THE LIMIT OF SPORT
THE LIMIT OF SPORT[1]
“Αριστον ὕδωρ,” says Pindar. “Water is good,” as it is often
translated. But why should a hymn in honour of a victor in the
games begin with a sentiment which would be much better suited to
an anti-alcoholic league? ὕδωρ here does not mean water; it is the
corresponding word to the Latin _sudor_, which means sweat,—the symbol
of the physical effort made by the athlete. “Excellent is sweat,” that
is to say, the effort made by the victor in training himself and in
winning an arduous victory.
[1] Speech delivered at the opening of the Congress of
the Psychology of Sport at Lausanne, May 6, 1913.
Αριστον ὕδωρ, then, says the clarion voice of one of the noblest sons
of Greece, the great poet who, in honour of the sport of his times,
has clothed in lyric poetry the dazzling myths of Hellenic polytheism.
The motto has travelled down the ages, and we, too, are assembled here
to interpret it after the fashion of our times. Is it not inevitable
that the speech I have to make should be merely a development of this
undying theme, ἄριστον ὕδωρ? And yet you would be justified in asking
why this task should devolve on this occasion upon a man who spends
his whole life in plying a tool—the pen—which is too light to convince
him of the truth of Pindar’s apothegm. It is true that there was a time
when he who has the honour of addressing you was not yet an examiner
of historical documents nor a student of philosophical problems; when
he was, on the contrary, an ardent gymnast. I will even confess to
you that the first time his name appeared in the newspapers, it was
in the accounts of gymnastic and athletic meetings, in connection
with which some amiable reporters thought it proper to comment on
his squirrel-like agility. But those times are, alas! long past. The
over-violent passion for physical exercises which was his between the
ages of ten and fifteen years obliged him suddenly to drop them. He
has allowed his muscles gradually to be invaded and eaten up by that
physical laziness which enervates so many thinkers of the present day,
and which upsets the balance of their bodily forces.
You see, then, that these far-distant memories cannot give me authority
to claim a right, however small, to address you on this occasion. I
am a stranger in this world of sport, which has developed so rapidly
in the last thirty years. I have followed only at a distance the
movement which has given it birth, and I should find myself in great
difficulties if I had to discuss in its details one of the numberless
questions attaching to this form of contemporary activity. What
authority, then, have I for addressing you on this occasion? None. And
the kindness which Baron de Coubertin has shown in honouring me with an
invitation to address you, though most flattering to me, cannot fill
the void left by manifest incompetence for the task. You will tell me
that I should have done better to remember the wise advice Homer gave
the cobbler, and to refuse this honour of which I was not worthy. And
you will be right. But I would excuse myself by telling you first of
all that it is difficult to refuse anything to so distinguished and
amiable a man and to so ardent an advocate of the causes he makes his
own as M. de Coubertin. Secondly, if I am a sportsman who long ago has
made his final exit, I am also a man who tries, as far as his feeble
wits will allow him, to understand that life outside himself in which
he can take no immediate and direct part.
Is not that the rôle, and in a certain sense the obsession, of the
historian? The historian must understand all the forms and phenomena of
life; crimes, intrigues, battles, wars, revolutions, loves, hatreds,
perfidies, the hidden weaknesses of great men, the blind impulses of
the masses, the noblest and the basest sentiments which actuate the
human mind. If we were required to have experienced everything that we
are required to understand, the profession of historian would be the
most difficult and the most dangerous in the world; for, in order to
qualify, a man would have at least to run the risk of the galleys or
of the scaffold. Without a doubt, this necessity of understanding all
the forms of the life outside is also one of the great weaknesses of
historians. Often they make mistakes; even more often, the picture they
give of things seems but pale by contrast with the living reality, to
those who have actually lived that reality. I am quite sure that this
will be my fate, if I talk to you about things which you know better
than do I. That, however, is the inevitable drawback of the profession,
and I shall go through with my task, relying on your kind indulgence.
