Chapter XVI: The Play Instinct in Children

Italy's greatest recent patriot is Cesare Battisti, who suffered martyrdom for love of his native land. He was an Austrian subject, professor of biology and geography in the University of Trent and a deputy in the Austrian House of Parliament. In the beginning of the war he returned to Italy to fight against the country of his adoption and to favor the fortunes of his native land, and his efforts were crowned with great success. He entered the Italian Army as a lieutenant of the Alpini, and in 1916 fell into the hands of the Austrians, who quickly and cruelly despatched him by the most barbarous methods that they could conceive. Streets and piazzas have been named for him, hospitals and monuments have been raised in his honor, and his name is known to every man, woman, and child in the kingdom.

But it is not of Battisti that I would write, but to record a train of thought that was initiated by the sight of the orphans who were occupying the building which Italy's most distinguished physician, Ettore Marchiafava, aided by generous friends of the sick poor, has taken over for a tuberculosis hospital, and which will be called after Cesare Battisti. There were about two hundred girls, ranging in age from six to fourteen, in the charge of an order of nuns. The building is situated on a hill in the outskirts of Rome known as Monte Verde, which is the southern continuation of the Janiculum. In former days it was a palatial villa belonging to some dignitary of the church and latterly church property. It commands a magnificent view of Rome, of the Tiber, of the Campagna, the Castelli Romani, and the Alban Hills. When I arrived the children were in the grounds about the house and more or less segregated in a broad walk or alley lined by trees which led from the street to the villa. They were walking up and down in twos or threes or singly, apparently without other objective or display of desire than to walk. They looked like children of many nationalities, healthy and clean; but, more than that, they looked happy, contented, satisfied. As I passed amongst them, nearly every one greeted me with a smile and "_Buon giorno_." There was no show of embarrassment, shyness, bashfulness, or artificiality.

I looked over the grounds of the place, several acres, and saw not the slightest sign of games, swings, playgrounds, sand-piles, or other feature with which children divert themselves or are diverted in other lands. I went through the house from cellar to garret, and rarely have I seen an inhabited building with fewer signs of habitation. The dormitories contained long rows of beds with no sign of tables, chairs, stands, comfort-bags--nothing save the beds. The refectory was equally barren. The schoolroom was desolation itself--benches, long desks, and a solitary blackboard. The only indication that anything was taught save that which could be imparted by word of mouth was a typewriting machine. Examine as carefully as I might, I wasn't able to detect the smallest object for the diversion, entertainment, distraction, occupation of the little ones that the place was utilized to harbor, to nurture, to develop, and to instruct. When I returned to _terra firma_, there they were, walking up and down the alley as they were when I went in. A gentle-eyed sister was among the groups of the smaller ones, but they seemed not to need care. They were self-sufficient.

For the first time I felt the sensation of oppression in the presence of a crowd of joyous children. I felt they were in a prison-house narrower and more restricting than that which closes in upon the budding man, and I went away without thought of Cesare Battisti, but big with solicitude for these lusty young beings whose best and most potential quality, the play instinct, was being stultified, or at least not cultivated.

I marvelled that the country which made the most constructive contribution to child pedagogy of the nineteenth century fails to see or to realize that the most potent, directly God-sent possession of a child is its imagery or fancy, which externalizes itself in every child in the desire to play--to play parent, construction, warfare, games, or ape the activities of their elders. The explanation cannot be that Italy is ignorant of the cultivation of the child's instinct for play in other countries or of the immense provision that is made to enhance it both in public and in private life. I can readily understand that there might be wilful opposition to it in church institutions, as its elaborate display is considered inimical to that humility which is the essence of the Christian religion. Punish the flesh, have a contempt and a disdain for any of its clamorings, treat it as if it were a vessel unworthy of its sacred cargo the soul, scourge it and humiliate it, and you will find favor in His sight. It is extraordinary and inexplicable that man should feel himself free to suggest to himself and to others that a suppression, even abnegation, of God-given instincts which are as much an integral part of the _genus homo_ as his speech capacity, is necessary in order that the individual should find favor in God's eyes and be worthy of reward when he is called to join Him. It seems so much more consistent with reason that the species were provided with instincts that they might be utilized, and therefore that the duty of the teacher and the guide is to foster these instincts, to develop them, and to direct them toward the channels where they may be utilized to the advantage of the individual, the community, and the state. If it were only the church that displayed an opposition to the development of the play instinct in children I should not concern myself particularly with it, as I am not inclined to take issue with the church, either in its propaganda or in its teachings. I consider that it takes an unfair advantage of infants and children, but I solace my indignation with the thought that when the child comes to man's estate mentally he is free to liberate himself from its enthralments and inhibitions. It may be said that it has shaped his mental processes, activities, and inclinations to such purpose that he does not see straight, and that accusation is true, providing they have sterilized his mind to such a degree that he is no longer capable of constructive thought. There is no doubt that they often bring about such mental eunuchoidismus, but it is probable that the great majority of those thus sterilized would have been dead-wood in the stream of evolutionary progress had they been left intact. But insensitiveness to the child's needs is not confined to parochial schools and other church institutions where children are harbored and taught. In Italy it is displayed in nearly every public and private institution where the young are segregated for purposes of instruction and maintenance.

