ure of the imagination. For it is in the
spontaneous play of his faculties that man finds himself and his
happiness. Slavery is the most degrading condition of which he is
capable, and he is as often a slave to the niggardness of the earth
and the inclemency of heaven, as to a master or an institution. He
is a slave when all his energy is spent in avoiding suffering and
death, when all his action is imposed from without, and no breath
or strength is left him for free enjoyment.

Work and play here take on a different meaning, and become
equivalent to servitude and freedom. The change consists in the
subjective point of view from which the distinction is now made.
We no longer mean by work all that is done usefully, but only what
is done unwillingly and by the spur of necessity. By play we are
designating, no longer what is done fruitlessly, but whatever is
done spontaneously and for its own sake, whether it have or not an
ulterior utility. Play, in this sense, may be our most useful
occupation. So far would a gradual adaptation to the environment
be from making this play obsolete, that it would tend to abolish
work, and to make play universal. For with the elimination of all
the conflicts and errors of instinct, the race would do
spontaneously whatever conduced to its welfare and we should live
safely and prosperously without external stimulus or restraint.

_All values are in one sense aesthetic._

Sec. 5. In this second and subjective sense, then, work is the
disparaging term and play the eulogistic one. All who feel the
dignity and importance of the things of the imagination, need not
hesitate to adopt the classification which designates them as play.
We point out thereby, not that they have no value, but that their
value is intrinsic, that in them is one of the sources of all worth.
Evidently all values must be ultimately intrinsic. The useful is
good because of the excellence of its consequences; but these must
somewhere cease to be merely useful in their turn, or only
excellent as means; somewhere we must reach the good that is
good in itself and for its own sake, else the whole process is futile,
and the utility of our first object illusory. We here reach the second
factor in our distinction, between aesthetic and moral values,
which regards their immediacy.

If we attempt to remove from life all its evils, as the popular
imagination has done at times, we shall find little but aesthetic
pleasures remaining