Читать книгу The Play of Man - Psychological Purpose of Child's Play - Karl Groos - Страница 24

In other connections we have touched upon many movement plays, such as voice practice and the production of sounds by means of various bodily organs, experimentation with tactile stimuli, and watching moving objects. This sort of exercise often combines motor with sensor play, as has been frequently pointed out. Therefore, to avoid repetition, I will in this section, after a few preliminary remarks suggested by such bearings of the subject as I conceive to be essential, proceed at once to consider the most important and obvious of all movement-plays—namely, those connected with change of place.

In voice practice experiments with the larynx, tongue, lips, and breathing muscles are involved. When children whisper, for example, their enjoyment must be due as much to the lip movements as to the slight sounds produced. The fact that the blind deaf-mute Laura Bridgman158 playfully indulged in the production of various sounds seems to confirm this, and the principle is applicable too to other noises. The child who claps his hands, splashes in the water, bangs on the table with his fist, or puffs out his cheeks to blow a horn; the grown man who shuffles his feet, drums on the table or window pane, the noisy dancer, and even the piano or violin player who indulges in movements now loud, now soft, now slow, now quick—all derive a considerable part of their pleasure in the sport from the motor discharge which is involved.

No exhaustive demonstration is needed to prove that the same conditions prevail in experimentation with touch stimuli and the observation of motion, which is so often connected with it. “In the first year,” says Preyer, in speaking of the manifold and apparently aimless movements of the infant, “exercise of the muscles is the raison d’être of all this activity which appears to be aimless. An adult lying on his back could not repeat the commonest movements of a seven to twelve months child without extreme fatigue.”159 In arm movements the development of right-handedness is of especial interest. Formerly it was attributed to the mother’s or nurse’s method of carrying the child, to the greater weight of one side of the body, and similar pretexts; but Baldwin’s investigations show that such extraneous influences have little to do with it, for he found on excluding such agencies a marked preference for the right hand in the seventh and eighth months, displayed first in strenuous grasping movements.160 An entirely satisfactory explanation has not yet been offered, though Sticker’s theory, is perhaps most probable—namely, that the left brain hemisphere has a better blood supply than the right.161 When there is some difficulty to overcome, some opportunity to display dexterity, there are heightened stimulus and greater directness in the movements of arms and hands. Older children delight to set themselves such tasks as, for instance, clasping the hands behind the back, so that one arm crosses the shoulder, or placing the open hand on a table and raising the ring finger without any of the others, or laying the fingers over one another, etc. When such efforts are overlooked and directed by parents and teachers, we have the beginning of gymnastics, which remains a play so long as the subject enjoys it. Free-hand movements, exercises with dumb-bells and weights and the like, so far as the interest is not centred in the foreign body, all belong here. The intense desire for movement in many forms of mental disease should also be noted in this connection, since they have an indirect playful character, and by their very exaggeration are calculated to throw some light on the conduct of normal humanity. No psychic derangement shows this more clearly than does mania. The voice of such patients, says Kraepelin, “is usually high-pitched. … They are contented, feel inclined to all sorts of fun, and teasing, singing, and joking,” yet all this is invariably followed by a sudden plunge into the contrary mood. “That grave symptom of derangement, strong propensity to movement seems to stand in the closest connection with liveliness of spirits. The patient fairly revels in emotion; he is uneasy, can not long lie or sit still, stirs about, skips, runs, dances. He gesticulates wildly, claps his hands, makes faces, scribbles and rubs on the ground, walls, and windows, beats and drums on the floor, strips off his clothes, tears them to ribbons, etc.”162 Since movement and its opposite are closely connected, the question arises whether the strange rigidity of body manifested in catalepsy is not referable to the same cause. There is certainly often a certain designedness about it. “When any attempt is made to change the position of the patient every muscle is found to be tense. If the head is forced aside by pressure, it flies back to its former position when released. To support the head hardly requires more than the weight of a finger. We are best acquainted with the psychic organ of this stubborn resistance in the common cases where the patient responds contrarily to speech suggestions. He can be made to go forward by being ordered back, and vice versa, will take a seat when told not to, stand still when commanded to go on, etc.”163

