THE

NINETEENTH

CENTURY.

No. XXXI.-SEPTEMBER 1879.

RECREATION.1

In all places of the civilised world, and in all classes of the civilised community, the struggle for existence is now more keen than ever it has been during the history of our race. Everywhere men, and women, and children are living at a pressure positively frightful to contemplate. Amid the swarming bustle of our smoke-smothered towns surrounded by their zone of poisoned trees, amid the whirling roar of machinery, the scorching blast of furnaces, and in the tallow-lighted blackness of our mines-everywhere, over all the length and breadth of this teeming land, men, and women, and children, in no metaphor, but in cruel truth, are struggling for life. Even our smiling landscapes support as the sons of their soil a new generation, to whom the freedom of gladness is a tradition of the past, and on whose brows is stamped, not only the print of honest work, but a new and sadding mark-the brand of sickening care. Or if we look to our universities and schools, to our professional men and men of business, we see this same fierce battle rage-ruined health and shattered hopes, tearful lives and early deaths being everywhere the bitter lot of millions who toil, and strive, and love, and bleed their young hearts' blood In such a world and at such a time, when more truly than ever it may be said that the whole creation groans in pain and travail, I do not know that for the purposes of health and happiness there is any subject which it is more desirable that persons

in sorrow.

Expanded from notes of a Lecture delivered before the National Health Society. VOL. VI.-No. 31.

EE

of all classes should understand than the philosophical theory and the rational practice of recreation. For recreation is the great relief from the pressure of life-the breathing space in the daily struggle for existence, without which no one of the combatants could long survive; and therefore it becomes of the first importance that the science and the philosophy of such relief should be generally known. No doubt it is true that people will always be compelled to take recreation and to profit by its use, whether or not they are acquainted with its science and its philosophy; but there can be equally little doubt that here, as elsewhere, an intelligent understanding of abstract principles as well as of practical applications will insure more use and less abuse of the thing which is thus intelligently understood.

With a view, then, of obtaining some such intelligent understanding of recreation, let us begin by clearly understanding what recreation means. First of all, the mere word, like many of our other English words that signify abstractions, condenses much philosophy within itself. For as 'creation' means a forming, re-creation' means a forming anew; and as in etymological derivation so in actual truth re-creation is nothing other than a re-novation of the vital energies; leisure time and appropriate employment serve to repair the organic machinery which has been impaired by the excess of work. The literal meaning of the word is therefore in itself instructive, as showing that what our forefathers saw in recreation was not so much play, pastime, or pleasantry, as the restoration of enfeebled powers of work. And I do not know that within the limits of one word they could have left us a legacy of thought more true in itself or more solemn in its admonition. Recreation is, or ought to be, not a pastime entered upon for the sake of the pleasure which it affords, but an act of duty undertaken for the sake of the subsequent power which it generates, and the subsequent profit which it insures. Therefore, expanding the philosophy which is thus condensed in our English word, we may define recreation as that which with the least expenditure of time renders the exhausted energies most fitted to resume their work. Such is my definition of recreation; yet I know that many things are called by this name which cannot possibly fall within this definition, and I doubt whether nine persons out of ten ever dreamed either of attaching such a meaning to the word, or of applying such a principle to the thing. Nevertheless I also know that in whatever degree so-called recreation fails to be covered by this definition, in that degree does it fail, properly speaking, to be recreation at all. It may be amusement, fun, or even profitable employment; but it is not that particular thing which it is the object of this paper to consider. Therefore the definition which I have laid down may be taken as a practical test of recreation as genuine or spurious. If recreation is of a kind that renders a man less fitted for work than would some other kind

of occupation, or if it consumes more time than would some other kind of occupation which would secure an equal amount of recuperation, then, in whatever degree this is so, in that degree must the quality of such recreation be pronounced impure.

So much, then, for the meaning of recreation. The next point that I shall consider is the physiology of recreation. It may have struck some readers as a curious question, why some actions or pursuits should present what I may call a recreative character, and others not. For it is evident that this character is by no means determined by the relief from labour which these actions or pursuits secure. A week on the moors involves more genuine hard work than does a week in the mines, and a game of chess may require as much effort of thought as a problem in high mathematics. Moreover, the same action or pursuit may vary in its recreative quality with different individuals. Rowing, which is the favourite recreation of the undergraduate, is serious work to the bargeman; and we never find a gardener to resemble his master in showing a partiality to digging for digging's sake. If it is suggested that it is the need of bodily exercise which renders muscular activity beneficial to the one class and not to the other, I answer, no doubt it is so partly, but not wholly; for why is it that a man of science should find recreation in reading history, while an historian finds recreation in the pursuit of science? or why is it that a London tradesman should find a beneficial holiday in the country, while a country tradesman finds a no less beneficial holiday in London? The truth seems to me to be that the only principle which will serve to explain the recreative quality in all cases is what I may call the physiological necessity for frequent change of organic activity, and the consequent physiological value of variety in the kinds and seasons of such activity. In order to render this principle perfectly clear, it will be necessary for me very briefly to explain the physiology of nutrition.

