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Man as constructed by nature has two functions to fulfill: self-preservation and propagation. The former of these is enforced by the pain that arises when his life is threatened in any form; the latter is maintained by the excess of pleasure inherent in the propagative processes.
When tools first came to be used by man, they served thereby his self-preservation. At a later stage, he constructed extensions of his own limbs in order to facilitate or improve his ways of forcing reality to take the course that he desired it to take for the purpose of his survival. In so doing, he did not add anything to reality; he rearranged what already existed in a new fashion, which from a certain point of view did not go beyond the aggregate of its parts.
Yet when man added something to the tool—the engraving of lines, or some aspect that did not per se contribute to an improvement of the realistic working of the tool—a new category was introduced. The unadorned tool, an instrument of pure utility, grew out of a dissatisfaction: the arm is not long enough, therefore let it be extended; the human fingernail is not sharp enough, therefore let it be replaced with an artificial claw. But the prehistoric engravings belong in a different category. In these, man did something that nature had never done before at all. This difference between tools and engravings would be, of course, somewhat reduced if it were ever proven that the latter were born solely out of a magic impulse. By the discovery of magic, a new source of power would have been trapped that went in its nature, efficacy, and meaning, far beyond the broad stratum of physical tools.
When now, in a sudden leap, Shakespeare's plays are envisaged as human productions, we find in them all the motives and functions that are often enumerated: magic; cosmic anguish; sudden invention; the urge to play and to