Finally, before going on to our principal subject, we should glance at the instinctive chewing motions which were mentioned among tactile plays. When a full-grown man going for a walk sticks a twig in his mouth and gnaws it the movements of his own jaw are of more interest to him than is the stick, except as it promotes sensations of contact. We take genuine pleasure in crunching toast and gnawing on a bone, and the unfortunate habit of biting the finger nails is one form of such play. Many smokers soon chew up the mouth pieces of their pipes and cigar holders, and others constantly bite pencil or penholder, and are unhappy when such indulgence is denied them. Betel-chewing, which, it is true, has the attraction of a narcotic, is indulged in, according to Von Bibra, by one hundred million human beings.164 New Zealanders use kauri, the resin of a certain tree. “In the northern part of Sweden resin obtained from the trunk of a pine tree is very generally chewed.”165 Americans who twenty-five years ago chewed prepared resin have adopted the chewing-gum habit. Material for it is brought chiefly from Mexico; in 1895 four million pounds of chicle gum was imported for this purpose. Jules Legras says of Russia: “Gnawing sunflower seeds is the favourite amusement of children and of the poorer classes. The streets are full of shops where the beloved grain is sold, and the common people stuff their pockets with it. They skilfully split open the husk with the front teeth, discard it, and mechanically chew the kernel. It is a national habit, inexplicable to an outsider, for the seeds are tasteless; but the jaws are kept busy, and their motion forms an accompaniment to the vague dreaming of the poor people.”166

Turning now to our subject proper—namely, playful locomotion or change of place—we find the biological significance of play, the elaboration of certain imperfect instincts, brought out with marked distinctness. The child’s first practice in the direction of future walking is found in the alternative kicking, which is so essential to muscular development.167 Further progress is marked by raising the body and learning to sit, efforts marking the beginning of the struggle with weights which Souriau regards as the leading stimulus to movement-play. So long as this struggle to retain his equilibrium lasts, the child’s behaviour betrays the direct intention of the play. Preyer says: “In his fourteenth week my sturdy boy easily made his first attempt to sit, having his back well propped. In his twenty-second week the child could raise himself in the effort to reach my face, but not till the thirty-ninth week could he sit alone, and still preferred a back. In his carriage it was necessary for him to hold on even in the fortieth and forty-first weeks. But when for a supreme moment he did manage to sit up unassisted he was evidently delighted, and made the greatest efforts to preserve his equilibrium.”168

Creeping is an imperfect though genuine sort of locomotion preparatory to walking. “It is a treat,” says Sigismund, “to watch a creeping child. The tiny creature, seated on the floor, longs for something beyond his reach; straining to get it, he loses his balance and falls over. In that position he still stretches his hand out, and notices that he is nearer the object of his desire, and that a few more such forward motions would attain it. Soon he becomes more active, sure, and courageous, and learns to maintain his centre of gravity on three supports while he lifts the fourth member for his next step forward, for at first the child raises but one limb at a time, though he soon learns to use the right hand and left foot together. I have never seen one so use the hand and foot on the same side. Sometimes the child crawls backward like a crab, even when there is nothing before him which he wishes to shun.”169 Fouquières gives two beautiful ancient representations of creeping children, the first going toward some fruit which lies on a footstool, and the other gazing at a vase on the ground.170

Children who have a lively desire to roam before they are able to walk invent many expedients which afford them great satisfaction; for example, a little boy, Werner H——, has acquired remarkable skill in getting about by stiffening his arms as he stretches them down at his sides and swinging himself forward as if on crutches, as we sometimes see the unfortunates do who have had both legs amputated.