I would not be understood to say that there are not playgrounds of any kind connected with Italian schools, but the few that exist are scarcely worthy of the name. The plain truth of the matter is that the play instinct has been thwarted so long in the Italian that it doesn't seem to exist any more. One of the things that strikes the stranger who penetrates far enough into family life to permit him the opportunity of observation is that the parent doesn't play with his children as does the Anglo-Saxon, and children do not play with each other. I cannot conceive that the child, left to itself, does not

"Hold unconscious intercourse with beauty
Old as creation,"

and give evidence of it and of the activity of its developing mind which reveals itself constructively in that which we call play. But the observation and experience of children in Italy lead me to believe that when they grow up and recall

"Those recollected hours that have the charm
Of visionary things, those lovely forms
And sweet sensations that throw back their life,
And almost make remotest infancy
A visible scene, on which the sun is shining,"

they do not expose a treasure-house in which are stored the recollections of the most envied times of their lives.

The little _villino_ that I occupy is cared for by a couple whose only child is a little girl of eight. From my window I survey her activities and I have never yet seen her in play,

"Seen no little plan of chart or fragment
From her beam of human life
Shaped by herself with newly learned art."

When I look out in the morning she is likely to be sitting outside the gate as if awaiting something to transpire that would be worthy of observation, attention, or participation. When I return in the middle of the day and again in the evening and when Sundays or other times I am in my rooms for a protracted period, I see her ever busily engaged in doing nothing. The only imaginative or emotional activity that I have ever witnessed her display is that sometimes I find her humming and she always smiles and greets me most affably. At times I see other children make a visit to her, but it is obviously a ceremonious one, for there are no shrieks or yells, no tumbling or rolling, no scampering or chattering, none of that display of physical vitality and joy of living that lambs or colts or calves or even puppies or kittens make. They are like a miniature group of Giacondas, older than the rocks upon which they sit, who have tasted all the joys to satiety. The doll that I gave her has apparently been put away, not at all unlikely with a scapular or holy beads. At least, I have never seen her with it in her arms since the day she received it. There is no sign of miniature wheelbarrow or shovel or sandpile, no little wooden geegee, no bicycle or miniature locomotive, no blocks or other material from which to construct a castle or a kitchen, no indication whatsoever that she attempts to portray any of the vagrant thoughts or fleeting fancies that arise in her budding mind. When I go on a Sunday to the little villages in the Campagna or in the Castelli Romani to which the proletariat repair with their families in _villeggiatura_, I see hundreds of children, but never once have I seen any of them playing, nor are they noisy and boisterous. If they are clamorous and restless, it is for food or for appeasement of some other physical need. Even the little boys do not play in the streets. Their one source of amusement is for a number of them to gather around a pile of small stones used for repair of the road and to divert themselves by hurling them at one another when a carriage or an automobile is not passing, at which time they concentrate their efforts on attempts to slay the occupants of these vehicles with the deadly missiles at hand.

On the Janiculum where I live there is a paradise for children, a little park with the roaring, splashing fountain of St. Paolo at one end of it and the entrance to the broad, shaded driveway that traverses the Janiculum to St. Onofrio at the other. On either side of this drive are broad lawns interspersed with flowerbeds and shaded with most seductive trees, amongst which is Tasso's oak, now fallen into such a state of decrepitude that it has to have artificial support and braces. The place is often alive with children, painfully decorous and silent. They often remind me of Millet's "Man with the Hoe," bowed down with the weight of ages. Not infrequently I meet in the morning and in the evening whole troops of children going and returning from the accessible fields of Monte Verde, always lined up like soldiers, two abreast, and the only manifestation of externalized emotion I have ever seen in them is that occasionally their keepers--priest, nun, or sour-visaged guardian--permit them to break into song--patriotic anthem or lyric wail.

It is notorious that games play no such part in the diversion of the adult Italian as they do in the countries peopled by our own race. Golf, tennis, football, cricket, baseball are practically unknown except as they have been established by foreigners for their own use. Naturally they have attracted some Italians, but there is no general interest in them. Contests of endurance, such as bicycle races and rowing, they have, and horse-racing has a certain vogue, but chiefly because it facilitates taking chances on the winner. This is the more remarkable, for when they do go in for games they often excel, showing aptitude, endurance, and daring. There is no nationality that compares with them in their riding, for instance. It is not true to say that they do not play games. The Spanish game of ball known as _pelota_ is played in some centres where the _jeunesse dorée_ segregate, and another game of ball called _pallone_ is played a little, but with no enthusiasm, and it arouses no considerable interest. In fact, nothing included under the head of sport plays a great rôle in Italy. Fortunately it is being encouraged, and within a generation we may confidently anticipate a decided change. It would, of course, be ridiculous to say that they do not shoot and fish. You often encounter in tramping through the country a man with a gun on his shoulder, but usually he is a pot-hunter, and now and then your rambles bring you face to face with a Nimrod, but in nine cases out of ten he likewise is animated by the desire for succulent food.

On superficial examination it seems extraordinary that this state of affairs should exist in a country which for many centuries seemed to have had its chief enjoyment in murder, sense-gratification, games, and contests of courage, strength, and endurance. No one can read the history of the days of Roman supremacy without being struck with the fact that the chief amusement of the populace of those days was play, display of strength, skill, dexterity, and inventiveness. Archæologists and others interested in unearthing and interpreting archaic remains tell us that the aphorism that there is nothing new under the sun is true so far as games are concerned, and I expect any day to hear that they have disinterred a golf course at Ostia, a diamond or a football field at Salerno. However, after reflection, it occurs to me that there are many reasons why the Italians, young and old, do not play spontaneously and intentionally, or as naturally and pleasurably as those of other nations. It is easy enough to understand why all play ceased in those days of intellectual apathy, artistic sterility, and emotional decay which, beginning with the fourth century A.D., continued for nearly a thousand years. I have never looked into the matter with sufficient care to be able to say whether or not there was a renaissance of the play instinct or any elaborate and wide-spread manifestation of it beginning with the fourteenth century, but my impression is that there was. We have records of tournaments and jousts and games of various kinds in certain cities of Italy, such as Salerno; there still exist the physical features or foundations of such play. Any one who has read Italian history until the successful movement of nationality of 1870 will not be astonished that play in any form did not have a great vogue during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The people were too busy devising plans to outwit their neighbors and to get possession of their lands and their treasures to have time for play.

The Italian nature or temperament is not favorable to development of the play instinct. The Italian likes to act, or to display histrionic possession, more than anything else; it has often been remarked that they are born actors, and not only do they produce more great actors and actresses than any other country but you see more finished and artistic acting in Italy than in any other country of the world. They are devoted to mimicry, adepts in pantomime, and their "marionettes" have reached a high degree of artistic development. As for the cinema, they go to it with the ardor of a lover to his mistress. The theatre and gambling is the Italian idea of diversion, relaxation, and amusement.

The display and satisfaction of the play instinct spell work, oftentimes most laborious work carefully planned and elaborately carried out. The successful pursuit of games of all sorts requires not only work but oftentimes protracted physical training and profound physical effort. The Italians do not take kindly to them. In the south of Italy there are six months of the year and often more when no one is keenly disposed to active physical effort and at no time in the year is there that atmospheric incitation to physical activity that exists in England or in our own country. It may well be that children of the South do not take kindly to play because of the great and protracted heat, during which they are taught to remain within doors several hours in the middle of the day, and children of the lower classes are often obliged to work during the cool hours.

Italian children mature very early, and the emotional disequilibrium that comes with the supremacy of a new internal secretion makes them self-conscious, bashful, retiring, and inimical to play. I am not inclined to lay much stress on any of these occurrences as an explanation for the apathy for play shown by Italian children. Jewish children, who live in countries quite as hot as Italy, and who certainly mature as early as Italian children, are naturally playful, and not only playful but inventive of games. If one reads the biographies of some of the literary Hebrews of America who have set forth in print their renunciations and their successes, it will be seen that despite their most unfavorable surroundings the play instinct in childhood--which, after all, is the imaginative faculty--is often very strong.

Another thing that is very curious in Italy is that children of both sexes do not play together. It is true that no particular effort is made to keep them apart when they are very young, but there is no more unusual sight in Italy than a boy from ten to fourteen with a girl of the same age, unless it is to see a young man with a young woman who is not his wife. There is no open and fraternizing relationship between the sexes. If you say in Italy that a young woman is the _amica_ or friend of a man, you mean what is signified in French by _chère amie_. In certain parts of Italy, and particularly in the South, the position of women in society and in relationship to men savors very much of the Oriental.

Every one is agreed that play does two things for the young child--it promotes its physical welfare and it facilitates its budding imagination. More than this, it contributes materially to its education and, particularly, it develops its constructive faculties. It teaches older children and youths who participate in games of skill and control the principles of give and take, bear and forbear, and it shows them how to be victors without arrogance and losers without venom. It instils principles of honesty, favors frankness and directness, and generally paves the way for successful dealing with their fellows socially, commercially, and politically in mature life. When one considers the pains and money that are expended in our own country and in England to teach young people how to play, it is astonishing how apathetic the Italians have been toward the matter.

My belief is that Italy is awakening to the fact that play is one of the most important factors in the development of the people, and if this war had not come on I should most likely not have had occasion to make these observations and to draw conclusions from them. I am told that a few years ago they began to have mixed schools, that is, schools where children of both sexes are assembled during school hours, and in many cities there were stadia where sports of all sorts were encouraged and fostered.

There are many factors that have tended to impede the development of play in this country and the recognition of its importance, but aside from that there is something in the Italian temperament or nature that is antipathic to the play instinct and inimical to sports. Pedagogy has recognized its importance but it has not succeeded in promoting and developing it.

I have often wondered whether the suppression of the play instinct practically to the point of abnegation is not manifest in the energies and success of a people. Aside from the field of mechanical application as represented by that in the profession of engineering, I do not know of any realm in which the Italian of the past three or four generations has signally distinguished himself. There have been poets, artists, architects, physicians, priests, statesmen, philosophers, explorers, or interpreters of life and events whose names have taken permanent places in the world. I mean to say that in this period there have been many Italians who have attained eminence and earned immortality, but there has been no one from whom an epoch dates: no Pasteur, no Deisler, no Thompson, no Devries, no Stanley, no Edison, no Langley, no Wright, no Morgan, no Eddy--to enumerate only a few of those that are legitimately put in the class of supermen.

This paucity of genius may be no more than a coincidence, but it strikes me, nevertheless, as extraordinary that a country which has enjoyed freedom as this country has for the past fifty years, has not manifested the fruits of its liberation from tyranny and oppression such as were manifested in France after the French Revolution, when once its devastation had been cured.

If the child is father to the man, it stands to reason that indulgence and training during childhood will manifest their effect during maturity, and success in any activity of human life stands in direct relation to imagination or vision and industry. It likewise follows that if we neglect to facilitate the development of the former and to develop the appetite for and form the habit of the latter during the early years of life, it is too much to expect the display of them in later years. It is quite possible, it seems to me, that the reputation for lack of directness in their dealings with the peoples of other nationalities, their circuitousness in the business affairs of life, their secrecy or lack of frankness and candor, their ceremoniousness, their failure to cement a solid friendship with other nations of Europe, may, in some measure at least, be linked up with the suppression of the play instinct in childhood and the subservient place which they have given to women.