social principles. In the dark background of history there is now much
evidence that at some point, play, art, and work were not divorced.
They all may have sprung from rhythmic movement which is so
deep-seated in biology because it secures most joy of life with least
expense. By it Eros of old ordered chaos, and by its judicious use the
human soul is cadenced to great efforts toward high ideals. The many
work-songs to secure concerted action in lifting, pulling, stepping,
the use of flail, lever, saw, ax, hammer, hoe, loom, etc., show that
areas and thesis represent flexion and extension, that accent
originated in the acme of muscular stress, as well as how rhythm eases
work and also makes it social. Most of the old work-canticles are
lost, and machines have made work more serial, while rhythms are
obscured or imposed from without so as to limit the freedom they used
to express. Now all basal, central, or strength movements tend to be
oscillatory, automatically repetitive, or rhythmic like savage music,
as if the waves of the primeval sea whence we came still beat in them,
just as all fine peripheral and late movements tend to be serial,
special, vastly complex, end diversified. It is thus natural that
during the period of greatest strength increment in muscular
development, the rhythmic function of nearly all fundamental movements
should be strongly accentuated. At the dawn of this age boys love
marching; and, as our returns show, there is a very remarkable rise in
the passion for beating time, jigging, double shuffling, rhythmic
clapping, etc. The more prominent the factor of repetition the more
automatic and the less strenuous is the hard and new effort of
constant psychic adjustment and attention. College yells, cheers,
rowing, marching, processions, bicycling, running, tug-of-war,
calisthenics and class gymnastics with counting, and especially with
music, horseback riding, etc., are rhythmic; tennis, baseball and
football, basketball, golf, polo, etc., are less rhythmic, but are