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<1> A. Riehl, Vierteljahrschr. f. wissenensch. Philos., xxi, xxii. <2> K. Groos, Der Aesthetische Genuss, 1902, p. 17.
Lastly, a most interesting theory is that which is associated with the name of Groos, and which is best expressed in the sentence: "Animals do not play because they are young, but they have their youth because they must play," play being regarded as the preparation for future life activities.
The passage from Robert Louis Stevenson becomes more clear from a scientific point of view when taken in connection with one from Karl Groos' book on the "Psychology of Animal Play": "The child is wholly absorbed in his play, and yet under the ebb and flow of thought and feeling like still water under wind-swept waves, he has the knowledge that it is pretense after all.
If, as Groos asserts, a symbol has two chief meanings, one in which it indicates a physical process which stands for a psychic process, and another in which it indicates a part which represents the whole, erotic symbolism of act corresponds to the first of these chief meanings, and erotic symbolism of object to the other.
Groos, in his two excellent works on the subject, has maintained with much power the opposite view. According to him the theory of Schiller and Spencer, based on the expenditure of superfluous activity and the opposite theory of Lazarus, who reduces play to a relaxation that is, a recuperation of strength are but partial explanations. Play has a positive use.
Play, both in animals and men, as Groos has shown with marvelous wealth of illustration, is a beneficent process of education; the young creature is thereby preparing itself for the exercise of those functions which in later life it must carry out more completely and more seriously.
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