mentally weary from a morning's work. 
 Despite the strenuous physical exertion of an 
 afternoon at golf, our fatigue is lessened, not 
 increased. Fresh air does not explain it. It 
 is a return to the primitive outdoor life. We 
 stride over hill and through ravine; we stumble 
 into ditches; we carry a club and strike vi- 
 ciously at the ball; we follow the ball with the 
 eye and search for it in the grass as our fore- 
 fathers searched for their arrows and missiles ; 
 
PLAY T] 
 
 we use our legs and our arms; we let the nerve 
 currents course through the more ancient 
 channels; we revel unconsciously in latent 
 memories and old race habits and come back 
 to our work rested, renewed, and refreshed. 
 
 But you may say golf and bowling and base- 
 ball and prize-fighting require skill and close 
 attention and tax mind as well as muscle. 
 But this is not the point. Our remote ances- 
 tors had skill. To see quickly and correlate 
 nicely eye and hand, or eye and foot, was an 
 early acquisition. It is not this that fatigues 
 us in modern life. It is the everlasting, high- 
 pressure grind. It is holding ourselves down 
 to hard working and hard thinking and long- 
 sustained tasks. It is analysis, concentration, 
 effort, dead lift of mind, — the kind of men- 
 tal work that digs Panama canals, perfects 
 automobiles and airships, discovers new laws 
 of mind and matter in the laboratory, thinks 
 out new fields for the investment of capital, 
 scrutinizes countless court records for prece- 
 dents in law which may clear our clients, 
 holds the ship's captain on the bridge in 
 times of peril, keeps the soldier at his post 
 and the clerk at his desk through the long 
 hours and the weary days. As the strenuous 
 
78 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 life increases in city and country, there is an 
 increased demand for relaxation, whether in 
 the form of baseball or football, horse-racing 
 or gambling, or in the fonn of the automo- 
 bile craze, or the auction-bridge craze, or the 
 dancing craze, or the moving-picture craze. 
 These are all methods of escape from the 
 clutch of the modern strenuous life, exhibited 
 in all countries, but most noticeably in Amer- 
 ica, for whatever it is that is driving the hu- 
 man race forward in the path of progress so 
 rapidly and relentlessly seems to have gripped 
 the Anglo-Saxon people particularly hard. 
 
 Even these many forms of relaxation are 
 not sufficient to relieve the overwrought brain, 
 and so in ever-increasing amounts we have 
 recourse to artificial means of relaxation 
 through narcotics, such as alcohol, tobacco, 
 and other drugs. Alcohol, by its slight paral- 
 ysis of the higher and later developed brain 
 tracts, accomplishes artificially what is effected 
 naturally by play and sport, that is, it liber- 
 ates the older, freer life of the emotions and 
 the more primitive impulses. 
 
 Thus, from our new point of view, the diffi- 
 culties in regard to children's play disappear. 
 The reason why children play and why their 
 
PLAY 79 
 
 plays take reversionary forms is now evident. 
 The higher brain tracts, those making work 
 possible, are not developed. If a child does 
 anything, he must play, i.e., his activity must 
 take the form prescribed by the brain patterns 
 already developed, and these are the old racial 
 ones. He is equipped with a nervous mechan- 
 ism adequate for old racial activities and for 
 the most part with these only. The little girl 
 hugging and nursing her doll is not the victim 
 of an instinct whose purpose is to prepare her 
 for later maternal duties. She is simply doing 
 what her mother and her grandmothers have 
 done since the beginning. If they had not 
 done so, she would never have been born. 
 
 The child does not play because of surplus 
 energy, for under normal conditions all his 
 energy is expended in play; the child is a 
 playing animal. Nor does he play because of 
 an instinctive need of practice and prepara- 
 tion for life's serious duties, for the form of the 
 latter is constantly changing while the plays 
 of children remain much the same from year 
 to year and century to century. Nor, finally, 
 does he play because it is necessary for his 
 complete growth that he should pass through 
 the several stages of racial history. He plays 
 
8o PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 because he is a child, and to the child's natural 
 and active life we give the name "play" to 
 distinguish it from the life of conscious self- 
 direction, of strain and effort and inhibition 
 which evolution has imposed upon the adult 
 human being. 
 
 When we say that all of the activity of the 
 young child takes the form of play, the state- 
 ment should be regarded as a general one. As 
 the term "play" is actually used, there are 
 certain minor classes of responses which are 
 not included. The child's instinctive shrink- 
 ing from a large furry animal is as much a 
 part of his original nature as his tendency to 
 run and jump and climb and wade. His re- 
 sponses in the taking of food, likewise, and 
 in protecting himself by crying are original 
 inherited responses. But to crying and suck- 
 ing and shrinking from objects of fear we do 
 not give the name "play," because, being of 
 the inxmediate life-serving kind, they bear a 
 closer resemblance to those responses to which 
 in later life we give the name "work," and we 
 reserve the term "play" for that larger and 
 characteristic class of activities which are dis- 
 tinguished from the conscious self-directive 
 life of the man. The play reactions of chil- 
 
PLAY 8 1 
 
 dren, therefore, belong to their original nature. 
 Social heredity may account for the forms of 
 . organization of many of the plays of children 
 as well as the sham character which they as- 
 sume when compared with their originally 
 serious fonn, but the elements of the great 
 mass of the plays which are dearest to the 
 hearts of children are truly instinctive.^ 
 
 The educational application of this theory 
 of play presents less difficulties than the older 
 theories. It is not necessary that the child 
 should live through and live out any series of 
 savage stages. It is merely necessary that he 
 should be kept active with the mental and 
 physical equipment that he has, that work 
 should not be too early imposed upon him, 
 and that his plays should be so organized and 
 supervised that, while retaining the elemen- 
 tary form of his instinctive responses, they 
 may be physically, morally, and socially harm- 
 less. For instance, a boy, if he is a boy, must 
 throw. It is just a question of whether he shall 
 throw stones at a cat, at a street-car, at little 
 children, or whether he shall throw a curved 
 ball to the catcher. The latter is harmless, the 
 former dangerous. Again, a boy's instinct of 
 
 1 Compare James's Psychology, ii, 429, n. 
 
82 PSYCHOLOGy OF RELAXATION 
 
 rivalry is very strong. He must do something 
 daring, get ahead of some one, as those of his 
 ancestors who survived did before him. If a 
 proper playground is provided, all these things 
 may be done without injury to society. Again, 
 in response to the dancing instinct, the chil- 
 dren must be taught the graceful and health- 
 ful folk-dances. 
 
 In our modern cities supervised play has 
 become necessary for social order for the rea- 
 son that the old conditions of spontaneous, 
 healthful play have been taken away. 
 
 Says Luther Burbank, quoted by George E. 
 Johnson : — 
 
 Every child should have mud-pies, grass- 
 hoppers, water-bugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud tur- 
 tles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, 
 chestnuts, trees to climb, brooks to wade in, 
 water-lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, 
 various animals to pet, hay fields, pine cones, 
 rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries, and 
 hornets; and any child who has been deprived 
 of these has been deprived of the best part of 
 his education. 
 
 As regards adults, the social applications of 
 the theory are equally obvious. There must 
 be large periods of relaxation from the high- 
 
PLAY 83 
 
 tension life of to-day. If they are not pro- 
 vided in the form of healthful and harmless 
 sports, there will be irritability, abnormal fa- 
 tigue, and anti-social outbreaks. There will 
 be auction-bridge crazes and dancing crazes 
 and moving-picture crazes, and there will be 
 ever-increasing resort to the temporary har- 
 monizing effect of alcohol, tobacco, and coffee. 
 Even in the life of the family the harmoniz- 
 ing influence of games is seen. The friction 
 sometimes exhibited among its members, in 
 some cases taking the extreme form of nag- 
 ging, wrangling, and quarreling, is no doubt 
 due in large part to the fatigue of the higher 
 brain. In such cases it will often be found 
 that participation in some simple game, par- 
 ticularly an outdoor game, such as golf, ten- 
 nis, or even quoits, will completely relieve the 
 situation, bringing sympathy, harmony, and 
 peace. In society, the larger family, the same 
 effect must follow upon the larger participa- 
 tion in healthful sports. It is sometimes a 
 matter of surprise to us in periods of national 
 prosperity, when wages are good and work 
 obtainable, that unrest increases, together 
 with crime and insanity. It may be because 
 the high tension with its consequent fatigue 
 
84 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 is not relieved. What is needed is less work 
 and worry and more healthful relaxation. 
 Worry is a good example of the high-tension 
 life that is a part of our civilization. Worry is 
 only a perverted form of prevision. It is well 
 enough for preachers to tell us not to worry, 
 but worry is one of the conditions upon which 
 civilization depends, namely, solicitude and 
 care for the future. As a nation we are just 
 beginning to worry, for instance, about the 
 depletion of our forests and soil, and it is well 
 that we are doing so. But sometimes we be- 
 come excessively solicitous about the future, 
 whether it be about the rent or the winter's 
 supply of coal or our future health or the 
 health and morality of our children, and this 
 is what is usually spoken of as worry. It is 
 very wearing, for the reason that it brings 
 constant strain upon delicate and recently de- 
 veloped brain tracts and makes relaxation 
 imperative. 
 
 If we have correctly described the theory of 
 play and the psychology of relaxation and their 
 relations to the conditions of our modern life, 
 it will be evident at once that the need will 
 not be supplied merely by providing more 
 playgrounds for children and more holidays 
 
PLAY 8s 
 
 and sports for grown-ups, vital as these are. 
 The difficulty goes deeper and calls for em- 
 phasis of still other forms of relaxation than 
 play and sport. There are many of these, 
 such, for instance, as music, which is one of the 
 best, and rhythmic dancing, when freed from 
 objectional features. An ever-ready and con- 
 venient form of relaxation is the modern novel, 
 in which the attention is sustained objectively 
 as in the chase or the drama, but its value as 
 relaxation is greatly less than that of the old 
 and social story-telling. Society in all its forms 
 is a healthful means of relaxation. All valu- 
 able games and sports are social and the mere 
 mingling with our fellows lowers the mental 
 stress and tension. Primitive man was wholly 
 social and survived only in cooperative groups. 
 The reversionary character of crowd behavior 
 has been made well known to us. 
 
 Religion may be mentioned finally as a 
 mode of relaxation of the highest value. Re- 
 ligion is a letting go the stress and tension of 
 the individual and resigning one's self to an 
 outside power, whether that power be God or 
 the Church. The function of religion in this 
 aspect is that of a sustainer, and religion loses 
 much of its usefulness if the individual, as is 
 
86 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 often the case, feels it his duty to sustain his 
 religion. His religion must sustain him. Clubs, 
 societies, fraternities of all kinds, exercise a 
 similar function. The great charm of all fra- 
 ternal societies is that they relieve the stress, 
 the burden, the tension of the individual and 
 shift the responsibility upon the society as a 
 whole. The society is back of him, to some 
 extent will do his thinking for him, decide 
 moral questions for him, relieve him from 
 fear. 
 
 Just as man has physically lifted himself 
 from the earth, overcoming gravity, so men- 
 tally he has raised himself above the other 
 animals by the fatiguing exertion of his higher 
 mental powers. The first animals were marine 
 animals. They floated in or upon the water 
 without effort. Then came creeping land ani- 
 mals prone upon the ground but not so com- 
 pletely supported as in the water. Gradually 
 the animal lifted himself upon four legs and 
 at last, by infinite labor, erect upon two, and 
 the tension is correspondingly great. The 
 horse rests very comfortably upon his four 
 legs if allowed to stand, and needs to lie down 
 scarcely an hour in the twenty-four. Man sus- 
 tains himself with constant effort in an erect 
 
PLAY 87 
 
 position and must sit much of the time on a 
 chair, and at night reverts to the original po- 
 sition of the worm, flat upon the bed. This 
 illustrates the whole theory of relaxation. It 
 is always some form of reversion to primitive 
 attitudes, physical or mental, and it brings 
 rest and peace and harmony. 
 
 The rhythm of moral and social progress 
 probably follows the same law. Periods of 
 rapid progress are followed by periods of rest 
 and relaxation. From time to time we are 
 shocked by waves of vice and epidemics of 
 immorality. We hear suddenly of conditions 
 of astonishing laxity of morals in the small 
 towns of our Western States, which are sup- 
 posed to be models of propriety, and we say 
 that the world is going to the bad. But our 
 judgment is too hasty. These things are really 
 incidental to progress. What we witness is 
 a kind of moral relaxation, a relapse to more 
 primitive conditions, as a result probably of 
 progress that is too rapid, of tension too great. 
 Something like moral fatigue takes place and 
 a reaction follows. 
 
 Just at present we are hearing it said that 
 our country has gone "amusement-mad." 
 Well, our manner of life has been very stren- 
 
88 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 uous. The tension has been high. Something 
 was bound to happen. Other forms of relaxa- 
 tion have failed us just when we needed them 
 most — particularly art and religion. We are 
 told that the art of ancient Greece was the 
 product of the Greek genius. Perhaps it was 
 the cause of it. Both art and religion entered 
 intimately into the daily life of the Greeks. 
 They have departed from ours. 
 
 In fact the world has lately been getting 
 too severely serious and laborious. Too much 
 hard thinking is demanded to keep up the 
 modern pace. Whether in journalism, in liter- 
 ature, in scientific research, in mechanical in- 
 vention, in social and educational reform, in 
 labor movements, or in the feverish struggle 
 for wealth, the higher brain is taxed to a de- 
 gree incommensurate with the possibility of 
 physiological adjustment. Our physical con- 
 stitution cannot so quickly adapt itself to this 
 suddenly increased demand upon certain spe- 
 cific nervous functions comparatively new and 
 unstable. Reactions of one kind or another 
 are therefore inevitable. In America we have 
 the amusement crazes, obsessions of dancing, 
 motoring, baseball, football, moving pictures, 
 etc., together with a healthy revival of ath- 
 
PLAY 89 
 
 letlc sports, playground and recreation move- 
 ments, and interest in outdoor life. In Europe, 
 where the temper of the people lends itself 
 less readily to these forms of release, we have 
 witnessed the reaction in its most repulsive 
 form, in a debauch of bloodshed, and a return 
 to the most brutal and the most elemental 
 kind of behavior, that of war, which rests the 
 higher brain completely. It is really a physio- 
 logical situation that the peace societies have 
 to contend with. Mankind cannot so easily 
 escape from its long past. 
 
 In conclusion, it should be said that it is 
 doubtful whether the tendency shown in chil- 
 dren's play and in adult sport to take the 
 forms of old racial activities can be subsumed 
 under such names as survival, reversion, or 
 recapitulation. These biological terms are all 
 too narrow, and they carry a certain reproach 
 which does not pertain to the play and sport 
 activities. It is a wholly unwarranted assump- 
 tion that those peculiar forms of mental activ- 
 ity which in a special manner characterize the 
 adult masculine mind are of any higher or- 
 der than those which are exhibited in play in 
 the broader sense in which we have used the 
 term. The latter represent more fundamental 
 
90 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 forms of human behavior and perhaps more 
 valuable. Just at the present time evolution 
 seems to be tending toward the development 
 of those high-tension masculine traits by which 
 man adapts himself to his environment and 
 which produce something which we call prog- 
 ress or civilization, a civilization, however, in 
 no way remarkable except in the way of its 
 frenzied reactions. It is the age of work, the 
 age of stress and effort and tension, the ex- 
 pansive, centrifugal age, the age of outer con- 
 quest but not of inner harmony. At such 
 a time, comforts, luxuries, and inventions 
 abound, side by side with profoimd misery. 
 Is it not possible to think of a higher civiliza- 
 tion than ours — a civilization faintly realized 
 by the ancient Greeks — where the play mo- 
 tive will be ascendant, where a greater degree 
 of repose, of measure, and of harmony will 
 be attained, and where humanism will be more 
 prized than expansionism? 
 
PLAY 91 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
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 Bryan, E. B. "Nascent Stages and their Pedagogical 
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 Burk, C. F. "The Collecting Instinct." Ped. Sem., vii, 
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 "The Influence of Exercise upon Growth." Amer. 
 
 Phys. Ed. Rev. (1899), 340. 
 
 Bumham, W. H. "Education from the Genetic Point of 
 View." Proc. N. E. A. (1905), 727-34- 
 
 Cabot, Richard C. What Men Live By, part 11. 
 
 Call, Annie Payson. Power Through Repose. 
 
92 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 Carr, H. A. The Survival Values of Play. 
 
 Chamberlain, A. F. The Child, chap. ii. 
 
 "Work and Rest; Genius and Stupidity." Pop. Sci. 
 
 Mo., LX, 413-23. 
 
 Chambers, W. G. "Why Children Play." Proc. N. E. A. 
 (1909), 720-26. 
 
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 perimentale." Exper. Ped., 125/. 
 
 Colozza, G. A. Psychologie und Padagogik des Kinderspiels. 
 
 Compayre, Gabriel. Evolution intellectuelle et morale de 
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 Croswell, T. R. "Amusements of Worcester School Chil- 
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 Curtis, Elnora Whitman. The Dramatic Instinct in Educa- 
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 Curtis, H. S. Play and Recreation in the Open Country. 
 
 Education through Play. 
 
 The Practical Conduct of Play. 
 
 Dearborn, George V. N. Motor-Sensory Development. 
 
 Dewey, John. "Play." Cyclopedia of Education. 
 
 Schools of To-morrow, chap. v. 
 
 Eastman, Charles. Indian Boyhood. 
 
 Ferrero, G. "The Limits of Sport." In his Ancient Rome 
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 of Sociology, XIX, 6 (May, 1914). 
 
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 und Exp. Pad., 12, 7, 8. 
 
 The Play of Animals. 
 
 The Play of Man. 
 
 Guillet, C. "Recapitulation and Education." Ped, Sem, 
 VII, 397-445- 
 
PLAY 93 
 
 Gulick, L. H. " Some Psychical Aspects of Muscular Exer- 
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 " Interest in Relation to Muscular Exercise." Amer. 
 
 Phys. Ed. Rev., vii, 340-49. 
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 Hall, G. Stanley. " A Study of Fears." Amer. Jour. Psy., 
 
 VIII, 147-249. 
 
 "Children's Collections." Ped. Sem., i, 234-37. 
 
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 Youth; Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene, chap. vi. 
 
 and AUin. "Tickling and Laughter." Amer. Jour. 
 
 Psy., IX, 1-41. 
 and Pupils. "Aspects of Child Life and Education." 
 
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 "A Study of Dolls" (Ellis and Hall); 
 "The Collecting Instinct" (Burk); 
 "Fetichism in Children ".(Ellis). 
 " Recreation and Reversion." Ped. Sem., xxii, 
 
 510-20. 
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 257-68. 
 Henderson, E. N. Principles of Education, chap. xiii. 
 Hildebrandt, Paul. Das Spieheug im Leben des Kindes. 
 
 (1904-) 
 
 Hutchinson, Woods. Can the Child Survive Civilization. 
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 Johnson, G. E. Education by Plays and Games (with Bibli- 
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 Johnson, J. "Rudimentary Society among Boys." Johns 
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94 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
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 XXXI, 796-800. 
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 Education for Social Efficiency, chap. vii. 
 
 Kirkpatrick, E. A. The Individual in the Making. 
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 Play as Medicine. Playground and Recreation Asso- 
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 Play as an Antidote to Civilization. Idem. 
 
 Leland, Arthur, and Lorna H. Playground Technique and 
 
 Playcraft. 
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 McGhee, Z. "A Study in the Play Life of some South 
 
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 N. E. A. (1899), 1084-90. 
 Montessori, Maria. Pedagogical Anthropology. 
 Mosso, A. Fatigue. Esp. chapter on "Attention." 
 Newell, W. W. The Games and Songs of American Children. 
 Oppenheim, N. Mental Growth and Control. 
 
 The Development of the Child. 
 
 Patrick, G. T. W. "The Psychology of Football." Amer. 
 
 Jour. Psych., xiv, 104-17. 
 Quantz, J. O. "Dendro-Psychoses." Amer. Jour, of Psych., 
 
 IX, 831-42. 
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 Sandiford, Peter. The Mental and Physical Life of School 
 
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 Psy., XIII, 426-49. 
 
PLAY 95 
 
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 Human and Animal Psychology. Lecture 24. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LAUGHTER 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LAUGHTER 
 
 UNLIKE the other forms of relaxation 
 which we are considering in these stud- 
 ies, laughter in its psychological aspects has 
 been a favorite theme with writers from Aris- 
 totle and Hobbes to Bergson and Sully. Many 
 of these investigators have limited their study 
 to the search for some common quality in the 
 ludicrous and the comic, or in wit and humor. 
 So we hear of various categories under which 
 the causes of laughter are subsumed, such as 
 "degradation," "incongruity," "descending 
 incongruity," "nullified expectation," etc. 
 
 Recently this method of studying laughter 
 has given place to more modern methods, 
 which are at once psychological, physiological, 
 and genetic, and are designed to show not 
 merely the occasions upon which laughter 
 arises and the laughable quality in the objects 
 themselves, but also the reason why laughter 
 rather than any other form of behavior should 
 appear on these occasions. The psychologist 
 
100 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 of the present day attempts to show what 
 laughter itself really is. In other words, he 
 wishes to know why funny things are funny, 
 and why, if anything is funny, we laugh upon 
 seeing or hearing it, rather than weep or 
 swear. In fact, to the psychologist, it explains 
 nothing to say that we laugh at incongruity 
 or degradation or nullified expectation. For 
 aught he can see, these things should cause us 
 to weep. 
 
 The real problem, indeed, seems first to have 
 been appreciated by Darwin, who made a 
 study of the mechanism of emotional expres- 
 sion in general, and by Spencer, who studied 
 the physiology of laughter in particular. 
 
 Recently great light has been thrown upon 
 the meaning and origin of laughter by Sully, 
 Bergson, Sylvia H. Bliss, Hall and Allin, Crile, 
 Boris Sidis, and Freud. ^ At the present stage 
 of the study it is impossible to do much more 
 than to summarize the conclusions reached 
 by these investigators. We shall, however, try 
 to- correlate laughter more closely with the 
 other forms of relaxation which we are study- 
 ing, and shall put more emphasis upon the 
 
 * At the end of this chapter will be found a bibliography 
 of writings on this subject. 
 
LAUGHTER loi 
 
 phylogenetic factors in explaining it, and make 
 a greater distinction between the laughter 
 of children and that of grown-ups, following 
 thus the plan that we followed in the study 
 of play. 
 
 Sully's theory that laughter is due to sudden 
 release from a strained and tense situation, 
 Miss Bliss's theory that it is due to subcon- 
 scious satisfaction, Freud's theory of economy 
 of psychic expenditure and relief from inhibi- 
 tory and repressive processes, and Crile's the- 
 ory of physiological clarification are found, as 
 worked out by these writers, to have so much 
 in common and to apply to so many occasions 
 of laughter, that together they make a rich 
 contribution to the psychology of this subject. 
 
 Laughter is of many kinds and arises on 
 many and various occasions, and it has always 
 proved dangerous to try to generalize these 
 completely and refer them to any one princi- 
 ple. Without attempting any such complete 
 generalization, we may approach the study 
 from the standpoint of the laws of relaxation 
 which we have discovered in our study of 
 play. 
 
 Laughter is, at any rate, highly relaxing. 
 All tense and difficult social situations are 
 
102 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 greatly relieved by a good contagious laugh, 
 as, for instance, those difficult and uncertain 
 moments when a speaker faces a strange 
 audience. In general, laughter is associated 
 with our periods of relaxation, with our hours 
 or moments of release from the burdens of 
 daily life. It serves as a rest and a corrective. 
 It is a relief from strain and tension. It is 
 universally associated with play, and is the 
 accompaniment of the relaxation of sports and 
 pastimes, of feasting, drinking, and banquet- 
 ing. The normal life of the child is a life of 
 relaxation, and laughter is its constant com- 
 panion. It might ahnost be said that those 
 moments when the child is not laughing or 
 smiling are moments when the even flow of his 
 child life is interrupted either by the sudden 
 intrusion of pain or some slight sorrow, or else, 
 more commonly, by the premonition of those 
 mental attitudes which are to make the child 
 a man, namely, perhaps, the attempt to fix 
 and concentrate the attention upon some 
 necessary inhibition of impulse, or some re- 
 adjustment of behavior, or the acquisition of 
 some new motor powers. The latter may be 
 illustrated by the child's first fateful steps 
 across an open space. There is tension and 
 
LAUGHTER 103 
 
 anxiety and uncertainty. The attention is 
 strained, the muscles taut, and the face set. 
 The great event accomplished, there is relaxa- 
 tion and laughter. The muscles of the face 
 relax and the explosive release of the muscles 
 of the chest and diaphragm take the place of 
 the bated breath. The child is again a child, 
 and the child who is really a child laughs. 
 
 Consequently, our task is not primarily to 
 explain the laughter of the child, which is 
 hardly more necessary than to explain the 
 child himself, but that of man. Just as we 
 may say that laughter in childhood is the ac- 
 companiment of the absence of inner tension, 
 so in the case of the adult, we may say that 
 it is the accompaniment of the relief of inner 
 tension. In our study of play we found that 
 adult play is a periodic return to primitive 
 forms of human activity, serving as a rest from 
 the strain and tension of modern life, and giv- 
 ing those peculiar mental powers involved in 
 advancing culture and civilization a needed 
 daily or periodic rest. Now, in the study of 
 laughter, we shall find that it is a form of 
 momentary escape from the tension and rigors 
 of our social life. 
 
 Advancing culture is always associated with 
 
I04 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 the repression and restraint of primitive im- 
 pulses. The very existence of society or the 
 state involves the denial or repression of a 
 great number of egoistic and natural impulses. 
 "The progressive renouncement of constitu- 
 tional impulses," says Freud, "the activity of 
 which affords the ego primary pleasure, seems 
 to be one of the basic principles of human 
 culture." ^ The following words from Sylvia 
 H. Bliss state these well-known laws so clearly 
 and furnish such a solid foundation for the 
 study we wish to make of the laws of laughter 
 that we quote them in full : — 
 
 The animal is perfectly natural. It follows 
 instinct, hiding and repressing nothing. It may 
 growl, roar, fight, give chase, plunder, excrete, 
 and, subject to certain limitations, feed and 
 reproduce, when it wills. Indecency and shame 
 are words without meaning. Rightness extorts 
 no homage. If he loves, well and good, but if 
 he hates, no social or ethical code torments him 
 with its "ought." In scientific phraseology 
 there is for the animal no inhibition of instinct. 
 With this free and natural state, contrast 
 man's condition. In the evolution of humanity 
 those instincts which are inimical to the prog- 
 ress of civilization are theoretically transformed 
 
 * Quoted by Brill, Psychanalysis, 238. 
 
