And all kinds of men, singly and in groups, have been looking with freshly focused minds at all sorts of supposedly unimportant happenings; even at the gambols of kittens and at the games of children. And (since science, like charity, begins at home) one of the first things that these latter observers discovered was the fact that no kitten ever plays at anything except at being a cat, and that no puppy ever plays at anything except at being a dog.
At first this seemed interesting, but not especially important. But, as the observations were extended, it developed that the lower one goes in the scale of life, the more meager and short-lived become the play-impulses of the young; while the higher one goes in the scale, the more complex and long-continued they are. And when the facts had been sufficiently studied and compared, it became clear that the play of young animals, far from being a mere meaningless spending of surplus energy, is really in the nature of a preparation—a dramatization of their developing instincts. And when, gradually, a great many men and groups of men, working along separate lines and ultimately comparing notes
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