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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI. " All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." This old proverb expresses the belief that amusement is one of the most essential elements of happiness. If this is so, among the best practical utilitarians would seem to be those who do their utmost to spread a taste for the best games all over the world—Englishmen who teach Indians to play cricket, and Maoris to play football, Americans who introduce into the mother country their fascinating game of base-ball, rural rectors who encourage their parishioners to play cricket on the village green, and all who by precept or example induce their fellow men and fellow women to take any kind of healthy exercise in the open air. The effect upon happiness of such sports is both direct and indirect, direct inasmuch as those engaged in games enjoy themselves while playing, indirect because they lay up for themselves stores of health which may be a permanent source of happiness. There is a Spanish proverb to the effect that the days spent in hunting do not count in one's life. It means that, if a man is forty-two years old, and has spent two years in hunting, he is to all intents and purposes only forty years old, the invigorating effects of the exercise being supposed to exactly counteract the weakening effect of time. The words of this proverb may be extended so as to apply not merely to hunting but to all outdoor sports. The case of hunting is distinguished from other meansof healthy exercise by the fact that the lower animals are forced to take part in it. Therefore the utilitarian in considering the effects of hunting upon happiness must include in his calculation the effect produced upon the hunted as well as that produced upon the hunter. Is the happiness of the lower animals injuriously affected by hunting? There is no...