I shall talk to you, then, about sport in modern life as a man who
has considered it from outside. I shall philosophise awhile about
sport, if you will allow me; for to philosophise about a thing is
often a polite way of talking about a thing regarding which the
speaker has little knowledge to people whose knowledge regarding it
is considerable. And I will ask myself this question: What is and
what ought to be the function of sport in modern society? What is
its rôle, and what are its limits? Put thus, the question is but a
particular form of a more general question which philosophers have
long been asking themselves: What is the mutual and reciprocal rôle of
the different human activities? It is a well-known truth that with the
advances of civilisation social life undergoes an inward process of
differentiation. Commerce separates from industry, industry from war,
war from government, government from the intellectual activities, which
in their turn become specialised,—art, science, religion, etc. We get
professions, corporations, institutions, and classes corresponding to
all these different activities; men, that is to say, who have passions,
ambitions, desires, needs, and interests, and who quickly come into
conflict with one another. What parts ought to be allowed to all these
different activities? Which is the most necessary, the most noble,
and the most exalted? Which ought to be surrounded with the greatest
respect, covered with the greatest honours, and recompensed with the
most considerable rewards?
Men have answered this question in countless different ways. It is,
however, easy to discover in many of these answers a common tendency
that is a proneness to consider as first and all-important the
corporation, profession, or institution to which each inquirer belongs.
A savant is easily convinced that the end of life is the search after
the truth. In his eyes, the universe must exist only in order that
men of science may discover its laws and its secrets. For artists, on
the other hand, the world has been created to enable them to adorn it
with pictures, statues, or buildings. For the soldier war is the end
of existence, while the merchant sees in commerce the beneficent force
which makes the world go round. And so on. All these theories seem
sober fact to those who formulate them; unfortunately the others, those
who belong to a different class or profession, reject them as absurd
and ridiculous errors.
How are the various views to be reconciled? A certain number of
philosophers have tried to raise themselves above these too narrow or
too biassed points of view, and to find solutions of general value.
Many have been proposed; now is not the time to discuss the principal
ones. So I will confine myself to expounding to you that one of these
theories which seems to me the simplest, the most ingenious, and
the most useful for the resolution of the problem which we have set
ourselves in connection with sport. It is the theory of the limits. All
human activities ought to be reciprocal limits.
Take art and morality for instance: What relation ought they to bear to
each other? The question has been discussed with ardour. Artists, and
many of their friends, have tried to postulate a violent schism between
the two, proclaiming that art has the right to search for beauty
wherever she can find it, without bothering herself about morality.
Super-moralists, on the contrary, have tried to make art the slave of
morality, asserting that the former ought to be always ready to obey
its orders and to sacrifice herself to its demands. But would it not
be more reasonable and more human to say that art and morality are
reciprocal limits? Morality is one of art’s limits; without wishing to
make her its slave, it can and must prevent her from seeking beauty
in certain subjects and certain incidents which would be dangerous to
morals or to the pure-mindedness of the public. The forms of beauty are
so numerous. Why should not art refrain for moral reasons from seeking
for some of them? But art on her side is a limit of morality; she is
in no way anxious to dominate it, but she can and must prevent morality
from going astray in its search for perfection. Those who are familiar
with history know that a spice of artistic taste has always been the
best remedy for the most dangerous or the most repugnant excesses of
asceticism.
Let us take another example. A question which has much exercised
men’s minds is whether art and science ought to set before themselves
practical ends, or whether they are in themselves ends. There are
people who would like to subordinate the rest of the world to art and
to science. This entails requiring of art and science that they should
seek beauty and truth without having in view any utilitarian end,
without troubling themselves to ask whether they are useful or hurtful
to man. Others again propose to subordinate art and science to the rest
of the world, asserting that every art and every science which does
not serve practical ends is a waste of time and trouble. Here, too, it
seems to me that it would be more human to say that science and art
seek truth and beauty, not utility. Utility, then, is not the end of
art and of science; but it is one of their limits. The truths which the
human mind can discover, like the forms of beauty which it can create,
are infinite.
Is it strange, then, that man, unable to discover all the truths or
to create all the forms of beauty, should choose for preference those
which, in addition to conferring intellectual or æsthetic pleasure,
help him to live? Can anyone see anything absurd in this? If a man set
to work to build edifices with the sole object of pleasing the eye
through harmonious lines, he could build them as fancy prompted him;
there would be no limit either to the variety of forms or to the number
of different constructions. Will anybody be found to maintain that art
has the right to fill the world with beautiful edifices which are of no
use for anything? No, practical considerations have their claim. Even
the epochs in which architecture flourished most bravely built edifices
which, while beautiful to look at, served also definite ends; and
nobody has ever protested against the limitations which this practical
consideration imposed.
