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Show Lxvin BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY state of culture the way is long and the years are counted by millions. Every animate, individual in all this time has experienced the effects of lesions and bruises, until the concept has been woven into the constitution of mankind by experience, and the intuition is perfected through verified judgments. It is unnecessary for the man to pass through a complex ratiocination for the purpose of discovering this variety. A trivial accident may befall a soldier in line of battle, which he interprets as a wound; he hears the coming of the shell from a piece of field artillery, it strikes the ground and scatters its fragments broadcast, together with chips and gravel. A bit of wood strikes the soldier; he interprets it as a fragment of shell, has the illusion of being wounded, and feels the pain and expresses all the agony which a real wound may actually produce. Animate matter is not endowed with an essential of physical pain, but it develops pain by cognition of effects. In the evolution of sports we discover a development from individual and unorganized multiple activities in many individuals to organized activities, in which special activities are assumed for special purposes, all so differentiated and integrated as to accomplish a desired end. A hundred savages, men, women, and children, will join in a dance to revolve in a circle by uniform and rhythmic steps, and everyone moves like every other one. But a game of baseball is organized so that every player has a particular function to perform which differs from the functions of all the others. This law of the organization of sports is universal. GAMES We now reach the fourth group of activital pleasures; these are games played in rivalry of skill and chance. Games have their root in sorcery, as it is practiced by wildwood man. It seems that at first arrows or arrowheads are the pieces played- the pawns, knights, castles, kings, and queens of the game, or the cards upon which the actors are painted. In the wide geographical realm of tribal man many of these games are discovered, but they have common elements- that is, they are founded on universal concepts, and everywhere in this stage |