Learning to stand is an essential step preliminary to talking, and causes a child the liveliest satisfaction, giving him further control over his own body, and responding as it does to an inborn impulse. Sigismund places the first efforts in this direction in the eighteenth or twentieth week. “If the nurse holds up a child of this age on her lap, supporting it under the arms, it will dance, hop, and spring perpetually like a hooked fish, bound like a grasshopper, draw up his legs like a closed pocket knife, and twist his head and neck—in short, he will exhibit the same mercurial exuberance of motion which pleases us in young goats, lambs, and kittens. The child’s movements, however, are naturally in the direction of the normal human attitude, and he will make desperate attempts to pull himself up by his nurse’s dress or the edge of a chair or his bath tub, and when by the exertion of this utmost strength he succeeds he commonly breaks out into loud cries of joy.”171 The playful quality so clearly recognised here appears also in Preyer’s remark that his boy in the fortieth week preferred to be exercised in standing rather than in sitting, although the former was more difficult.172 This fact no doubt enhanced the pleasure. At the end of the first year or beginning of the second the child is usually far enough on to stand entirely alone. “He is amazed at his own daring, standing anxiously with feet wide apart, and at last letting himself down rather abruptly.”173

Coming now to actual walking, it is uncertain whether the alternating kicks of the infant point to special instinctive impulses, but we may be sure that when a child pushes forward on being held with the feet touching the floor he feels the stirrings of instinct. “Champney’s child,” says Preyer, “was held upright for the first time at the end of the nineteenth week, so that his feet rested on the floor, and he was moved forward; his legs worked with regularity, and each step was taken accurately and without hesitation or wavering even when the feet were lifted too high. Only in this case was the alternation interrupted, and he made another effort to take the step with his feet in the air. Resting the body sideways on one foot seemed to transfer the stimulus to the other. These observations ground my belief that walking is an instinctive act.”174 This happens somewhat later if the child is not moved forward on being held up; thus Baldwin, whose experiment included no such motion, found that the “native walking reflex” suddenly appeared in the ninth month, while previous to that only a single alternation appeared, which might well be ascribed to chance.175 Independent experimentation begins when, having drawn himself up by a chair, the child walks around it with the help of his hands, all the time resting on the seat, in which progress the achievement of a corner is as critical a movement as the rounding of a jutting crag in the path of a mountain climber. Soon after this arrives the crucial test—the terrible risk of the first step alone, which, when successfully accomplished, throws both parent and child into a transport of joy. The appreciative Sigismund gives a beautiful description of this too: “Forward steps having been practised while the hands cling to some fixed object, he is prepared to venture alone. This first step alone of a little child makes one involuntarily hold his breath at the sight. The small face reveals a conflict between the bold resolve to venture all and the cautious counsels of conservatism. Suddenly one little foot is shoved forward rather than lifted, and one hand at last stretched out as a balance. Sometimes that one step is all, and the little Icarus sinks down again. But often the child to whom the effort is particularly difficult makes, like a boy learning to skate or a man walking a rope, several steps in one direction, especially when the haven of safety is near at hand. Many children make no further attempts for weeks after the first; others, again, follow it up at once. Very gradually walking loses its anxious, doubtful character, and becomes an easy habit not requiring attention.” Froebel has well described the pleasure in success which, together with the gratification of instinctive impulse, makes learning to walk such a satisfaction. “The fact is well established,” he says, “that walking, and especially the first steps, give the child pleasure merely as a demonstration of his strength, although this is soon followed by other elements of enjoyment, such as the realization that it is means of arriving and of obtaining.”176 As it becomes mechanical, walking, of course, loses its playful character. Pleasure in simple locomotion is experienced by adults, as a rule, only when the discharge of their motor impulses has been hindered by a sedentary life, and even then motion is not the chief source of satisfaction. The regular rhythm of walking acts like a narcotic on an excited mind, which reacts to it unconsciously. I remember that Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkmann paced up and down like a sick wolf before the door of the wife from whom he was separated; and we find a fearful reminder of the restless walking back and forth of caged animals in the deep-worn footprints of the prisoner of Chillon. We find, though, for all ages games whose object is the conquest of some difficulty, great or small. We frequently see small dogs keep one leg up in the air without any apparent reason and, run along on three, and in the same way children try all sorts of experiments in walking. Now one of them is lame in one foot, now one small leg is stiff, now he drags his feet, now walks with a jerk or on tiptoe. Many of these movements are turned to account in elementary gymnastics, and those pathological subjects whose mania takes a playful turn show quite similar peculiarities in walking.177 Almost as soon as the child has learned to preserve his equilibrium in ordinary walking he proceeds to complicate the problem by trying to walk on curbstones, in a rut, on a beam, on a balustrade or narrow wall. Unusual facility in these leads on to rope walking, and afterward turns out to be of great service to the mountain climber on narrow ridges and snow-covered ledges. A famous architect was so foolhardy as to walk round the narrow leads of the Königstuhl tower in Heidelberg, and it is recorded of the ancient Norse king Olav Tryggvason that he possessed the accomplishment, among others, of being able to run across the oars of a boat while the men were rowing. Another form of self-imposed difficulty and consequent conversion of locomotion into play is the attempt to step on all the cracks in the pavement or floor or on certain figures in a carpet. Something of this kind must have led to the game of Paradieshüpfen in Germany, hop-scotch in England, la Marelle in France, in which certain spaces are marked out in the sand or on a floor, on whose outlines the foot must not be set.

