I suppose the general playfulness of the foregoing instances might be called in question on the ground that there is no consciousness that it is all a play, no sham activity. Yet we refer complacently enough to other things which display quite as little of such subconsciousness as play. Indeed, the rule is that it is absent from mental play, and, moreover, this is a case that more closely concerns the emotions. The plays which involve subjective sham activity overlap to a great extent the sphere of the objective ones where the man or animal takes pleasure in action which has no necessary actual aim, yet without being conscious of having turned aside from the life of cause and effect. If we admit that the boy careering aimlessly about is playing because he enjoys the movement for its own sake, or that gourmands who eat without hunger, and merely to tickle their palates, are playing, then we must also call it play when the child takes pleasure in the sexual sensations arising from touch stimuli without knowing that his activity, on account of the exclusion of their proper end, is all a sham. From a purely biological standpoint the conception of play goes much deeper, as we shall see later on. I have purposely selected such examples as (with the exception of the last citation) exhibit the sexual impulse in conjunction with other activity that is unmistakably playful, believing that this conjunction would strengthen the probability of its being playful in those cases which if given alone might appear doubtful.