LAUGHTER 105 
 
 into qualities and acts less at variance with 
 social and ethical laws, but in reality the sub- 
 stitution is far from perfect and entire. Man 
 is not yet completely evolved; he is but partly 
 adjusted to a civilized environment and a por- 
 tion of his nature lags far behind at a primitive, 
 savage level. 
 
 The human being, from childhood up must 
 curb, repress, skulk, hide, control. From the 
 mother's "No, no," to the thundering "Thou 
 shalt not" from Mount Sinai, there is a con- 
 stant denial of instinct. So accustomed are we 
 to regard this as pure benefit, that we are blind 
 to the accompanying disservice. 
 
 Consider man's inner life — a nest of hopes, 
 impulses, and desires, in themselves perfectly 
 natural and to be expected at this stage of evolu- 
 tion, yet directly in opposition to the prevail- 
 ing social, ethical, and religious codes. Nature 
 confined is not entirely quiescent. With all the 
 outlets, transformations, and substitutions which 
 physical and mental activities afford, there re- 
 mains still a large residue of repressed primal 
 instinct which results in discordant and tense 
 conditions in the subconscious life. The repres- 
 sions of the primitive man of our study were 
 obviously of the most elemental impulses and 
 took place in obedience to nascent social de- 
 mands of the tribe and through his own growing 
 sense of shame.^ 
 
 * Sylvia H. Bliss, "The Origin of Laughter," Amer. Jour, 
 Psych., 238 (April, 1915). 
 
io6 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 It is strange that psychologists have not 
 made more use of this important psychoge- 
 netic law, which lies at the very foundation 
 of our social development, in explaining many 
 hitherto unexplained facts in our mental and 
 social life. The psychology of play, sport, laugh- 
 ter, dreams, profanity, and war are immediately 
 illumined by this genetic study. The social 
 development of mankind contains the secret. 
 And this development is always in the direc- 
 tion of restraint and inhibition of primitive 
 impulses which are thought to be detrimental 
 to social order. The interests of the group 
 demand self-denial, restraint, and repression. 
 And this restraint and repression must be very 
 largely self-directed, involving ever-increasing 
 powers of attention and concentration, and 
 resulting in rapid mental fatigue. 
 
 There is thus always a conscious or sub- 
 conscious rebellion on the part of the indi- 
 vidual against this restraint, repression, and 
 fatigue, and always a tendency to escape 
 from it at times, and when adequate means of 
 escape are not provided, there will always be 
 outbreaks and social disturbances and spas- 
 modic reactions to restore the balance. Freud 
 has shown us some of the evil results of the 
 
LAUGHTER 107 
 
 repression of impulses in the individual in 
 producing pathological nervous and psychic 
 conditions. Something similar seems to take 
 place on a larger scale in racial development. 
 Too much repression of racial impulses is 
 disastrous to society, as it is to the individual. 
 Laughter is one of the means which nature has 
 provided to preserve psychic equilibrium and 
 prevent more serious outbreaks. 
 
 We have seen how this psychogenetic law 
 throws light upon the psychology of play and 
 sport. We shall see how the insistent crav- 
 ing for narcotic drugs receives from this stand- 
 point a new interpretation. We shall see how 
 war itself may be understood as the rebellion 
 of society as a mass against the too insistent 
 urge of progressive forces. We have now to 
 see how the escape from these repressive 
 forces, when it is sudden and harmless, results 
 in a peculiar wave of joy and gladness whose 
 physical manifestation is laughter. 
 
 Laughter is the very simplest form of reac- 
 tion against the ever-present repressive forces 
 of society. It is the spontaneous outburst of 
 joy whenever the old and natural suddenly ap- 
 pears amidst the restrained and artificial. It 
 represents a momentary escape from social 
 
io8 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 rigors back to primeval freedom. It is a form 
 of release, release from the constant galling 
 grip of social claims. It is the expression of 
 the glee which we feel when we see the cogs 
 of civilization slip a little. It is the "subcon- 
 scious satisfaction" which we have in old ra- 
 cial memories revived by the perception of 
 social lapses of all kinds. 
 
 Indeed these may be mere physical lapses. 
 The very simplest possible illustration of this 
 would be the glee we feel when we see the 
 racially old and familiar recumbent position 
 suddenly and accidentally assimied in situa- 
 tions which call for dignity and propriety, as 
 when a man about to be introduced to a lady 
 on the street slips and sits down at her feet. 
 Mental chagrin or physical pain may prevent 
 the person who falls from participating in the 
 fun, but the bystanders laugh. The writer was 
 told that he must go to see the Charley Chaplin 
 moving pictures if he wanted to laugh. He 
 went and laughed, but nine tenths of the 
 ludicrous incidents were based on the simple 
 falling and tumbling about of serious people 
 in dignified situations. All that is needed is a 
 stout lady in tight skirts keeling over back- 
 ward from a seat in the park. 
 
LAUGHTER 109 
 
 Slips from conventional positions are funny, 
 but so also are slips from conventional lan- 
 guage. As one writer notes, the word " damn" 
 spoken on the stage is sure to provoke a laugh. 
 Similar language from the pulpit would be 
 still more improper, and would be pretty sure 
 to evoke a laugh, unless the emotion were 
 overpowered by some stronger emotion, such 
 as pain. In many companies the insertion of 
 a swear-word in any funny story insures the 
 laugh which is to follow. 
 
 Slips and lapses! Around these words the 
 psychology of laughter largely centers. We 
 laugh at people slipping on the ground, on the 
 ice, or on polished floors, rejoicing, as it were, 
 to see some elemental force, as of gravity, 
 victorious in the case of others over the force 
 which, half against our wills, forever urges us 
 to stand upright. In like manner we laugh at 
 slips in language, slips in decorum, and even 
 slips in morals, if the latter are not so serious 
 as to excite other emotions. The Mrs. Mala- 
 prop sayings would be an example of the first, 
 and a boy stealing watermelons of the last. 
 
 Heraclitus, when he said that it is a joy for 
 souls to become wet, had in mind, no doubt, 
 this deep instinctive delight in escaping from 
 
no PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 time to time from the fetters of social demands. 
 The occasion of laughter is thus any elemental 
 situation suddenly thrust into the course of 
 modern routine. A sudden roar of laughter in 
 a group of rough men would probably reveal 
 as its occasion some reference to a more or 
 less mild form of indecency, based on some 
 simple and natural elemental relation, act, or 
 attitude. In a group of giggling girls the mere 
 mention of a kiss will elicit peals of laughter. 
 Custom and civilization forever urge upon 
 us the conventional, the decorous, the orderly, 
 the customary, the usual, the regular, the co- 
 herent, the congruous, the proper, the refined, 
 and the logical. What we laugh at is the un- 
 conventional, the indecorous, the disorderly, 
 the unaccustomed, the unusual, the irregular, 
 the incoherent, the incongruous, the improper, 
 tne unrefined, the illogical, the nonsensical, 
 land the eccentric. We laugh at a person in 
 partial dishabille in a public place; a man in 
 the street chasing his hat or missing a car and 
 obliged to walk; a well-dressed person falling 
 in the mud or caught in the rain; an intoxi- 
 cated man; a man sleeping in church, espe- 
 cially if a deacon or a member of the choir; a 
 precise person making slips in language. We 
 
LAUGETTER in 
 
 laugh at negroes, if unaccustomed to see them, 
 especially if they have protruding lips and 
 flat, aboriginal noses. We laugh, unless our 
 laughter is forbidden, at all kinds of monstrosi- 
 ties or deviations from a narrowly prescribed 
 mode or conventional type. The grotesque in 
 physiognomy, dress, or language is usually the 
 primitive or old. 
 
 Sully mentions the case of a traveler who 
 visited the house of an Indian chief in Can- 
 ada and inadvertently sat down on one of his 
 wives, who was concealed in a bundle of buf- 
 falo robes. The chief and his wife shrieked 
 with laughter. This act involved even more 
 elemental relations than they were accus- 
 tomed to. The older writers were wont to re- 
 fer such cases to a principle which they called 
 incongruity, but they did not explain why 
 the incongruous is the cause of merriment. 
 We are now in a position to understand what 
 incongruity itself means. It is one of the forms 
 of release from tension, and the occasion of 
 the release is the intrusion into our modern 
 life of primitive natural situations. 
 
 A clergyman was at one time making a pas- 
 toral call upon a young lady of his congrega- 
 tion. The conversation turned upon the sub- 
 
112 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 ject of blueberries. "Yes," said the young 
 lady, "I like them very much, but I never can 
 keep them down!" This was a surprising re- 
 mark, but mere surprise is not a cause of 
 laughter, as our daily experience teaches. It 
 was rather the introduction into a polite and 
 proper conversation of a primitive and natural 
 situation, the mention of which convention 
 usually discourages. In every mind there is 
 a kind of latent sympathy with this relatively 
 harmless lawlessness. 
 
 Another trifling instance will bring the prin- 
 ciple into clear relief. At an evening social 
 gathering a pretty lady offers a basket of 
 candy kisses to a man, saying, "Won't you 
 have a kiss.''" If the company is young and 
 in vital spirits, the remark will probably be 
 greeted with peals of merry laughter. In the 
 mind of each person there is a half-latent re- 
 bellion against the tyranny of custom which 
 forbids acts that are distinctively human and 
 natural, and there is a kind of momentary glee 
 at even the suggestion of escape from this 
 tyranny. At the moment, social bonds are a 
 little relaxed, and there is a corresponding 
 sense of ease and relief, without, however, any 
 serious consequences which might give rise to 
 
LAUGHTER 113 
 
 other and conflicting emotions. Many of the 
 laughable situations in comedy depend upon 
 the outwitting of a too exacting parent or 
 guardian by a fun-loving son, daughter, or 
 ward. Most comedy can be analyzed into 
 dignity laid low, convention violated, and 
 innovations ridiculed, as the reader of Aristo- 
 phanes, Plautus, or Moliere will readily recall. 
 The following story (the older stories are 
 best adapted to our purpose) presents some- 
 what more complicated conditions. In a rail- 
 way accident the passengers were thrown in 
 a promiscuous heap over an embankment and 
 rolled or slid down a steep incline. In the 
 descent a man was crushed by a stout woman, 
 whom he found, at the bottom of the descent, 
 sitting in his lap. "Madam," he said, "this 
 is as far as I go." In this story the mind is 
 under a certain strain and uncertainty, owing 
 to the new and threatening situation, and the 
 mental relaxation comes in the sudden intro- 
 duction of an old and perfectly familiar rela- 
 tion, namely, that of a cart and its burden. 
 It is a question, of course, in this story just 
 how much of the humor is due to a mere 
 relief from mental strain, the sudden turning 
 of tragedy into comedy. Such an explanation, 
 
114 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 however, begs the question. The mere state- 
 ment that the travelers arrived unhurt at the 
 bottom of the slide would remove the tragedy, 
 but it would not be funny. The "comedy" 
 would still remain unexplained. 
 
 Thus it appears that laughter represents the 
 sudden or momentary escape from the con- 
 stant upward urge of progressive forces. It is 
 release from the decorous, the proper, the re- 
 fined, the fitting, the elegant, the strict, the 
 starched, the stiff, and the solemn. The mind 
 runs riot for a moment in the old, the familiar, 
 the instinctive, the impulsive, and the easy, 
 knowing that the inevitable claims of prog- 
 ress must soon force it into servitude again. 
 Laughter thus represents a momentary and 
 spasmodic rebellion against civilization, just 
 as play and sport represent more deliberate 
 periodic efforts to escape from it by resting 
 awhile before resuming the burden; just as 
 war represents, as we shall later understand, 
 a large and general social revolt resembling 
 a complete debauch. 
 
 In polite and elegant conversation the mere 
 mention of commonplace things, that is, things 
 racially very familiar, will cause a smile or 
 laugh, the propensity to laugh being in direct 
 
LAUGHTER 115 
 
 proportion to the stiffness of the situation and 
 the commonness of the intruding idea. Thus 
 a cow or a pig or a mule on the stage will be 
 the occasion of merriment, or even the mere 
 mention of them in conversation, if the latter 
 be sufficiently conventional. The mention of 
 a horse or dog will probably not have the 
 same comic effect, for the reason that they 
 are still at the present time honorable associ- 
 ates of man. So a countryman on the stage, 
 or especially a countryman milking a cow, or 
 anything whatever common or vulgar that is 
 racially old and familiar, in surroundings more 
 modern and refined, elicits laughter, and fur- 
 nishes a never-failing fund for comedy. The 
 unexpected primitive "conveniences," which 
 are observed at the street-corners of some 
 European cities, particularly in southern Italy, 
 never fail to evoke a broad smile from Ameri- 
 can tourists. 
 
 It has been customary to say that such things 
 are funny because they are things out of place, 
 but things out of place are not necessarily 
 funny, as numerous illustrations might show. 
 The cause of the fun is to be found in the 
 relief which is obtained in the vision of the 
 elemental in a social state always involving 
 
ii6 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 a certain unpleasant tension. Thus any kind 
 of stupidity or simplicity in a social environ- 
 ment corresponding to a more advanced stage 
 of culture is apt to be a source of jollity. The 
 court fool is a case in point, and the buffoon. 
 We laugh for the same reason at the woman 
 who deplored the increasingly poor work of 
 the tailors nowadays, saying to her husband, 
 "This is the fifth time I have had to sew this 
 button on again for you." The greater part 
 of Mark Twain's irresistible humor, as shown, 
 for instance, in his "Innocents Abroad," 
 comes under this head, or in his bon mot about 
 the report of his death being greatly exag- 
 gerated, or his taking passage on a glacier, 
 which he said he had heard flowed down to the 
 valley. This is primitive simplicity. 
 
 An old farmer, annoyed at the golf balls 
 coming over on his land, went up on the links 
 to remonstrate with the players. They asked 
 him to play a few holes himself to see how 
 difficult it was to keep the balls in bounds. 
 They showed him how to hold his club, how 
 to place the ball, and how to strike it. Finally 
 he made a great swing and the ball, as it hap- 
 pened, flew off in the direction of the green. 
 Running down, they found the ball lying close 
 
LAUGHTER 117 
 
 by the hole. "By heck," said the fanner, 
 greatly crestfallen, "I missed it." The merri- 
 ment which this story elicits is partly due to 
 the exhibition of primitive simplicity, but it 
 is due, no doubt, in part to the feeling of su- 
 periority which the hearer feels, who himself 
 knows about the game, and knows that it could 
 not be expected to make the hole in one 
 stroke. The story, therefore, involves in part 
 the elements of exultation and derision which 
 we shall consider presently 
 
 Closely related to these forms of himior, and 
 coming under the same principle, are all the 
 countless jokes which turn on some form of 
 absent-mindedness. The great Newton, for 
 instance, making a hole in the fence for his 
 hogs to go through and just beside it a smaller 
 one so that the little pigs could go through, 
 or boiling his watch in the water, while re- 
 garding the egg in his hand, is the stock illus- 
 tration. Increasing power of concentration of 
 attention is the very condition of advancing 
 culture. We laugh at absent-mindedness be- 
 cause of a kind of subconscious sympathy with 
 any lapses from this rigor of attention. 
 
 Thus we see that it is usually some form of 
 the primitive or elemental in the midst of the 
 
ii8 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 highly developed or complex, whether it be 
 elemental intelligence, elemental language, or 
 elemental objects and situations, which fur- 
 nishes the occasion for laughter. We shall find 
 the same element involved in all those many 
 jokes and humorous stories which depend for 
 their element of hum.or upon reckless exag- 
 geration upon the part of the narrator. The 
 Baron Munchausen stories will serve as a 
 type of humor of this class. The actual sight 
 of such wonders as he mentions would not 
 cause any one to laugh. They would be merely 
 mysteries to be solved. The hxmior of the 
 stories is found in the temporary escape from 
 seriousness in our human relations. It is a 
 relief from the ever-present feeling of con- 
 straint that society imposes upon us to be 
 truthful and exact in our statements. We 
 sympathize somewhat with one who boldly 
 breaks away from this restraint. The annual 
 crop of fish stories furnishes us a few good 
 laughs every summer. The Irish "bull," again, 
 is a type of wit depending upon a momen- 
 tary escape from the logical coherency which 
 advancing culture demands. 
 
 Laughter is thus the expression of an ever- 
 present half-latent protest against the for- 
 
LAUGHTER 119 
 
 ward "pull" of evolution. It is a momentary 
 reversion to original or aboriginal habits, and 
 its occasions are to be found in all sorts of 
 departures from the propriety, dignity, for- 
 mality, and logical coherency of our modern 
 life. We can, therefore, understand why it is 
 that, in situations where tension is greatly in- 
 creased, laughter is more ready and its effect 
 more relaxing. In the college class-room or 
 lecture-room almost any kind of joke is re- 
 freshing and will pass. The bodily confine- 
 ment and constraint make the tension high. 
 A good laugh furnishes much relief. In the 
 case of children an overpowering impulse to 
 laugh sometimes appears without any appar- 
 ent cause whatever in surroundings that are 
 solemn or even tragic, as, for instance, the 
 impulse to laugh during grace at meals, or at 
 funerals. > 
 
 Laughter is therefore a means of rest and 
 relaxation and is closely related to play, and 
 like play finds the secret of its refreshing 
 power in the release which it offers from the 
 tension of our daily life of work and effort. 
 When weary with reflection, deliberation, self- 
 control, and self-repression, we may go to the 
 
 ' Compare Sylvia H. Bliss, op. cit., p. 245. 
 
120 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 golf links or ball park and find relief in sport; 
 or to the comic opera or moving pictures and 
 find our relief in laughter; or we may merely 
 turn to the column of funny stories in our 
 magazines. 
 
 Wit depends largely upon the same prin- 
 ciple of relief from mental tension, furnished, 
 in this case, by the sudden emergence of the 
 simple and elemental into the complex and 
 involved, or again of the natural into the 
 artificial, or the sudden substitution of the lit- 
 eral for the figurative. The following may be 
 taken as a type of thousands of witty stories : 
 The Waitress — "And how did you find the 
 apple pie, sir.?" The Diner — "I moved the 
 bit of cheese aside and there It was." Here, 
 the literal is substituted for the figurative, 
 although the humor is probably partly due to 
 the additional element of derision. 
 
 In cartoons free use is made of the principle 
 we are now considering. Mr. Bryan in resign- 
 ing from the Cabinet asked the American 
 people to sit in judgment upon his decision. 
 So a Chicago daily represents a giant Uncle 
 Sam sitting upon a diminutive Bryan. Thus, 
 In nearly all cartoons, situations in our highly 
 complex and involved political and social life 
 
LAUGHTER 121 
 
 are graphically translated into simple and 
 racially familiar scenes. Constant use is made 
 of the poultry-yard, the farm-yard, the stable, 
 the fish-pond, the swimming-hole, the wood- 
 shed, the kitchen, the breakfast-table, the sick- 
 room, and every kind of domestic or rural 
 scene. Animals, such as the mule, the cow, 
 the cat, the hen and chicks, the ducks and 
 geese, all racially familiar, but now disap- 
 pearing from our city life, greet us again in 
 the daily cartoons and bring us corresponding 
 joy. So also appear the familiar apple and 
 pear trees, the vegetable garden, the old 
 pump, the grindstone, the birch rod and the 
 slipper, the doctor and his bottle of medicine, 
 the cradle and the grave. 
 
 We commonly say that in cartoons persons 
 in high estate are shown in ludicrous situa 
 tions, but of course the word "ludicrous 
 simply means laughable, and it is only when 
 we attempt to determine by analysis what 
 situations are ludicrous, and why they are so, 
 that we come upon the fundamental principle 
 in the psychology of laughter as it has come 
 to light in this chapter. The "sudden glory" 
 which we experience is very largely the glory 
 of fond memories, individual or racial. 
 
 j> 
 
122 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 Our first result is, therefore, that laughter 
 is a form of relaxation and comes under the 
 laws of relaxation that are exhibited in the 
 psychology of play. But this does not offer 
 a complete psychology of the subject. It will 
 at once occur to the reader that the principles 
 which we have been studying will not explain 
 — at any rate at first sight — all of the occa- 
 sions of laughter, nor apply to all its many 
 forms. What shall we say of children's laugh- 
 ter, of the laughter from tickling, of imita- 
 tive or contagious laughter, of nervous and 
 hysterical laughter, of derisive and sardonic 
 laughter? Does the principle of relaxation ap- 
 ply to these or any of them? 
 
 To answer these questions a still more care- 
 ful study from the phylogenetic standpoint 
 must be made. The result of this further in- 
 quiry will show that the principle of relax- 
 ation must be supplemented by the principle 
 of exultation. Let us see if this new element 
 will not throw much light on all the other 
 forms of laughter. 
 
 We must recall that laughter is the ac- 
 companiment of relief from some kind of ten- 
 sion, the most common form of tension arising 
 from the cpnstant necessity of conforming to 
 
LAUGHTER 123 
 
 social restrictions. It has thus become very 
 largely a social phenomenon, but it was not 
 necessarily so in the beginning. Physiologi- 
 cally, laughter in its earliest form was no doubt 
 mere muscular relaxation after periods of men- 
 tal and muscular strain. Darwin in his work 
 on the "Expression of the Emotions" has of- 
 fered an explanation of the probable origin and 
 significance of the smile and the laugh phys- 
 iologically considered. The following state- 
 ment of Professor Angell better represents 
 the present-day view and to some extent sup- 
 plements and corrects the earlier theory: — 
 
 The laugh is the motor activity which inevi- 
 tably accompanies the explosive release from 
 sustained tension, with its suspended breathing. 
 In an account of the attentive processes in 
 consciousness, we remarked the holding of the 
 breath, as one among other adaptive motor ar- 
 rangements, all of which involve muscular ten- 
 sion. In joy, in the appreciation of humor, in 
 surprise after expectation, we meet precisely 
 this suspension of breathing cut short. The 
 innervation of the vocal, facial, and breathing 
 muscles which this involves is the laugh. ^ 
 
 Under what circumstances, now, in the 
 early history of human development did such 
 » J. R. Angell, Psychology, p. 333. 
 
124 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 relief from tension take placer}/ Evidently 
 after that concentration pf.iriieiital and bodily- 
 forces and fixity of attention which was the 
 condition of survival and progress with prim- 
 itive man. Bated breath ^^nd tenseness of the 
 facial muscles were the aeepmpaniments of 
 that fixed attention and those strained atti- 
 tudes with which primitive man watched for 
 his prey or his enemy and struggled with 
 them. Whdn the victor stood over the slain 
 victim, then came that sudden relaxation of 
 the respiratory organs and the facial muscles 
 which we know as laughter. What we should 
 call joy over the conquest of an enemy after 
 mortal combat, or joy in the presence of the 
 prospective feast after the strain and effort of 
 the chase, had for its physical side those motor 
 reactions known as the laugh. "Perhaps the 
 first great laugh," says Sully, "was produced 
 by man or his proximate progenitor, when 
 relief came after fear of the strain of battle."^ 
 Thus exultation and relaxation were associated 
 from the beginning. "Derisive laughter," says 
 Lloyd Morgan, "may have had its origin in 
 the exultation of the savage over his van- 
 quished foe." ^ 
 
 ' James Sully, jin Essay on Laughter, p. 176. 
 
 * Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, art., "Laughter." 
 
LAUGHTER 125 
 
 The unit of the laugh, says Dr. Paul Cams, 
 is the monosyllable "Ha!" — a rapid expul- 
 sion of the breath expressing joy and triumph. 
 
 If the "Ha!" be repeated several times, it 
 forms a volley of ejaculations by which the 
 whole breast begins to shake; and such a phe- 
 nomenon is a regular laughter, which is noth- 
 ing but the abbreviation of a triumphal shout. 
 Translated into common parlance it means: 
 "Hurrah, I have got the best of you and you 
 are worsted." ^ 
 
 Thus we may believe that primitive man 
 laughed in his vital moods, in his moments of 
 victory, in the outcome of his successful chase. 
 Laughter becomes thus in a way the expres- 
 sion of vital moods. It stands for victory, 
 triumph, joy, gladness. It is at once the ex- 
 pression of joy, the expression of triumph, and 
 the expression of contempt for the fallen 
 enemy. 
 
 Here, of course, it is not to be understood 
 that laughter is the expression of emotion in 
 the sense of the older psychology. The physi- 
 cal reaction arises directly from the situation, 
 as we have shown. The emotion of joy, with 
 
 ' Dr. Paul Cams, " On the Philosophy of Laughing," 
 Monist, VIII, 261. 
 
126 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 which we are not here in any way concerned, 
 is only the consciousness of the entire process. 
 It is proper to speak of the laugh as an expres- 
 sion of the emotion of joy only in the sense 
 that it may be an index to another mind of the 
 emotion which the person is experiencing. 
 
 Thus laughter is a kind of language — per- 
 haps the earliest of all forms of language. It 
 means, I am alive, I breathe deeply, I have 
 overcome, I am glad, I am happy; and in the 
 complicated and interwoven life of the present 
 day it is a return to this elemental language 
 in sympathetic response to any elemental sit- 
 uation. In social evolution, furthermore, it 
 may also become a language in the social 
 sense, particularly in its vocal form, and by 
 communicating the mood of gladness become 
 of survival value in the social group. 
 
 From this point of view we are better able to 
 understand the laughter of children. Children 
 do not laugh because they are glad ; they laugh 
 because they are children, just as we have 
 seen that they play because they are children. 
 The laughter of children is not the response 
 to a situation, nor is it the expression of a 
 gladsome mood. It is simply life itself in its 
 
LAUGHTER 127 
 
 physical manifestation. If one would wish to 
 know why life exhibits itself in those partic- 
 ular muscular movements, it is because the 
 child repeats the habits of the race. 
 
 Children, we may say, are the heirs of the 
 exultant moments of primitive man. They re- 
 flect his vital moods, his success, his triumph, 
 his gltny, his life. To say, as Spencer does, 
 that laughter is to be explained as the over- 
 flow of surplus energy following the channels 
 of least resistance is surely at the best a case 
 of misplaced emphasis. It is rather life mani- 
 festing itself as it has always done in the ab- 
 sence of those attitudes of strain and effort 
 which condition forward progress. Laughter 
 was for primitive man the expression of tri- 
 umph; the life of the healthy child is a series 
 of childish triumphs. "Children and Life are 
 one. They are the product, the producers, and 
 the preservers of Life. They exalt Life. They 
 interpret Life. Without them Life has no 
 meaning." ' 
 
 Rut the child does not always laugh. It is 
 rather only the exulting child. Every oncom- 
 ing wave of vitality manifests itself in this 
 way, interrupted by periods of childish stress, 
 » Harold Bell Wright, in Their Yesterdays. 
 
