Our daily existence is divided into two phases, as distinct as day and night. We call them work and play. We work many hours a day and we allow the necessary minimum for such activities as eating and shopping. 46) The rest we spend in various activities which are known as recreations, an elegant word which disguises the fact that we usually do not even play in our hours of leisure, but spend them in various forms of passive enjoyment or entertainment.
We need to make, therefore, a hard-and-fast distinction not only between work and play but, equally, between active play and passive entertainment. 47) It is, I suppose, the decline of active play — of amateur sport — and the enormous growth of purely receptive entertainment which have given rise to a sociological interest in the problem. If the greater part of the population, instead of indulging in sport, spend their hours of leisure "viewing" television programs, there will inevitably be a decline in health and physique. In addition, we have yet to trace the mental and moral consequences of prolonged diet of sentimental or sensational spectacles on the screen. 48) There is, if we are optimistic, the possibility that the diet is too thin and unnourishing to have much permanent effect on anybody. Nine films out of ten seem to leave absolutely no impression on the mind or imagination of those who have seen them.
49) It is only when entertainment is active, participated in, practiced, that it can properly be called play, and as such it is a natural use of leisure. In that sense play stands in contrast to work, and is usually regarded as an activity that alternates with work.
Work itself is not a single concept. We say quite generally that we work in order to make a living. Some of us work physically, tilling the land, minding the machines, digging the coal; others work mentally, keeping accounts, inventing machines, teaching and preaching, managing and governing. 50) There does not seem to be any factor common to all these diverse occupations, except that they consume our time, and leave us little leisure.
50) There does not seem to be any factor common to all these diverse occupations, except that they consume our time, and leave us little leisure.