Chapter 10: Modern Survivals of Prowess
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The leisure class lives by the industrial community rather than in
it. Its relations to industry are of a pecuniary rather than an
industrial kind. Admission to the class is gained by exercise of the
pecuniary aptitudes -- aptitudes for acquisition rather than for
serviceability. There is, therefore, a continued selective sifting
of the human material that makes up the leisure class, and this
selection proceeds on the ground of fitness for pecuniary pursuits.
But the scheme of life of the class is in large part a heritage from
the past, and embodies much of the habits and ideals of the earlier
barbarian period. This archaic, barbarian scheme of life imposes
itself also on the lower orders, with more or less mitigation. In
its turn the scheme of life, of conventions, acts selectively and by
education to shape the human material, and its action runs chiefly
in the direction of conserving traits, habits, and ideals that
belong to the early barbarian age -- the age of prowess and
predatory life.
The most immediate and unequivocal expression of that archaic human
nature which characterizes man in the predatory stage is the
fighting propensity proper. In cases where the predatory activity is
a collective one, this propensity is frequently called the martial
spirit, or, latterly, patriotism. It needs no insistence to find
assent to the proposition that in the countries of civilized Europe
the hereditary leisure class is endowed with this martial spirit in
a higher degree than the middle classes. Indeed, the leisure class
claims the distinction as a matter of pride, and no doubt with some
grounds. War is honorable, and warlike prowess is eminently
honorific in the eyes of the generality of men; and this admiration
of warlike prowess is itself the best voucher of a predatory
temperament in the admirer of war. The enthusiasm for war, and the
predatory temper of which it is the index, prevail in the largest
measure among the upper classes, especially among the hereditary
leisure class. Moreover, the ostensible serious occupation of the
upper class is that of government, which, in point of origin and
developmental content, is also a predatory occupation.
The only class which could at all dispute with the hereditary
leisure class the honor of an habitual bellicose frame of mind is
that of the lower-class delinquents. In ordinary times, the large
body of the industrial classes is relatively apathetic touching
warlike interests. When unexcited, this body of the common people,
which makes up the effective force of the industrial community, is
rather averse to any other than a defensive fight; indeed, it
responds a little tardily even to a provocation which makes for an
attitude of defense. In the more civilized communities, or rather in
the communities which have reached an advanced industrial
development, the spirit of warlike aggression may be said to be
obsolescent among the common people. This does not say that there is
not an appreciable number of individuals among the industrial
classes in whom the martial spirit asserts itself obtrusively. Nor
does it say that the body of the people may not be fired with
martial ardor for a time under the stimulus of some special
provocation, such as is seen in operation today in more than one of
the countries of Europe, and for the time in America. But except for
such seasons of temporary exaltation, and except for those
individuals who are endowed with an archaic temperament of the
predatory type, together with the similarly endowed body of
individuals among the higher and the lowest classes, the inertness
of the mass of any modern civilized community in this respect is
probably so great as would make war impracticable, except against
actual invasion. The habits and aptitudes of the common run of men
make for an unfolding of activity in other, less picturesque
directions than that of war.
This class difference in temperament may be due in part to a
difference in the inheritance of acquired traits in the several
classes, but it seems also, in some measure, to correspond with a
difference in ethnic derivation. The class difference is in this
respect visibly less in those countries whose population is
relatively homogeneous, ethnically, than in the countries where
there is a broader divergence between the ethnic elements that make
up the several classes of the community. In the same connection it
may be noted that the later accessions to the leisure class in the
latter countries, in a general way, show less of the martial spirit
than contemporary representatives of the aristocracy of the ancient
line. These nouveaux arriv閟 have recently emerged from the
commonplace body of the population and owe their emergence into the
leisure class to the exercise of traits and propensities which are
not to be classed as prowess in the ancient sense.
Apart from warlike activity proper, the institution of the duel is
also an expression of the same superior readiness for combat; and
the duel is a leisure-class institution. The duel is in substance a
more or less deliberate resort to a fight as a final settlement of a
difference of opinion. In civilized communities it prevails as a
normal phenomenon only where there is an hereditary leisure class,
and almost exclusively among that class. The exceptions are (1)
military and naval officers who are ordinarily members of the
leisure class, and who are at the same time specially trained to
predatory habits of mind and (2) the lower-class delinquents -- who
are by inheritance, or training, or both, of a similarly predatory
disposition and habit. It is only the high-bred gentleman and the
rowdy that normally resort to blows as the universal solvent of
differences of opinion. The plain man will ordinarily fight only
when excessive momentary irritation or alcoholic exaltation act to
inhibit the more complex habits of response to the stimuli that make
for provocation. He is then thrown back upon the simpler, less
differentiated forms of the instinct of self-assertion; that is to
say, he reverts temporarily and without reflection to an archaic
habit of mind.