* * * * *
Similarly sport must, in my opinion, be considered as a limit; the
limit necessary to the excesses of an intellectual and sedentary
civilisation, which exposes the nervous system to formidable trials.
M. de Coubertin has analysed this aspect of modern life so well in his
_Essais de psychologie sportive_, that I beg leave to quote one of the
numerous fine passages from that book:
La vie moderne n’est plus ni locale ni spéciale; tout y influe
sur tout. D’une part la rapidité et la multiplicité des
transports ont fait de l’homme un être essentiellement mobile,
pour le quel les distances sont de plus en plus insignifiantes
à franchir et sollicitent, par conséquent, de fréquents
changements de lieu; d’autre part l’égalisation des points de
départ et la possibilité d’élévations rapides vers le pouvoir
et la fortune ont excité les appétits et les ambitions des
masses à un point inconnu jusqu’ ici.... Ce double élément a
transformé de façon fondamentale l’effort humain. L’effort
d’autre-fois était régulier et constant; une certaine sécurité
résultant de la stabilité sociale, le protégeait. Surtout, il
n’était pas cérébral a un degré excessif. Celui d’aujourd’hui
est tout autre. L’inquiétude et l’espérance l’environnent avec
une intensité particulière. C’est que l’échec et la réussite
ont dé nos jours des conséquences énormes. L’homme peut à la
fois tout craindre et tout espérer. De cet état de chose est
née une agitation que les transformations de la vie extérieure
encouragent et accroissent. Au dedans et au dehors le cerveau
est entretenu dans une sorte d’ébullition incessante. Les
points de vue, les aspects des choses, les combinaisons,
les possibilités, tant pour les individus que pour les
collectivités, se succèdent si rapidement qu’il faut pour en
tenir compte et les utilises au besoin se tenir toujours en
éveil et comme en une mobilisation permanente.
This picture of modern life is perfect. Never has man lived in such a
state of permanent and growing excitement. If the men of the ancient
world could come to life again, their first impression, you may be
sure, would be that mankind had gone mad. It is this excitement which
has produced the formidable explosion of energy that we are witnessing
on our little planet, which for ages had lived in comparative
tranquillity. But has not this formidable tension of the world-soul
itself need of limits? Can we conceive its being allowed to increase
indefinitely until the time when the nervous system breaks down as
inevitably it must? Can we conceive our perpetual agitation being
left without any limit save exhaustion, insanity, or death? The
question answers itself. The limits to the over-excitement of our
nerves raise one of the most serious problems of our epoch; a problem
with a thousand different aspects, which involves morals as well as
hygiene, politics as well as the intellectual life. Now sport may
be one of these limits, if it be practised—again I borrow from M.
de Coubertin—with calmness, “s’il devient cet empire du Matin Calme
d’où les deux vampires de notre civilisation—la hâte et la foule—sont
chassés”; if it be made, not one more in the long list of causes of
excitement and exhaustion, but a health-giving diversion, a beneficent
force capable of spraying the nerves with that divine ambrosia, now
so rare and so precious—healthy sleep and peace of mind. No one who
is convinced of the supreme necessity for limits can doubt that this
conception of sport is the truest, worthiest, and most beneficial;
indeed, the only one that is in its turn susceptible of a limit and
runs no risk of losing itself in excesses,—those excesses of sport, in
its quality of spectacle for the masses, whose brutalising and corrupt
effects are notorious.
A balancing force, a counterpoise to the intellectual excesses of
a sedentary, nervous civilisation which is agitated by a perpetual
excitement, that is what sport ought to be. I hasten to add that I
cannot claim the credit for this definition, not that it is in itself a
very striking discovery. An opponent might even say that it is almost a
platitude; a special application of that principle which is as old as
the hills, and which the Greeks expressed in their formula, μηδὲν ἅγαν,
nothing in excess. Granted; but it is sometimes a good thing to repeat
platitudes, for human wisdom is not an inexhaustible mine of ever-new
principles and ideas. Its treasure-house is stored with platitudes,
which have only become such because man is always requiring their
repetition. Besides, when questions touching moral and social life are
under discussion, the intellectual point of view is not by any means
the most important. Those principles of wisdom which seem the easiest
and simplest to announce are not those which are always the simplest in
practice, and the easiest to carry into execution. μηδὲν ἅγαν—nothing
in excess—has been to men the cry of wisdom since the beginning of
time. Is it not the clearest and the simplest of principles? Need one
be a profound philosopher to understand that moderation in the use of
everything, even of good things, is necessary? This truth is indeed
one which the simplest mind is capable of understanding. Yet life is
but an eternal struggle against excesses of all sorts, to which man is
continually tempted to give way. Why? Because though the precept be
clear and evident, to apply it man has to struggle with his passions,
with his own interests, and those of others, and with the illusions and
errors that assail him on all sides. Consequently, he must be under no
illusion.
