incalculable and uncertain, that the result achieved in each case stands quite by itself, that the end has no significance beyond the moment, is fulfilled literally for its own sake.[1] In every one of these respects it differs from the end of labour. Reflection will show that all these elements are necessary, if the game is really a game; for they are all derived from the essential fact that a game is a deal with chance or contingency. With chance we can do as we please, by the very nature of chance; hence the arbitrary character of a game. We can make a game with any elements involving chance, an inflated vessel at football, three upright rods and a ball at cricket, and so on. If we are quite certain of accomplishing the end we set before us, if we can count on it being done with all the probability which is the guide of practical life, we say it is not a game at all; if the result practically always comes off there is none of the contrast between intention and expectation in which the very interest of a game lies. When again we are done with a given game, we are no better off for the next game than we were before, except so far as the skill in pursuing the game is concerned. But this skill never reaches the point of helping us to prophesy the result with certainty, otherwise we cease to care for the game. And the man who has something to gain by the game, whose life is perturbed by the result, or whose status in society is at all affected by it, is not a player; we call him a professional, a man whose business it is to play, who plays for a reward and not for the sake of the game itself, who has a serious end beyond the game. But in labour the ends are set by the very conditions of human existence and are determined by the ends of living and of living well, ends which are in the control or arbitrary choice of no one. The attainment of these ends must be certain, calculable, and reliable, otherwise we cannot pursue them continuously and stake our very lives upon their attainment. The result of each day's work or of each bit of work does not stand by itself; it is bound up with the whole plan and structure of a man's purposes in life; it forms a part, and a necessary part, of a wider whole with which his life and the lives of others are bound up.
- ↑ In this respect a game resembles an art.