This institution of the duel as a mode of finally settling disputes
and serious questions of precedence shades off into the obligatory,
unprovoked private fight, as a social obligation due to one's good
repute. As a leisure-class usage of this kind we have, particularly,
that bizarre survival of bellicose chivalry, the German student
duel. In the lower or spurious leisure class of the delinquents
there is in all countries a similar, though less formal, social
obligation incumbent on the rowdy to assert his manhood in
unprovoked combat with his fellows. And spreading through all grades
of society, a similar usage prevails among the boys of the
community. The boy usually knows to nicety, from day to day, how he
and his associates grade in respect of relative fighting capacity;
and in the community of boys there is ordinarily no secure basis of
reputability for any one who, by exception, will not or can not
fight on invitation.
All this applies especially to boys above a certain somewhat vague
limit of maturity. The child's temperament does not commonly answer
to this description during infancy and the years of close tutelage,
when the child still habitually seeks contact with its mother at
every turn of its daily life. During this earlier period there is
little aggression and little propensity for antagonism. The
transition from this peaceable temper to the predaceous, and in
extreme cases malignant, mischievousness of the boy is a gradual
one, and it is accomplished with more completeness, covering a
larger range of the individual's aptitudes, in some cases than in
others. In the earlier stage of his growth, the child, whether boy
or girl, shows less of initiative and aggressive self-assertion and
less of an inclination to isolate himself and his interests from the
domestic group in which he lives, and he shows more of sensitiveness
to rebuke, bashfulness, timidity, and the need of friendly human
contact. In the common run of cases this early temperament passes,
by a gradual but somewhat rapid obsolescence of the infantile
features, into the temperament of the boy proper; though there are
also cases where the predaceous futures of boy life do not emerge at
all, or at the most emerge in but a slight and obscure degree.
In girls the transition to the predaceous stage is seldom
accomplished with the same degree of completeness as in boys; and in
a relatively large proportion of cases it is scarcely undergone at
all. In such cases the transition from infancy to adolescence and
maturity is a gradual and unbroken process of the shifting of
interest from infantile purposes and aptitudes to the purposes,
functions, and relations of adult life. In the girls there is a less
general prevalence of a predaceous interval in the development; and
in the cases where it occurs, the predaceous and isolating attitude
during the interval is commonly less accentuated.
In the male child the predaceous interval is ordinarily fairly well
marked and lasts for some time, but it is commonly terminated (if at
all) with the attainment of maturity. This last statement may need
very material qualification. The cases are by no means rare in which
the transition from the boyish to the adult temperament is not made,
or is made only partially -- understanding by the "adult"
temperament the average temperament of those adult individuals in
modern industrial life who have some serviceability for the purposes
of the collective life process, and who may therefore be said to
make up the effective average of the industrial community.
The ethnic composition of the European populations varies. In some
cases even the lower classes are in large measure made up of the
peace-disturbing dolicho-blond; while in others this ethnic element
is found chiefly among the hereditary leisure class. The fighting
habit seems to prevail to a less extent among the working-class boys
in the latter class of populations than among the boys of the upper
classes or among those of the populations first named.
If this generalization as to the temperament of the boy among the
working classes should be found true on a fuller and closer scrutiny
of the field, it would add force to the view that the bellicose
temperament is in some appreciable degree a race characteristic; it
appears to enter more largely into the make-up of the dominant,
upper-class ethnic type -- the dolicho-blond -- of the European
countries than into the subservient, lower-class types of man which
are conceived to constitute the body of the population of the same
communities.
The case of the boy may seem not to bear seriously on the question
of the relative endowment of prowess with which the several classes
of society are gifted; but it is at least of some value as going to
show that this fighting impulse belongs to a more archaic
temperament than that possessed by the average adult man of the
industrious classes. In this, as in many other features of child
life, the child reproduces, temporarily and in miniature, some of
the earlier phases of the development of adult man. Under this
interpretation, the boy's predilection for exploit and for isolation
of his own interest is to be taken as a transient reversion to the
human nature that is normal to the early barbarian culture -- the
predatory culture proper. In this respect, as in much else, the
leisure-class and the delinquent-class character shows a persistence
into adult life of traits that are normal to childhood and youth,
and that are likewise normal or habitual to the earlier stages of
culture. Unless the difference is traceable entirely to a
fundamental difference between persistent ethnic types, the traits
that distinguish the swaggering delinquent and the punctilious
gentleman of leisure from the common crowd are, in some measure,
marks of an arrested spiritual development. They mark an immature
phase, as compared with the stage of development attained by the
average of the adults in the modern industrial community. And it
will appear presently that the puerile spiritual make-up of these
representatives of the upper and the lowest social strata shows
itself also in the presence of other archaic traits than this
proclivity to ferocious exploit and isolation.