128 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 such as pain, sorrow, or disappointment, and 
 more often by momentary attitudes of atten- 
 tion, anticipating the powers of the man. 
 Even that shght sensory attention which we 
 call listening, touching, tasting, looking, an- 
 ticipates the strenuous life which destroys 
 gayety. Still more do the childish attempts 
 at muscular readjustments or inhibitions serve 
 as premonitions of serious life and check the 
 laughing mood. The tenseness passed or 
 victory gained, joyous merriment follows. 
 In older children, after periods of enforced 
 restraint, such as confinement in the school- 
 room, boisterous laughter breaks forth. Free- 
 dom from all fear and restraint is in gen- 
 eral conducive to it among children. It 
 prevails, therefore, in all kinds of play, par- 
 ticularly in romping and chasing one another, 
 which is accompanied in young children by 
 peals of laughter and glee unbounded. It 
 means this to children — that danger and re- 
 straint which so often threaten their childish 
 well-being are absent. 
 
 In this way the puzzle about the laughter 
 from tickling is perhaps solved, as Sully has 
 pointed out. Tickling is an "attack" which 
 the child recognizes as playful. A slight fear 
 
LAUGHTER 129 
 
 upon the first attack is followed by a sudden 
 perception that the attack is playful, and the 
 laughing reaction follows. 
 
 The laughter of children thus becomes some- 
 what clear viewed in the light of the life of 
 early man. From this point of view we see 
 that the laughter of children and that of mod- 
 ern man are essentially different. With the 
 latter, laughter and play represent a return to 
 nature; with the former they are nature itself. 
 But this differentiation should not be made too 
 marked. There is, of course, no line of distinct 
 cleavage between childhood and manhood — 
 and children laugh at funny things just as 
 grown-ups do, partly from imitation, no doubt, 
 but partly because the conditions of laughter 
 which we have described in modern life begin 
 early to display themselves in the life of chil- 
 dren. When we say that laughter in the child 
 is not the response to a situation, the state- 
 ment should not be taken too strictly nor 
 applied to children of all ages. It points to 
 the great truth that laughter is inseparable 
 from healthy childish life. 
 
 We are now at last in position to inquire 
 whether those other very common forms which 
 
I30 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 we call the laughter of ridicule and derision 
 may be explained from our point of view. The 
 following story is quite apt to evoke a laugh, 
 but apparently is not explained by any of the 
 principles considered in the early part of this 
 chapter. A man was run over by an auto- 
 mobile in the street and severely injured. 
 Sympathetic bystanders picked him up, car- 
 ried him to the sidewalk, stood him on his feet, 
 and asked him, "Are you married.?" "No," 
 said the man, "this is the worst calamity that 
 has ever befallen me." It might be said that 
 the mental tension of the hearer caused by the 
 uncertainty of the outcome of the tragic cir- 
 cumstances is suddenly released by the un- 
 expected answer of the injured man, which has 
 the character of levity. But this explanation 
 is hardly sufficient. The story belongs rather 
 to that large class of perpetual jokes about 
 women and marriage. Every comic paper or 
 column of funny stories furnishes a daily 
 batch of anecdotes turning on the foibles, 
 weaknesses, or inferiority of woman or the dis- 
 illusionment of marriage. We have here, there- 
 fore, an example of derisive laughter. Early 
 man laughed over his fallen foe and thereafter 
 at everything over which he triumphed. 
 
LAUGHTER 131 
 
 In the early history of mankind social groups 
 were at constant war with one another. The 
 vanquished tribes were always objects of 
 ridicule and derision. From time immemorial 
 members of foreign countries or strangers 
 coming to any community have been objects 
 of ridicule. Even to this day we laugh at for- 
 eigners. We laugh at the peculiar appearance 
 and the peculiar language of the Irish, Scotch, 
 Dutch, and of the Chinese and Japanese, and 
 they laugh at us. Each considers the other in- 
 ferior. We laugh likewise at idiosyncrasies of 
 language, and at dialect and provincialisms. 
 Woman has come up through a long history of 
 partial servitude and has almost universally 
 been laughed at. Women likewise laugh at 
 men when they in turn exhibit their peculiar 
 masculine weaknesses. All the burglar-in-the- 
 pantry stories are illustrations of this type of 
 cheap wit; for instance: Wife — "Wake up, 
 John! there are burglars in the pantry eating 
 my mince pies." John — "Well, it does n't 
 matter, does it, so long as they don't die in the 
 house .^" "For a great many years," says an 
 English writer,^ " nearly all our national humor 
 
 * J. L. Ford, "Concerning Humor," The Bachelor of Arts, 
 January, 1896; quoted by Hall and AUin. 
 
132 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 had for its foundation the mother-in-law, the 
 goat, the stovepipe, inebriety, and the banana 
 peel." 
 
 Derisive laughter has played an important 
 part in social evolution. Recalling our law of 
 laughter as relaxation, as the relief from social 
 tension in the presence of lapses of every kind, 
 we see how the one who makes the slip will be- 
 come the object of ridicule. The slip may be 
 the occasion of great amusement to the be- 
 holder, but the other is conscious of having 
 failed in some social requirement or conven- 
 tion or decorum or logical coherency. He suf- 
 fers, therefore, a certain hiraiiliation, and in 
 this way laughter becomes a social corrective 
 having a decided survival value. The on- 
 looker sympathizes, at least subconsciously, 
 with the lapse, but society frowns at the in- 
 fraction of its rules, and the laugh which 
 follows serves as a kind of castigation. 
 
 Thus, laughter has a double aspect and 
 serves a double purpose. On the one hand, it 
 is a rest and relaxation from some fonn of 
 tension, and on the other, it is a kind of exulta- 
 tion, and in more complex life a social correc- 
 tive. In the highly complex life of the present, 
 it may take the form of ridicule and may be 
 
LAUGHTER 133 
 
 used merely as a weapon. Thus in cartoons 
 and in comedy and satire, direct use is made 
 of the principle of the ludicrous in the inter- 
 ests of the reformer or the partisan. 
 
 But the value of laughter as a social correc- 
 tive is slight as compared with its value as a 
 means of relaxation. The words "wit" and 
 "humor" suggest this lighter and more restful 
 aspect of the matter. Much has been written 
 on the salutary character of the laugh, but it 
 has usually been thought of as a corrective or 
 medicine rather than an integral part of hu- 
 man nature. As our study into its real mean- 
 ing and origin has shown, it is not to be con- 
 sidered as a medicine so much as a normal 
 means of rest and release from the daily and 
 hourly -stress of progress. It has the same 
 function, therefore, as play and sport in adult 
 life. These things are the rest platforms, so to 
 speak, in the stairs leading up to the high 
 tower. Laughter is more than salutary; it is 
 necessary. To change the figure — wit, hu- 
 mor, and laughter are shock-absorbers. They 
 alone enable us to stand the pace and save our 
 nerves from disaster. 
 
 Perhaps even this way of regarding laughter 
 does not give us a true insight into the depth 
 
134 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 of its significance. Hobbes's happy descrip- 
 tion of it as "sudden glory" has been so often 
 quoted that its truth has been shown by its 
 wide appeal. What is it in the comic and the 
 humorous and the laughable that is "glori- 
 ous".? It is evidently the glory of the past. 
 Philosophy has been defined as homesickness, 
 and there is something of this kind in art. 
 Music may owe its power and its charm to 
 the latent memories which it evokes. In sculp- 
 ture and painting it may be that we have 
 composite portraits of all past experience. In 
 poetry we have displayed to us vivid pictures 
 of our own inner experiences, to which there is 
 such quick and sympathetic response that it 
 almost seems as if the memories evoked must 
 reach out beyond our individual lives deep 
 into the racial history of the past. Bergson 
 has some such thought when he says in his 
 essay on "Laughter": — 
 
 Art, whether it be painting or sculpture, poetry 
 or music, has no other object than to brush aside 
 the utilitarian symbols, the conventional and 
 socially accepted generalities, in short, every- 
 thing that veils reality from us, in order to bring 
 us face to face with reality itself. . . . What 
 drama goes forth to discover and brings to light, 
 is a deep-seated reality that is veiled from us 
 
LAUGHTER 135 
 
 often in our own interests, by the necessities of 
 life. . . . Man must live in society, and conse- 
 quently submit to rules. And what interest ad- 
 vises, reason commends : duty calls, and we have 
 to obey the summons. Under this dual influence 
 has perforce been formed an outward layer of 
 feelings and ideas which make for permanence, 
 aim at becoming common to all men, and cover, 
 when they are not strong enough to extinguish 
 it, the inner fire of individual passions. The slow 
 progress of mankind in the direction of an in- 
 creasingly peaceful social life has gradually con- 
 solidated this layer, just as the life of our planet 
 itself has been one long effort to cover over with 
 a cool and solid crust the fiery mass of seeth- 
 ing metals. But volcanic eruptions occur. And if 
 the earth were a living being, as mythology has 
 feigned, most likely when in repose it would take 
 delight in dreaming of these sudden explosions 
 whereby it suddenly resumes possession of its in- 
 nermost nature. Such is just the kind of pleasure 
 that is provided for us hy drama. Beneath the 
 quiet humdrum life that reason and society have 
 fashioned for us, it stirs something within us 
 which luckily does not explode, but which it 
 makes us feel in its inner tension. It offers nature 
 her revenge upon society. Sometimes it makes 
 straight for the goal, summoning up to the sur- 
 face, from the depths below, passions that pro- 
 duce a general upheaval. Sometimes it follows 
 a flank movement, as is often the case in con- 
 temporary drama; with a skill that is frequently 
 
136 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 sophistical it shows up the inconsistencies of 
 society; it exaggerates the shams and shibbo- 
 leths of the social law, and so indirectly, by 
 merely dissolving or corroding the outer crust, 
 it again brings us back to the inner core. But, 
 in both cases, whether it weakens society or 
 strengthens nature, it has the same end in view; 
 that of laying bare a secret portion of ourselves, 
 what might be called the tragic element in our 
 character. This is indeed the impression we get 
 after seeing a stirring drama. What has just in- 
 terested us is not so much what we have been told 
 about others as the glimpse we have caught of 
 ourselves — a whole host of ghostly feelings, emo- 
 tions and events that would fain have come into 
 real existence, but fortunately for us, did not. 
 It also seems as if an appeal had been made within 
 us to certain ancestral memories belonging to a far- 
 away past — memories so deep-seated and so for- 
 eign to our present life that this latter, for a mo- 
 ment, seems something unreal and conventional, for 
 which we shall have to serve a fresh apprenticeship. 
 So it is indeed a deeper reality that drama draws 
 up from beneath our superficial and utilitarian 
 attainments; and this art has the same end in 
 view as all the others.^ 
 
 Bergson, to be sure, makes a sharp distinc- 
 tion between comedy and tragedy, in that the 
 former deals with types and the latter with 
 
 * Bergson, ZawgAi^r, p. IS7#. (Italics ours.) 
 
LAUGHTER 137 
 
 individual experiences. But it is doubtful 
 whether this distinction can be carried through. 
 There is something common to comedy and 
 tragedy, and this is perhaps that which belongs 
 to all the arts and to play and to laughter and 
 to all forms of relaxation, namely, the power 
 to release us from the burden of the present, 
 from the rigor of social conventions and utili- 
 tarian claims, and to enable us to revel for a 
 little while in the world of dreams. All are 
 forms of relaxation and all are of priceless 
 worth. When the human race learns to do 
 without sleep and rest, when it learns to work 
 both day and night, only then may we dis- 
 pense with laughter, with play, with art, and 
 with religion. 
 
 This suggests the significant question : Are 
 we as a nation forgetting how to laugh? Is it 
 already becoming a lost art? It would appear, 
 from the principles of relaxation which we 
 have been studying, that as culture increases, 
 as the tension becomes greater under the pres- 
 sure of our modern institutions, laughter like 
 other forms of relaxation would increase. This 
 does not appear to be the case. There is, 
 indeed, an increased demand for forms of re- 
 laxation, for amusement, dances, sports, and 
 
138 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 outings, but there is not more laughter. Why 
 is this, and is it praiseworthy or deplorable? 
 
 Answers to these questions can only be con- 
 jectural. It is true that as regards laughter 
 much depends upon national temperament 
 and habits of repression. Southern peoples, 
 with what we call their sunny temperament, 
 are more disposed to mirth. They are more 
 like children. Northern peoples are more stern 
 and reserved, and more accustomed to inhibit 
 outward expression. If it be true, as is some- 
 times thought, that the northern nations are 
 more progressive, it would appear at first 
 sight that they would be more given to 
 laughter as a means of relaxation. But this 
 "progress" is of a wholly different kind. It is 
 not due to increased sociability or to a highly 
 complicated social life which demands ever- 
 increased inhibition of natural impulses, but 
 rather to increased physical and mental energy 
 which finds its expression in an active life, in 
 the conquest of nature. In new countries and 
 in new civilizations the need of relaxation is 
 not so great. The time is fast approaching, 
 however, when in America and in northern 
 Europe the question of relaxation will become 
 an all-important one. 
 
LAUGHTER 139 
 
 But in general it is probably true that 
 laughter is becoming rarer among all peoples. 
 The good, old-fashioned boisterous laugh is 
 not now in good form, and that settles the 
 matter. We are taught to inhibit once more 
 the very means which nature has provided for 
 tempering the inhibitions made necessary by 
 our social life. Thus fashion causes the inner 
 tension to increase and paves the way for 
 spasmodic outbreaks of amusement crazes and 
 various social reactions. 
 
 Many people turn with avidity to the comic 
 papers or to the page of funny stories in the 
 monthly magazines and read them through 
 with great apparent interest and probable 
 enjoyment, but often without a laugh or visi- 
 ble smile. There seems to be the demand for 
 relaxation, but long habits of repression have 
 discouraged the usual physical expression. 
 What we still have is amusement, enjoyment, 
 admiration, joy. What we miss is the old- 
 fashioned mirth, fun, and hilarity. Of course, 
 there is still laughter in our social life and in 
 abundance, but not in the old measure nor in 
 the old spontaneity. 
 
 A good deal of our social laughter, too, is 
 formal, forced, to brighten social occasions and 
 
I40 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 "carry off" conversation. At our popular 
 dances the faces of the dancers are rather set 
 and serious. The faces of the spectators at our 
 great ball games are also rather strained and 
 serious, and even in our theaters, when comedy 
 is on the stage, or at our humorous moving- 
 picture shows, there is much tenseness and 
 inhibition of expression. 
 
 We do not mean, to be sure, that these 
 forms of relaxation are not valuable without 
 laughter, but that perhaps they would be more 
 valuable with it. There is some danger that 
 the world may become too earnest and too 
 dull. Perhaps we take too seriously our own 
 shortcomings and those of other people. The 
 situation will be a sad one when one half of 
 the world is sinning and the other half weep- 
 ing over the sins of the first half. Perhaps a 
 little more healthful relaxation would dis- 
 courage the sinning of the one and the sadness 
 of the other. 
 
LAUGHTER 141 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Angell, J. R., and Thompson, H. B. " Organic Processes 
 and Consciousness." Psych. Rev., vi, p. JS- 
 
 Aristotle. Poetics. Butcher's trans., v, 4. 
 
 Bain, A. The Emotions and the Will. "The Emotions," 
 chap. XIV, 38-40. 
 
 Bell, Sir Charles. The Anatomy and Philosophy of Expres- 
 sion. London, 1893, 7th ed. 
 
 Bergson, Henri. Laughter. Trans, by Brereton and Roth- 
 well. 
 
 Bliss, Sylvia H. " The Origin of Laughter." Amer. Jour. 
 Psych., April, 1915, p. 236. 
 
 Bruce, H. Addington. "Why Do We Laugh?" Outlook, 
 104, August 9, 1913, pp. 816-21. 
 
 Carus, Dr. Paul. "On the Philosophy of Laughter." 
 Monist, vin, 250. 
 
 Cicero. Discourse on Oratory and Orators. 
 
 Crile, George W. The Origin and Nature of the Emotions. 
 Chapter on "Pain, Laughter, and Crying." 
 
 Darwin. Expression of the Emotions, chap. viii. 
 
 Dugas, L. Psychologie du rire. Paris, 1902. 
 
 Fischer, Kuno. Ueher den Witz. (1889.) 
 
 Ford, J. L. " Concerning Humor." The Bachelor of Arts, 
 January, 1896. 
 
 Freud, Dr. Sigmund. Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum 
 Unhewussten. 
 
 Hall, G. Stanley, and AUin, A. "The Psychology of 
 Tickling, Laughing, and the Comic." Amer. Jour. 
 Psych., IX, if. 
 
 Hecker, Ewald. Die Physiologic und Psychologie des Lachens 
 und des Komischen. Berlin, 1873. 
 
 Hobbes, H. Human Nature, chap, ix, p. 13. 
 
 Hoffding. Outlines of Psychology, p. 290/. 
 
142 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 Hunt, Leigh. Wit and Humor. 
 
 Kant. Kritik der Urteilskraft. Bernard's trans., 54, p. 223. 
 
 Lilly, W. S. "The Theory of the Ludicrous." Fortnightly 
 Rev., May, 1896. 
 
 Lipps, Th. Komik und Humor. (1898.) 
 
 Mantegazza, Paolo. Physiognomy and Expression. Lon- 
 don, 1884. 
 
 Melanaud, Camilla. "Pourquoi rit-on?" Revue des Deux 
 Mondes (1895), 612-30. 
 
 Mercer, J. E. " The Theology of Laughter." Hibbert Jour- 
 nal, IX, 206. 
 
 Meredith, George. "Essay on Comedy." Scribners, 191 1. 
 
 Morgan, C. Lloyd. Ency. of Religion and Ethics; art. 
 "Laughter." 
 
 Philbert, M. Le rire. (1883.) 
 
 Raulin. Le rire. 
 
 Richter, Jean Paul. Vorschule der Aesthetik. 
 
 Roetschi. Der aesthetische Wert des Komischen und der 
 Wesen des Humors. Berne, 1915. 
 
 Schopenhauer. Die Welt als Wille und Forstellung. Brock- 
 haus ed., 1877, 11, 70. 
 
 Schiitze, St. Versuch einer Theorie des Komischen. (1817.) 
 
 Sidls, Boris. Psychology of Laughter. 
 
 Spencer, H. "Physiology of Laughter." Essays Scientific, 
 Political, and Speculative, 2d Series, 452. 
 
 Sully, James. An Essay on Laughter. London, 1902. 
 
 Thorndike, E. L. The Original Nature of Man, 160-67. 
 
 Titchener, E. B. Outlines of Psychology. 
 
 Vasey. The Philosophy of Laughing and Smiling. 2d ed., 
 London, 1882. 
 
 Vischer. Ueber das Erhabene und Komische, ein Beitrag zur 
 Phil, des Schonen. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PROFANITY 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PROFANITY 
 
 WILL genetic psychology throw as much 
 light upon profanity as it has upon 
 laughter? Does the catharsis effect, which has 
 often been attributed to profanity, entitle us 
 to consider it under the laws of mental relax- 
 ation ? Is profanity, too, a kind of relief from 
 tension ? Is it an escape from social restrictions 
 in the direction of an earlier and more primi- 
 tive form of expression? Let us try in this 
 chapter to give a brief answer to these two 
 questions: Why do men swear? When they 
 swear, why do they use the words they do? 
 
 We may distinguish two kinds of swearing, 
 asseverative and ejaculatory. The former will 
 include, first, legal swearing, and secondly, 
 popular asseverations taking the form of legal 
 oaths. Of these, legal swearing is not, of 
 course, included in profanity. Nor should we 
 include popular asseverations apart from legal 
 proceedings, provided only they are used with 
 sufficient solemnity, as when a person accused 
 
146 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 of a serious offense calls the gods to witness 
 his innocence. On the other hand, the light 
 and flippant use of the name of a deity in 
 asseverations, as in the yih Aia or vr/ rhv Aia of 
 the Greeks, or the mehercle or edepol of the 
 Romans, or the name of God following the 
 particle hy {bei) in English or German, would 
 be considered as profane swearing, although 
 its moral quality will depend upon the ac- 
 cepted code of the age or country in which it 
 is used. 
 
 The psychology of these asseverative phrases 
 is comparatively simple and need detain us 
 but a moment. Truth-telling is a modern 
 virtue and represents a highly developed civi- 
 lization. The mendacity of former days and 
 of primitive peoples is well known. Under such 
 circumstances, truth and honesty, whether 
 real or pretended, protect and assert them- 
 selves by the strongest appeals to the most 
 sacred objects. Hence, invocations to the 
 deities, to the holy grave, to the saints, to 
 the sword or javelin, to the head of the em- 
 peror, to the sun or the moon. Later these 
 phrases, which at first are solemn protes- 
 tations of honesty or truth, become merely 
 conventional expressions having an adverbial 
 
PROFANITY 147 
 
 force and differing only in degree from words 
 like "truly," "verily," or "indeed." 
 
 It is, however, with the second kind of 
 swearing, the ejaculatory, that we are now 
 chiefly concerned. From this point of view, 
 we may then define profanity as the ejacula- 
 tory or exclamatory use of a word or phrase, 
 usually the name of the deity or connected in 
 some way with religion or other sacred things, 
 having no logical connection with the subject 
 in hand, and indicative of strong feeling, such 
 as anger or disapproval. This definition we may 
 accept with sufficient latitude to include the 
 severer forms of profanity, such as cursing, 
 vituperation, and blasphemy, and the milder 
 and more common forms, such as the mere 
 interjectional use of words and phrases that 
 have lost their once sacred character. 
 
 Since any theory or explanation of profanity 
 must, of course, rest upon the facts to be ex- 
 plained, a brief summary of the more ob- 
 vious facts will be the best introduction to our 
 study. 
 
 The words and phrases used in profane 
 swearing we may roughly divide into seven 
 classes. 
 
 I. Names of deities, angels, and devils; 
 
148 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 such as "Indra," "Zeus," "Jupiter," "God," 
 "Lord," "Christ," "Jesus," "the Devil," 
 "Beelzebub," etc. In this class should be 
 included the numerous corrupted or euphe- 
 mistic fprms of the above names, such as 
 "gad," "egad," "gol," "gosh," "deuce" 
 {Deus), "potz," "law" (Lord), etc. 
 
 2. Names connected with the sacred mat- 
 ters of religion, such as ^'' sakrament" " kreuz" 
 "the holy mass," "zounds" (God's wounds), 
 etc. 
 
 3. Names of saints, holy persons, or bibli- 
 cal characters, such as "holy Mary," "holy 
 Moses," "holy Peter," "Jehoshaphat," etc. 
 
 4. Names of sacred places, such as "Jerusa- 
 lem," " the holy grave," " the land of Goshen," 
 "for the land's sake," etc. 
 
 5. Words relating to the future life, such 
 as "himmel," "heavens," "hell," "bless," 
 "damn" (with its numerous corrupted or eu- 
 phemistic forms, like "darn," "dern," "dang," 
 "demn"). 
 
 6. Vulgar words. Words and phrases un- 
 usual or forbidden by polite usage. 
 
 7. Expletives, including words or phrases 
 having unusual force for various reasons, such 
 as "mercy," "goodness," "gracious," "for 
 
PROFANITY 149 
 
 pity's sake," "confound it," "hang it," "tau- 
 send" "million" etc. Many of these will be 
 found to be fossil remains of religious terms 
 or of ejaculatory prayers, such, for instance, 
 as "mercy" and "gracious." ^ 
 
 We shall return later to the question of the 
 common quality possessed by these words 
 adapting them to the use of profanity. 
 
 Continuing our inductive study, we should 
 next notice the history of profanity. Here our 
 knowledge is scanty and fragmentary.^ The 
 history of profanity, so far as it is written, is 
 bound up with the history of religion, profane 
 swearing having prevailed at those times and 
 among those people where great sacredness 
 has been attached to the names of the gods or 
 to matters of religion. This rule does not, how- 
 ever, apply to ribaldry and vulgarity, which 
 under many circumstances are included in 
 profanity and constitute a very objectionable 
 form, but rather to profanity in its ordinary 
 
 * For full lists of common swear-words and their sup- 
 posed origins, see Small, "Methods of Manifesting the In- 
 stinct of Certainty," Ped. Sem., v, 313. 
 
 ' Julian Sharman, in his quaint book entitled A Cursory 
 History of Swearing (London, 1884), throws interesting 
 side-lights on the subject. We are indebted to him for 
 some of the facts under this head. 
 
ISO PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 sense, such as cursing, blasphemy, and execra- 
 tion. The psychological grounds for this rela- 
 tion between profanity and religion will be 
 apparent as we proceed. Hence it was that 
 among the Hebrews the vice was so common 
 and so offensive that its prohibition found a 
 prominent place in the Decalogue, while in 
 the Levitical law it was punishable by death. 
 For a like reason, among the less serious 
 Greeks the vice was uncommon, being prac- 
 tically limited to a few asseverative phrases, 
 and although the abuse of these was ridiculed 
 at Athens and forbidden in Crete where Rhad- 
 amanthus made a law that the people should 
 not swear by the gods, but by the dog and 
 the goose and the plane tree, it was never 
 taken very seriously. The Athenian boys, for 
 instance, were allowed to swear by Hercules, 
 but only in the open air. In Rome, custom 
 allowed the men to swear by Hercules and the 
 women by Castor. 
 
 In modern times it is again in serious and 
 religious England and America that the vice 
 has most prevailed. In England in the thir- 
 teenth and fourteenth centuries, after the 
 monkish teaching had implanted a vivid con- 
 sciousness of the suprasanctity of the body of 
 
PROFANITY 151 
 
 Christ and of every scene connected with his 
 sufferings, there burst upon the country a 
 wave of imprecation in which profane use was 
 made of the body and members and wounds 
 of Christ and of many things connected with 
 his death. ^ Fossil remains of these oaths have 
 come down to us in such expressions as 
 "zounds," " 'sdeath," "bodikins," "ods bodi- 
 kins," etc. The significance of this historical 
 circumstance will be seen when we discover 
 that the psychological value of an oath de- 
 pends upon the force of the "shock" which it 
 is capable of giving. 
 
 After the Reformation swearing in England 
 took on a different coloring. It was sonorous 
 in sound and was assumed to be manly. It 
 smacked of the field, the army, and the court. 
 Elizabeth herself is said to have been profi- 
 cient in the lordly art. Hotspur demands of 
 Lady Percy, "Swear me, Kate, like a lady as 
 thou art, a good mouth-filling oath." In the 
 
 * We should not, however, overlook the fact that owing 
 to the deeply religious feeling of the times, this impious 
 language would cause great offense and distress to the more 
 refined minds, which would find expression in the literature 
 of the day, and coming down to us give us an exaggerated 
 picture of the English profanity of those centuries compared 
 with that of other times and places. 
 
152 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 army the favorite English oath was so very 
 common that in France and Holland the name 
 "Goddam" became a mere nickname for an 
 Englishman. In the seventeenth century an 
 attempt was made to suppress profanity by 
 Parliamentary enactments, with every kind 
 of penalty from a fine of twelvepence an oath 
 in England to punishment by death in Scot- 
 land. At different epochs in later English 
 history there have been epidemics of profan- 
 ity, as in the reigns of Charles II, Anne, and 
 George II. Until recent times it has usually 
 been considered manly or lordly to swear, 
 giving the swearer a certain kind of distinc- 
 tion. This, indeed, is noticed now among 
 boys and some classes of men. But in general 
 in this century profanity has become unfash- 
 ionable. The stamp of vulgarity and social 
 disapproval have proved far more effective 
 agencies in suppressing the vice than any legis- 
 lation. But the habit still widely prevails 
 throughout the world, especially among sol- 
 diers and sailors, in the laboring classes, among 
 the uneducated and among criminals. 
 
 We may next notice some psychological 
 facts about swearing. Under what circum- 
 stances do men swear, and what are the sub- 
 
PROFANITY 153 
 
 jective effects of the oath? In general, pro- 
 fanity is the accompaniment of anger or of 
 emotions of the anger type. People swear 
 when they are provoked, or annoyed, or sur- 
 prised by a hurt or injury. They swear in 
 personal encounters or altercations when 
 actual bodily injury is not attempted, the 
 most dangerous men not being the hardest 
 swearers. They swear at horses as an incentive 
 to greater exertion and at all domestic animals 
 when irritated by them. Finally, they use 
 oaths in any discourse where ejaculations, 
 interjections, and superlatives are demanded 
 or where the poverty of language makes it 
 incommensurate to the occasion. In general, 
 we may say that the occasion of profanity is 
 a situation in which there is a high degree of 
 emotion, usually of the aggressive type, ac- 
 companied by a certain feeling of helplessness. 
 In cases of great fear, where action is impos- 
 sible, as in impending shipwreck, men pray; 
 in great anger, they swear. 
 
 As regards the subjective effects of pro- 
 fanity, they are characteristic and peculiar. 
 The most striking effect is that of a pleasant 
 feeling of relief from a painful stress. It seems 
 to be the appropriate expression for certain 
 
154 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 mental states and is accompanied by that sat- 
 isfaction which attends all emotional expres- 
 sion. To take a simple illustration : Even men 
 who do not swear can by a sort of inherited 
 instinct appreciate the teleqlogical relation ex- 
 isting between the behavior of a refractory 
 collar-button during the hurried moments of 
 dressing for some evening function and the 
 half-smothered ejaculation of the monosyllable 
 "damn." The word seems to have been made 
 for the occasion. The feeling of annoyance in 
 this case is slight and the instance trifling, but 
 in more serious affairs, under the influence of 
 great anger, the mental stress demands an out- 
 let which the oath seems to afford in a striking 
 manner. 
 
 Here is a forcible illustration of the instinc- 
 tive desire to relieve the overburdened soul 
 by the use of swear-words. A friend of the 
 writer, a clergyman, has a boy of six years, 
 a sturdy and combative child, but of good 
 habits and careful training. One day, having 
 suffered some serious childish trouble with his 
 playmates, he came in and said, "Mamma, I 
 feel just like saying 'God damn'; I would like 
 to say, 'Jesus Christ,' but I think that would 
 be wrong." This pacifying and, so to speak. 
 
PROFANITY iss 
 
 purifying effect of profanity is one of the 
 phenomena which any theory of swearing 
 must take into account. It is observed also 
 in other forms of emotional expression, as for 
 instance in the "good cry," whose purifying 
 effect in relieving the tension of grief or anger 
 is well known. H. Campbell, writing on the 
 physiology of the emotions, says, "The shout- 
 ing and gesticulation which accompany an 
 outburst of passion act physiologically by re- 
 lieving nerve tension; and, indeed, as Hugh- 
 lings Jackson has suggested, swearing may 
 not be without its physiological justification. 
 Passionate outbursts are generally succeeded 
 by periods of good behavior and, it may be, 
 improved health." ^ 
 
 Certain facts also in the field of abnormal 
 psychology must be taken account of in any 
 theory of profanity. Mental pathology con- 
 firms the evidence of philology that profanity 
 is one of the oldest forms of spoken language. 
 In progressive aphasia, profanity is often the 
 last form of speech to be lost and aphasic 
 patients who can swear oftentimes cannot re- 
 peat the profane words from hearing. The 
 
 1 " The Physiology of the Emotions," Nature, vol. xvi, 
 306. 
 
iS6 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 oaths slip out quite reflexly. Reformed swear- 
 ers revert unconsciously to their profanity in 
 moments of great excitement. In automatic 
 writing, in trance utterances, in the language 
 of instinctive criminals, and in subconscious 
 and reversionary psychoses in general, profan- 
 ity, usually of the milder sort, has a conspicu- 
 ous place. These phenomena afford at least 
 some ground for the belief that profanity is 
 an ancient and deep-seated form of expression 
 standing in close organic connection with ges- 
 ture language. 
 
 Keeping in mind, then, the principal facts 
 to be explained, let us proceed to consider the 
 theory of profanity. Previous to the fruitful 
 discussion which followed upon the James- 
 Lange theory of emotion and in general ac- 
 ceptance of Darwin's theory of expression, 
 the explanation of profanity, had it been at- 
 tempted, would doubtless have proceeded 
 along the following lines : Profanity is an ex- 
 pression of emotion, particularly of the emo- 
 tion of anger. Anger, like other emotions, has 
 as its physiological accompaniment an inner 
 turmoil, an increased metabolism in the nerv- 
 ous centers, an increased excitement and 
 stress, seeking an outlet in motor channels. 
 
PROFANITY 157 
 
 Profanity is one of the many forms of the out- 
 burst of this inner excitement. Why the sur- 
 plus released nervous energy escapes through 
 this particular channel is to be explained 
 partly by the law of serviceable habit and 
 partly by the constitution of the body. The 
 natural and primitive form of expression of 
 anger is combat, involving a supreme effort 
 of the whole muscular system and high-pres- 
 sure activity of the heart and lungs. The 
 inhibition of these earlier forms of reaction 
 makes other outlets necessary. The organs of 
 speech serve well as such drainage channels. 
 Animals in anger may fight, but if actual fight- 
 ing is impracticable, they may snarl or growl 
 or bellow or scream or roar. Men in anger may 
 perhaps be obliged to repress every overt act 
 and every expression of their emotion except 
 facial movements or some form of vocaliza- 
 tion. Profanity is therefore a safety-valve; it 
 represents partial inhibition; if the man did 
 not swear, he would do something worse. It 
 may be likened to the engine blowing off 
 steam. Why the vocalization takes the form 
 of the profane oath may also be explained 
 upon the same principle. Oaths are more 
 forceful and give greater vent to the inner tur- 
 
iS8 PSYa-IOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 moil than less sacred words. In the same way 
 we understand why the vr;icc in prr^fanity is 
 usually loud and high. The subjective pacify- 
 ing effect of the oath, the feeling of relief, is 
 also readily explained from this point of view. 
 It is an actual physiological relief of a central 
 stress. It is a kind of purgation. 
 
 This explanation is open to criticism at 
 nearly every point. As popularly understood, 
 it regards the emotion as a kind of psychic 
 force which Is aroused by the perception of an 
 object and seeks an outlet. If interpreted 
 physiologically, it presupposes a central ex- 
 citement or diffusive wave of energy which is 
 itself unexplained. It involves, too, the doubt- 
 ful theories of accidental discharge and drain- 
 age channels. It assumes finally that the 
 emotion precedes the expression and is not 
 mediated by it. 
 
 It is evident, then, that we can no longer 
 say that profanity is an outburf,t of emotion 
 and use the emotion of anger to explain it, 
 nor can we affirm that the vocal organs are 
 simply easy drainage channels i<)r exces- 
 sive nervous discharge. The vocal ejaculation 
 must be more directly connected with its 
 object, i.e., with the perception of whatever 
 
PROFAXm' IS9 
 
 evokes it. Profanity, therefore, can be ex- 
 plained only from the standpoint of phylog- 
 eny. It must be shown to be a useful form of 
 reaction, at least in the beginning. 
 
 If we cx)nsider ver^- simple forms of animal 
 life, we may say that the acti\aties of the 
 indi\-iduwal are of three kinds, those connected 
 with the procuring of food, with protection 
 from enemies, and vrith. reproduction. So long 
 as these acti\dties are normal, there would be 
 no psychical accompaninient which could be 
 called emotion. Again, all these acti\-ities in- 
 volve a senson' mechanism and a gradually 
 perfected coordination between the sensory 
 and motor mechanism, and this we may caU 
 habit. The failure of this coordination, con- 
 scious or unconscious efforts at readjustment, 
 may have for their jjsychical accompaniment 
 something that we may call primitive emo- 
 tion. It is more nearly related to pain than to 
 pleasure. 
 
 Let us now confine oiir study to the second 
 of the above-mentioned forms of acti^-it^", 
 that connected with protection from enemies. 
 These acti^■ities will take two forms, which 
 we may call combat and escai>e, the latter 
 including flight and concealment. Failure to 
 
i6o PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 coordinate the usual sense impressions and 
 muscular reactions leading to flight or con- 
 cealment will be accompanied by the prim- 
 itive emotion of fear. A like failure to coordi- 
 nate the usual sensory and motor elements 
 connected with combat will be accompanied 
 by the emotion of anger. Let us again confine 
 ourselves to the reactions connected with com- 
 bat. These reactions will need constant read- 
 justment to adapt them to changing environ- 
 ment connected with and leading to changes 
 in bodily structure. Suppose an animal to be 
 attacked by an enemy of superior strength 
 under circumstances where escape would be 
 impracticable. Any modification of the usual 
 reactions of combat of such a character as to 
 induce in the opponent reactions of flight will 
 be of distinct advantage to the combatant, 
 and therefore used and preserved. Darwin's 
 illustrations will at once occur to us, such as 
 the display of teeth, or reactions which are 
 designed to increase the apparent size of the 
 combatant, such as the erection of the hair or 
 feathers, or the arching of the back. Under 
 this head we may include all kinds of noises 
 which an animal may make in order to " strike 
 terror to the heart" of the opponent, such as 
 
PROFANITY i6i 
 
 the growl, the snarl, the roar, the bellow, and 
 the hiss, all of which are, like the curse or 
 oath of anger in human beings, harmless in 
 themselves, but useful as indirect means of 
 defense, since they induce in the opponent 
 the reactions of flight instead of combat. It 
 is conceivable that the faculty of phonation 
 arose originally in this way, as a modification 
 of the organism useful in defense against a 
 more powerful foe. In that case the earliest 
 form of speech would be the ejaculation of 
 anger. It is probable, however, that a more 
 careful inquiry into the origin of phonation 
 will lead us to a somewhat different conclusion. 
 Fortunately, our discussion does not involve 
 us in the problem of the origin of language. 
 The defenders of the several theories all agree 
 in this — that vocalization of some sort pre- 
 ceded articulate language by vast periods of 
 time. Take for instance the "bow-wow" or 
 onomatopoetic theory. If a dog was named 
 "bow-wow" by a hypothetic homo alalus be- 
 cause of his bark, it is assumed that the dog 
 himself already possessed a faculty of vocal 
 expression. One wonders, then, to what extent 
 this faculty of vocalization had developed 
 previous to the time when it became " speech." 
 
i62 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 If the dog or other vertebrate could express 
 his anger by a growl, we can hardly doubt that 
 "speechless man" was very far from speech- 
 less, at least as regards his emotions, or that 
 he possessed a considerable emotional vocabu- 
 lary. The discussion about the origin of lan- 
 guage has been very much a waste of words 
 for the reason that it has been conducted usu- 
 ally from the standpoint of philology rather 
 than from that of genetic psychology. In real- 
 ity it has been a discussion about the origin 
 of conceptual thought and has had to do with 
 a relatively recent period in human develop- 
 ment. If we go back of this period, we see at 
 once that primitive man must have possessed 
 an extensive and useful vocabulary. 
 
 It would be possible to make a trial list 
 of the forms of vocalization which would be 
 useful to a species of animals, assuming only 
 that the sense of hearing was possessed by its 
 own and other species. There would be, for 
 instance, the cry of pain, the scream of fear, 
 the laugh of exultation, the growl of anger, the 
 song of love, and finally the articulate word 
 as expression of thought. None of these are 
 to be considered as mere expressions of emo- 
 tion. They are merely useful activities, all of 
 
PROFANITY r63 
 
 them probably being forms of communication. 
 The cry of pain, for instance, brings food and 
 aid to the young. The song of love, including 
 all forms of vocalization that are pleasing to 
 the ear, is useful in alluring the desired mate. 
 The scream of fear is a warning of danger, 
 while the growl or snarl or roar of anger is 
 useful in putting to flight an opponent. Now 
 the human analogue of the growl or roar of 
 anger is the profane oath; and carrying out 
 the list of analogues we shall have, as the 
 various forms of primitive vocalization, weep- 
 ing, screaming, laughing, swearing, and sing- 
 ing. The accuracy or completeness of such a 
 classification is unimportant for our purpose. 
 It may be left to anthropologists. But it sug- 
 gests the wide extent and primitive character 
 of vocalization as contrasted with mere articu- 
 late speech. Furthermore, when we reflect 
 that these various forms of vocalization are 
 not mere expressions of feeling, but life-serving 
 forms of communication, we see that they 
 may properly be included in the term lan- 
 guage, and the problem of the origin of lan- 
 guage takes on a different form and a much 
 simpler one. Moreover, much of the wealth 
 of this primitive, so-called emotional, Ian- 
 
i64 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 guage has come over into articulate language 
 in the form of the most various modulation, 
 intonation, and accent, so that the meaning of 
 an articulate phrase or sentence may be ten- 
 fold more than the mere conceptual equiva- 
 lents of the words. 
 
 We now approach our last problem, and we 
 find this easily solved from the standpoint 
 which we have gained. What is the explana- 
 tion of the peculiar words used in profanity? 
 These we have seen to be in our era the names 
 of deity, of holy things and places, religious 
 terms of many kinds, and finally vulgar words. 
 Recalling our classification of these terms, do 
 they possess any quality in common which 
 makes them serviceable as expressions of 
 anger, i.e., as means of offense.'' Yes, they 
 possess that which all weapons possess, the 
 power of producing a shock in the one against 
 whom they are directed, that is, they are 
 all "shocking." According to the law of selec- 
 tion which we are applying, the vocal accom- 
 paniments of anger will always be those 
 sounds or words which are most terrifying. 
 Before the advent of conceptual language 
 we may expect phonation which is merely 
 loud or which suggests natural enemies or 
 
PROFANITY i6s 
 
 destructive agencies, such as the roar of the 
 storm, the crash of the Hghtning, or the growl 
 of the thunder. When articulate language ap- 
 pears, we shall have the names of these de- 
 structive agencies, together with the vocal 
 stress and intonation of the original expres- 
 sions. Hence "thunder and lightning," "(io«- 
 nerwetter," "Gottes donner und blitz" or '^potz 
 tausend" or "tausend donnerwetter" where the 
 oath is made as awful as possible by the appeal 
 to mighty forces or mighty numbers. If there 
 Is anything upon which the imagination has 
 been accustomed to dwell with peculiar dread, 
 or fear, or awe, its serviceableness in produc- 
 ing a shock is still greater. Hence the particu- 
 lar effectiveness of oaths relating to gods or 
 devils or to future punishment, such, for in- 
 stance, as the English word "damn," or the 
 expression "hell and damnation." Owing to 
 physical disability, or to social or legal re- 
 straints, the angry man may not be able to 
 inflict actual bodily harm upon his adversary, 
 but he can with im.punity and much satisfac- 
 tion condemn h.im to eternal punishment, and 
 in doing so make "his voice as awful as his vocal 
 capacity will permit, and fortify his curses by 
 invoking the terrible name of God or making 
 
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i68 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 or shock the opponent. The words actually 
 used in profanity are found to have this com- 
 mon quality. Although originally useful in 
 combat, the occasion of profanity at the pres- 
 ent time may be any analogous situation in 
 which our well-being is threatened, as in help- 
 less distress or disappointment. There is al- 
 ways, however, some object, though it may 
 even be one's self, against which the oath is 
 directed. 
 
 Profanity is a primitive and instinctive form 
 of reaction to a situation which threatens in 
 some way the well-being of the individual, 
 standing next to that of actual combat. Like 
 all instinctive reactions, it does not generate 
 emotion but allays it. The emotion arises 
 where the reaction is delayed or inhibited. We 
 are thus able to account for the catharsis 
 phenomena of profanity. It seems to serve as 
 a vent for emotion and to relieve it. It really 
 acts as a vent only in this sense that it brings to 
 an end the intolerable period of inner conflict, 
 of attempted inhibition, of repression and re- 
 adjustment, and allows the habitual attitude 
 to assert itself. The relief is only that of any 
 completed activity. The " Sakrament" which 
 the peasant uttered completes in a certain 
 
PROFANITY 169 
 
 sorry fashion the activity which should have 
 been completed by his entering the carriage. 
 The emotion, his disappointment and chagrin, 
 are psychical states which accompany the at- 
 tempts at readjustment or inhibition, and are 
 to a certain extent allayed by the oath. As a 
 means of restoring disturbed balance and of 
 relieving inner tension, profanity thus has a 
 catharsis effect similar to that of laughter and 
 play and may thus appear as a form of relaxa- 
 tion. This effect is probably further increased 
 by the elemental character of profanity itself. 
 The individual revels in an outburst of primi- 
 . tive language giving him a certain sense of 
 release and escape from the constant inhibi- 
 tions which society demands. 
 
 This illustration may perhaps bring the 
 whole principle of catharsis into clearer light. 
 The Aristotelian theory of catharsis, as it has 
 usually been interpreted, whether as applied 
 to the drama in Aristotle's sense, or whether as 
 applied to the forms of relaxation which we are 
 studying, receives little sanction from psy- 
 chology. Sport, play, laughter, and profanity 
 have a catharsis effect, but it is not because they 
 act either as a purge or as a vent, nor is it be- 
 cause they offer harmless exercise to emotions 
 
I70 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 which otherwise might be destructive. It is 
 rather because they provide some form of sub- 
 stituted or completed activity, thus permitting 
 the subsidence of the emotion, or else, as in 
 other cases, it is because they serve as a means 
 of rest and relaxation by substituting older 
 and easier forms of behavior for the newer and 
 more difficult ones, thus relieving stress and 
 tension. 
 
 If we should interpret the whole process 
 physiologically after the manner of Walter B. 
 Cannon ^ and Dr. George W. Crile,^ it still 
 does not appear that profanity and laughter 
 are to be considered as forms of catharsis ac- 
 cording to the Aristotelian medical simile, al- 
 though Dr. Crile would so understand them. 
 That is, he would probably say, a man is con- 
 fronted by a threatening situation, say an 
 enemy. An emotion of anger arises, and at 
 once the whole organism is thrown into a state 
 of preparedness for battle, including visceral 
 changes, secretions of the thyroid and adre- 
 nals, etc., making possible the great muscular 
 activity which the prospective combat, phy- 
 
 * Walter B. Cannon, Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, 
 Fear, and Rage. 
 ' Dr. George W. Crile, The Origin of the Emotions. 
 
PROFANITY 171 
 
 logenetically determined, will require. But 
 owing to social and moral restraints no combat 
 can take place, and the energy is partly used 
 in the profane oath, the loud voice, and other 
 expressions of anger. It is drawn off, so to 
 speak, into other motor channels, which thus 
 serve as a kind of vent and so preclude injury 
 to the organism. 
 
 But the point we wish to make is that the 
 profane oath, the loud voice, the laughing, 
 etc., have themselves been phylogenetically 
 determined as useful forms of reaction. They 
 are not, therefore, drainage channels, vents, or 
 safety-valves, any more than was the original 
 activity for which they are regarded as sub- 
 stitutes. In other words, they are in no sense 
 physiological substitutes, but forms of re- 
 action which social evolution itself has sub- 
 stituted for older and simpler ones. 
 
 If, finally, the oath is a form of instinctive 
 reaction, and even a purifying agent, why is it 
 considered to have an immoral quality.? For 
 two reasons : first, because advancing civiliza- 
 tion bids us evermore inhibit and repress, and 
 secondly, because of the unfortunate but in- 
 evitable connection between profanity and the 
 sacred names of religion. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ALCOHOL 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ALCOHOL 
 
 ONE of the problems which has been defi- 
 nitely set for psychologists to solve dur- 
 ing the twentieth century is the cause of the 
 almost universal desire for alcohol. It is a curi- 
 ous fact that in the thousands and hundreds of 
 thousands of books, articles, and writings of 
 every description relating to the many phases 
 of the alcohol problem, this simple and funda- 
 mental question — Why do men desire alcohol? 
 — has until recently never been carefully con- 
 sidered at all, and even now has not been 
 answered. The belief that the desire for alcohol 
 is due to total depravity or original sin seems 
 to be about as far as we have got in answer- 
 ing this question. One author wrote a serious 
 article not long ago to show that the cause of 
 drinking is to be attributed to bad cooking in 
 the home! He evidently did not appreciate the 
 fact that the desire for alcohol, as well as its 
 use, is at least as old as the lake-dwellers of the 
 Neolithic Age. Few if any savage tribes known 
 
176 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 to anthropologists, whether in ancient or in 
 modern times, except certain tribes- of Eski- 
 mos, who have no fruit or grain from which 
 alcohol can be prepared, have been without 
 this drug or some other having similar proper- 
 ties. The discovery and use of alcohol have not 
 spread from tribe to tribe, but have been au- 
 tochthonic, arising independently in all parts 
 of the world. So keen has been the desire for 
 alcohol and so eager the quest for it, that al- 
 ways and everywhere some means has been 
 discovered by which this water of life could be 
 expressed from fruit or grain or vegetable. 
 
 And yet we do not even know why it is 
 desired. 
 
 The whole vast machinery of the temper- 
 ance movement, employing thousands of 
 skilled and zealous workers, controlling large 
 sums of money, and making use of wise edu- 
 cational, social, and legislative methods, seems 
 to have accomplished little or nothing in reduc- 
 ing the consumption of alcohol. At the very 
 time that legislative and social control of the 
 manufacture, sale, and use of alcoholic liquors 
 is extended over larger and larger portions 
 of our country, the relentless figures of the 
 Commissioner of Internal Revenue show that 
 
ALCOHOL 177 
 
 year by year with almost fateful regularity 
 the fer capita consiimption of these liquors 
 has increased rather than decreased. 
 
 The following table shows the -per capita 
 consumption of all liquors in the United States 
 from the year 1850 to the year 1914, inclusive : 
 
 PER CAPITA CONSUMPTION OF ALL WINES AND 
 LIQUORS 
 
 Period Gallons Period Gallons 
 
 1850 4.08 1901 17-65 
 
 i860 6.43 1902 19- 14 
 
 1870 7.70 1903 19.57 
 
 1871-80 8.79 1904 19-87 
 
 1881-90 13.21 1905 19.85 
 
 1891 16.72 1906 21-55 
 
 1892 17-13 1907 22.79 
 
 1893 18.20 1908 22.22 
 
 1894 16.98 1909 21.06 
 
 1895 16.57 1910 21.86 
 
 1896 17.12 1911 22.79 
 
 1897 16.50 1912 21.98 
 
 1898 17-37 1913 22.68 
 
 1899 16.82 1914 22. 49* 
 
 1900 17.76 
 
 * The nearly stationary 'per capita consumption for the 
 past few years and the probable actual decrease for the 
 year 1915, the statistics for which are not at this writing 
 available, would not seem to indicate any lessened desire 
 for alcohol. The fact that the enormous extension of dry 
 territory in recent years has done so little to decrease the 
 consumption of alcohol would seem to show a steadily in- 
 creasing desire for it. 
 
178 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 These figures should not be interpreted as 
 showing the failure of the various means used 
 for the limitation of the sale of intoxicating 
 drinks. There is every reason for believing 
 that these means are in a high degree effective 
 and that without them the increase in the use 
 of alcohol would have been much greater than 
 it has been. The true meaning of the figures is, 
 rather, to show the increasing force of this 
 desire in modern society. 
 
 There are, of course, other great human de- 
 sires besides the desire for alcohol, but in re- 
 spect to these other desires it seems less diffi- 
 cult to explain the cause. It is not difficult to 
 explain the desire for bread, nor the keen in- 
 terest in all matters relating to the means of 
 acquiring it. Problems of labor and capital, 
 problems of high prices, problems of produc- 
 tion and distribution of food, relate more or 
 less directly to the bread question and become 
 thus wholly intelligible, because bread is nec- 
 essary to life. Neither is it difficult to under- 
 stand another profound human desire, which 
 involves serious social problems, the desire of 
 the sexes for each other. Difficult as these 
 social problems may be, the psychologist's 
 part presents here less difficulty, for the place 
 
ALCOHOL 179 
 
 of this great passion in human economy is 
 clear. 
 
 The desire for alcohol approaches the above 
 desires as regards both its force and its uni- 
 versality, but its place in human economy is 
 not thus far clear. 
 
 The following familiar statistics are not 
 cited in this case to show the extent of "hu- 
 man depravity," nor to point out an "evil" to 
 be suppressed, but rather to indicate the force 
 of a himian desire whose cause we seek to 
 determine. 
 
 The people of the United States are now 
 consuming annually about 2,000,000,000 gal- 
 ions of malt liquors, nearly 64,000,000 gallons 
 of wine and more than 138,000,000 gallons of 
 distilled liquors. In Germany the per capita 
 consumption of distilled liquors is about the 
 same as in this country, while their consump- 
 tion of malt liquors is, per capita, about one 
 third larger than ours and of wine about twice 
 as large. In England the per capita consvmip- 
 tion of malt liquors is still greater than it is in 
 Germany, while the consumption of wine and 
 distilled liquors is somewhat less than in Ger- 
 many or in the United States. 
 
 In this country we have no means of deter- 
 
i8o PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 mining accurately the outlay of the people for 
 alcoholic liquors, but we know that the whole- 
 sale value of the malt, vinous, and dis- 
 tilled liquors produced annually in the United 
 States is approximately $600,000,000, abnost 
 the same as the total value of our wheat crop. 
 These figures do not take into account the 
 value of wines and liquors imported, nor the 
 output of illicit distilleries. Of these illicit 
 stills, according to the last report of the 
 United States Commissioner of Internal Rev- 
 enue, 1593 were seized and destroyed during 
 the fiscal year 19 14. 
 