You are at one in a conception of sport which is the noblest and wisest
possible, because it regards sport as a balancing force between the
diverse elements of social life. You band together and join forces in
order to popularise this conception. It is a useful and a wise task;
but it will expose you to wearisome struggles, and you must be prepared
for many a bitter disappointment. In every epoch, those who have wished
to introduce equilibrium into life have had to struggle against this
mysterious force which drives men into every excess. But in no epoch
and in no civilisation perhaps has this struggle been so difficult and
wearisome as it is in contemporary civilisation. It is a phenomenon
which few people nowadays take clearly and precisely into account; but
which is, nevertheless, the keystone of the greatest difficulties by
which our civilisation is beset. Yes, there is no doubt about it, we
are living at an extraordinary crisis in history. Man has never been
so powerful, so wise, so rich, so sure of himself and of his future.
He has dared to lift his eyes and gaze steadily at the sombre mystery
of things, before which he had for so many centuries bowed his head
in trembling. He has conquered the world and torn from it its most
recondite treasures. He has cast aside all the supports which sustained
our ancestors in their toilsome march through life—traditions,
religions, beliefs, all the principles of unquestioning obedience. He
had succeeded to a certain degree in conquering space and time. All the
civilisations which preceded the French Revolution seem, if we compare
them with ours, small, limited, timid, poor, and inadequate.
Yet modern man does not seem to have any very distinct and sure
consciousness of his actual greatness. He may be elated by an
occasional fit of glowing pride, but as often as not he is
discontented. He grumbles; he sincerely deplores the vices and
imperfections of his day. A broad and deep current of pessimism flows
through the fabulous wealth and the wonders of our times. Why? Because
our civilisation is by the very nature of its constitution unable to
thrive save on excesses; and it can thrive only on excesses because it
has acquired so much power by overturning nearly all the limits within
which previous civilisations had confined themselves.
How marvellous an epic, but how disquieting in its novelty and its
grandeur, is this gradual awakening of human daring and pride, of
which the history of the last four centuries is full! For its first
appearance dates back to the great geographical discoveries of the
fifteenth century, and to that which was the greatest of all those
discoveries—America.
A few years later saw the astronomic revolution. Ancient thought, after
long deliberation, had decided to enclose the universe in a confined
system, with established limits. Copernicus took no notice of these
limits, and launched out in thought into the infinite. The impression
produced on the men of the sixteenth century by these two great events
was profound. The bold spirits who had dared to cross the two limits
considered insuperable on earth and in the sky had come back with a
rich booty of land and stars.
Was the world then greater and man more powerful than the ancients
had thought, and had the ancients been wrong in seeking to limit the
efforts of human genius so strictly? Gradually, during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, the effort of the human spirit to free itself
from the ancient limits continued, increased, and became bolder and
more methodical. Subtle and ingenious philosophies delivered masked
but clear attacks on the limits which marked the bounds of Good and
Evil, Truth and Error; on tradition, on century-old institutions, on
authority in all its forms. They pretended to wish to ascertain whether
the limits were solidly planted in the right place; but in reality they
undermined their foundations. Little by little an idea crept into men’s
minds, an idea which was the negation of all the limits within which
the world had lived until then; an idea which was bound to upset the
conception of social and moral life; the idea of liberty, applied to
religion, culture, and politics. At the same time, by means of science
and fire, man sought very timidly, if not to free himself from, at
least to enlarge, the limits which nature seemed to have set to his
forces. The strata of coal began to be discovered and exploited. Men
set themselves to invent machines more complicated and more rapid
than those of which their fathers made use; the steam-engine, the
fountainhead of all the formidable agitation which has invaded the
world, made its appearance; the great era of iron and of fire began.
