Then it affords a stimulus to
effort very different from that arising from the thought of
results which have nothing to do with the intervening action. As
already mentioned, the absence of economic pressure in schools
supplies an opportunity for reproducing industrial situations of
mature life under conditions where the occupation can be carried
on for its own sake. If in some cases, pecuniary recognition is
also a result of an action, though not the chief motive for it,
that fact may well increase the significance of the occupation.
Where something approaching drudgery or the need of fulfilling
externally imposed tasks exists, the demand for play persists,
but tends to be perverted. The ordinary course of action fails
to give adequate stimulus to emotion and imagination. So in
leisure time, there is an imperious demand for their stimulation
by any kind of means; gambling, drink, etc., may be resorted to.
Or, in less extreme cases, there is recourse to idle amusement;
to anything which passes time with immediate agreeableness.
Recreation, as the word indicates, is recuperation of energy. No
demand of human nature is more urgent or less to be escaped. The
idea that the need can be suppressed is absolutely fallacious,
and the Puritanic tradition which disallows the need has entailed
an enormous crop of evils. If education does not afford
opportunity for wholesome recreation and train capacity for
seeking and finding it, the suppressed instincts find all sorts
of illicit outlets, sometimes overt, sometimes confined to
indulgence of the imagination.
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