 An intense human interest clusters around 
 everything connected with alcohol. The very 
 names of the countless forms of beverages, as 
 well as their odors, tastes, and colors, are all 
 interesting. Language itself reflects the depth 
 of this interest, particularly in the many syn- 
 onyms for intoxication. Partridge, in his book 
 on "The Psychology of Intemperance," gives 
 a list of about 370 words and phrases in Eng- 
 lish expressive of intoxication, and he says that 
 a list of more than 600 words in German has 
 been collected. In his opinion nothing except 
 the sexual relation has made a stronger im- 
 pression upon popular language. 
 
ALCOHOL i8i 
 
 The praise of wine has been celebrated in 
 the poetry of every age. Drinking-songs have 
 a peculiar charm. In the history both of reli- 
 gion and of medicine, alcohol has occupied a 
 prominent place, and in some form it has been 
 regarded as a cure for every ill. Huge volumes 
 could be filled with the legislative acts of civi- 
 lized people in their efforts to regulate its sale 
 and use. In recent years an almost incredible 
 number of books and articles has appeared re- 
 lating to some phase of this subject. 
 
 It is evident, then, that there exists in the 
 human mind, for some reason or other, a pro- 
 found, persistent, and intense desire for al- 
 cohol. The psychologist is interested in dis- 
 covering the cause of this desire and the 
 sociologist well knows that it will not be until 
 this cause has been determined that any real 
 progress will be made in solving the social 
 problem of alcohol. 
 
 How, then, shall the cause of the desire for 
 alcohol be determined? It would seem a priori 
 improbable that anything so profoundly and 
 universally desired should not answer to some 
 real need of the human organism. It is clear, 
 therefore, that the first thing to do is to make 
 a scientific study of alcohol and its relation to 
 
1 82 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 the body and mind. It is only in recent years 
 that any real attempt has been made to carry 
 out such studies, but they have already cast a 
 flood of light upon the subject. Physiological, 
 psychological, and sociological laboratories, 
 hospitals and asylums, medical records, and 
 the reports of life insurance companies have all 
 contributed to give us a more accurate knowl- 
 edge of the action of alcohol on the human body 
 and the human mind and to pave the way for a 
 scientific theory of the alcohol motive. These 
 researches are particularly instructive for the 
 reason that they deal with the real question, 
 i.e., with the effects of alcohol in moderate 
 doses, not with its excessive use. The literature 
 on inebriety, alcoholism, and intemperance has 
 always been sufficiently abundant. 
 
 It would be impossible in this chapter to 
 attempt even the briefest summary of these 
 researches. It will be sufficient simply to recall 
 the more important conclusions. 
 
 I. The desire for alcoholic drinks is due to 
 the presence of ethyl alcohol, CJi(P. Beer, 
 ale, wine, and even whiskey and brandy, have 
 characteristic odors, pleasant to many people 
 and ravishing to some, but it is not on this 
 account that they are desired. The pleasant- 
 
ALCOHOL 183 
 
 ness of the tastes and odor is largely if not 
 wholly due to association with ethyl alcohol, 
 
 2. It is not on account of its food value that 
 alcohol is desired. The researches of Atwater 
 and others have seemed to show rather con- 
 clusively that a certain amount of alcohol, 
 say two and one half ounces per day, may 
 under favorable circum.stances be oxidized in 
 the body and so act as a substitute for other 
 food by furnishing heat and possibly energy. 
 It is not claimed, however, by those who hold 
 that alcohol may in some cases act as a food 
 that it is on this account that it is desired. 
 The history of drinking, which shows that it 
 has been wholly convivial among primitive 
 people and that it is still largely so, precludes 
 this view. It is only in modern industrial 
 drinking that any attempt has been made to 
 work on alcohol or to live on it, and here the 
 attempt has not been successful, as Sullivan 
 has shown in his careful and painstaking work 
 on "AlcohoUsm." 
 
 3. It has now been pretty definitely shown 
 that alcohol is not a stimulant, and thus there 
 is overthrown at once the most commonly 
 accepted theory as to the cause of the desire 
 for it. Alcohol acts as a depressant upon all 
 
1 84 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 forms of life from the simplest micro-organism 
 to the most complex nervous structures in the 
 human brain. It is interesting, however, to 
 call attention to the fact, especially since a 
 few physiologists still claim that under some 
 circumstances it may act as a stimulant to 
 certain bodily organs, — that if alcohol were a 
 stimulant, this would not, after all, afford any 
 evidence that it plays a useful part in human 
 economy. A stimulant as such adds nothing 
 to human economy, whether such economy is 
 considered from the standpoint of the race or 
 of the individual. It offers no gain in the long 
 run and could be of no real advantage in the 
 struggle for existence. A stimulant can be 
 serviceable only in emergency cases and under 
 abnormal conditions and as such cannot serve 
 as an explanation for a desire extending to 
 nearly all people in all periods of history. 
 
 4. The supposition may be made that al- 
 cohol increases muscular efficiency, at least 
 temporarily, and that the desire for it may be 
 explained in this way, but the experimental 
 evidence forbids this view. Many series of ex- 
 periments have been made by Warren, Frey, 
 Schnyder, Destree, Tavernari, Fere, Kraepe- 
 lin, Partridge, Rivers, and others, using the 
 
ALCOHOL 1 8s 
 
 ergograph and other forms of dynamometer, 
 to determine the effect of small doses of alcohol 
 upon muscular power and efficiency. These 
 experiments have shown that, as the result of 
 small, or so-called normal doses of alcohol, 
 there is a slight initial increase of muscular 
 power followed by a decrease, so that, on the 
 whole, the results reveal a loss rather than 
 a gain in efficiency. With an increase in the 
 size of the doses, the decrease in efiiciency is 
 greater. There seems some ground for believ- 
 ing that alcohol, while it does not increase 
 muscular efficiency, shortens reaction-time at 
 first and facilitates the liberation of energy. 
 This may account to some extent for the feel- 
 ing of increased efficiency which follows the 
 ingestion of alcohol. If it be true that it 
 shortens reaction-time and facilitates the lib- 
 eration of energy, it still does not appear that 
 this would offer any explanation for the world- 
 wide desire for it. It has not been shown that 
 any decided advantage accrues fromi the short- 
 ening of reaction-time or the quicker libera- 
 tion of energy. The normal reaction-time and 
 the normal liberation of energy would seem 
 in the long run to be more advantageous. 
 Kraepelin's conclusion is that the laborer who 
 
1 86 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 gains his livelihood by the strength of his arm 
 destroys by the use of alcohol the very foun- 
 dation of his efficiency. The experiments of 
 Hodge with retrieving dogs showed that the 
 dogs given alcohol did about half as much 
 work as the normal animals. The experiments 
 of Durig in miountain climbing, with and with- 
 out alcohol, showed that moderate doses of 
 alcohol resulted in a loss of about twenty per 
 cent in efficiency. 
 
 5. Alcohol, again, does not increase men- 
 tal efficiency. The experiments of Kraepelin 
 and his associates show that moderate doses 
 of alcohol exert a deadening influence on all 
 mental processes. Apprehension is slower, ac- 
 curacy is lessened, errors are increased, and 
 memory is impaired. The character of as- 
 sociations is also unfavorably affected, the 
 nimiber of higher logical associations being 
 decreased, while associations depending upon 
 similarity and contiguity in time and space are 
 increased. Schnidman made experiments on 
 the effect of alcohol in the work of translating 
 from one language to another, with the result 
 that under the influence of small doses of 
 alcohol there was an increase of errors and 
 a decrease of rapidity. The experiments of 
 
ALCOHOL 187 
 
 Lieutenant Boy upon Swedish soldiers in 
 revolver and rifle shooting with and without 
 alcohol showed that accuracy was affected un- 
 favorably by the drug. Mayer found that the 
 speed of writing was lessened by alcohol. In 
 Dr. Aschaffenburg's experiments with type- 
 setters, he found that there was an average 
 impairment of efficiency amounting to about 
 nine per cent as the result of small doses of 
 alcohol. Smith experimented on the eff^ect of 
 small doses of alcohol upon memory processes 
 when the drug was administered for successive 
 days.' The alcohol in these experiments was 
 administered in the evening and was found 
 to exert a damaging effect upon the memory 
 processes to a very marked degree, the effect 
 increasing from day to day. Fiirer found that 
 eighty cubic centimeters of alcohol taken in 
 the evening was followed by increased errors 
 in choice-reactions during the whole of the 
 following day. 
 
 Experiments such as the above are difficult 
 to carry out and possible sources of error may 
 enter. It is highly desirable that still further 
 researches should be made in this direction, 
 eliminating every possible source of error. We 
 shall await with interest the further researches 
 
1 88 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 which are now being made in this field. It may 
 safely be said, however, that the experimental 
 evidence is already sufficient to show that it 
 is not on account of any increased mental 
 efficiency due to alcohol that the world-wide 
 desire for it is to be explained.^ The testimony 
 of Heknholtz, in his speech at Berlin on the 
 occasion of his seventieth birthday, is signifi- 
 cant in this connection. Speaking of the con- 
 ditions under which he had had his most 
 brilliant intuitions, he said that the smallest 
 amount of alcohol seemed to frighten them 
 away. 
 
 The experimental evidence of the damaging 
 effect of alcohol on physical and mental effi- 
 ciency is confirmed by the practical experience 
 of railroads, steamship companies, shops, man- 
 ufacturing establishments, contractors, survey- 
 ing and exploring parties, athletic teams, etc. 
 
 ' Since the conclusive value of these researches has been 
 questioned, as has everything else that has ever been said 
 or written about alcohol, let it be explained here once 
 more and emphasized that the argument in this chapter 
 does not depend upon the results of any of these investi- 
 gations. They show only this, and they arc amply suffi- 
 cient to show this — that the desire for alcohol cannot be 
 explained by any supposed increase of mental or physical 
 efficiency, either temporary or permanent, which might fol- 
 low from its use. 
 
ALCOHOL 189 
 
 An increasingly large number of railroads for- 
 bid the use of alcoholic liquors to their em- 
 ployees, in some cases even when off duty, 
 while in shops and in mercantile establish- 
 ments of all kinds statistics show a significant 
 increase of accidents and decrease of efficiency 
 immediately following Sundays and holidays. 
 The desperate effort made by nations in time 
 of war to suppress or lessen the use of alcohol 
 in the army and navy is a practical demon- 
 stration not merely of its uselessness, but of 
 its harmfulness. It is, however, only the use- 
 lessness and not the harmfulness of alcohol 
 that we are at present interested in, since we 
 are merely trying to trace the cause for the 
 desire. 
 
 If next we consider the contributions of 
 recent science to the use of alcohol in its rela- 
 tion to human health and longevity, we are 
 again met with disappointment in our quest 
 for the explanation of its use. Alcohol was 
 formerly very freely used by physicians in 
 both surgery and medicine, but faith in its 
 therapeutic powers has now been almost 
 wholly lost. The figures given by Horsley 
 showing the decrease in the use of alcohol in 
 English hospitals and asylums during the last 
 
190 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 twenty years are exceedingly striking. In sur- 
 gery alcohol has been replaced by antiseptics 
 and in medicine by milk and eggs. Alcohol 
 has now come to be regarded by physicians 
 not as a cure for disease, but as a prolific cause 
 of it. As an excretory product of the yeast 
 plant, its action upon higher organisms is that 
 of a toxin. Its regular moderate use renders 
 the individual less resistant to disease and its 
 excessive use brings a long list of diseases in 
 its train. 
 
 The influence of alcohol upon longevity has 
 now been studied with some thoroughness by 
 physicians and actuaries, and some definite 
 results have been gained, although here much 
 work needs to be done. The results show, at 
 any rate, that alcohol does not increase lon- 
 gevity, and hence we have here again no clue 
 to the world-wide desire for it. Robert Mac- 
 kenzie Moore, actuary of the United Kingdom 
 Temperance and General Provident Institute, 
 in a recent report based upon sixty years' 
 experience of that company in the insurance 
 of the lives of abstainers and non-abstainers 
 (the latter being moderate drinkers and good 
 risks and belonging to the same class and fol- 
 lowing the same occupations as the former), 
 
ALCOHOL 191 
 
 found that in respect to longevity the abstain- 
 ers showed a marked superiority over the non- 
 abstainers throughout the whole period of life 
 for every class of policies and for both sexes, 
 however tested. For instance, at the age of 
 thirty the expectation of life for the non-ab- 
 stainers is 35.1 years; for the abstainers, 38.8 
 years, a difference of nearly eleven per cent. 
 At the age of forty, the percentage of differ- 
 ence is the same. Another very thorough and 
 impartial investigation has been made by Mr. 
 Edward B. Phelps on the mortality due to 
 alcohol. It is based on the testimony of the 
 medical directors of three prominent life-in- 
 surance companies of America. Mr. Phelps's 
 conclusion is that eight per cent of all deaths 
 of adults in the United States are due to 
 alcohol. 1 
 
 If we turn, finally, to the social relations of 
 men in our search for an explanation for the 
 universal desire for alcohol, our reward is even 
 less. Alcohol, indeed, encourages sociability, 
 but it would be hard to show that this in itself 
 is a benefit proportional to the desire for it, 
 
 1 For similar conclusions from statistics of other life- 
 insurance companies see article by Samuel Wilson entitled 
 "Is Moderate Drinking Justified." Outlook, June 30, 1915. 
 
192 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 and we find in connection with its use a long 
 list of social evils, such as poverty, crime, and 
 racial degeneracy. These evils are connected 
 for the most part with the excessive use of 
 alcohol and consequently they interest us only 
 indirectly here; but it would appear to be one 
 more disadvantage to be attributed to alcohol 
 that its moderate use is apt to issue in exces- 
 sive use and so lead to many unhappy and 
 disagreeable consequences, such as drunken- 
 ness, disability for work, domestic trouble, 
 poverty, crime, and degeneracy of offspring. 
 We are thus brought finally face to face 
 with the question, Why do men desire alcohol? 
 The theories hitherto advanced in explanation 
 of the alcohol motive have failed to take into 
 account certain essential facts in regard to the 
 problem and have therefore been incomplete. 
 Among these facts are the following : The de- 
 sire for alcohol is common both to civilized 
 and uncivilized man. It tends to increase 
 rather than to decrease with the advance of 
 civilization in spite of vigorous and to some 
 extent successful efforts to restrain it. It has 
 reached an unparalleled degree of intensity at 
 the present time in prosperous communities 
 relatively rich in coniforts and luxuries. It is 
 
ALCOHOL 193 
 
 strong, again, in industrial and manufacturing 
 centers among plodding and underpaid labor- 
 ers. It is somewhat stronger in northern pro- 
 gressive races than among the less progressive 
 southern people. It is particularly character- 
 istic of the adult male individual, the desire 
 being decidedly less strong in women and 
 children. It is not an appetite in the ordinary 
 sense of the word, as it answers to no inner 
 need of the body so far as is known. To these 
 facts should be added those specially noted 
 above, namely, that alcohol apparently adds 
 nothing to either physical or mental efficiency, 
 that it contributes nothing to health or lon- 
 gevity, and does not enhance social well-being. 
 Is it possible to explain the desire for alco- 
 hol on the ground of its immediate pleasurable 
 mental effects ? It deadens pain to some extent 
 and drives away care. It produces a feeling of 
 euphoria, of well-being, comfort, contentment, 
 ease, and inner harmony. Under the influence 
 of alcohol many of the unpleasant feelings 
 accompanying the daily drudgery of life tem- 
 porarily disappear or are at least alleviated, 
 such, for instance, as fatigue, apprehension, 
 fear, worry, anxiety, and to some extent physi- 
 cal pain. Selecting one from any number of 
 
194 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 illustrations which might be drawn from liter- 
 ature, we read in Gosta Berling : — 
 
 The year had dragged itself out in heavy 
 gloom. Peasant and master had passed their 
 days with thoughts on the soil, but at even their 
 spirits cast off their yoke, freed by brandy. In- 
 spiration came, the heart grew warm, life became 
 glowing, the song rang out, roses shed their per- 
 fume. The public-house barroom seemed to him 
 a tropical garden, grapes and olives hung down 
 over his head, marble statues shone among dark 
 leaves, songsters and poets wandered under the 
 palms and plane trees. 
 
 Another author, picturing the hopeless 
 grinding toil of the coal miner, his monotonous 
 and unillumined life, his long working-day, 
 his hasty and insufficient supper, and his hard 
 bed, says that at the end of the week when 
 a little respite comes, the "demand for joy" 
 drives this coal miner to the saloon. 
 
 But this explanation, at first sight partially 
 adequate, when more carefully considered, 
 encounters serious difficulties and only adds to 
 the obscurity of the subject. Are we to under- 
 stand that the desire for alcohol is due to the 
 "demand for joy".? There never was a time 
 in the history of the world when, quite apart 
 
ALCOHOL 195 
 
 from alcohol, joys were so abundant as they 
 are in America at the present day. The rich 
 have every comfort and luxury and the poor 
 have every humane consideration, while labor- 
 ers have shorter hours, better pay, better food, 
 and better clothes, and more books, papers, 
 and other forms of entertainment than ever 
 before in the world's history. We are compar- 
 atively prosperous, happy, and -well fed; we 
 have abundant leisure and countless comforts; 
 yet it appears that we need two thousand mil- 
 lion gallons of alcoholic liquors yearly to com- 
 plete our "joy." Furthermore, if this were 
 the correct theory, it would be impossible 
 to explain the lesser desire for alcohol among 
 women, for although at present in America the 
 lot of woman is a relatively happy one, this has 
 not been the case among primitive people, 
 nor in historic times, nor even in other coun- 
 tries at the present time. Her life has been 
 relatively monotonous and laborious and her 
 joys and amusements have been fewer. 
 
 But serious psychological objections to this 
 theory appear also. Joy and pleasure are the 
 mental accompaniments of physical well- 
 being, of mental and physical health, while 
 alcohol acts as a poison in the presence of all 
 
196 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 forms of life. Against this apparent contra- 
 diction little is gained by saying that the joy 
 of alcohol is an abnormal joy answering to an 
 abnormal or diseased condition. The desire is 
 too universal, too fundamental, so to speak, 
 for that. Or, if we say that alcohol brings an 
 immediate and temporary joy, while its poi- 
 sonous effects are delayed, we encounter two 
 difficulties; first, the difficulty of showing what 
 particular kind of benefit corresponds to the 
 immediate and temporary joy, and second, 
 the difficulty of explaining on any principles 
 of evolution the desire for a drug whose effects 
 are on the whole injurious — a desire which is 
 so strong and so universal as almost to merit 
 the name of an instinct. This seems to be a 
 kind of deadlock to any further progress in 
 arriving at a theory of alcohol. But the joys 
 of alcohol are evident and its injurious effects 
 are equally evident. It is clear, therefore, that 
 the "demand-for-joy" theory is only a super- 
 ficial statement of a certain truth whose expla- 
 nation lies deeper. 
 
 But leaving for the moment the "demand- 
 for-joy" theory, let us consider the view that 
 alcohol banishes care and drives away sorrow 
 and pain; in other words, that it is narcotic in 
 
ALCOHOL 197 
 
 its action, a kind of sedative or anaesthetic. 
 This theory seems at first sight to account for 
 some of the facts. It is now generally, though 
 not quite universally, admitted by physiolo- 
 gists that alcohol is not a stimulant, but a 
 narcotic. It apparently paralyzes the higher 
 brain centers and in thus inhibiting the inhibi- 
 tory centers produces effects resembling stimu- 
 lation. Furthermore, pain, sorrow, and care 
 are ever present in human life, making the 
 universality of the desire thus far intelligible. 
 But clearly the narcotic theory encounters 
 difficulties from the same sources as the "de- 
 mand-for-joy" theory. It fails first to account 
 for the lesser desire among women, who have 
 certainly at all times had their share of sorrow, 
 pain, and care. It fails likewise to account for 
 the increase of the desire in times of prosperity 
 and activity, or in times like the present of 
 improved hygiene, increased longevity, and 
 multiplied pleasures and comforts. Finally, 
 the narcotic theory, if it were true, would seem 
 to be nature's checkmate upon itself, for pain 
 in all its forms is evidently purposive. Are we 
 to suppose that nature has discovered a way 
 to tear down its own danger signals? The 
 narcotic theory would be available only in 
 
198 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 respect to times of degeneration and national 
 decay. Nordau, who explains the desire for 
 alcohol in this way, regards the present as 
 such a time of degeneration, and Partridge, 
 who recognizes the narcotic motive as one of 
 the elements in the desire, seems to think that 
 so far as it is present it betokens "old age and 
 disease in a nation." But since the desire 
 flourishes most strongly, as we have seen, in 
 times of great national vigor, such, for in- 
 stance, as prevail at the present time in Ger- 
 many, England, and America, the narcotic 
 theory seems to fail. Nevertheless, it may 
 appear below that the narcotic motive is pres- 
 ent, after all, only not in the form hitherto 
 recognized. 
 
 Another writer, Reid, has broached the 
 theory that the desire for alcohol is a by- 
 product of evolution, a specific craving which 
 nothing but alcohol will satisfy. It is coexten- 
 sive with the human race and harmful in its 
 results, and is to be met in only one way, 
 namely, by the automatic action of "evolu- 
 tion against alcohol," by the action of natural 
 selection in gradually eliminating those not 
 immune to the desire. It is part of Reid's 
 theory to maintain that the people of southern 
 
ALCOHOL 199 
 
 Europe have become partly immune to alco- 
 hol, owing to its abundant supply, and are 
 therefore more temperate. Almost all the facts 
 upon which this theory is based are open to 
 question. 
 
 Partridge, while recognizing the narcotic 
 motive in the desire for alcohol, "the longing 
 to escape from pain, to seek relief in inactivity 
 and rest, a turning backward from the strenu- 
 ous life," apparently believes that the so-called 
 "intoxication motive" is more important. It 
 springs from the desire for states of con- 
 sciousness of higher intensity, for feelings of 
 exaltation, for life and life more abundant, for 
 freedom and expansion, for states of higher 
 tension. It is the erethic impulse, a craving 
 for excitement. 1 But the evidence is over- 
 whelming, as we have seen, that alcohol, so 
 far from contributing to the more abundant 
 life, contributes from every point of view to 
 the less abundant life, and as for the desire 
 for states of higher tension, there is every, 
 reason to believe, as will be shown in what 
 follows, that alcohol produces states of lower 
 tension and is desired for precisely this reason. 
 And if the desire for alcohol were due to a 
 
 * Partridge, The Psychology of Intemperance, chaps, ix, x. 
 
200 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 longing for excitement, life, tension, move- 
 ment, this longing would seem to be well sat- 
 isfied by the conditions in modern American 
 cities without recourse to two thousand mil- 
 lion gallons of alcoholic liquors yearly. 
 
 Any satisfactory theory of the alcohol im- 
 pulse must not only take account of the facts 
 to be explained, some of which we have men- 
 tioned above, but it must also be grounded on 
 an accurate knowledge of the whole life history 
 of man, particularly his mental development 
 and the corresponding development of the 
 brain. It would be necessary, furthennore, for 
 such a theory that we should have an accurate 
 knowledge of the action of alcohol on the 
 human brain. Neither psychology nor physi- 
 ology is able as yet to furnish this knowledge 
 completely, so that any theory of the alcohol 
 motive must be tentative, awaiting further 
 scientific advance. The following observa- 
 tions, therefore, although for brevity's sake 
 put in somewhat dogmatic form, may be con- 
 sidered as suggestions toward such a theory. 
 
 It is to the psychology of play and sport 
 that we must look for the key to the psychol- 
 ogy of alcohol. Let us, therefore, recapitulate 
 briefly those points in the psychology of play, 
 
ALCOHOL 201 
 
 as we have developed them in Chapter II, 
 that bear directly on our present problem. 
 
 Human progress seems to be in a certain 
 definite direction and to involve the develop- 
 ment of certain definite mental powers and 
 of the corresponding higher cerebral centers. 
 The chief of these powers is that of voluntary, 
 sustained attention, which differentiates man 
 sharply from the lower animals and likewise 
 distinguishes civilized man from the savage. 
 Progress has been possible because man has 
 been able to narrow the field of attention, to 
 concentrate or focus his powers, to live under 
 mental stress, strain, and effort, and to hold 
 his attention on a definite object. The word 
 "tension" perhaps best expresses both psy- 
 chologically and physiologically the subjec- 
 tive correlate of progress. It is characteristic 
 of the savage as compared with the lower 
 animals, of civilized man as compared with 
 the savage, of northern races as compared with 
 southern, and of the male as compared with 
 the female. As concentration, sustained at- 
 tention, and abstraction, it issues among civi- 
 lized man in science and invention. Whether 
 the product be Newton's "Principia," or 
 wireless telegraphy, or even the long-sustained 
 
202 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 working-day of the common laborer, it pre- 
 supposes the above-mentioned powers and 
 involves the continued development of the 
 higher cortical centers of the brain. There is 
 something, whether it be the "will to live," 
 or a "vital impulse," or the cosmic conscious- 
 ness, or only natural selection, that is eter- 
 nally driving us on in this direction. 
 
 Now, these psychical processes, which have 
 been developed late in the history of the race, 
 are most subject to fatigue, and cannot be used 
 continuously during all of our waking hours. 
 During sleep they enjoy almost perfect rest, 
 our dream activity taking the form of passive 
 reverie. Nature seems, therefore, to demand, 
 during a considerable part of our waking 
 hours, some form of activity which shall afford 
 rest to the higher and newer mental processes, 
 while providing employment for the lower 
 ones. To such a condition of mind and body 
 we apply the term "relaxation," and it em- 
 braces a considerable portion of our daily 
 activity. It is most perfectly typified in play 
 and sport, but includes many other forms of 
 human interest and activity, such, for in- 
 stance, as the enjoyment of music, of the 
 drama, and of other forms of fine art, the 
 
ALCOHOL 203 
 
 reading of fiction, and countless other kinds 
 of amusement and entertainment not com- 
 monly included under the terms "play" or 
 "sport." 
 
