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(1) Recreation must involve some excitement, some appeal to an existing interest, some change, some stirring of the wearied or sleeping embers of the mind. Routine work, tending to become more and more routine, wears life. It is “life of which our nerves are scant,” and recreation should revive the sources of life. Most people, as Mr. Balfour, look askance at efforts which, under the guise of amusing, aim to impart useful culture. Recreation must be something other than repose—something more stirring than sleep or loafing—it must be something attractive and not something undertaken as a duty.

(2) Recreation must involve the strengthening of the less used fibres of the mind and the body; the embers which are stirred by excitement need to be fed with new fuel, or the flames will soon sink into ashes. Gambling and drink, sensational dramas, and exciting shows stir but do not strengthen the mind. Mere change—the fresh excursion every day, the spectacle of a contest—wears out the powers of being. “The crime of sense is avenged by sense which wears with time.” On the other hand, games well played fulfil the condition, and there is no more cheering sight than that of playing-fields where young and old are using their limbs intent on doing their best. Music, foreign travel, congenial society, reading, chess, all games of skill, also fulfil the condition, as they make a claim on the activity of heart or mind, and so strengthen their fibres. A good drama is recreation if the spectator is called to give himself to thought and to feeling. He then becomes in a sense a fellow creator with the author, he has what Professor Groos says satisfies every one, “the joy of being a cause,” or, as he explains in another passage, “it is only when emotion is in a measure our own work do we enjoy the result”. Recreation must call out activity, it fails if it gives and requires nothing. We only have what we give. He that would save his life loses it.