The best play is true
genius, which always comes thus into the world, and has this way of
doing its work, and all the contents of the memory pouches is luggage
to be carried rather than the vital strength that carries burdens.
Grosswell says that children are young because they play, and not
_vice versa_; and he might have added, men grow old because they stop
playing, and not conversely, for play is, at bottom, growth, and at
the top of the intellectual scale it is the eternal type of research
from sheer love of truth. Home, school, church, state, civilization,
are measured in one supreme scale of values, viz., whether and how,
for they aid in bringing youth to its fullest maturity. Even vice,
crime, and decline are often only arrest or backsliding or reversion.
National and racial decline beginning in eliminating one by one the
last and highest styles of development of body and mind, mental
stimulus of excessive dosage lowers general nutrition. A psychologist
that turns his back on mere subtleties and goes to work in a life of
service has here a great opportunity, and should not forget, as Horace
Mann said, "that for all that grows, one former is worth one hundred
reformers."
[Footnote 1: Interest in Relation to Muscular Exercise.
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