as divination or a legal proceeding. War itself might be regarded as a form of divination. The chapter contains some pleasantly surprising remarks: One might call society a game in the formal sense, if one bears in mind that such a game is the living principle of all civilization. In the absence of the play-spirit civilization is impossible. VI. Playing and knowing For archaic man, doing and daring are power, but knowing is magical power. For him all particular knowledge is sacred knowledge—esoteric and wonder-working wisdom, because any knowing is directly related to the cosmic order itself. The riddle-solving and death-penalty motif features strongly in the chapter. Greek tradition: the story of the seers Chalcas and Mopsos. VII. Play and poetry Poiesis, in fact, is a play-function. It proceeds within the play-ground of the mind, in a world of its own which the mind creates for it. There things have a different physiognomy from the one they wear in "ordinary life", and are bound by ties other than those of logic and causality. For Huizinga, the "true appellation of the archaic poet is vates, the possessed, the God-smitten, the raving one". Of the many examples he gives, one might choose Unferd who appears in Beowulf. VIII. The elements of mythopoiesis As soon as the effect of a metaphor consists in describing things or events in terms of life and movement, we are on the road to personification. To represent the incorporeal and the inanimate as a person is the soul of all myth-making and nearly all poetry. Mythopoiesis is literally myth-making (see Mythopoeia and Mythopoeic thought). IX. Play-forms in philosophy At the centre of the circle we are trying to describe with our idea of play there stands the figure of the Greek sophist. He may be regarded as an extension of the central figure in archaic cultural life who appeared before us successively as the prophet, medicine-man, seer, thaumaturge and poet and whose best designation is vates. X. Play-forms in art Wherever there is a catch-word ending in -ism we are hot on the tracks of a play-community. Huizinga has already established an indissoluble bond between play and poetry. Now he recognizes that "the same is true, and in even higher degree, of the bond between play and music" However, when he turns away from "poetry, music and dancing to the plastic arts" he "finds the connections with play