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 temp