Running games will form our next subject, and we find that the child’s earliest efforts for locomotion are as much like running as walking. His first steps alone are, it is true most hesitatingly made, but the nearer the goal, especially if it happens to be his mother kneeling with outstretched arms, the more rapid are his movements. Gradually the distinction between running and walking becomes more marked. For an example of genuine practice for a quick run Preyer’s observations may again be cited. He says that on the four hundred and fifty-ninth day the boy stopped short several times in his rapid course and stamped. In his seventy-seventh week this child ran nineteen times without stopping around a large table, calling out “mama,” and “bwa, bwa, bwa,”178 the while. This simple running soon loses its charm, and is not much used later in play until it is transformed into a contest and acquires a new and higher meaning, of which we shall speak presently. Yet there are many running games whose attraction consists in the difficulties to be overcome, and very rapid running is a delight in itself, throwing us into a sort of transport and exciting in us “je ne sais quelle idée d’infini, de désir sans mesure, de vie surabondante et folle, je ne sais quel dedain de l’individualité quel besoin de se sentir aller sans se retenir, de se perdre dans le tout.”179

Running down a smooth slope is a diversion which easily tempts even grown people, and boys at least find something like it in their game of snapping the whip, in which game a chain is made with the strongest boy in front. He has the task of moving the whole line in curves, so that the end ones are obliged to run in dizzy haste. In both cases natural forces, coming to the aid of the individual’s own efforts, add to the enjoyment. Overcoming difficulties is prominent in the Hellenic πιτυλίζειν, which it seems consisted in running on the tips of the toes, as well as in the equally ancient ἐκπλεθρίζειν, which was a peculiar varied running, without curves, in a straight line back and forth, the line growing shorter and shorter till a central point was reached, where, as only one step remained, the runner came to a standstill.180

Hopping and skipping are also to be classed with running plays; the body is suspended in the air for an instant in all these movements, though in hopping and skipping the motion is more vertical. They belong in the same category with the vagaries of locomotion which I have pointed out, and any lively child finds it hard to dispense with them when out for a walk, just as lambs and kids do. In the ordinary skip one foot at a time comes with a slight shoving motion on the ground and gives us the beginning of a galop and the principle of the waltz, while hopping forms the foundation for the polka. This hop on one foot is utilized in many plays, such as the hopscotch already mentioned, and in chasing and fighting games, like “Cock Fight” (German Hahnenkampf), “Fox in his Hole,” etc. In Greece the ἀσκωλιάζειν was a popular game, and Grasberger says that their hopping was the same as ours, and in some games he who accomplished the task with the fewest hops won the prize. In a catching game the contestants hopped on a circular line and attempted to touch one another with the free foot. Finally, the drollest and most popular form of the game, which never failed to excite laughter in all beholders, was the genuine Askoliasmos. A skin well oiled on the outside and filled with air was stepped on by the player, who attempted to stand on it while he went through various dancing and hopping motions. The favourite circus trick of running on a rolling cannon ball is a modern form of this.

