Die Spiele der Menschen

Abstract

PROF. GROOS will add by the present volume to the reputation he has already earned by his well-known work on the “Games of Animals.” A really comprehensive account, at once sympathetic and intelligent, of the games of both children and adults has long been a desideratum with the psychologist as well as with the anthropologist, and Prof. Groos's new work goes very far indeed towards permanently supplying the want. As is only right and proper, by far the larger part of the book is given up to an exhaustive description of the facts as far as they are known; the “Theory of Play” enunciated in the second part of the treatise can thus be judged by the reader upon a sufficiently wide basis of empirical information. The range and the accuracy of Prof. Groos's knowledge are alike surprising; not only is he a mine of information about the amusements of his own country, but he appears, for instance, as much at home in the English nursery and playground as though he had been brought up amongst us.

Die Spiele der Menschen.

By Karl Groos. Pp. vi + 538. (Jena: G. Fischer, 1899.)