When things become signs, when they gain a representative capacity as standing for other things, play is transformed from mere physical exuberance into an activity involving a mental factor. A little girl who had broken her doll was seen to perform with the leg of the doll all the operations of washing, putting to bed, and fondling, that she had been accustomed to perform with the entire doll. The part stood for the whole; she reacted not to the stimulus sensibly present, but to the meaning suggested by the sense object. So children use a stone for a table, leaves for plates, acorns for cups. So they use their dolls, their trains, their blocks, their other toys. In manipulating them, they are living not with the physical things, but in the large world of meanings, natural and social, evoked by these things. So when children play horse, play store, play house or making calls, they are subordinating the physically present to the ideally signified. In this way, a world of meanings, a store of concepts (so fundamental to all intellectual achievement), is defined and built up.—John Dewey, "How We Think."
(2387)
PLAYFUL ATTITUDE, THE
Playfulness is a more important consideration
than play. The former is an attitude
of mind; the latter is a passing outward
manifestation of this attitude. When things
are treated simply as vehicles of suggestion,
what is suggested overrides the thing.
Hence the playful attitude is one of freedom.
The person is not bound to the physical
traits of things, nor does he care whether
a thing really means (as we say) what he
takes it to represent. When the child plays
horse with a broom and cars with chairs,
the fact that the broom does not really represent
a horse, or a chair a locomotive, is
of no account. In order, then, that playfulness
may not terminate in arbitrary fancifulness
and in building up an imaginary
world alongside the world of actual things,
it is necessary that the play attitude should
gradually pass into a work attitude.—John
Dewey, "How we Think."
(2388)
PLAYTHINGS, EARTH'S
He begged me for the little toys at night,
That I had taken, lest he play too long,
The little broken toys—his sole delight.
I held him close in wiser arms and strong,
And sang with trembling voice the even-*song.
Reluctantly the drowsy lids drooped low,
The while he pleaded for the boon denied.
Then, when he slept, sweet dream, content to know,
I mended them and laid them by his side
That he might find them in the early light,
And wake the gladder for this joyous sight.
So, Lord, like children, at the even fall
We weep for broken playthings, loath to part,
While Thou, unmoved, because Thou knowest all,
Dost fold us from the treasures of our heart;
And we shall find them at the morning-tide
Awaiting us, unbroke and beautified.
—Ainslee's Magazine.
(2389)
PLEASANT LOOKS If one does not believe that his countenance adds to or detracts anything from the lives or expressions of others, let him pause for a moment before that now celebrated "Billiken." It is almost impossible to look at the little imp and not smile. The Japanese teach their maids in the hotels, and those also in higher walks of life, the art of smiling. They are compelled to practise before a mirror. One can not stay long in Japan without being inoculated with the disposition to "look pleasant." The "look pleasant, please," of the photographer goes deeper than the photograph plate. No one wants to associate long with an animated vinegar cruet. A disposition is easily guessed from the angle of the corners of the mouth; a disposition is molded by compelling those angles to turn up or down. If a merry heart maketh a glad countenance, it is also true that a glad countenance maketh a merry heart—in the one who has it and in the one who beholds it. "Iron sharpeneth iron. So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend."—Baptist Commonwealth.
(2390)
Pleasure a Deceiver—See Slaves of Pleasure.
PLEASURE, ETHICS OF
Mrs. Wesley discusses with exquisite good
sense the whole ethics of pleasure:
"Would you judge of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of pleasure take this rule:
