ESTIIETOLOGY: ARTS, OR SPONTANEOUS' ACTIVI TIES. In the absence of a satisfactory term to de note the more spontaneous activities of mankind, the customary designation of a portion of these may be extended to all; and when so applied the term arts may be defined as including the fine arts (painting, sculpture. music. the drama, etc.) and also play. sports, games, and other manifestations of enjoyment and recreation, but not the industrial arts.
There is some diversity of opinion as to the logical order of the activities, the position of the arts being especially questioned. Thus Herbert Spencer adopted the 'surplus-energy theory,' i.e. the view that in the pleasurable and recreative activities any surplus energy not. required for immediate welfare escapes along lines related to those of habitual exercise; in this view the arts would become subordinate to and largely de pendent on the industrial and other serious activities. Karl Groos and .T. Mark Baldwin, on the other hand. contend that play is prophetic of the occultations of later life; and in this view the arts would seem to he at the threshold of human action and form a prelude to industries, laws, languages, and practical ideas. Groos's marshal ing of the facts is convincing; yet it remains true that while playful acts may be prophetic so far as the individual or group is concerned. the lines of action are determined by habit and bodily function and even organic structure. themselves the product of ancestral exercise; so that in the last. analysis play and its correlatives must be regarded as both the prophecy and the fulfillment of faculty.
The simple and aimless play of individuals and groups is common to man and various lower ani mals, and need not be considered in detail; though it is to he noted that play is commonly mimetic, and also that the play instinct is an c‘ii welling source action whence the less sl ,wt.cnc nu, acti% ities flow.
organized plays btcome games. The games Of lower culture are by no means random out grow tins. but are suggested mid controlled by fixed regulations. Thus, various Amerind tribes are devoted to foot-racing: yet the races are not tests of swiftness so much as divinatory or in Noentory acts designed to appeal to tutelaries, and are usually set by seasons for planting or harvesting or hunting. In the Papago tribe of Arizona and Sonora the racer drives a ball, which is (-aught on the foot and thrown forward, and kept in constant motion; actually the game affords a severe test of swiftness, endurance, and skill. vet it is regarded as a ceremonial contest for the favor of tutelaries. In the Tarahomari tribe of :Mexico a similar game is played as an invocation for success in hunting, and in both tribes there are corresponding races for females, which are run as a special inv(•ation for fertility. Dances also are ceremonial observances connected with invocation or thanksgiving; the perform ers are in ceremonial costume: they wear anklets of strung deer-hoofs designed to simulate the clicking of the hoofs of an animal walking over rocks, carry rattles (of gourds partly filled with dry seeds) to imitate the sounds made by reptiles or other creatures, and wear head-dresses of deer horns or fox-scalps or eagle-feathers as symbols of and invocations to the Ancients of those ani mals recognized as tutelaries. Primitive peoples
are more given to games of chance than of skill. Among the Iroquoian tribes a dice game is played with phun-stones in a wooden dish, and the gamesters sit for hours or days, staking and perhaps losing their possessions even to the gar ments from their backs, and in olden times their wives. Similar games prevailed among the Cali fornia tribes, and native tradition has it that of old mortal enmities were wiped out on the chance of a (lie, as when the loser stood up as a voluntary victim of the winner's war-club. Although mere games of chance, yet to both Eastern and West ern tribesmen these were tests of the favor or power of deities, and the outcome was deemed the ulthnatum of the fates. Among many primi tive peoples an elaborate game was played with a ring or hoop (with the aperture sometimes re duced by a net) used in connection with a staff or arrow: the play consisting in attempts to thrust or throw the staff or arrow through the ring as it rolled across the gaming plaza. Among Amerind tribes this game was originally divina tory and of esoteric meaning connected with fer tility; it passed into higher culture through de velopment along several lines, one leading to the ring-and-spear game of the modern tournament, and another leading to racquet and its variants. A still more important type. both in aboriginal form and in modern development, is the arrow game investigated by Cushing and Tylor and more recently by Colin. Germs of the game found among Amerind tribes are ceremonial and sortilegie, as among the Pueblo peoples, where arrows were cast toward the four quarters as in vocations to the powers, and in the Hnichol tribe, of Mexico. where arrows were discharged ceremonially in groups of two or four in the search for a sacred plant used as a stimulant. In the primal ceremony the pieces are finished products of the arrow-maker's skill, and the parts are marked with appropriate emblems (e.g. the point for mandible or beak, the shaft for neck or body, the feathering for wings, and the nook for feet, of an avian tutelary) ; in the developed game billets of wood may be substituted for ar rows, but they bear the symbolic markings. This game is of much interest as the parent stock whence many modern games have sprung. In Korea it is played with hillets much broadened and flattened, though retaining the emblematic markings; in China and Japan the billets are of ivory or board, while the emblems are somewhat modified; in India and Arabia further steps in development are shown; and in Europe the pieces are cards with esoteric emblems directly trace able to the archaic arrow game.