As if to leave no doubt about the essential immaturity of the
fighting temperament, we have, bridging the interval between
legitimate boyhood and adult manhood, the aimless and playful, but
more or less systematic and elaborate, disturbances of the peace in
vogue among schoolboys of a slightly higher age. In the common run
of cases, these disturbances are confined to the period of
adolescence. They recur with decreasing frequency and acuteness as
youth merges into adult life, and so they reproduce, in a general
way, in the life of the individual, the sequence by which the group
has passed from the predatory to a more settled habit of life. In an
appreciable number of cases the spiritual growth of the individual
comes to a close before he emerges from this puerile phase; in these
cases the fighting temper persists through life. Those individuals
who in spiritual development eventually reach man's estate,
therefore, ordinarily pass through a temporary archaic phase
corresponding to the permanent spiritual level of the fighting and
sporting men. Different individuals will, of course, achieve
spiritual maturity and sobriety in this respect in different
degrees; and those who fail of the average remain as an undissolved
residue of crude humanity in the modern industrial community and as
a foil for that selective process of adaptation which makes for a
heightened industrial efficiency and the fullness of life of the
collectivity. This arrested spiritual development may express itself
not only in a direct participation by adults in youthful exploits of
ferocity, but also indirectly in aiding and abetting disturbances of
this kind on the part of younger persons. It thereby furthers the
formation of habits of ferocity which may persist in the later life
of the growing generation, and so retard any movement in the
direction of a more peaceable effective temperament on the part of
the community. If a person so endowed with a proclivity for exploits
is in a position to guide the development of habits in the
adolescent members of the community, the influence which he exerts
in the direction of conservation and reversion to prowess may be
very considerable. This is the significance, for instance, of the
fostering care latterly bestowed by many clergymen and other pillars
of society upon "boys' brigades" and similar pseudo-military
organizations. The same is true of the encouragement given to the
growth of "college spirit," college athletics, and the like, in the
higher institutions of learning.
These manifestations of the predatory temperament are all to be
classed under the head of exploit. They are partly simple and
unreflected expressions of an attitude of emulative ferocity, partly
activities deliberately entered upon with a view to gaining repute
for prowess. Sports of all kinds are of the same general character,
including prize-fights, bull-fights, athletics, shooting, angling,
yachting, and games of skill, even where the element of destructive
physical efficiency is not an obtrusive feature. Sports shade off
from the basis of hostile combat, through skill, to cunning and
chicanery, without its being possible to draw a line at any point.
The ground of an addiction to sports is an archaic spiritual
constitution -- the possession of the predatory emulative propensity
in a relatively high potency, A strong proclivity to adventuresome
exploit and to the infliction of damage is especially pronounced in
those employments which are in colloquial usage specifically called
sportsmanship.
It is perhaps truer, or at least more evident, as regards sports
than as regards the other expressions of predatory emulation already
spoken of, that the temperament which inclines men to them is
essentially a boyish temperament. The addiction to sports,
therefore, in a peculiar degree marks an arrested development of the
man's moral nature. This peculiar boyishness of temperament in
sporting men immediately becomes apparent when attention is directed
to the large element of make-believe that is present in all sporting
activity. Sports share this character of make-believe with the games
and exploits to which children, especially boys, are habitually
inclined. Make-believe does not enter in the same proportion into
all sports, but it is present in a very appreciable degree in all.
It is apparently present in a larger measure in sportsmanship proper
and in athletic contests than in set games of skill of a more
sedentary character; although this rule may not be found to apply
with any great uniformity. It is noticeable, for instance, that even
very mild-mannered and matter-of-fact men who go out shooting are
apt to carry an excess of arms and accoutrements in order to impress
upon their own imagination the seriousness of their undertaking.
These huntsmen are also prone to a histrionic, prancing gait and to
an elaborate exaggeration of the motions, whether of stealth or of
onslaught, involved in their deeds of exploit. Similarly in athletic
sports there is almost invariably present a good share of rant and
swagger and ostensible mystification -- features which mark the
histrionic nature of these employments. In all this, of course, the
reminder of boyish make-believe is plain enough. The slang of
athletics, by the way, is in great part made up of extremely
sanguinary locutions borrowed from the terminology of warfare.
Except where it is adopted as a necessary means of secret
communication, the use of a special slang in any employment is
probably to be accepted as evidence that the occupation in question
is substantially make-believe.
