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 collect