When he saw I was ready, he sat with his eyes shut and his hands clasped together in front of him, and proceeded to pour forth a long discourse. He began by saying that all the higher animals showed some disposition towards play; and that, in particular, the human animal was pre-eminently distinguished in this respect. Some anthropologists had argued that the persistence of the play-instinct was a proof of the essential usefulness of play, in developing both muscular and intellectual power. He himself did not adopt this view, or, at any rate, only in a modified form. He held that play was one of the most wasteful methods of nature, and that if the competition between the various races and subdivisions of the human species had been perfect, the race that could reduce play to an absolute minimum, confined perhaps to the first three years of life, would--_ceteris paribus_--succeed in winning the foremost place. Play was certainly the least profitable form of mental activity, and one of the problems of education was the gradual elimination of play from the scheme of national culture. It was unfortunately true that even the best system of education had to make concessions to this instinct of play, and it would take many generations before it could be reduced to a minimum. But the experiments of the Meccanian psychologists had demonstrated that the amount necessary, both in the case of children and in the case of adults, had been grossly exaggerated in the past, and was still grossly exaggerated by other nations. These experiments would have been impossible without the assistance of the Time Department, and the absence of a Time Department in other countries probably accounted for the little progress they had made in this direction. "For example," he continued, "other nations have almost entirely neglected the value of cultural toys. They have been content, even where they have given any thought at all to the subject, to devise toys which gave a little more opportunity for ingenuity, but their object has been mainly to amuse; they have had no clear conception of the ultimate purpose of toys in a complete cultural scheme. Now we have a carefully thought-out scheme, and although it does not come under my department, but under Section A1, it affords a good illustration of the basis of our system. All our toys are classified in fifteen stages. We began with only five stages, but the number has gradually increased, for the system necessarily becomes more complex as it becomes more perfect. Stage I. is represented by simple objects which a baby can grasp and recognise before the age of eighteen months. Stage II. is represented by balls and cubes and objects of that order. Stage III. by dolls and images. Stage IV. by objects which can be grouped so as to afford a basis for the teaching of number. Stage V. by simple mechanical toys and simple tools. Stage VI. by constructive blocks of various kinds...."