The veil covering reality is woven for him far thinner than for common
men. He sees life moving eternally behind the forms he separates and
"creates." And to those of us who are akin to him, who are
temperamentally artistic, he offers freedom of a kind. The
contemplation of a work of art releases the tension of the nerves. To
use the language of psychology it "arrests" us, suspends the functions
of our everyday surface personality, abolishes for a moment time and
space, allows the "free," generally suppressed subconscious self to
come up and flood the surface intelligence, allows us for a moment to
be ourselves. But, still, this momentary relaxation, this momentary
"play," this holiday from the surface "I," remains an affair dependent
upon suggestive symbols coming from "without." The supreme artist
achieves freedom. We, who in matters of art are the imitative mass,
can only have "change," a new heaven and earth, a fresh "culture."

Then there is love. That promises, at the outset, complete escape into
freedom and reality. And supreme lovers, both of individuals and of
"Humanity," have indeed found freedom and the pathway to reality in
love. But ordinary everyday people rushing idolatrously out to find
themselves in others find in the end only another I. The religions
perhaps work best and longest. But even here average humanity, where
the mystical sense is feeble, are thrown back in the end upon
ethics--and go somewhat grimly through life doing their duty, living
upon the husks of doctrine, the notions and reports of other men.

If the play spirit within us, that longing for the real joy of life,
for real relaxation and re-creation, fares so poorly for most of us in
the amusements large and small that life offers to our leisure
moments, is it any better in the "games" the individual chooses for
himself--hobbies, for instance? Can these generally "instructive" and
"useful," generally also solitary, occupations be called play? Are
they not merely a reversal of life's engine, rather than an unmaking
and a remaking. They are merely a variant of life. They are very truly
called a "change of occupation." They are led and dominated, commonly,
by the intelligence. They contain no element of freedom. The same
defect is found in all organised "games."

* * * * *

Real play, like every other reality, comes from what our mechanical
and practical intelligences have called "within."

Real play a