 But it is in children's play and in adult 
 sport that we find the principles of relaxation 
 best exhibited as they will be found presently 
 to bear upon our problem. The active life of 
 the child is, as we have seen, almost wholly a 
 life of play. The mental functions developed 
 late in the history of the race come to maturity 
 late in the life of the child. Hence he rebels 
 instinctively against work, for it involves yet 
 undeveloped powers, those connected with 
 spontaneous and sustained attention. Play is 
 self-developing and supplies its own interest. 
 Furthermore, a study of children's plays shows 
 that they are largely reversionary in form, 
 following the old racial activities of our remote 
 ancestors. The boy, therefore, runs, races, 
 rolls, wrestles, wades, swims, climbs trees, 
 shoots with sling or with bow and arrow, goes 
 hunting, fishing, canoeing, camping, builds 
 tree houses, cave houses, wigwams, and pur- 
 sues a hundred occupations recalling the life of 
 primitive man and far removed from the seri- 
 ous life of modern man, the life of the farm. 
 
204 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 the shop, the office, the factory, the bank, 
 or the schoolroom. The brain paths in- 
 volved in children's play are the old time- 
 worn easy paths requiring no new associa- 
 tions, no abstractions, no strong and sustained 
 effort of will or attention. 
 
 In adult sport we have a still better illus- 
 tration of the principles of relaxation. We 
 have seen that those forms of sport which 
 afford the most perfect rest and relaxation are 
 of a character to use the old racial brain 
 paths and rest the higher and newer centers. 
 The tired teacher, lawyer, doctor, preacher, or 
 business man, when his vacation comes, re- 
 verts to the habits of primitive man. He takes 
 his tent, rod, gun, or canoe and goes to for- 
 est, lake, or mountain, wears more primitive 
 clothes, sleeps on the ground, and cooks over 
 a camp-fire. Hunting, swimming, yachting, 
 dancing, wrestling, prize-fighting, horse-racing 
 — all these are illustrations of the rest afforded 
 by primitive activities. As forms of relaxation 
 they seem so natural to us that often we do 
 not realize how primitive they are and how 
 far removed from the real workaday world of 
 modern life, the world of mental concentra- 
 tion, of pen and ink and books, of clerks and 
 
ALCOHOL 205 
 
 stenographers, of office and courtroom, of flats 
 and congested cities, of business and finance. 
 Mankind appears to be under the dominance 
 of two opposing forces. On the one hand, we 
 are driven on by the relentless whip of prog- 
 ress, which demands ever greater and greater 
 specialization, application, concentration, and 
 powers of conceptual analysis. On the other 
 hand, the tired brain rebels against this cease- 
 less urging and seeks rest and relaxation. 
 
 But, now, even in the early history of the 
 race, there was discovered another means of 
 relaxation, artificial, to be sure, but quick, 
 easy, and convenient. Drugs of various kinds, 
 owing to their peculiar action upon the brain, 
 effect a kind of artificial relaxation. Ethyl 
 alcohol, produced everjovhere, whenever the 
 ever-present yeast cells come in contact with 
 the sugar of crushed fruit or fermented grain, 
 has the peculiar property of paralyzing to a 
 greater or less extent the higher and later de- 
 veloped brain tracts which are associated with 
 those peculiar forms of mental activity ac- 
 companying work and the strenuous life. The 
 later developed and more delicate centers of 
 the nervous system are more susceptible to the 
 
2o6 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 attacks of an intruding destructive agency, 
 such as alcohol. Thus it comes about that 
 alcohol answers the demand of the body and 
 mind for relaxation and accomplishes in an 
 artificial way what is effected in a natural 
 way by sport and play and other forms of 
 relaxation. The latter effect this end by turn- 
 ing the energy of the brain into lower and 
 older channels, leaving the higher centers to 
 rest; the former, by directly narcotizing the 
 higher centers and thus liberating the older, 
 freer life of the emotions and the more primi- 
 tive impulses. 
 
 It should not be understood that alcohol 
 has any "selective affinity" for any part of 
 the nervous system. Its action, like that of 
 other toxins, is no doubt diffusive, but affects 
 most seriously those parts of the brain having 
 less power of resistance, particularly the cen- 
 ters late in the order of development. Its de- 
 pressive effect is felt to some extent, however, 
 upon the lower reflex centers, and as such re- 
 sults again in physiological relaxation. This 
 is owing to the fact that its depressive action 
 raises the threshold value of the reflex arc 
 and so diminishes reflex excitability. 
 
 From this point of view, therefore, we see 
 
ALCOHOL 207 
 
 that while the action of alcohol is narcotic, 
 nevertheless the narcotic theory, as it has 
 hitherto been presented, is very one-sided, 
 and the truth in the narcotic theory, as well 
 as in the stimulation or intoxication theory, is 
 now brought into proper relief. One would 
 not say that play and sport are narcotics. 
 They seem to be very refreshing and stimu- 
 lating. In the same way alcohol is stimulating, 
 not directly, for its physiological action is 
 wholly depressive, but indirectly by inhibiting 
 the higher mental processes and setting free 
 the older and more primitive ones. Thus, alco- 
 hol appears as a depressant of voluntary at- 
 tention and effort, of logical associations and 
 abstract reasoning, of foresight and prudence, 
 of anxiety and worry, of modesty and reserve, 
 and the higher sentiments in general, while, 
 on the other hand, it acts indirectly as an 
 excitant of speech, and laughter, and song; of 
 emotional feeling and expression; of sentimen- 
 tality; and, in increased doses, of still older and 
 more basic impulses, such as garrulity, quar- 
 relsomeness, recklessness, immodesty; and, 
 finally, of coarseness and criminal tendencies. 
 Thus, under the progressive influence of alco- 
 hol, we see the whole life history of the race 
 
2o8 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 traversed In reverse direction, for the crim- 
 inal life of to-day represents the noimal life 
 of primitive man. 
 
 We thus trace the desire for alcohol to the 
 inherent need of mind and body for relaxa- 
 tion, a need normally supplied by all the varied 
 forms of play and sport. Psychologically it is 
 the expression of the desire for release from 
 the tension of the strenuous life. In a sense, 
 therefore, it is the strenuous life which is re- 
 sponsible for the alcohol impulse, but it should 
 be noted that the word "strenuous" is here 
 used in a broad sense. It does not refer neces- 
 sarily to an exciting, active, high-pressure life, 
 but refers rather to any condition of unrelieved 
 tension, where sustained effort is demanded 
 with little opportunity for complete rest and 
 relaxation. While these conditions are, per- 
 haps, most often encountered in the high-pres- 
 sure life of our cities, they are also present in 
 the unrelieved toil of the industrial worker. 
 
 We are in this way able to understand some 
 of the facts which, as we have shown, must 
 be considered in any theory of the alcohol 
 motive. We may understand not only the 
 increased desire for alcohol in modern life, but 
 also the lesser need for it on the part of 
 
ALCOHOL 209 
 
 woman. Woman is less modified than man 
 and presents less variation. Her life is calmer 
 and more even. She is more conservative, 
 representing the child type, which is the race 
 type. Her life is less strenuous. She is not 
 keyed up to so high a pitch, and hence has 
 less need of relaxation and feels less demand 
 for play and sport. Man, on the other hand, 
 represents variation. The mental powers pe- 
 culiar to advancing civilization are more de- 
 veloped in him. He has to be in the vanguard 
 of progress. With him, therefore, the stress of 
 life, the tension, the excitement, are greater, 
 and he feels more the need of the harmonizing 
 action of alcohol. 
 
 Again, we can understand why even the 
 primitive man finds alcohol a relief, for the 
 tension of his life is great as compared with 
 the lower animals, and we can understand 
 why the desire increases with the progress of 
 civilization and the corresponding increase of 
 tension. The stress of life is greatest among 
 the Anglo-Saxon people and greatest of all, 
 perhaps, in American cities at the present 
 time. In this country, especially, the intense 
 life of concentration, of effort, of endeavor, 
 of struggle, of rapid development, has for its 
 
210 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 correlate an intense longing, not for stimu- 
 lants, — for our life, our climate, our environ- 
 ment are surely stimulating enough, — but 
 for rest, for relaxation, for hannony, for some- 
 thing to still temporarily the eternal turmoil. 
 Does the fact that the desire for alcohol is 
 increased by the indulgence in it and the ap- 
 parent fact that those who fall victims to its 
 excessive use are not always those most in 
 need of its harmonizing action present any 
 difficulty in this theory? Probably not. The 
 desire for relaxation is not necessarily in- 
 creased by the use of alcohol, but only the 
 ever-renewed demand for that which produces 
 the longed-for effect, and, again, it is not cer- 
 tain that those who fall victims to its excessive 
 use are those most in need of its harmon- 
 izing action. Here the element of prudence 
 and self-control must be taken into account. 
 Excessive users may be those having lesser 
 control or greater opportunity, not those ex- 
 periencing stronger desire. While the desire 
 for alcohol is increasing with the complexity 
 of society, it is actually true that drunkenness 
 is decreasing, and it is possibly true that the 
 number of total abstainers is increasing. These 
 things are determined by custom, by individ- 
 
ALCOHOL 211 
 
 ual environment and education, and by the 
 power of self-control. But the steady increase 
 in the desire for alcohol is shown not merely 
 in the steady increase in its consumption, but 
 still more in the fact that it increases in the 
 face of public and private sentiment, legal 
 statute, and social effort. 
 
 We see also why the use of alcohol has 
 commonly followed the law of rhythm. Among 
 primitive tribes drinking was periodic, wild 
 orgies of intoxication following considerable 
 periods of the plodding life. This periodicity 
 is seen in convivial drinking of all times and 
 is a familiar fact in every community at the 
 present. The power of self-restraint, strength- 
 ened by public sentiment and private pru- 
 dence, deters from the use of alcohol up to a 
 certain point, when the cumulative force of 
 the desire, which is the cumulative need of 
 release from painful tension, overthrows all 
 barriers, and excess and complete relaxation 
 follow for a season. 
 
 So it appears that the effect of alcohol is a 
 kind of catharsis. But, just as we have seen in 
 the case of play and sport and laughter and 
 profanity, it is a catharsis only in a very lim- 
 ited sense, not in the Aristotelian sense of 
 
212 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 purification by purging something away, but 
 only in the sense that it affords rest and re- 
 laxation. Truer, perhaps, it would be to say 
 that alcohol is a kind of escape. It is not in 
 itself desired; often enough it is hated. But 
 the user finds himself under the rule of an im- 
 perative, an insistent idea, a tormenting pres- 
 ence, and this presence is his whole deep hu- 
 man personality crying out against the eternal 
 urge of the "will to live." The spirit of the age 
 proclaims that we must be efficient. Efficiency, 
 and ever more efficiency, is demanded, and 
 the desire for alcohol is the desire for rest, 
 for release from the tension, for freedom and 
 abandonment. Nietzsche, crying out against 
 this spirit of progress, says : "Why does pre- 
 cisely this gloomy and vehement oppressor 
 pursue me? I long for rest, but it will not let 
 me. 
 
 The relation between the effect of alcohol 
 and that of the drama is again clearly ex- 
 pressed by Benjamin Ide Wheeler, when he 
 says : — 
 
 That which was at the beginning the charm 
 of the drama, and has been, so far as it is true to 
 Itself, ever since. Is Its power to release those who 
 behold It for a little while from the burden and 
 
ALCOHOL 213 
 
 enthrallment of the commonplace workaday life, 
 and bathe their wearied souls in dreams. This 
 is the very heart of Dionysus, and this too is his 
 claim to control the fruit of the vine. 
 
 But now, if this theory is correct, what is the 
 conclusion.? Is alcohol a means of purification 
 through relaxation? Just so far as it affords 
 rest to the wearied higher brain and relief from 
 the tyranny of the will, it is a means of purifi- 
 cation, but unfortunately it is at the same time 
 a poison, bringing in its train a heavy residuum 
 of damage not only to society, but to the in- 
 dividual. The imperative need of relaxation is 
 apparent, but, while play and sport are relax- 
 ing and recreative, alcohol is relaxing and de- 
 structive. The colossal evil of its excessive use 
 is evident to every one, but there is reason to 
 believe that even its moderate use detracts 
 from the sum total of well-being of the in- 
 dividual in exact proportion to the amount 
 used. It is possible, however, that the case is 
 still worse. Let us suppose that alcohol were 
 not a poison, that it had no effect beyond a 
 slight paralysis of the higher brain. What will 
 be the cumulative effects of such action upon 
 the individual and the race? This question 
 cannot at present be answered. It seems prob- 
 
214 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 able that this constant doping of the highest 
 and most delicate nervous centers, while it 
 affords the needed relaxation, may work havoc 
 with the delicate organization of the brain. 
 Possibly alcohol represents a factor of mal- 
 adaptation in the evolution of man and will 
 prevent the realization of his highest destiny. 
 If we consider the degree of civilization at- 
 tained by the ancient Greeks, several stages 
 above our own in art, and on an equal plane at 
 least in poetry, in eloquence, and in philoso- 
 phy, we are impressed with the slight progress 
 we have made, when measured by a reason- 
 able expectation based on the time which has 
 elapsed and our rich intellectual inheritance. 
 Gladstone bemoaned the lack of progress in 
 intellectual power made by man in recent 
 centuries. Is any one in position to say that 
 this has not, in part at least, come about from 
 meddling with ethyl alcohol? 
 
 In this chapter we have been concerned only 
 with the psychological aspects of the alcohol 
 problem. In our concluding chapter some ref- 
 erences will be made to the practical and 
 social questions involved. Only this may be 
 said here : To the psychologist it would appear 
 
ALCOHOL 2IS 
 
 that the method of substitution will have more 
 satisfactory results in the end than the method 
 of direct suppression. Merely to suppress the 
 sale of alcohol is like putting a lid on the tea- 
 kettle to prevent the steam from escaping. As 
 long as the fire burns brightly beneath and 
 there is water in the kettle, something will 
 probably happen to the lid. If the lid is 
 screwed on tightly enough, something will 
 probably happen to the kettle. We must 
 either provide some way for the steam to 
 escape or else remove the fire. So we must 
 either provide some substitute for alcohol, 
 such as healthful fonns of relaxation, or else, 
 by a different kind of education or a differ- 
 ent manner of social life, bring about such a 
 harmony in the human personality as to 
 make unnecessary the resort to temporary 
 expedients. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR 
 
 FROM the flood of writings called out by 
 the war in Europe, a few things have be- 
 come fairly clear. For instance, it is evident 
 that it has been the most costly and the most 
 tragic of all the wars of history, that it pro- 
 ceeded from the least apparent causes, and 
 that it came in the face of new and powerful 
 forces making for peace. 
 
 But these facts, if such they be, reveal a 
 situation which to the sociologist is more than 
 puzzling, it is amazing. If, as Norman Angell 
 has maintained, modern wars are wholly futile 
 so far as the possibility of bringing any kind of 
 gain to the victorious nation is concerned; if 
 war is contrary to the spirit of the age, which 
 is no longer martial, but industrial, commer- 
 cial and humanitarian; if the contrast between 
 the brutality of war and the culture and re- 
 finement of the age is so great that war has be- 
 come grotesque and anomalous ; if war is the 
 outgrowth of political rivalries which have 
 
220 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 largely lost their significance owing to the fact 
 that nearly all present vital human interests 
 have widened out beyond the mere political 
 boundaries of the state and become inter- 
 national in their scope; and if, finally, the 
 nations in order to carry on a war are obliged 
 to assume a debt so crushing that posterity 
 cannot exist unless the debt is repudiated 
 in whole or in part, — why, then, it would 
 appear that the whole European world has 
 gone insane. 
 
 But the student of history and of psychol- 
 ogy will look at the matter in quite a different 
 way. He will see that the history of man- 
 kind for thousands of years has been a history 
 of incessant warfare, and that the new eco- 
 nomic and industrial conditions which have 
 made war irrational are not more than about 
 one hundred years old, while the human brain 
 is practically the same old brain of our fathers 
 and forefathers, deeply stamped with an- 
 cestral traits and primitive instincts, which 
 cannot thus suddenly be outgrown. It is 
 society which has suddenly changed, not the 
 units of society. 
 
 From the beginning of the war, sociologists, 
 economists, philosophers, and political theo- 
 
WAR 221 
 
 rists tried their hands at explaining its causes, 
 and with small success. Its roots must be 
 sought in psychology and anthropology. 
 
 The anthropologist and historian will review 
 the situation somewhat as follows : The rival- 
 ries between nations, with their mutual sus- 
 picion, distrust, and hatred leading to the 
 clash of arms, are survivals of early conflicts 
 between primitive social groups. These con- 
 flicts were incessant in all parts of the world 
 wherever there were virile and progressive 
 races, and the cause of the conflicts was the 
 natural desire of the stronger to exploit the 
 weaker, it being always easier and more at- 
 tractive to gain sustenance by robbery than 
 by labor. Furthermore, these incessant con- 
 flicts were in a high degree beneficial to social 
 development, resulting in the extermination of 
 the unfit and in the consolidation and survival 
 of the strong and the brave. Within the primi- 
 tive groups there was some degree of co- 
 operation, sympathy, mutual helpfulness, re- 
 gard for life and property, together with 
 some observance of "law" and "order" and 
 "right" and "wrong," this primitive organi- 
 zation resulting, perhaps, from the rules and 
 regulations imposed by a victorious group 
 
222 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 upon the conquered one. Between the groups 
 there was fear, suspicion, hatred, with no 
 respect for Hfe or property. Might was right. 
 Within the group certain actions were stigma- 
 tized as wrong and were punished, such, for 
 instance, as murder and theft. But between 
 members of hostile groups these acts were 
 praiseworthy. 
 
 The modern constitutional state is the his- 
 torical development of the primitive group. 
 Within the groups, now called nations, the up- 
 per classes, nobles, lords, officers, plutocrats, 
 still to a greater or less extent exploit the lower 
 classes, as the victors did the vanquished, and 
 between the groups there is still the old rivalry, 
 suspicion, and distrust, while the taking of life 
 and property is still praiseworthy and is not 
 called murder and theft, but war. And patriot- 
 ism, which is devotion not to humanity nor to 
 society, but to that particular political group 
 to which one happens to belong, is still ac- 
 counted the first of all the virtues. 
 
 But meanwhile, within the political state 
 there have grown up two new communities — 
 one moral and the other industrial and com- 
 mercial; and gradually, while the old bounds 
 of the political state have persisted, the moral 
 
WAR 223 
 
 and industrial states have expanded till they 
 have burst the bounds of the political state 
 and become international and world-wide. A 
 cosmopolitan conscience has replaced the old 
 group conscience, and moral obligations ex- 
 tend to all mankind. In time of war between 
 the nations, however, under the transport of 
 patriotism, the old group consciousness re- 
 vives, with its deep-seated instinct of pug- 
 nacity, and with it is revived the old group 
 conscience and the ancient hatred and sus- 
 picion, and the ancient desire to exterminate 
 the rival group. Hence the reversion in time 
 of war to primitive standards of conduct. 
 
 But under the completely transformed con- 
 ditions of society in modern times, the origi- 
 nal raison d'etre of war has ceased to be. Vic- 
 tory is no longer to the physically stronger 
 and mentally braver. The vanquished are no 
 longer exterminated or enslaved. The victors 
 lose, perhaps, as many of their fighters as the 
 vanquished, and the disabled are vastly more 
 in number than the dead, and both the dead 
 and the disabled are the flower of the nation's 
 youth. Meanwhile, the monstrous cost of a 
 modern war, which impoverishes the nation 
 and its posterity, the paralysis of a great and 
 
224 PSYCH0LCX3Y OF RELAXATION 
 
 intricate system of world commerce and in- 
 dustrial international relations, the colossal 
 destruction of wealth, the irreparable damage 
 to progress and civilization, the impoverished 
 physical heredity of a whole people, the affront 
 to moral ideals slowly and painfully achieved, 
 the untold burden of pain and woe and human 
 suffering in desolated homes far from the field 
 of battle, all combine to make war repulsive 
 and repugnant to modem sense. It no longer 
 cultivates manly virtues, but for the most part 
 only machination and mechanical ingenuity. 
 
 It is probable that all the benefits which a 
 warring nation hopes to gain by victory are in 
 modem times illusory, or at least they are so 
 far illusory that they are almost if not wholly 
 confined to the circumstances of some hy- 
 pothetical future war. For instance, a great 
 nation demands the control of some cele- 
 brated strait or narrows, so that it may have 
 an outlet for its vast exports — an open way 
 to the sea, although in time of peace that na- 
 tion already has the enjoyment of the freest 
 use of that strait. In other words, were it not 
 for some hypothetical future war, that nation 
 has already the open way to the sea which it 
 demands. Another great nation desires a 
 
WAR 225 
 
 place in the sun, the freedom of commerce, or 
 a fair share of colonies in distant lands, the 
 colonies being desired for purposes of trade 
 and colonization of its emigrants. But in time 
 of peace this same nation extends its trade by 
 leaps and bounds to every corner of the earth 
 freely, and has the utmost freedom of com- 
 merce, and sends its emigrants in great num- 
 bers to prosperous North and South America. 
 It is only in time of war that the opportunities 
 for trade of that country are limited or that it 
 would profit by having its emigrants under 
 political control. Colonies again in distant 
 parts of the earth may be desired for coaling- 
 stations, but it is only in time of war that the 
 ships of a nation cannot coal freely anywhere. 
 Still another country desires to retain or 
 regain disputed territory, although in time of 
 peace probably no citizen or group of citizens 
 in its own or in the coveted territory would 
 have its opportunities in any way enlarged or 
 its condition benefited by mere political trans- 
 ference. The acquisition of territory is, again, 
 a common excuse for war, but it has never 
 been shown that, under our modern condi- 
 tions, the citizens of larger states are any 
 happier or wiser or wealthier than the citizens 
 
226 PSYCH0L(X5Y OF RELAXATION 
 
 of smaller states. Thus we have the vicious 
 circle; war exists because of war. 
 
 War being thus outgrown and wholly irra- 
 tional, and having no longer any possible pur- 
 pose except to perpetuate itself, and being 
 opposed to the spirit of the age and discour- 
 aged by the powerful peace movements of the 
 day, and directly adverse to the all-controlling 
 and all-absorbing industrial and conomercial 
 interests of the world, it would seem that it 
 must soon disappear from the face of the 
 earth. But strangely enough such an outcome, 
 happy as it might be, is made probable neither 
 by the study of history, psychology, nor pres- 
 ent political tendencies. To the psychologist, 
 indeed, it appears that the whole trend of 
 social movements is in a direction favorable 
 to the perpetuation of war. 
 
 One hundred years ago there were bright 
 visions of universal peace. War, it was be- 
 lieved, was an iniquitous invention of evil and 
 mischievous men, interfering with the peace 
 and prosperity of the world. Free trade be- 
 tween nations and free competition between 
 men were to inaugurate a reign of universal 
 peace and prosperity. The function of govern- 
 ment was to be limited to a minimum. A sort 
 
WAR 227 
 
 of universal fraternity, pan-humanism, or in- 
 ternationalism was to take the place of frat- 
 ricidal strife. 
 
 This dream has been poorly realized. Free 
 competition has not worked in practice, and 
 the emphasis is being put more and more upon 
 the functions of the state. To be sure, many 
 would substitute "society" for the state, and, 
 indeed, Socialists and Utopianists still look 
 forward to a "new basis of civilization," in 
 which a pleasure economy is to replace the old 
 pain economy, when surplus energy, equality 
 of opportunity, increase of food, short working- 
 hours, good sanitation, good housing, etc., will 
 release starving human faculties, resulting in 
 human culture, morality, economic equilib- 
 rium, and finally in a "denationalized frater- 
 nal humanity." Thus, with the disappearance 
 of poverty the last obstacle will be removed 
 to upward human progress and universal 
 peace. 
 
 It is the purpose of this paper to point out 
 some of the psychological obstacles to the 
 realization of this ideal. Meanwhile, it is ob- 
 vious that the political obstacles are equally 
 great. 
 
 At the present time the trend of political 
 
228 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 events is precisely in the opposite direction. 
 With the unification of Italy in 1859, there 
 awoke the new spirit of nationaUsm and 
 the revival of patriotism. In 1861, the Ameri- 
 can Union, fired by the same spirit, resisted 
 disunion. Then followed the unification of 
 Germany, the awakening of the Slavs, the 
 expansion of Great Britain. 
 
 Instead of the anticipated free trade be- 
 tween nations, each country by means of pro- 
 tective tariffs drew the mantle of self-suffi- 
 ciency more closely around itself. In place of 
 the expected pan-humanism, a new patriotism 
 has everywhere sprung up. Add to this an- 
 other fact, perhaps correlated with it, that in 
 the last hundred years a new impulse of cosmic 
 energy, or something of the kind, seems to 
 have flowed into the motor nerves of human 
 beings. There is tremendous activity in the 
 form of striving. The gospel of striving which 
 dates from Lessing and Fichte, and which 
 found its poetic expression in Goethe, is the 
 gospel of modern life. It exhibits itself in in- 
 tense desire for expansion, for self-expression. 
 It has produced stupendous results in scien- 
 tific invention, discovery, industrial and com- 
 mercial expansion. Then follows the desire for 
 
WAR 229 
 
 political expansion, and the occasion for war 
 is at hand. The gospel of striving apparently 
 leads to the gospel of strife. 
 
 While to a superficial observer the whole 
 tendency of modern thought is in the direction 
 of universal peace, to the more careful ob- 
 server it is all in the direction of war. It was 
 not even necessary that the voice of Nietzsche, 
 with his gospel of the will to power, should be 
 reechoed through every land, nor that the 
 new philosophy of Pragmatism should come 
 forward to teach us that nothing succeeds like 
 success. 
 
 But perhaps the war in Europe is itself the 
 best witness to the fatal political obstacles 
 which stand in the way of these dreams of 
 peace, for it presents the astonishing spectacle 
 of the greatest war in the world's history pro- 
 ceeding from the least apparent causes and in 
 the face of the most powerful forces working 
 for peace. That such a colossal war should 
 occur under circumstances so adverse to war 
 would seem to indicate that it was made 
 necessary by some tremendous issues, either 
 moral, religious, economic, or commercial. 
 
