It is evident that a pantomimic imitation of any activity must, as exercise and stimulation, facilitate the subsequent real execution of the same activity. Individuals and nations who have grown familiar in play with the most important actions in life’s work have thus acquired an unquestionable advantage in the struggle for existence. After the publication of Professor Groos’s great works on animal and human recreations it is needless to dwell upon this point. This eminent psychologist has, with regard to the evolutionary value of sportive representations—or, as he prefers to say, “præ-presentations”—of life, been led to consider them as based on inherited instinctive impulses. Instead of the play-impulse, which only serves to provide an outflow for the superfluous energy in the organism, he has thus introduced the conception of an activity which exercises an important positive influence on life. And, on the other hand, his consummate researches have brought out with especial clearness the intimate connection between play and art. A great many of the instances he has collected present all the technical qualifications of a manifestation of dramatic art. As Groos himself remarks, only the addition of a disinterested æsthetic attention in the players is needed in order to transform the instinctive activities into artistic ones. How this transition has taken place is a question which will undoubtedly be treated in the great system of art-philosophy to which the hitherto published works of Professor Groos constitute the introduction. We have therefore only to point out how much support these views derive from the study of primitive art. In the various tribes, with their differing types of life, there is afforded a singular opportunity of observing the connection between play, or art, and the serious occupations of life. The games of the children, as well as the dances and pantomimes of the full-grown, almost everywhere correspond to the prevailing activities in the various communities. The North American Indians, the Malays, the Maoris, the tribes of Central Asia, and others, all furnish instances of the familiar law that the amusements of warlike nations mainly consists in exercises which are preliminary to, or reminiscent of, the experiences of battle. A war dance or a mimic fight is the traditional type not only of their public entertainments, but also of their state ceremonial. No example could be more telling than that of the Dahomey state dances, which, however they may begin, always seem to end with an imitation of the greatest social action in the country—decapitation.[390] Where the struggle for existence is a contest with nature and not with fellow-men, a hunting or fishing pantomime usually takes the place of these military performances. It is true that such representations of work often lose their importance in national art when the conditions of life grow easier. Mr. Taplin