A further feature in which sports differ from the duel and similar
disturbances of the peace is the peculiarity that they admit of
other motives being assigned for them besides the impulses of
exploit and ferocity. There is probably little if any other motive
present in any given case, but the fact that other reasons for
indulging in sports are frequently assigned goes to say that other
grounds are sometimes present in a subsidiary way. Sportsmen --
hunters and anglers -- are more or less in the habit of assigning a
love of nature, the need of recreation, and the like, as the
incentives to their favorite pastime. These motives are no doubt
frequently present and make up a part of the attractiveness of the
sportsman's life; but these can not be the chief incentives. These
ostensible needs could be more readily and fully satisfied without
the accompaniment of a systematic effort to take the life of those
creatures that make up an essential feature of that "nature" that is
beloved by the sportsman. It is, indeed, the most noticeable effect
of the sportsman's activity to keep nature in a state of chronic
desolation by killing off all living thing whose destruction he can
compass.
Still, there is ground for the sportsman's claim that under the
existing conventionalities his need of recreation and of contact
with nature can best be satisfied by the course which he takes.
Certain canons of good breeding have been imposed by the
prescriptive example of a predatory leisure class in the past and
have been somewhat painstakingly conserved by the usage of the
latter-day representatives of that class; and these canons will not
permit him, without blame, to seek contact with nature on other
terms. From being an honorable employment handed down from the
predatory culture as the highest form of everyday leisure, sports
have come to be the only form of outdoor activity that has the full
sanction of decorum. Among the proximate incentives to shooting and
angling, then, may be the need of recreation and outdoor life. The
remoter cause which imposes the necessity of seeking these objects
under the cover of systematic slaughter is a prescription that can
not be violated except at the risk of disrepute and consequent
lesion to one's self-respect.
The case of other kinds of sport is somewhat similar. Of these,
athletic games are the best example. Prescriptive usage with respect
to what forms of activity, exercise, and recreation are permissible
under the code of reputable living is of course present here also.
Those who are addicted to athletic sports, or who admire them, set
up the claim that these afford the best available means of
recreation and of "physical culture." And prescriptive usage gives
countenance to the claim. The canons of reputable living exclude
from the scheme of life of the leisure class all activity that can
not be classed as conspicuous leisure. And consequently they tend by
prescription to exclude it also from the scheme of life of the
community generally. At the same time purposeless physical exertion
is tedious and distasteful beyond tolerance. As has been noticed in
another connection, recourse is in such a case had to some form of
activity which shall at least afford a colorable pretense of
purpose, even if the object assigned be only a make-believe. Sports
satisfy these requirements of substantial futility together with a
colorable make-believe of purpose. In addition to this they afford
scope for emulation, and are attractive also on that account. In
order to be decorous, an employment must conform to the
leisure-class canon of reputable waste; at the same time all
activity, in order to be persisted in as an habitual, even if only
partial, expression of life, must conform to the generically human
canon of efficiency for some serviceable objective end. The
leisure-class canon demands strict and comprehensive futility, the
instinct of workmanship demands purposeful action. The leisure-class
canon of decorum acts slowly and pervasively, by a selective
elimination of all substantially useful or purposeful modes of
action from the accredited scheme of life; the instinct of
workmanship acts impulsively and may be satisfied, provisionally,
with a proximate purpose. It is only as the apprehended ulterior
futility of a given line of action enters the reflective complex of
consciousness as an element essentially alien to the normally
purposeful trend of the life process that its disquieting and
deterrent effect on the consciousness of the agent is wrought.
The individual's habits of thought make an organic complex, the
trend of which is necessarily in the direction of serviceability to
the life process. When it is attempted to assimilate systematic
waste or futility, as an end in life, into this organic complex,
there presently supervenes a revulsion. But this revulsion of the
organism may be avoided if the attention can be confined to the
proximate, unreflected purpose of dexterous or emulative exertion.
Sports -- hunting, angling, athletic games, and the like -- afford
an exercise for dexterity and for the emulative ferocity and
astuteness characteristic of predatory life. So long as the
individual is but slightly gifted with reflection or with a sense of
the ulterior trend of his actions so long as his life is
substantially a life of naive impulsive action -- so long the
immediate and unreflected purposefulness of sports, in the way of an
expression of dominance, will measurably satisfy his instinct of
workmanship. This is especially true if his dominant impulses are
the unreflecting emulative propensities of the predaceous
temperament. At the same time the canons of decorum will commend
sports to him as expressions of a pecuniarily blameless life. It is
by meeting these two requirements, of ulterior wastefulness and
proximate purposefulness, that any given employment holds its place
as a traditional and habitual mode of decorous recreation. In the
sense that other forms of recreation and exercise are morally
impossible to persons of good breeding and delicate sensibilities,
then, sports are the best available means of recreation under
existing circumstances.