Children begin to jump by leaping downward. Before the little experimentor has halfway learned to go down steps he likes to reach the ground by a jump from the last one, at first a difficult enough exploit. But soon this palls, and something harder is at once undertaken, just as the habitual drunkard attains to stronger and stronger potations. The three-year-old can take two or three steps or boldly leap from a chair on which he has laboriously clambered with this intent. When some large stone pillars intended for a garden gate lay in the street before my house all the children in the neighbourhood collected to enjoy the pleasure of jumping off of them. Psychologically this pleasure is derived not merely from the agreeable flying motion, but from the stimulus of difficulty to be overcome and a feeling of pride in encountering risks. Chamberlain tells of two small Americans who had in their familiar speech a word for “the feeling you have just before you jump, don’t you know, when you mean to jump and want to do it and are just a little bit afraid to do it,” and another for “the way you feel when you have just jumped and are awfully proud of it.”181 Perhaps the liveliest feeling of pleasure is caused by the leap into water, because the soft, yielding, and yet resisting element furnishes an unusually long trajectory. Many South Sea islanders have cultivated this art to an astonishing degree. The pleasure of snowshoeing, too, consists chiefly in the circumstance that the path ends suddenly in an abrupt slope, over which the skilful sportsman flies in a tremendous leap amid a whir of soft snow. “To see,” says Nansen in his book on Greenland, “how the practised runner makes his leap into the air is one of the finest spectacles in the world. To see him whizzing boldly down the mountain, collect himself in a few steps before the spring, pause and take position, and then like a sea gull glide through the air, striking the ground at a distance of twenty to twenty-five metres immersed in a cloud of flying snow—all this sends a thrill of sympathetic pleasure through one’s frame.” Later, children learn high and long-distance jumps, the doorstep, a tiny stream and narrow ditch affording opportunity for the first practice, and an older boy leaps gaily over a low hedge, a wide brook, or his comrade’s back in leap-frog. The element of danger exists here and some combativeness, as though it were a sort of conquest of the object; these features are especially prominent when the vault is made over a blazing fire, as in the custom with some mountaineers’ games. It is first heard of in the Palilia, a herdsman’s game of ancient Rome, commemorative of the founding of the city, and the people of the Nicobar Islands believe that leaping through fire is a sure cure for colds, fevers, etc.182 The salto mortale marked the highest degree of difficulty and danger—a Greek vase shows it as a somersault in the midst of the high jump. Norwegian youths can spring up so high as to touch the ceiling with one foot and agilely regain their upright position. The Greeks used weights of stone or lead, which they swung violently to intensify the force of the leap, the springboard being apparently unknown to them. Grasberger regards the statement that Phayllos of Crete could cover from fifty to fifty-five feet183 as well authenticated, but it was certainly a prodigious leap. Similar incredible feats are reported of the ancient Germans, one being that of the Viking Halfdan, who jumped over a gorge thirty yards wide.184 From this is but a step to the world-famed contest between Brunhilde and Gunther, in which Brunhilde hurled a mighty stone and then leaped after it as far as or farther than the stone went, and Siegfried performed the same feat, carrying Gunther with him.

Climbing is probably the outcome of a special instinct. The striking fact that a newborn infant is at once able to cling with his hands certainly points to this. It has been shown by Robinson that infants may cling fast enough to a stick to be lifted from the ground and held suspended in midair.