 But strangely enough no such issues are 
 apparent. There were no great moral issues 
 
230 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 involved, as in the American Civil War, no 
 great religious questions as in the Crusades and 
 the wars of the Reformation, no great mon- 
 etary crises, as in some of the Italian and 
 Roman wars. Starvation has sometimes led 
 tribes or nations to war, but starvation threat- 
 ened none of these warring countries. On the 
 contrary, they were all in a highly prosper- 
 ous economic condition. Wealth, prosper- 
 ity, comfort, and luxuries abounded. "Never 
 since the world began," says Albert Bushnell 
 Hart, "was trade so broad and profitable as 
 in the year 1913." The total value of inter- 
 national commerce was $42,cxx),ooo,ooo in 
 that year. The total value of German exports 
 and imports combined was ^5,000,000,000; 
 and of English, ^6,900,000,000. Germany's 
 actual and proportional trade was increasing 
 from year to year. England was exporting 
 goods to Germany valued at ^292,000,000, and 
 importing goods from Germany valued at 
 $394,000,000 yearly. The entrance of Italy 
 into the war revealed only too clearly that war 
 has its roots in psychological causes more 
 than in great political or economic issues or 
 in heroic defense of the fatherland. 
 Does this strange situation admit of any 
 
WAR 231 
 
 explanation? Or naust we say that there are 
 forces at work in social evolution which we 
 do not understand — that it is dangerous for 
 man to meddle too much with his own destiny, 
 and that out of these terrible wars some great 
 good may come in ways unknown? This ques- 
 tion may not be answered, but at any rate 
 some light is thrown upon the situation by 
 the psychologist. In all the many books and 
 articles that have recently appeared on the 
 causes of war in general, and the European 
 war in particular, there is a noticeable failure 
 to take due account of the psychological fac- 
 tors in the situation. 
 
 As a single typical illustration let us con- 
 sider the illuminating articles by Mr. G. Lowes 
 Dickinson entitled "The War and the Way 
 Out," published in recent numbers of the 
 "Atlantic Monthly." 
 
 Mr. Dickinson traces the causes of war to 
 the artificial rivalries between those abstract 
 and unreal beings called states, rivalries which 
 are wholly unshared by the real men, women, 
 and children who compose the state. The 
 actual citizens of the state desire to live in 
 peace and quiet, to till their land, sell their 
 produce, and buy their necessities, and are but 
 
232 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 little interested in the question whether the 
 shores of the Baltic shall belong to Russia or 
 Germany or whether Constantinople shall be 
 controlled by one nation or another. Nor, in- 
 deed, do these political relations make any 
 material difference to the people themselves; 
 they make a difference only to that idol, the 
 abstract state, and then only in time of war. 
 The remedy, therefore, is to be found, first, 
 in the cessation of these international rivalries, 
 second, in the international control of arma- 
 ments, and third, in the elective allegiance of 
 disputed territory, such, for instance, as Po- 
 land, Alsace and Lorraine. The cause of war 
 being thus removed, the peace-loving, law- 
 abiding, and land-tilling citizens will live in 
 happiness and prosperity. 
 
 This programme is most captivating, and 
 no one can doubt that if international rival- 
 ries could be prevented in this way, the im- 
 mediate cause of many wars would be re- 
 moved. But the greater number of the wars 
 of history have not been between rival states, 
 but have been wars of conquest and civil wars, 
 and the real causes of them all lie deeper than 
 in any political relations, deeper than the love 
 of conquest, deeper than in any economic or 
 
WAR 233 
 
 commercial complications. All these alike are 
 the occasions and not the causes of war. 
 
 Mr. Dickinson regards the state as an ab- 
 straction, in a way unreal, and not having 
 necessarily as its interests the interests of the 
 real people who compose the state. This is 
 probably true, but Mr. Dickinson's construc- 
 tive programme rests, if not upon an abstrac- 
 tion such as the political state, nevertheless, 
 upon a myth, namely, the myth of the peace- 
 loving, law-abiding, and land-tilling citizen, 
 who, if opportunity offers, will till his land and 
 buy and sell his goods in peace and prosperity. 
 This quiet, peace-loving, and land-tilling citi- 
 zen, if not quite a myth, is at any rate not typi- 
 cal of the modern citizen. The typical man of 
 to-day has not, to be sure, any conscious desire 
 for war nor any wish to violate the laws of the 
 state, but he is an exceedingly complex prod- 
 uct of biological evolution, of modern civiliza- 
 tion and of social forces, and in his own brain 
 may, perhaps, be found the real powder maga- 
 zine responsible for war. The man of to-day 
 is a high-tension being, with a highly organ- 
 ized brain, possessing an immense amount of 
 potential energy in a state of rather unstable 
 equilibrium, the product of an evolution which 
 
234 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 has discovered the survival value of certain 
 peculiar mental qualities. Beneath this supe- 
 rior brain, and sometimes perilously near the 
 surface, there lies a vast network of inherited 
 dispositions connecting the man of to-day with 
 his warlike savage ancestors. 
 
 In place, then, of this unreal social unit, the 
 peace-loving, land-tilling citizen, we have the 
 real man, the restless and aggressive man, who 
 loves the city rather than the country, fre- 
 quents the stock exchange, the theater, and the 
 moving-picture show, likes to speculate and 
 gamble, is fond of rapid transit by means of 
 steam or trolley car, automobile or aircraft, 
 passes much of his time indoors, reading, writ- 
 ing, planning, and contriving, delves into new 
 problems of philosophy, science, and inven- 
 tion, exploits new lands and new routes of 
 trade, invents new guns and new explosives, 
 devises new methods of rapid communication 
 and transportation, is addicted to the use of 
 tobacco and alcohol and strong coffee and tea, 
 is subject to chronic fatigue, has a tendency 
 to the use of poisonous drugs and to insanity 
 and suicide and small families. 
 
 This is our typical man of to-day, and be- 
 side him and living in close proximity to him, 
 
WAR 235 
 
 there is another class, likewise neither peace- 
 loving nor land-tilling, namely, the class of 
 dependents, delinquents, and defectives. 
 
 This, then, is the material we have to work 
 with, and now, given this material, let us 
 suppose that international rivalries should 
 cease, that our colossal modern armies and 
 navies should disappear, and that the vast 
 number of men and the enormous amounts of 
 capital involved in military armament should 
 be turned into productive channels, and let us 
 suppose, further, that the burden of taxes 
 hitherto required for armies, navies, and pen- 
 sions should be lifted, and with it lifted also 
 the fear of invasion, — what, then, would hap- 
 pen? Something very different, no doubt, from 
 that condition of idyllic happiness and peace 
 which one infers from the arguments of the 
 pacificists. 
 
 The fact is, the causes of war lie much 
 deeper than in any political conditions. They 
 are to be sought in the constitution of the 
 human mind. The question, therefore, is a 
 profoundly difficult one and demands a dif- 
 ferent method of approach. It must be ap- 
 proached from the biological and psycholog- 
 ical as well as the sociological point of view. 
 
236 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 The following attempt to approach the sub- 
 ject from its psychological side is submitted 
 in the belief that the facts here presented, 
 while no doubt partial and incomplete, are 
 facts which the student of the causes and 
 remedies of war will have to consider. 
 
 To understand the psychology of war, it is 
 necessary to go back and trace the actual his- 
 tory of the development of the human being. 
 Here lies the trouble with all our schemes of 
 pacificism and all our Utopias and all our 
 pleasure and peace economies. They deal with 
 an ideal human being, not with actual men. 
 Sociologists will make futile contributions to 
 human progress except as they keep in close 
 touch with the facts of human evolution and 
 of human history. 
 
 Some ages ago Nature, as we may say, in 
 a figure of speech, made a great and wonderful 
 discovery, that of the survival value of intel- 
 ligence, supplemented later by the discovery 
 of the survival value of sympathy and cooper- 
 ation. It was no longer, thereafter, a question 
 of tooth and claw, of swift foot, strong arm, 
 and warm fur; it was a question of the man- 
 ufacture and use of weapons and tools and 
 clothes and houses. Psychologically, it was a 
 
WAR 237 
 
 question of the development of certain new 
 and wonderful mental traits, those of cun- 
 ning and dexterity, attention and concentra- 
 tion, abstraction, analysis, and invention. But 
 these required a large brain, and Nature there- 
 fore produced an erect, top-heavy animal, who 
 acquired speech and called himself man. 
 Physically this animal ceased further develop- 
 ment. He needed nothing but a large and 
 ever larger brain and a dexterous hand, and, 
 finally, the dexterous hand also was scarcely 
 needed, but brain and brain alone. The brain, 
 however, required nourishment and a certain 
 physical support, hence stomach, heart, lungs, 
 and a circulatory system must needs be re- 
 tained after some fashion, but the main intent 
 was to develop brain and only brain. 
 
 This process is now at its height. Nature, 
 we may say, is more than ever elated at her 
 discovery of the survival value of intelligence, 
 and this discovery is being worked for all that 
 it is worth. There is no limit, it would seem, 
 to the power of the mind. Other animal species 
 are no longer feared. They are not even 
 needed as servants. Electricity can be made 
 to do all things better than the horse. Against 
 intelligence the elements have no longer any 
 
238 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 power. Storm and lightning and flood are 
 now only interesting episodes. Night is no 
 longer a harbinger of evil, but under the glare 
 of the electric light a joy and great delight. 
 Heat and cold are no longer to be considered. 
 Steam and the electric current turn winter 
 into benign summer, and night into day. 
 Neither is distance to be reckoned with any 
 more. It is short-circuited by steam, gasoline, 
 and electricity. 
 
 Especially in continental Europe, in Eng- 
 land and America, during the past fifty years, 
 has the march of mind gone forward with 
 dizzy-like rapidity. More than ever has man 
 become master. More than ever are the higher 
 brain centers the only significant organs in the 
 body. Less than ever has Nature found it 
 necessary for her immediate needs to care for 
 stomach, heart, and lungs, or muscle and re- 
 productive system. It is mind that counts 
 and mind alone. Nineteenth- and twentieth- 
 century man has become a high-power effi- 
 ciency machine combining a marvelous capac- 
 ity for thought with an unconquerable force of 
 will, but working inevitably under high pres- 
 sure and dangerous tension. 
 
 A gigantic system of wireless telegraphy and 
 
WAR 239 
 
 telephony is not invented and extended over 
 the whole face of the earth in a few years (one 
 might almost say in a few months) without 
 thought and effort. Dreadnoughts and super- 
 dreadnoughts, mortars and machine-guns, dir- 
 igibles and aeroplanes, superb and matchless 
 systems of military organization, are not per- 
 fected without thought and effort. Magnifi- 
 cent cities, fed by a network of smoothly run- 
 ning railroads, are not built without thought 
 and effort. Improved systems of agriculture 
 forcing the earth to produce fourfold more 
 abundantly are not devised without thought 
 and effort. Miraculously wonderful cinemat- 
 ographic machines are not invented without 
 thought and effort, nor without thought and 
 effort is every moving thing from the Arctic 
 to the Antarctic in nature and in art pho- 
 tographed and brought in its living and mov- 
 ing similitude to our eyes. Large continental 
 cities are not freed from graft and brought 
 under elaborately perfect systems of municipal 
 government without thought and effort. Great 
 national and international systems of organ- 
 ized labor are not perfected without thought 
 and effort. The day laborer does not hold 
 himself hour by hour and day by day and 
 
240 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 month by month to his highly specialized and 
 fatiguing work without thought and effort. 
 
 These illustrations could be extended indefi- 
 nitely. In the work of scientific research, in 
 philosophical study, in industrial and me- 
 chanical invention, in the building of great 
 systems of schools and universities, in the 
 management of great commercial and indus- 
 trial enterprises, in journalism, literature, and 
 art, we see exhibitions of ceaseless thought 
 and tireless effort. It is an age of hard work, 
 and almost without exception it is mental work 
 of a highly specialized kind and involves stress 
 of the highest and most recently developed 
 brain centers. 
 
 It was inevitable that disaster of some kind, 
 or a reaction of some kind, should follow upon 
 this high-tension and one-sided life. Some- 
 thing was bound to snap and something has 
 snapped. Nature has overreached herself in 
 her discovery of the survival value of intelli- 
 gence. Intelligence, to be sure, has a survival 
 value of almost limitless degree, but intelli- 
 gence is, as it happens, linked inseparably to 
 a brain, a highly complex, delicate, and unsta- 
 ble mechanism, which was originally intended 
 as a motor center for hand, foot, and the 
 
WAR 241 
 
 muscles of the trunk, and not as a center for 
 thought and sustained effort. Furthermore, 
 the brain itself is organically dependent upon 
 stomach, heart, and lungs, whose parallel de- 
 velopment Nature in her haste to develop her 
 new discovery has neglected. 
 
 The form that the reaction has taken in this 
 case is the form which the psychologist sees 
 it must inevitably take, namely, the tempo- 
 rary reassertion of primitive human impulses. 
 The world has had a thinking spasm of unusual 
 severity; it must have a fling. In America, 
 where conditions were much the same as in 
 Europe, the reaction has taken the milder form 
 of amusement crazes. The dance, the mov- 
 ing-picture show, the automobile, the baseball 
 diamond, and the football gridiron have helped 
 to relieve the tension. Furthennore, in both 
 North and South America the tension has been 
 greatly lessened until now by the conquest of 
 a new country. Here men have lived more in 
 the open, and have had the powers of nature 
 to pit their forces against. 
 
 To those who do not understand this law 
 of psychological compensation and who have 
 been accustomed to regard the world as get- 
 ting very serious and civilized and dignified, 
 
242 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 intent on moral and social improvement, there 
 is something almost as ludicrous in the specta- 
 cle of dancing America as there is something 
 pathetic and tragic in that of warring Europe. 
 For in Europe, where the temper of the people 
 lends itself less readily to these lighter forms 
 of release, the reaction took the form of a 
 return to most primitive bloodshed. Conse- 
 quently the war came to us as a distinct shock. 
 One heard everywhere the comment — " It 
 is impossible. I thought we had got far be- 
 yond all that." The culture of Germany, 
 France, and England was so high that it 
 was unbelievable that these people should 
 suddenly develop hate in its most intense 
 form, with a frenzied desire to kill one another. 
 To the psychologist, however, it seems not 
 unreasonable. It was a temporary reversion 
 to completely primitive instincts restoring the 
 balance to an overwrought social brain. 
 
 Before the war we heard everywhere of 
 "unrest," a great spiritual unrest. But the 
 significance of this unrest was not understood. 
 It was not due to untoward social or economic 
 conditions, for the world has never seen con- 
 ditions so favorable for the greatest happiness 
 of the greatest number. Its cause rather was 
 
WAR 243 
 
 to be found in an asjonmetrical development 
 of human personality, too much thought, too 
 much effort, too much "efficiency," and not 
 enough balance, not enough mere bodily vi- 
 tality. In England this unrest displayed it- 
 self as a high degree of social irritability. On 
 the stage it appeared as a carping criticism of 
 social life and social institutions; in literature 
 as a hysterical pursuit of new Utopias; in po- 
 litical life as jarring rumors of civil war. 
 
 In Russia, just before the outbreak of the 
 war, the streets of Petrograd were barricaded 
 by strikers and progressives jealous of real or 
 fancied wrongs. Instantly, when war was de- 
 clared, a great inward "peace" settled down 
 upon the warring nations. The restless soul 
 ceased in a moment its feverish upward striv- 
 ing after new inventions, new philosophy, new 
 science, and new thought. The brain centers 
 were short-circuited. The social mind sank to 
 the old level. It lived again in the old primi- 
 tive emotions and the old racially familiar 
 scenes, in pictures of bloodshed and rapine, in 
 memories of the drum-beat and of the tread 
 of marching armies. To be sure, there were 
 sorrow and suffering and anxious faces and 
 hunger and hardship and countless woes, but 
 
244 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 these are old friends of the human mind. The 
 nation was at war, but it was at rest. A cer- 
 tain strange harmony settled down upon the 
 people. The war was hardly two months old 
 when we began to hear of a new Russia, a new 
 France, a new England, and a new Germany, 
 all regenerated by the baptism of blood, full 
 of high aspirations, purified visions, and noble 
 resolutions. 
 
 The study which we have made of the psy- 
 chology of play and sport enables us more 
 easily to understand the psychology of war. 
 The high tension of the modern workaday life 
 must be periodically relieved by a return to 
 primitive forms of behavior, as in football, 
 baseball, hunting, fishing, horse-racing, the 
 circus, the arena, the cock-fight, the prize- 
 fight, and the countless forms of outing. Man 
 must once again use his arms, his legs, his 
 larger muscles, his lower brain tracts. He must 
 live again in the open, by the camp-fire, by 
 the stream, in the forest. He must kill some- 
 thing, be it fish or bird or deer, as his ancestors 
 did in times remote. Thereafter come peace 
 and harmony, and he is ready once more to 
 return to the life of the intellect and will, to 
 the life of "efficiency." 
 
WAR 245 
 
 Periodically, however, man seems to need 
 a deeper plunge into the primeval, and this is 
 war. War has always been the release of 
 nations from the tension of progress. Man is 
 a fighting animal; at first from necessity, after- 
 wards from habit. In former centuries, when 
 the contrast between peace and war was not 
 so great, it was undertaken with more ease 
 and less apology, almost as a matter of course. 
 Life was less intense then and the reaction of 
 war less extreme. Now, in the face of an ad- 
 vanced public sentiment, of peace societies and 
 arbitration boards, the tension has to become 
 very great, the potential very high before the 
 spark is struck, and, when this happens, we 
 have the ludicrous spectacle of the warring 
 nations apologizing and explaining to an as- 
 tonished world. 
 
 War, therefore, seems to act as a kind of 
 catharsis. The warring nation is purified by 
 war, and thereafter, with a spirit chastened 
 and purged, enters again upon the upward way 
 to attain still greater heights of progress. But 
 here again, as we have seen in the other forms 
 of relaxation which we have studied, the 
 catharsis figure is misleading. The situation 
 is not one of gross emotions to be purged 
 
246 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 away, as Aristotle's figure of speech implies. 
 It is rather merely a question of fatigue and 
 rest. Our demand for an ever-increasing effi- 
 ciency has brought too great a strain upon 
 those cerebral functions associated with the 
 peculiar mental powers upon which efficiency 
 depends. Efficiency demands great powers of 
 attention, concentration, analysis, self-control, 
 inhibition, sustained effort, all of which are 
 extremely fatiguing and demand frequent in- 
 tervals of rest and relaxation. When this rest 
 and relaxation are lacking, we may always 
 expect cataclysmic reactions which will re- ' 
 store the balance. 
 
 In war, society sinks back to the primitive 
 type, the primitive mortal combat of man 
 with man, the primitive religious conception 
 of God as God of battles, and the primitive 
 morality of right as might. It brings rest to 
 the higher brain, it brings social relaxation, it 
 brings release from the high tension which is 
 the condition of progress. After the war, al- 
 most in a day, the nation resumes its accus- 
 tomed moral standards, just as the debauchee 
 returns to his daily life chastened and sub- 
 dued. Unfortunately, this spiritual regenera- 
 tion, which in older times may have redeemed 
 
WAR 247 
 
 the horrors of war, is in our modern wars 
 buried under such a staggering load of evils, 
 financial, economic, and moral, that it taxes 
 the imagination to derive any consolation from 
 this spiritual rebirth. Perhaps the most that 
 can be said is that it clears the mental atmos- 
 phere for the future upward way. 
 
 If the theory of war here suggested is cor- 
 rect, it might be inferred that in modern times, 
 as life becomes more rapid and more strenuous 
 and the brain tension greater, wars would be- 
 come more and more necessary to relieve the 
 tension and restore the equilibrium. It is true 
 that with the heightening of mental life, relax- 
 ation of some kind becomes more and more 
 imperative. But with the growth of intelli- 
 gence the absurdity, futility, and unreason of 
 war as a means of settling disputes becomes 
 more and more evident, and with the increase 
 of culture and refinement and of Christian 
 love and sympathy, the spectacle of war be- 
 comes more and more anomalous and gro- 
 tesque, so that we have in modern times pow- 
 erful counteracting forces — forces which are 
 still further augmented by the vigorous hu- 
 manitarian movements of the times. The 
 motives which make for peace are so great 
 
248 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 and the absurdity of war so apparent that the 
 fact that wars continue quite as general and 
 quite as frequent as in former times shows that 
 the deep-lying psychological forces which lead 
 to war are more powerful than ever. 
 
 If some way is found to prevent interna- 
 tional rivalries, if war between nations is made 
 less and less possible by schemes of interna- 
 tional arbitration and conciliation, why, then, 
 it is probable, unless we also discover some 
 method of diminishing the mental tension of 
 our present mode of life, that "unrest," social 
 irritability, and probably civil wars will in- 
 crease. Professor James was wholly right when 
 he hoped for some substitute for war. The 
 suggestion made by Walter B. Cannon, that 
 international sports might take the place of 
 international wars, would seem to be one 
 quite in accord with the psychologist's atti- 
 tude on the subject.^ 
 
 The fact is that it does not take a very care- 
 ful reader of the human mind to see that all 
 the Utopias and all the socialistic schemes are 
 based on a mistaken notion of the nature of 
 this mind. It is by no means sure that what 
 
 * Sec the inter' sting chapter in his book, Bodily 
 Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear, and Rage, chap. xv. 
 
WAR 249 
 
 man wants is peace and quiet and tranquillity. 
 These are too close to ennui, which is his 
 greatest dread. W^at man wants is not peace, 
 but a battle. He must pit his force against 
 some one or some thing. E%'er}' language is 
 most rich in synonynas for battle, war, con- 
 test, conflict, quarrel, combat, fight. German 
 children play all day long ^^•ith their toy 
 soldiers. Our sports take the form of con- 
 tests in football, baseball, and hundreds of 
 others. Prize-fights, dog-fights, and cock-fights 
 ha-\-e pleased in all ages. \M"ien Rome for a 
 season was not engaged in real war, Claudius 
 staged a sea-fight for the delectation of an im- 
 mense concourse, in which nineteen thousand 
 gladiators ^^"ere compelled to take a tragic 
 part, so that the ships were broken to pieces 
 and the waters of the lake were red ^^'ith 
 blood. 
 
 You ma}' perhaps recall Professor James's 
 astonishing picture of his A-isit to a Chautau- 
 qua. Here he found modem culture at its 
 best, no povert}', no drunkenness, no zjTnotic 
 diseases, no crime, no police, — only poHte 
 and refined and harmless people. Here was a 
 middle-class paradise, kindergarten, and model 
 schools, lectures and classes and music, bi- 
 
250 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 cycling and swimming, and culture and kind- 
 ness and Elysian peace. But at the end of a 
 week, he came out into the real world, and he 
 said: — 
 
 Ouf! what a relief! Now for something pri- 
 mordial and savage ... to set the balance 
 straight again. This order is too tame, this cul- 
 ture too second-rate, this goodness too uninspir- 
 ing. This human drama, without a villain or a 
 pang; this community so refined that ice-cream 
 soda-water is the utmost offering it can make 
 to the brute animal in man; this city simmer- 
 ing in the tepid lakeside sun; this atrocious 
 harmlessness of all things — I cannot abide with 
 them. 
 
 What men want, he says, is something more 
 precipitous, something with more zest in it, 
 with more adventure. Nearly all the Utopias 
 paint the life of the future as a kind of giant 
 Chautauqua, in which every man and woman 
 is at work, all are well fed, satisfied, and cul- 
 tivated. But as man is now constituted he 
 would probably find such a life flat, stale, and 
 unprofitable. 
 
 Man is not originally a working animal. 
 Civilization has imposed work upon man, and 
 if you work him too hard, he will quit work 
 and go to war. Nietzsche says man wants 
 
WAR 25 1 
 
 two things — danger and play. War repre- 
 sents danger. 
 
 It follows that all our social Utopias are 
 wrongly conceived. They are all based on a 
 theory of pleasure economy. But history and 
 evolution show that man has come up from the 
 lower animals through a pain economy. He 
 has struggled up — fought his way up through 
 never-ceasing pain and effort and struggle and 
 battle. The Utopias picture a society in which 
 man has ceased to struggle. He works his 
 eight hours a day — everybody works — and 
 he sleeps and enjoys himself the other hours. 
 But man is not a working animal; he is a fight- 
 ing animal. The Utopias are ideal — but they 
 are not psychological. The citizens for such 
 an ideal social order are lacking. Human be- 
 ings will not serve. 
 
 Our present society tends more and more, 
 in its outward form, in time of peace, toward 
 the Chautauqua plan, but meanwhile striving 
 and passion bum in the brain of the human 
 units, till the time comes when they find 
 this insipid life unendurable. They resort to 
 amusement crazes, to narcotic drugs, to polit- 
 ical strife, to epidemics of crime, and finally 
 to war. 
 
252 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 Psychology, therefore, forces upon us this 
 conclusion. Neither war nor alcohol can be 
 banished from the world by sununary means 
 nor direct suppressions. The mind of man 
 must be made over. War is not social insan- 
 ity nor is it even social criminality. It is too 
 normal to be classed as either. But war is 
 fast becoming irrational, and a substitute for 
 it must be found. Social reconstruction here- 
 after will have to be conceived on a different 
 plan. It will have to be based on an intimate 
 knowledge of psychology, anthropology, and 
 history, rather than merely upon sociology 
 and economics. As the mind of man is con- 
 stituted, he will never be content to be a 
 mere laborer, a producer, and a consumer. 
 He loves adventure, self-sacrifice, heroism, 
 relaxation. These things must somehow be 
 provided. Still more important will be some 
 change in our educational ideals which shall 
 look not so much to efficiency merely and ever 
 more efficiency, as to the production of a har- 
 monized and balanced personality. Perhaps 
 we shall have to cease our worship of American 
 efficiency and German Strebertum and go back 
 to Aristotle and his teaching of "the mean." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 CONCLUSION 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 OUR purpose in these studies has been 
 merely to gain a better understanding 
 of play, of sport, of laughter, of profanity, of 
 the desire for alcohol, and of the causes of 
 war, from the psychologist's point of view. 
 But possibly the reader may ask whether any 
 practical results follow from these studies. 
 For instance, should we play more or less or 
 differently.'' Is there, from the viewpoint of 
 the psychologist, any hope of repressing the 
 desire for alcohol or checking the tendency 
 to war? 
 
 Perhaps the practical conclusions have in- 
 cidentally become apparent enough from the 
 preceding pages. It may be well, however, in 
 conclusion, to emphasize a few points con- 
 cerning some general tendencies of our times 
 in regard to work and play. 
 
 Of course, the first and obvious conclusion 
 would be that, if we are to avoid unhealthful 
 forms of relaxation, we must provide healthful 
 
2S6 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 ones. Periods o frelaxation ar e impera tive, not 
 only for our indmHual health and peace, but 
 also for social safety, andThe imperative need 
 of this relaxation is increased by the peculiarly 
 tense character of our manner of life. 
 
 A different kind of social life would seem 
 to be necessary if we are to lessen the craving 
 for alcohol and diminish the frequency of war. 
 Without doubt this is a profound truth, which, 
 if it could be made explicit, would solve the 
 problems of alcohol and war, or at least hold 
 out more hope of solving them than any 
 direct means of repression or any legislative 
 or political expedients. 
 
 Does the psychology of relaxation offer any 
 hints as to just what kind of social life this 
 different kind of social life will have to be if 
 the desired ends are to be realized? Well, 
 evidently it will not be the kind which has 
 usually been pictured in the Utopias. It will 
 not be any socialistic state based on a pleasure 
 economy, where peace and plenty are sup- 
 posed to go hand in hand. As the human mind 
 and body are now actually constituted, an era 
 of plenty will not be an era of peace. His- 
 torically the human race knows little of 
 "plenty"; it knows rather of want and pain 
 
CONCLUSION 257 
 
 and struggle. The twentieth century is com- 
 paratively an era of plenty, and it has wit- 
 nessed the most ferocious and bloody of all 
 the wars of the world. Increase of riches, 
 whether national or individual, does not con- 
 duce to peace, but to irritability and conten- 
 tion. Mr. L. P. Jacks, writing in the "Atlan- 
 tic Monthly," ^ maintains that the European 
 war sprang in large measure from the enor- 
 mous increase in national wealth which was 
 not tempered by a corresponding increase in 
 morality. 
 
 The psychologist sees less hope in social and 
 political and economic reforms in eliminat- 
 ing vice and preventing war than in different 
 habits of life and in a different manner of social 
 life and in a different kind of education for the 
 young. These changes must be in the direc- 
 tion of a largely increased relaxation and in a 
 mode of life which shall aim to produce a har- 
 monized personality and shall put less strain 
 and emphasis uporulhe brain. The pace has 
 become too rapid. -Both the individual and 
 society will have to learn to "let go" and 
 breathe more deeply^ 
 
 It would be easy to mention many changes 
 1 September, 1915, p. 419. 
 
258 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 in our manner of life which would tend in this 
 direction, but, while such suggestions might 
 be of priceless benefit to the individual who 
 should adopt them, they stand so directly 
 opposed to the stream of present social ten- 
 dencies that one sees little hope of speedy 
 changes of this kind. Such, for instance, 
 would be more outdoor life; more walking 
 and less riding, and in riding the return to the 
 use of the horse instead of the automobile, 
 especially to the use of the saddle horse; a 
 return to earlier forms of sport and play, espe- 
 cially to the rougher and ruder kinds; a return 
 to fishing and camping and hunting; a return 
 to country life instead of city life; the owning 
 and cultivating of the soil and the care of 
 domestic animals; the increase of holidays and 
 festivals; a very large decrease in the amount 
 of our reading; the substitution of music, par- 
 ticularly tranquilizing music, for the ultra- 
 stimulating theater and moving-picture show; 
 and finally the increased cultivation of the 
 quieting influences of art and religion. It 
 would be easy to extend this list and as use- 
 less as easy, for it all means the complete re- 
 versal of our present tendencies. 
 
 Scarcely less difficult and somewhat more 
 
CONCLUSION 259 
 
 hopeful would be the outlining of a different 
 system of education for the young. For in- 
 stance, let the children be kept out of doors 
 where the human race has lived; let them 
 stand on their feet, not sit cramped between 
 a desk and a seat; let them use the larger and 
 older muscles, not the finer muscles of the 
 eyes and fingers; let them avoid letters wholly 
 till they are ten years old, and even then 
 let them largely forswear books and pens and 
 stuffy schoolrooms; let them live, as the an- 
 cient Greeks lived, in the open or in the 
 gymnasium or on the playground or in the 
 baths; let their education be in music and 
 gymnastics and in physical training and in 
 morals and in citizenship and in handicraft, 
 and in manual rather than cerebral dexterities; 
 let the whole aim be to produce a harmonized 
 personality in which there shall be a perfect 
 balance between brain and muscle, and in 
 which heart and lungs and stomach and the 
 eliminative and reproductive systems shall 
 receive first rather than last consideration. 
 It is at any rate conceivable that a stable 
 society might be built from the stable units 
 thus produced. 
 As long, however, as our social ideals remain 
 
26o PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 as they are, so long will our schools cultivate 
 those mental traits which our social condi- 
 tions demand, namely, intensive thought, 
 analysis, attention, discrimination, keenness, 
 shrewdness, and cunning — and so long may 
 we expect frenzied social reactions and a crav- 
 ing for narcotic drinks and drugs. The mental 
 traits just mentioned are those which conduce 
 to individual efficiency, success, the exploita- 
 tion of nature and of other men, the amassing 
 of wealth, the increase of the bigness of every- 
 thing, — big business, big engines, big build- 
 ings, big cities, big ships, etc. ; and the fastness 
 of everything, — fast trains, fast steamships, 
 fast motor-cars, fast communication. These 
 things now stand for progress in the minds of 
 most people, and consequently there is not 
 just at present much hope for any radical 
 change in our educational programme. When 
 our ideals of progress change so that we shall 
 prize quality rather than quantity, a meas- 
 ured limitation rather than unrestricted lib- 
 erty, beauty rather than size, stability rather 
 than rapidity, the true rather than the sensa- 
 tional, then we may learn to emphasize other 
 traits in our education of the young. A system 
 of education is conceivable which should cul- 
 
CONCLUSION 261 
 
 tivate every part of the human personahty 
 with equal care, the body as well as the mind, 
 and of the mind not the intellect alone, but 
 every shade of fine feeling and noble impulse — 
 an education which should bestow the ability 
 to master self as well as to master nature, the 
 ability to rest, relax, and obey, as well as to 
 dominate other men, the ability to confine all 
 our desires, passions, ambitions, and activities 
 within just limits. 
 
 Ferrero, in his "Ancient Rome and Modern 
 America," has pointed out most clearly and 
 most convincingly the points of strength and 
 weakness in our modern social life. In this 
 book the learned historian of ancient Rome, 
 who has likewise made himself acquainted 
 with every phase of our dizzy modern life 
 both in Europe and the two Americas, has 
 pronounced a judgment upon our civilization 
 which is as sane and sober as it is critical and 
 penetrating. He is by no means blind to the 
 immeasurable advance that the world has 
 made in some respects since the days of ancient 
 Rome. But of the present time he says in his 
 concluding sentences : — 
 
 Never has man lived in such a state of per- 
 manent and growing excitement. If the men of 
 
262 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 the ancient world could come to life again, their 
 first impression, you may be sure, would be that 
 mankind had gone mad. It is this excitement 
 which has produced the formidable explosion 
 of energy that we are witnessing on our little 
 planet, which for ages had lived in comparative 
 tranquillity. But has not this formidable ten- 
 sion of the world-soul itself need of limits.'' Can 
 we conceive its being allowed to increase in- 
 definitely until the time when the nervous sys- 
 tem breaks down, as inevitably it must.? Can 
 we conceive our perpetual agitation being left 
 without any limit save exhaustion, insanity, or 
 death .'' The question answers itself. The limits 
 to the overexcitement of our nerves raise one 
 of the most serious problems of our epoch; a 
 problem with a thousand different aspects, which 
 involves morals as well as hygiene, politics as well 
 as the intellectual life. 
 
 Among the "thousand different aspects" of 
 the problem of overexcitement of our nerves 
 we might mention here incidentally the prob- 
 lem of the moving pictures. In these pictures 
 we have all the conditions most favorable for 
 an intensification of a mode of living already 
 too intense. It Is upon young children, how- 
 ever, that the effect is most pernicious. The 
 natural life of the child Is a life of muscular 
 activity in the open. To confine such children 
 
CONCLUSION 263 
 
 for one or two hours in a seat in a dark and 
 often poorly ventilated room would be unwise, 
 even if they had not already been confined, 
 perhaps, many hours in a schoolroom or over 
 their story-books. And yet this is the least of 
 the three evils of these pictures. 
 
 The second is the dangerous intensification 
 of the mental life of the child by the highly 
 exciting effect of such a rapid series of shifting 
 scenes drawn from every department of nature 
 and society. It constitutes a severe and un- 
 natural strain upon the attention and the per- 
 ceptive powers, which cannot fail to result in 
 an impairment of normal mental growth, and 
 may, indeed, in many cases result in positive 
 impairment of the nervous system in later 
 years. 
 
 In no sense, therefore, can moving pictures 
 be included in forms of relaxation for children. 
 On the contrary, their effect is to speed up a 
 mental life already under too much stimula- 
 tion. The concentration of attention, even 
 though the attention be objectively deter- 
 mined by the plot-interest and by the rapidity 
 of the changing scenes, is an effect qaUie the 
 opposite of that which recreation and relaxa- 
 tion seek to attain. 
 
264 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 Evils of the second class, just referred to, 
 are Inherent in all moving pictures. Those of 
 the third class, the moral evils, might be ob- 
 viated if the pictures themselves were of an 
 unobjectionable kind. The pictures commonly 
 shown are oftentimes simply of a character 
 to awaken wonder and to make one dissatisfied 
 with the plain and simple life of the home, but 
 sometimes they are directly suggestive of evil, 
 and sometimes, most unfortunately, they are 
 such as to stimulate too early certain instincts 
 and emotions which should ripen later and 
 more gradually. 
 
 We hear about the educational value of the 
 moving pictures. Surely, if this is education, 
 it is of an antiquated kind. Every educator 
 now knows that an education in which the 
 child is passive and quiescent is of little value. 
 The child must respond, he must react to his 
 impressions. Flashing before his eyes a lot of 
 scenes is not education, even when the scenes 
 themselves are of a harmless character. 
 
 Another aspect of this same problem of the 
 overstimulation of our nerves presents itself 
 in the use of stimulants and narcotics. We do 
 not always appreciate the significance of sta- 
 tistics like the following : The annual consump- 
 
CONCLUSION 26s 
 
 tion of tobacco in the United States is about 
 half a thousand million pounds; of coffee, 
 nearly a thousand million pounds; of tea, al- 
 most a hundred million pounds. In the current 
 issue of the grocery list of a colossal mail-order 
 house of one of our larger cities, seven pages 
 are devoted to coffee and tea, and two to 
 cigars, while flour is given only two pages and 
 no other article of food more than one page. 
 So far as is known, these narcotics and stim- 
 ulants contribute nothing whatever to mental 
 and physical economy. The reason why hu- 
 man beings desire bread is apparent. It fur- 
 nishes nutriment and renews wasted tissue 
 a|id expended energy. Tea, coffee, and to- 
 bacco furnish no energy and renew no tissue, 
 yet the desire for them is intense. This desire 
 for narcotics and stimulants is probably a 
 symptom of an overdeveloped and overstimu- 
 lated brain. It indicates a lack of adjustment 
 between body and brain — too much work 
 and not enough play. 
 
 Probably what we need is not to try so hard, 
 not to work under so much pressure — to at- 
 tain to more calm, poise, balance, symmetry, 
 harmony. We shall do well to ponder on 
 Ruskin's saying that the great things of the 
 
266 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 world have been done with a great ease, not 
 with a great effort. In the briUiant epochs 
 of painting and sculpture and architecture and 
 music and poetry, it was the overflowing im- 
 pulse of the artist which demanded expression 
 in those exquisite forms of beauty. Notwith- 
 standing Mr. Edison's bon mot, it was inspira- 
 tion and not perspiration that did those things. 
 Religion no more than art flourishes in a per- 
 spiring age like the present. The religious 
 impulse springs spontaneously from the full 
 heart. 
 
 Mr. Chesterton raises the question, as many 
 others have done, whether there has been in 
 recent times or is at present any human prog- 
 ress. Progress implies an ideal. What we have 
 at present is not progress, but a movement, a 
 movement toward industrial differentiation, 
 toward comfort, — no, not necessarily com- 
 fort, but toward a mode of life separate from 
 muscular activity. Now, the loss of muscular 
 activity must be fatal to man. It would be 
 the beginning of the end, however brilliant 
 the years of that end might be. Man has de- 
 veloped a stupendous brain, and with this 
 brain he can conquer nature and amass riches, 
 but there is danger that these riches may 
 
CONCLUSION 267 
 
 bring physical decadence rather than social 
 stability. Professor Giddings in his "Democ- 
 racy and Empire" says: — 
 
 Dazzled by the magnificent results of material 
 progress already achieved, men throw them- 
 selves into the great enterprises of modern life 
 with the zest of an ambition that knows no 
 bounds. The rate of industrial, professional, 
 political, and intellectual activity becomes pro- 
 portional to the swiftness of electricity and 
 steam. . . . Increase the strain of any kind of 
 competitive work and derange the conditions 
 under which it is done, and the percentage of 
 failures will rise. That this is the far-reaching , 
 explanation of the physical and intellectual and 
 moral degeneration that we behold on every side, 
 notwithstanding a marvelous multiplication of 
 all the influences that make for good, is not to be 
 doubted by one who will patiently study the 
 facts recorded in mental and vital statistics. 
 
 Professor Giddings goes on to recall the 
 rapid increase in suicides, insanity, and crime, 
 and he might well add now increase in blood- 
 shed in war and an increased desire for alcohol 
 and drugs. 
 
 As regards the physical condition of our 
 so-called civilized races, many writers have 
 been misled by mistaking striking examples of 
 
268 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 efficiency and endurance for physical excel- 
 lence. That our modem athletic records have 
 never been surpassed proves nothing as to the 
 physiological vigor of our people. The won- 
 derful development of nervous centers enables 
 the modern man to store up and expend an 
 enormous amount of energy, making him 
 highly efficient and progressive, but at the 
 same time unstable. The result is a glit- 
 tering materialistic civilization accompanied 
 by many neurotic evils, — feeble-mindedness, 
 crime, suicide, hysteria, nervous exhaustion, 
 amusement crazes, craving for narcotics, such 
 as alcohol and tobacco, the substitution of 
 urban for rural life, birth-control, decreasing 
 fertility, social instability, and war. To realize 
 the seriousness of these evils one has to re- 
 member the herculean endeavors that society 
 is making through every kind of uplift move- 
 ment to prevent or check them. An untold 
 army of skillful surgeons and dentists and 
 medical specialists enables us to cover up 
 many of our physical weaknesses and make 
 a good appearance. A race of men, which for 
 some hundred thousand years has stood on 
 its feet and lived in the open and fought for 
 its life, is not likely to lirive very long in 
 
CONCLUSION 269 
 
 street-cars, automobiles, steam-heated houses, 
 and hammocks and easy-chairs. We have be- 
 come a sitting race, and it is doubtful whether 
 a sitting race can long survive. In fact, we 
 are no longer able to sit erect, but demand 
 support for the back, which tends increasingly 
 to tip backward, giving us more and more a 
 reclining position. The desire for the ham- 
 mock and the increasing need which we feel 
 of getting our feet up on something is a serious 
 symptom. The hiraian race gained its erect 
 position through strenuous ages of selection, 
 a position which we are now somewhat re- 
 linquishing. 
 
 The gradual displacement of the human 
 waking day as compared with the solar day 
 is probably both cause and effect of decadence. 
 From two to four hours of life-giving sunshine 
 in the morning have been replaced by a like 
 period of artificial light in the evening. There 
 would seem to be every conceivable advan- 
 tage to human beings to make the waking day 
 conform to the sunlight day by getting up 
 two hours earlier in the morning and going to 
 bed two hours earlier at night, and no con- 
 ceivable disadvantage, sunlight being brighter, 
 healthier, and cheaper than electric light. But 
 
270 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 although the sunlight could be had for the 
 asking, the present age would not welcome 
 the change. We prefer the artificial light, and 
 each new generation prefers more of it. 
 
 The present age is an intensely masculine 
 age, and it is so because the peculiar masculine 
 qualities, those which fit us to our immediate 
 environment, have a direct and temporary 
 survival value. Woman, with her centripetal 
 character, her greater calm and poise and 
 relaxation, her conservation and her conser- 
 vatism, has until now been the needful 
 balance-wheel, the conserving force. If fem- 
 inism were what the word would indicate, 
 there would be some hope in that direction. 
 But apparently it means that woman is to 
 become masculine, and surely the world is 
 already masculine enough. It is characteristic 
 of our tirhes to be expansive, centrifugal, icon- 
 oclastic, self-conscious, and nervous. It is a 
 time of labor, of endeavor, of effort, of expen- 
 diture, of adaptation, and of change. These 
 are all masculine motives, and their tendency 
 is not toward peace or freedom or rest or 
 balance or beauty or attractiveness or reserve 
 of power or conservation of forces. Dionysus 
 is the god of this century; Apollo we have for- 
 
CONCLUSION 271 
 
 gotten. The Dionyslan motive, the motive of 
 the strenuous life, is not tempered, as it was 
 among the Greeks, by the Apollonian motive 
 of balance, harmony, and repose. 
 
 The nineteenth and twentieth centuries are 
 characterized by a belief that happiness is the 
 ideal of man, and that happiness is to be at- 
 tained by work and by wealth equally dis- 
 tributed. This is all open to doubt. A more 
 careful study of human history raises the 
 question whether man is a working animal, 
 whether he is not a fighting and a playing 
 animal. In Hebrew tradition work was im- 
 posed upon man as a curse for wrong-doing. 
 It might be better that he should cease to be 
 a fighting and a playing animal and become a 
 working animal, but the attempt to effect the 
 change may not be successful. Judging from 
 the war in Europe the change to date has not 
 been very rapid. Twentieth-century man has 
 become a hard worker, but he slips off his 
 harness and puts on his armor and then de- 
 stroys in a year the product of the labor of 
 decades. 
 
 Perhaps the ideal of man is joy rather than 
 happiness. A recent writer, commenting on 
 Maxim Gorky's "Comrades," says : — 
 
272 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 In this book we have the record of a people 
 living beneath the shadow of oppression, im- 
 prisonment, torture, death, yet overflowing with 
 an enthusiasm, a warmth of fellowship, a sense of 
 glory, a deep and thrilling joy more akin to the 
 genius of the New Testament than the life of 
 many of our churches.^ 
 
 We hear continually about the "unrest," 
 the "spiritual unrest," of the present, and it 
 is constantly and wrongly assumed that this 
 unrest is due to unfavorable economic and 
 social conditions and that it could be averted 
 if these conditions were better. But the eco- 
 nomic and social conditions were never as 
 good as they are now, if by "good" we mean 
 conducive to comforts and luxuries, and if 
 these conditions were still "better," the un- 
 rest would probably increase. Really good so- 
 cial and economic conditions are those which 
 would produce a sturdy and stable race and 
 a stable society and those higher forms of 
 culture which are typified by art, literature, 
 and religion. 
 
 Before the opening of the economic age [says 
 Brooks Adams], when the imagination glowed 
 with all the passion of religious enthusiasm, 
 
 ' Herman, Eucken and Bergson, p. 80. 
 
CONCLUSION 273 
 
 the monks who built the abbeys of Cluny and 
 Saint Denis took no thought of money, for 
 it regarded them not, . . . Their art was not a 
 chattel to be bought, but an inspired language 
 in which they communed with God or taught 
 the people, and they expressed a poetry in the 
 stones they carved which far transcended words. 
 . . . For these reasons Gothic architecture in its 
 prime was spontaneous, elevated, dignified, and 
 pure.^ 
 
 Now art is not a form of work; it is a fonn 
 of play. It is the fruit of the gospyel of relax- 
 ation. 
 
 Our purpose will be misunderstood if it is 
 thought to be a pessimistic depreciation of the 
 present times. Criticism of the present and 
 exaltation of the past are always easy. Our 
 purpose is to show that the glories of an 
 economic age are tempered by serious faults 
 which may become fatal ones. The kindliness, 
 S3Tnpathy, fellowship, and service of our time, 
 and its superabounding comforts and luxu- 
 ries, make it, except in the intervals of war 
 and except among the submerged and de- 
 pendent, defective, and delinquent classes, a 
 most comfortable time to live in. But it is 
 
 ^ Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay, 
 p. 380. 
 
274 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 at least open to doubt whether such comforts 
 and luxuries, or such service and sympathy, 
 are conducive to or compatible with a really 
 high civilization, unless the units of which 
 society is composed are to be very different 
 from the actual human beings of the present 
 order. Under the rule of sympathy and serv- 
 ice, and of comforts and luxuries, there is 
 danger of physical degeneration, with its re- 
 sulting racial instability, while the continued 
 development of the higher brain and the con- 
 tinued neglect of physiological vigor increase 
 the tension and irritability and precipitate 
 social reactions and upheavals. 
 
 Clearly, then, what we need are relaxation 
 and conservation — conservation of vitality, 
 of physiological strength and vigor, of the old 
 and basic powers of the race, of those non- 
 masculine traits which are typical of the past, 
 present, and future of mankind. The nine- 
 teenth century was the evolutionary century. 
 The world was intoxicated with the idea of 
 development. The twentieth century will be, 
 let us hope, the century of conservation. 
 
 It is doubtful whether the development of 
 the higher brain, wonderful as are its results 
 in producing a certain glittering kind of civi- 
 
CONCLUSION 275 
 
 lization, can be carried any further without 
 defeating its end. What we have to expect 
 and what is, indeed, now going on, is the silent 
 displacement of the highly civilized races by 
 the more sturdy and less civilized ones, a 
 change which will be no less certain, although 
 it may be less spectacular, than the one which 
 destroyed Imperial Rome. In the long run, 
 not the shrewdest and most intelligent race 
 will survive, but the race whose supreme intel- 
 ligence and whose power of cooperation shall be 
 buttressed by physiological vigor. Nietzsche 
 was perfectly right when he said that physi- 
 ological vigor is the only enduring ground of 
 human welfare. 
 
 In a great crowded city like New York or 
 Chicago, where nearness to the city's center 
 is advantageous, the sky-scraper was a bright 
 idea. But there is a limit to the height to 
 which it can safely attain. Stability and per- 
 manence may be sacrificed to height. In the 
 end the Greek temple, which has symmetry 
 as well as splendor, will stand longer. The 
 man of to-day is a kind of sky-scraper. He 
 has splendor but not symmetry. Stability and 
 permanence have been sacrificed to cerebral 
 development. The tension, therefore, is very 
 
276 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 great, and his career is accompanied by reac- 
 tions and reversions of many kinds. He lives 
 and works under high pressure, and disas- 
 trous outbursts and frequent reactions arc the 
 result, and that, too, despite the fact that a 
 considerable amount of the supreme intelli- 
 gence which he has gained is constantly used 
 in buttressing up by all manner of means the 
 human body, the human mind, and human 
 society. Never was mankind working so des- 
 perately to heal the diseases of the body, the 
 diseases of the mind, the diseases of morals, 
 the diseases of society. An enormous amount 
 of thought and effort goes to these cures and 
 to these uplift movements. We have a vastly 
 improved surgery and dentistry and medicine 
 and hygiene, and we have temperance move- 
 ments and peace societies, and we have better 
 schools and better churches, and better courts 
 and better laws, and better houses and better 
 clothes, and better food and better drink, and 
 we have societies for remedying every defect 
 of individual and social man, but the results 
 have been disappointing, for we have gained 
 no higher degree of civilization as measured 
 by art, poetry, or literature, nor have we 
 lessened in any noticeable degree physical and 
 
CONCLUSION 277 
 
 mental diseases, crime and social calamities. 
 To what extent is this due to social causes and 
 to what extent to organic decadence of the 
 umits of which society is comp>osed? It is the 
 custom of the day to put great emphasis upcm 
 social evolution and social heredity and to 
 seek in improved social, economic, and politi- 
 cal conditions for the cure of our social Uls. 
 But we cannot aflFord to be blind to the im- 
 portance of the biolc^cal fitness of the units 
 of which society is composed. All the evidence 
 from the studies we have made in this book 
 tends to strengthen the beUef that in the lack 
 of bicJogical fitness or of phyaological adjust- 
 ment we have the source of many of our 
 social ills. If this be tru^ is there any remedy 
 except the grim working of natural selec- 
 tion? 
 
 The creative power of human consciousness 
 apparently knows few limits. It can spy into 
 every secret of nature and control every 
 natural force. It can find the cause of every 
 disease and the cure of many. It can probably 
 in time equalize the distribution of wealth and 
 opportunity. It can, perhaps, in the end, 
 abolish war and alcohol. But can it do the 
 one thing needful? Can it protect its own 
 
278 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 physical basis? Can it effectuate a healthy 
 balance of mind and body? 
 
 The law that acquired characters are not 
 inherited seems to offer a fatal obstacle to this 
 goal. If so, racial tendencies must run their 
 course and the really fittest will survive. And 
 if the really fittest shall turn out to be the 
 sturdy rather than the highly civilized races, 
 then we must expect the present civilization, 
 the civilization of the large city, of steam and 
 electricity, of the telegraph and telephone, of 
 the motor-car and the easy-chair, — of those 
 who "live softly," in Mr. Roosevelt's apt 
 phrase, — to disappear and some other to 
 take its place. 
 
 This is very likely what may happen, and, 
 perhaps, with the renaissance of sturdiness, 
 there may also come an outpouring of art, 
 music, poetry, and religion, which symbolize 
 the deep joy of life. " When the intellectual 
 development of any section of the race has, for 
 the time being, outrun its ethical development, 
 natural selection has apparently weeded it out 
 like any other unsuitable product." ^ 
 
 But the real question of interest is whether 
 it is necessary that this shall take place by 
 
 1 B. Kidd, Social Evolution, p. 307. 
 
CONCLUSION 279 
 
 the destructive methods of relentless selec- 
 tion, such as in the case of old Rome caused a 
 great and wonderful civilization to collapse 
 like a rotten building, or whether the supreme 
 intelligence which man has attained, and 
 which has been invincible in the conquest of 
 nature, can take up and master the problem 
 of changing the directioB of human evolu- 
 tion itself into channels which shall lead to a 
 higher and more stable civilization, a civiliza- 
 tion free from the curses of war and alcohol 
 and from repulsive mental, physical, and 
 ■moral diseases. There are means already 
 known to science which look in this direction. 
 One method we may find in eugenics, an- 
 other in the continued influence of an im- 
 proved environment, a third in the indirect 
 benefit which shall accrue to racial stamina 
 through the elimination of war and alcohol. 
 It is now believed that alcohol is a protoplas- 
 mic poison and may poison the whole body, 
 and so prevent the proper nourishment of the 
 germ cells, even if it exerts no direct injury 
 upon them. Suppose, then, that by means of 
 a different system of education we might at- 
 tain to such poise and balance and harmony 
 that the desire for alcohol could be abated, 
 
28o PSYCHOLOGY OF RELAXATION 
 
 then it is conceivable that racial sturdiness 
 might be promoted without the sacrifice of 
 our present civilization. In the same way and 
 by the same means, the frequency of war 
 might be lessened and racial vigor be in- 
 creased, for modern wars act to impoverish 
 the physical heredity of a people by the loss 
 of its physically strongest men. 
 
 However this may be, the zest with which 
 we are now taking up the problems of conser- 
 vation, whether of our forests, our soils, or the 
 health and vigor of our children, holds out rich 
 promise of a possibility of some real solution of 
 these vexing questions. 
 
 THE END