But those members of respectable society who advocate athletic games
commonly justify their attitude on this head to themselves and to
their neighbors on the ground that these games serve as an
invaluable means of development. They not only improve the
contestant's physique, but it is commonly added that they also
foster a manly spirit, both in the participants and in the
spectators. Football is the particular game which will probably
first occur to any one in this community when the question of the
serviceability of athletic games is raised, as this form of athletic
contest is at present uppermost in the mind of those who plead for
or against games as a means of physical or moral salvation. This
typical athletic sport may, therefore, serve to illustrate the
bearing of athletics upon the development of the contestant's
character and physique. It has been said, not inaptly, that the
relation of football to physical culture is much the same as that of
the bull-fight to agriculture. Serviceability for these lusory
institutions requires sedulous training or breeding. The material
used, whether brute or human, is subjected to careful selection and
discipline, in order to secure and accentuate certain aptitudes and
propensities which are characteristic of the ferine state, and which
tend to obsolescence under domestication. This does not mean that
the result in either case is an all around and consistent
rehabilitation of the ferine or barbarian habit of mind and body.
The result is rather a one-sided return to barbarism or to the feroe
natura -- a rehabilitation and accentuation of those ferine traits
which make for damage and desolation, without a corresponding
development of the traits which would serve the individual's
self-preservation and fullness of life in a ferine environment. The
culture bestowed in football gives a product of exotic ferocity and
cunning. It is a rehabilitation of the early barbarian temperament,
together with a suppression of those details of temperament, which,
as seen from the standpoint of the social and economic exigencies,
are the redeeming features of the savage character.
The physical vigor acquired in the training for athletic games -- so
far as the training may be said to have this effect -- is of
advantage both to the individual and to the collectivity, in that,
other things being equal, it conduces to economic serviceability.
The spiritual traits which go with athletic sports are likewise
economically advantageous to the individual, as contradistinguished
from the interests of the collectivity. This holds true in any
community where these traits are present in some degree in the
population. Modern competition is in large part a process of
self-assertion on the basis of these traits of predatory human
nature. In the sophisticated form in which they enter into the
modern, peaceable emulation, the possession of these traits in some
measure is almost a necessary of life to the civilized man. But
while they are indispensable to the competitive individual, they are
not directly serviceable to the community. So far as regards the
serviceability of the individual for the purposes of the collective
life, emulative efficiency is of use only indirectly if at all.
Ferocity and cunning are of no use to the community except in its
hostile dealings with other communities; and they are useful to the
individual only because there is so large a proportion of the same
traits actively present in the human environment to which he is
exposed. Any individual who enters the competitive struggle without
the due endowment of these traits is at a disadvantage, somewhat as
a hornless steer would find himself at a disadvantage in a drove of
horned cattle.
The possession and the cultivation of the predatory traits of
character may, of course, be desirable on other than economic
grounds. There is a prevalent aesthetic or ethical predilection for
the barbarian aptitudes, and the traits in question minister so
effectively to this predilection that their serviceability in the
aesthetic or ethical respect probably offsets any economic
unserviceability which they may give. But for the present purpose
that is beside the point. Therefore nothing is said here as to the
desirability or advisability of sports on the whole, or as to their
value on other than economic grounds.
In popular apprehension there is much that is admirable in the type
of manhood which the life of sport fosters. There is self-reliance
and good-fellowship, so termed in the somewhat loose colloquial use
of the words. From a different point of view the qualities currently
so characterized might be described as truculence and clannishness.
The reason for the current approval and admiration of these manly
qualities, as well as for their being called manly, is the same as
the reason for their usefulness to the individual. The members of
the community, and especially that class of the community which sets
the pace in canons of taste, are endowed with this range of
propensities in sufficient measure to make their absence in others
felt as a shortcoming, and to make their possession in an
exceptional degree appreciated as an attribute of superior merit.
The traits of predatory man are by no means obsolete in the common
run of modern populations. They are present and can be called out in
bold relief at any time by any appeal to the sentiments in which
they express themselves -- unless this appeal should clash with the
specific activities that make up our habitual occupations and
comprise the general range of our everyday interests. The common run
of the population of any industrial community is emancipated from
these, economically considered, untoward propensities only in the
sense that, through partial and temporary disuse, they have lapsed
into the background of sub-conscious motives. With varying degrees
of potency in different individuals, they remain available for the
aggressive shaping of men's actions and sentiments whenever a
stimulus of more than everyday intensity comes in to call them
forth. And they assert themselves forcibly in any case where no
occupation alien to the predatory culture has usurped the
individual's everyday range of interest and sentiment. This is the
case among the leisure class and among certain portions of the
population which are ancillary to that class. Hence the facility
with which any new accessions to the leisure class take to sports;
and hence the rapid growth of sports and of the sporting sentient in
any industrial community where wealth has accumulated sufficiently
to exempt a considerable part of the population from work.