The first attempts at actual climbing occur in the second year in conjunction with creeping, and are usually efforts to go upstairs. Young animals whose future life demands skill in climbing also manifest this upward tendency. Where Lenz says that the two-weeks-old kid enjoys neck-breaking adventures and makes remarkable leaps, that he always wants to go upon piles of wood or stone, on walls and rocks, and that climbing upstairs is his chief delight,185 he gives at the same time a faithful picture of dawning human impulses. Little George K——, a year and a half old, made his way in an unguarded moment from the garden to the third story of his father’s house. Numberless accidents have resulted from the climbing upon chairs and tables, which is so indefatigably persisted in, and there are few plays which afford so much pleasure to older children as climbing trees. It is probable that, in spite of the danger of the situation, there is an instinctive feeling of security and comfort when they are cosily settled among the branches. We naturally attribute this, to the habits of their progenitors, but a simpler explanation of their enjoyment of the situation may be that their elders can not get to them. That girls gladly participate in this supposedly masculine indulgence is noteworthy. Marlitt and Mrs. Hungerford give amusing instances of trying situations in which older girls have been placed through this propensity. The tall and glossy beech tree, with all sorts of beauties luring one to its topmost branches, presents special difficulties to adventurers. Climbing steep cliffs, too, is a favourite pastime; one of the pleasantest recollections of my own youth is of climbing a wooded slope in the neighbourhood of St. Blasien in the Black Forest, where I spent half a day with two other children building a moss hut on an almost inaccessible crag. The modern fad of making foolhardy excursions to the highest peaks is too familiar to need enlarging on. It clearly shows that the most difficult movement plays are combative. Th. Wundt, the famous climber, is quite right when he says in his book on the Jungfrau and the Bernese Oberland that the mountain climber “takes Nature by storm; he does not expect that she will present a smiling aspect; he measures strength with her; he seeks a contest which will try him to the uttermost, and the longing for adventure is much stronger than any mere passive enjoyment.” We find traces of this same spirit in old German records, as witness thus: King Olaf Tryggvason, to prove his prowess, climbed the Smalsarhorn, hitherto regarded as unscalable, and fixed his shield to its summit.186

With only a passing mention of swimming movements, in which the South Sea Islanders excel, I turn at once to the dance, or what may be called the artistic form of locomotion, confining myself, however, strictly to those forms of it which have to do with pure movement-play. We must, I think, assume that elementary ideas of dancing are present in childhood, but the developed art belongs to adults. Besides the walking, running, hopping, and skipping of which we have spoken, the child makes use of every imaginable turn and attitude of the head, trunk, and limbs, and a careful study of the various gymnastic motions of all times and peoples could hardly reveal greater variety than is found among these little ones. A certain rhythm, too, is noticeable in their ordinary hopping and skipping, but the essential feature of the dance, the regulation of bodily movement by measured music, must be acquired. Preyer’s statement that his child in its twenty-fourth month danced in time with music,187 it seems to me, is an exception to the rule, for among the large number of small children whom I have seen dancing to music I can not recall a single one who kept time regularly and with assurance without some teaching and example. I myself learned the polka step, moving forward in a straight line, when I was a ten-year-old boy, and I can remember feeling that it was something new and peculiar, and that many of my comrades had great difficulty in achieving it. I am told by a woman teacher that she attempted to teach some little girls between five and eight years old to walk in time to a march played on the piano, and that not a single one of them could do it successfully on the first trial. Yet, on the other hand, it is certain that children learn dancing very quickly through imitation, especially among savages. It is amazing to see with what assurance these little ones can participate in the complicated dances of their elders. I shall return to this in speaking of imitative plays. The ring dances of European children, which we shall shortly refer to under social plays, are derived from mediæval and ancient dances of adults.

To find the sources of pleasure in dancing we must go back to the common ground of satisfaction in obeying the impulse for motion, yet it is not easy to assign a general explanation for the peculiar charm of rhythmical movement. Spencer holds that passionate excitement naturally manifests itself in rhythmic repetition; while Minor, on the contrary, sees in it the expression of a prudential instinct to restrain the fury of passionate feeling.188 As Schiller, too, says: