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