A homely and familiar fact may serve to show that the predaceous
impulse does not prevail in the same degree in all classes. Taken
simply as a feature of modern life, the habit of carrying a
walking-stick may seem at best a trivial detail; but the usage has a
significance for the point in question. The classes among whom the
habit most prevails -- the classes with whom the walking-stick is
associated in popular apprehension -- are the men of the leisure
class proper, sporting men, and the lower-class delinquents. To
these might perhaps be added the men engaged in the pecuniary
employments. The same is not true of the common run of men engaged
in industry and it may be noted by the way that women do not carry a
stick except in case of infirmity, where it has a use of a different
kind. The practice is of course in great measure a matter of polite
usage; but the basis of polite usage is, in turn, the proclivities
of the class which sets the pace in polite usage. The walking-stick
serves the purpose of an advertisement that the bearer's hands are
employed otherwise than in useful effort, and it therefore has
utility as an evidence of leisure. But it is also a weapon, and it
meets a felt need of barbarian man on that ground. The handling of
so tangible and primitive a means of offense is very comforting to
any one who is gifted with even a moderate share of ferocity.
The exigencies of the language make it impossible to avoid an
apparent implication of disapproval of the aptitudes, propensities,
and expressions of life here under discussion. It is, however, not
intended to imply anything in the way of deprecation or commendation
of any one of these phases of human character or of the life
process. The various elements of the prevalent human nature are
taken up from the point of view of economic theory, and the traits
discussed are gauged and graded with regard to their immediate
economic bearing on the facility of the collective life process.
That is to say, these phenomena are here apprehended from the
economic point of view and are valued with respect to their direct
action in furtherance or hindrance of a more perfect adjustment of
the human collectivity to the environment and to the institutional
structure required by the economic situation of the collectivity for
the present and for the immediate future. For these purposes the
traits handed down from the predatory culture are less serviceable
than might be. Although even in this connection it is not to be
overlooked that the energetic aggressiveness and pertinacity of
predatory man is a heritage of no mean value. The economic value --
with some regard also to the social value in the narrower sense --
of these aptitudes and propensities is attempted to be passed upon
without reflecting on their value as seen from another point of
view. When contrasted with the prosy mediocrity of the latter-day
industrial scheme of life, and judged by the accredited standards of
morality, and more especially by the standards of aesthetics and of
poetry, these survivals from a more primitive type of manhood may
have a very different value from that here assigned them. But all
this being foreign to the purpose in hand, no expression of opinion
on this latter head would be in place here. All that is admissible
is to enter the caution that these standards of excellence, which
are alien to the present purpose, must not be allowed to influence
our economic appreciation of these traits of human character or of
the activities which foster their growth. This applies both as
regards those persons who actively participate in sports and those
whose sporting experience consists in contemplation only. What is
here said of the sporting propensity is likewise pertinent to sundry
reflections presently to be made in this connection on what would
colloquially be known as the religious life.
The last paragraph incidentally touches upon the fact that everyday
speech can scarcely be employed in discussing this class of
aptitudes and activities without implying deprecation or apology.
The fact is significant as showing the habitual attitude of the
dispassionate common man toward the propensities which express
themselves in sports and in exploit generally. And this is perhaps
as convenient a place as any to discuss that undertone of
deprecation which runs through all the voluminous discourse in
defense or in laudation of athletic sports, as well as of other
activities of a predominantly predatory character. The same
apologetic frame of mind is at least beginning to be observable in
the spokesmen of most other institutions handed down from the
barbarian phase of life. Among these archaic institutions which are
felt to need apology are comprised, with others, the entire existing
system of the distribution of wealth, together with the resulting
class distinction of status; all or nearly all forms of consumption
that come under the head of conspicuous waste; the status of women
under the patriarchal system; and many features of the traditional
creeds and devout observances, especially the exoteric expressions
of the creed and the naive apprehension of received observances.
What is to be said in this connection of the apologetic attitude
taken in commending sports and the sporting character will therefore
apply, with a suitable change in phraseology, to the apologies
offered in behalf of these other, related elements of our social
heritage.
There is a feeling -- usually vague and not commonly avowed in so
many words by the apologist himself, but ordinarily perceptible in
the manner of his discourse -- that these sports, as well as the
general range of predaceous impulses and habits of thought which
underlie the sporting character, do not altogether commend
themselves to common sense. "As to the majority of murderers, they
are very incorrect characters." This aphorism offers a valuation of
the predaceous temperament, and of the disciplinary effects of its
overt expression and exercise, as seen from the moralist's point of
view. As such it affords an indication of what is the deliverance of
the sober sense of mature men as to the degree of availability of
the predatory habit of mind for the purposes of the collective life.
It is felt that the presumption is against any activity which
involves habituation to the predatory attitude, and that the burden
of proof lies with those who speak for the rehabilitation of the
predaceous temper and for the practices which strengthen it. There
is a strong body of popular sentiment in favor of diversions and
enterprises of the kind in question; but there is at the same time
present in the community a pervading sense that this ground of
sentiment wants legitimation. The required legitimation is
ordinarily sought by showing that although sports are substantially
of a predatory, socially disintegrating effect; although their
proximate effect runs in the direction of reversion to propensities
that are industrially disserviceable; yet indirectly and remotely --
by some not readily comprehensible process of polar induction, or
counter-irritation perhaps -- sports are conceived to foster a habit
of mind that is serviceable for the social or industrial purpose.
That is to say, although sports are essentially of the nature of
invidious exploit, it is presumed that by some remote and obscure
effect they result in the growth of a temperament conducive to
non-invidious work. It is commonly attempted to show all this
empirically or it is rather assumed that this is the empirical
generalization which must be obvious to any one who cares to see it.
In conducting the proof of this thesis the treacherous ground of
inference from cause to effect is somewhat shrewdly avoided, except
so far as to show that the "manly virtues" spoken of above are
fostered by sports. But since it is these manly virtues that are
(economically) in need of legitimation, the chain of proof breaks
off where it should begin. In the most general economic terms, these
apologies are an effort to show that, in spite of the logic of the
thing, sports do in fact further what may broadly be called
workmanship. So long as he has not succeeded in persuading himself
or others that this is their effect the thoughtful apologist for
sports will not rest content, and commonly, it is to be admitted, he
does not rest content. His discontent with his own vindication of
the practice in question is ordinarily shown by his truculent tone
and by the eagerness with which he heaps up asseverations in support
of his position.
But why are apologies needed? If there prevails a body of popular
sentient in favor of sports, why is not that fact a sufficient
legitimation? The protracted discipline of prowess to which the race
has been subjected under the predatory and quasi-peaceable culture
has transmitted to the men of today a temperament that finds
gratification in these expressions of ferocity and cunning. So, why
not accept these sports as legitimate expressions of a normal and
wholesome human nature? What other norm is there that is to be lived
up to than that given in the aggregate range of propensities that
express themselves in the sentiments of this generation, including
the hereditary strain of prowess? The ulterior norm to which appeal
is taken is the instinct of workmanship, which is an instinct more
fundamental, of more ancient prescription, than the propensity to
predatory emulation. The latter is but a special development of the
instinct of workmanship, a variant, relatively late and ephemeral in
spite of its great absolute antiquity. The emulative predatory
impulse -- or the instinct of sportsmanship, as it might well be
called -- is essentially unstable in comparison with the primordial
instinct of workmanship out of which it has been developed and
differentiated. Tested by this ulterior norm of life, predatory
emulation, and therefore the life of sports, falls short.
The manner and the measure in which the institution of a leisure
class conduces to the conservation of sports and invidious exploit
can of course not be succinctly stated. From the evidence already
recited it appears that, in sentient and inclinations, the leisure
class is more favorable to a warlike attitude and animus than the
industrial classes. Something similar seems to be true as regards
sports. But it is chiefly in its indirect effects, though the canons
of decorous living, that the institution has its influence on the
prevalent sentiment with respect to the sporting life. This indirect
effect goes almost unequivocally in the direction of furthering a
survival of the predatory temperament and habits; and this is true
even with respect to those variants of the sporting life which the
higher leisure-class code of proprieties proscribes; as, e.g.,
prize-fighting, cock-fighting, and other like vulgar expressions of
the sporting temper. Whatever the latest authenticated schedule of
detail proprieties may say, the accredited canons of decency
sanctioned by the institution say without equivocation that
emulation and waste are good and their opposites are disreputable.
In the crepuscular light of the social nether spaces the details of
the code are not apprehended with all the facility that might be
desired, and these broad underlying canons of decency are therefore
applied somewhat unreflectingly, with little question as to the
scope of their competence or the exceptions that have been
sanctioned in detail.
Addiction to athletic sports, not only in the way of direct
participation, but also in the way of sentiment and moral support,
is, in a more or less pronounced degree, a characteristic of the
leisure class; and it is a trait which that class shares with the
lower-class delinquents, and with such atavistic elements throughout
the body of the community as are endowed with a dominant predaceous
trend. Few individuals among the populations of Western civilized
countries are so far devoid of the predaceous instinct as to find no
diversion in contemplating athletic sports and games, but with the
common run of individuals among the industrial classes the
inclination to sports does not assert itself to the extent of
constituting what may fairly be called a sporting habit. With these
classes sports are an occasional diversion rather than a serious
feature of life. This common body of the people can therefore not be
said to cultivate the sporting propensity. Although it is not
obsolete in the average of them, or even in any appreciable number
of individuals, yet the predilection for sports in the commonplace
industrial classes is of the nature of a reminiscence, more or less
diverting as an occasional interest, rather than a vital and
permanent interest that counts as a dominant factor in shaping the
organic complex of habits of thought into which it enters.