When food is taken into the body it undergoes a variety of processes which are collectively called digestion and assimilation. Into the details of these processes I need not enter, it being enough for my present purpose to say that the total result of these processes is to strain off the nutritious constituents of the food, and pour them into the current of the blood. The blood circulates through nearly all the tissues of the body, being contained in a closed system of tubes. This system of tubes springs from the heart in the form of large hollow trunks which ramify into smaller and smaller tube-branches. These are all called arteries. The smaller arteries again ramify into a countless meshwork of so-called capillaries. Capillaries are also closed tubes, but differ from arteries in being immensely more numerous, more slender, and more tenuous in their walls. These capillaries pervade the body in such an intimate meshwork, that a needle's point cannot be run into any part of the body where they

occur without destroying the integrity of some of them, and so causing an outflow of blood.

As these capillaries ramify from the arteries, so do they again coalesce into larger tubes, and these into larger, and so on, until all this system of return tubing ends again in the heart in the form of large hollow trunks. The tubes composing this system of return tubing are called the veins. Thus the whole blood-vascular system may be likened to two trees which are throughout joined together by their leaves, and also by cavities at the bottoms of their trunks-the heart. The branches of both trees being everywhere hollow, the contained fluid runs up the stem and through smaller and smaller branches of the arterial tree into the delicate vessels of the leaves, which may be taken to represent the capillaries. Passing through these into the twigs of the venous tree, the blood returns through larger and larger branches of this tree till it arrives at the trunk, and completes its circuit by again entering the trunk of the arterial tree through the cavities of the heart. Now the blood, in perpetually making this complete circuit of the body, performs three important functions: it serves to carry oxygen from the lungs to all the other parts of the body; it serves to supply all parts of the body with the nutritive material with which it is charged; and it serves to drain off from all the tissues of the body the effete products which they excrete, and to present these effete products to the organs whose function it is again to abstract them from the blood and expel them from the body. The two latter functions of the blood-those of nourishing and draining-I must consider more in detail. They are both performed in the capillaries, so that the object of the arteries and veins may be considered as merely that of conveying the blood to and from the capillaries. Moreover, both functions are performed by transfusion through the delicate walls of the capillaries-the nutritive material in the blood being thus transfused into the surrounding tissues, and the waste product of these tissues being transfused into the blood. Thus, in the various vascular tissues there is always a double process going on-first, that of receiving nourishment from the blood whereby they are being constantly built up into an efficient state for the performance of their various functions; and, secondly, that of discharging into the blood the effete materials which the performance of these functions entails. Now when any tissue or organ is in a state of activity in the performance of its function, the activity which it manifests entails a process of disintegration, which is the reverse of the process of nutrition; that is to say, when a tissue or organ is doing its work, it is expending energy which it has previously derived in virtue of the process of nutrition. Work is therefore, so to speak, the using up of nutrition; so that if the income of energy due to nutrition is equal to the expenditure of energy due to work, the tissue or organ will remain stationary as regards its

capacity for further work, while, if the work done is in excess of the nutrition supplied, the tissue or organ will soon be unable to continue its work; it will become, as we say, exhausted, cease to work, and remain passive until it is again slowly and gradually refreshed or built up by the process of nutrition. Therefore all the tissues and organs of the body require periods of rest to alternate with periods of activity; and what is true of each part of the body is likewise true of the body as a whole-sleep being nothing other than a time of general rest during which the process of nutrition is allowed to gain upon that of exhaustion. Thus we may have local exhaustion-as when the muscles of our arm are no longer able to hold out a heavy weight-or we may have general exhaustion, as in sleep; and we may have local restorations due to nutrition-as when our exhausted arm, after some interval of rest, is again able to sustain the weight—or we may have a general restoration due to nutrition, as in the effects of sleep.

I have now said enough about the physiology of nutrition to render quite clear what I mean by recreation depending on the physiological necessity for a frequent change of organic activity. For although in the case of some organs-such as most of the secreting organs-activity is pretty constant, owing to the constant expenditure of energy being just about balanced by the constant income, in the case of nerves and muscles this is not so; during the times when these organs are in activity their expenditure of energy is so vastly greater than their income during the same times, that they can only do their work by drawing upon the stores of energy which have been laid up by them during the comparatively long periods of their previous rest. Now recreation applies only to nerve and muscle; and what it amounts to is simply this-a change of organic activity, having for its object the affording of time for the nutrition of exhausted portions of the body. A part of the body having become exhausted by work done, and yet the whole of the body not being exhausted so far as to require sleep, recreation is the affording of local sleep to the exhausted part by transferring the scene of activity from it to some other part. Be it observed that a certain amount of activity is necessary for the life and health of all the organs of the body; so it would not do for the community of organs as a whole that, when any one set become exhausted by their own activity, all the others should share in their time of rest, as in general sleep. But, by transferring the state of activity from organs already exhausted by work to organs which are ready nourished to perform work, recreation may be termed, as I have said, local sleep.

Thus we see that, in a physiological no less than in a psychological sense, the term re-creation is a singularly happy one; for we see that, as a matter of fact, the whole physiology of recreation consists merely of a re-building up, re-forming, or re-creation of tissues which have become partly broken down by the exhausting effects of work. So that in this