A work of art may cause a pleasant feeling by inciting any of a large number of mental activities. Beyond giving pleasure it has no purpose. Choice articles of food, new clothes, a profession yielding a good income, give us pleasure through their odor, their look, through the standing they give us in good society. But they please us also, and indeed chiefly, through their purposes: we need them for our existence. Because of their purposes they do not give us pure pleasure: they make us want better food, better clothes, a better position. A work of art, on the other hand, may in some way further our life; but he who enjoys it is not aware of such a furtherance. He sees no purpose in it. He experiences a bliss of heaven, not pleasures of the world. The purpose of art consists in its own unity; it does not draw us away from where we are. It gives us rest while it keeps us active. The pleasure resulting from this kind of activity is called esthetic pleasure. Many are the origins of art. Religion is doubtless one of them. Primitive man conceived of some of the most important of his demons as having their seats in certain species of animals. The possession of these animals gives witchcraft. But it is difficult to carry them about, and killing them is of course out of the question. Primitive reasoning then accepted an image, a picture, as having about the same effectiveness. So man came to carve such pictures on his weapons to make them stronger, to carry them hung around his neck to protect him, to make idols of his gods which he could visibly reward or punish. The pleasure of seeing these images then gave them a value separate from their religious applications. Yet pictures of the virgin and of saints still continue to be used for the earlier purpose. When thus beginning to be separated from religion, art became again attached to it; for man, enjoying pictures, offered them as presents to his gods, so that they, too, might enjoy them. The subject of representation was naturally the gods themselves, the most sublime subject known to man. Another origin of art is play. We said that play is that mass of instincts, common to man and animals, which brings about an exercise of the capacities necessary for preservation at a time when no special purposes demand such exercise. In this absence of a special purpose consists the ultimate relation of play and art. But play is not identical with art, because it is still too serious a matter. The boy who plays robber and police is not like an actor playing the rôle of a robber. He really is the robber so far as the advantages, the freedom, and the power of a robber are concerned; and he enjoys these advantages, while the actor does not even think of them. The actor, even while playing the rôle of a king, desires to play the king, not to be the king. Play, that is, the instinctive activity of play, is intermediate between art and life, a gateway to the former.