As it manifests itself in the sporting life of today, this
propensity may not appear to be an economic factor of grave
consequence. Taken simply by itself it does not count for a great
deal in its direct effects on the industrial efficiency or the
consumption of any given individual; but the prevalence and the
growth of the type of human nature of which this propensity is a
characteristic feature is a matter of some consequence. It affects
the economic life of the collectivity both as regards the rate of
economic development and as regards the character of the results
attained by the development. For better or worse, the fact that the
popular habits of thought are in any degree dominated by this type
of character can not but greatly affect the scope, direction,
standards, and ideals of the collective economic life, as well as
the degree of adjustment of the collective life to the environment.
Something to a like effect is to be said of other traits that go to
make up the barbarian character. For the purposes of economic
theory, these further barbarian traits may be taken as concomitant
variations of that predaceous temper of which prowess is an
expression. In great measure they are not primarily of an economic
character, nor do they have much direct economic bearing. They serve
to indicate the stage of economic evolution to which the individual
possessed of them is adapted. They are of importance, therefore, as
extraneous tests of the degree of adaptation of the character in
which they are comprised to the economic exigencies of today, but
they are also to some extent important as being aptitudes which
themselves go to increase or diminish the economic serviceability of
the individual.
As it finds expression in the life of the barbarian, prowess
manifests itself in two main directions -- force and fraud. In
varying degrees these two forms of expression are similarly present
in modern warfare, in the pecuniary occupations, and in sports and
games. Both lines of aptitudes are cultivated and strengthened by
the life of sport as well as by the more serious forms of emulative
life. Strategy or cunning is an element invariably present in games,
as also in warlike pursuits and in the chase. In all of these
employments strategy tends to develop into finesse and chicanery.
Chicanery, falsehood, browbeating, hold a well-secured place in the
method of procedure of any athletic contest and in games generally.
The habitual employment of an umpire, and the minute technical
regulations governing the limits and details of permissible fraud
and strategic advantage, sufficiently attest the fact that
fraudulent practices and attempts to overreach one's opponents are
not adventitious features of the game. In the nature of the case
habituation to sports should conduce to a fuller development of the
aptitude for fraud; and the prevalence in the community of that
predatory temperament which inclines men to sports connotes a
prevalence of sharp practice and callous disregard of the interests
of others, inDividually and collectively. Resort to fraud, in any
guise and under any legitimation of law or custom, is an expression
of a narrowly self-regarding habit of mind. It is needless to dwell
at any length on the economic value of this feature of the sporting
character.
In this connection it is to be noteD that the most obvious
characteristic of the physiognomy affected by athletic and other
sporting men is that of an extreme astuteness. The gifts and
exploits of Ulysses are scarcely second to those of Achilles, either
in their substantial furtherance of the game or in the 閏lat which
they give the astute sporting man among his associates. The
pantomime of astuteness is commonly the first step in that
assimilation to the professional sporting man which a youth
undergoes after matriculation in any reputable school, of the
secondary or the higher education, as the case may be. And the
physiognomy of astuteness, as a decorative feature, never ceases to
receive the thoughtful attention of men whose serious interest lies
in athletic games, races, or other contests of a similar emulative
nature. As a further indication of their spiritual kinship, it may
be pointed out that the members of the lower delinquent class
usually show this physiognomy of astuteness in a marked degree, and
that they very commonly show the same histrionic exaggeration of it
that is often seen in the young candidate for athletic honors. This,
by the way, is the most legible mark of what is vulgarly called
"toughness" in youthful aspirants for a bad name.
The astute man, it may be remarked, is of no economic value to the
community -- unless it be for the purpose of sharp practice in
dealings with other communities. His functioning is not a
furtherance of the generic life process. At its best, in its direct
economic bearing, it is a conversion of the economic substance of
the collectivity to a growth alien to the collective life process --
very much after the analogy of what in medicine would be called a
benign tumor, with some tendency to transgress the uncertain line
that divides the benign from the malign growths. The two barbarian
traits, ferocity and astuteness, go to make up the predaceous temper
or spiritual attitude. They are the expressions of a narrowly
self-regarding habit of mind. Both are highly serviceable for
individual expediency in a life looking to invidious success. Both
also have a high aesthetic value. Both are fostered by the pecuniary
culture. But both alike are of no use for the purposes of the
collective life.
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