And lo! finally a formidable cataclysm, of which man had never seen
the like in a few years, upset traditions, and wrought havoc amongst
states, institutions, and old-established laws. To the strains of the
_Marseillaise_, on the ruins of the Bastile, on the fields of Marengo
and Austerlitz, the work sketched out by Columbus and Copernicus,
continued by Galileo, Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Kant, was
completed. Man arose, tore up, and overturned all the ancient limits
and planted the new ones with his own hands, at his own good pleasure,
not only for himself but also for the authorities of Heaven and earth,
who had until then imposed their limits upon him.
Then began the extraordinary drama of which we are the spectators.
Rich, wise, and free, armed with fire and science, mistress of a large
part of the earth and, in particular, of a continent so vast and
rich as America, irked no longer by any limit, not by extent nor by
weight nor by matter and its laws which it has conquered, thanks to
discoveries and to machines, nor by God, whom it has banished to the
infinite, itself usurping His earthly throne, our civilisation expanded
in every direction, as it were, carried away by the intoxication of the
unlimited. Man rose erect like a giant, to face nature and the past;
and like a giant whom none can resist he swept on and conquered the
world.
Like a giant, indeed, but like a giant who totters at every step. This
civilisation of ours has become so powerful because it has overturned
all the limits; but just because it has overturned nearly all the
limits, it has become increasingly difficult for it to limit itself
in the good as well as in the bad; I mean to say, that the bad tends
to become worse, and the good to become bad. If the strength of the
forces of creation and initiative is in our epoch greater than ever it
was in any previous epoch, the same may be said of the weakness of the
forces of equilibrium, whose function it is to check the most dangerous
exaggerations and excesses. What an interesting comparison might be
made between the present and the past from this point of view; and
how many instances could be cited in proof of this assertion! I shall
instance just one, a simple and homely, but clear, one. Once delivered
from all the bonds which limited his efforts of yore, man has succeeded
in the last century in creating an abundance of material goods such
as the world had never thought possible even when it dreamed of the
Terrestrial Paradise, the Golden Age, and the Garden of the Hesperides;
all of them myths in which man had been pleased, during centuries of
the life of struggle, to objectify his most ardent desires. It is all
very well for men of the present day to complain that life is difficult
and full of struggles. Those who know the difficulties which beset
preceding centuries will feel a strong temptation to laugh at their
complaints. The modern world has contrived abundance in everything; in
the necessities of life, such as bread, and in things which become very
dangerous when they are over-abundant, like alcoholic drinks, tobacco,
and all stimulants. Many are the reproaches hurled against our epoch on
the score of the increase in alcoholism; many are the remedies devised
for this evil. But would not the only and the simplest remedy be that
adopted by our ancestors, the limitation of the production of liquors?
The masses would no longer be able to poison themselves when the
quantity of these liquors was scarcely sufficient—as it used to be—for
the requirements of a moderate consumption. The world, on the contrary,
will continue to get gloriously drunk, so long as the production of
wine, beer, and spirits increases. Now why is it that this, the only
efficacious remedy, is just the one which our epoch cannot bring itself
to apply? Why do we see everywhere governments taking measures of more
or less efficacy against alcoholism and at the same time contributing,
directly or indirectly, to the increase in the production of alcoholic
drinks?
The reason is, that nothing is more difficult for our civilisation
than to impose a limit on anything. Its impetus carries it too far in
everything. It is almost a law of its constitution. We have, to a great
extent, lost the sense of just measure, because we have weakened or
destroyed nearly all the authorities and moral forces which used to
make the limits respected. Our greatness and our power are partly due
to disequilibrium; and often enough we are called on to pay the tragic
penalty for this at the moment when we least expect the call.
This is, however, a long digression, and you may with reason ask me to
return to the matter which interests us. I have not lost sight of it;
for this digression has a very close connection with our subject.
This epoch which misuses everything, misuses and will misuse sport.
It will make it—it has already begun to make it—one more of the
elements of excitement, of competition, and of exhaustion, already
alas! only too numerous. No illusions are possible on this score.
It might even be said that sport is one of the things of which our
epoch will probably make the greatest misuse. History justifies us
in this fear, for it proves to us that even those civilisations,
like the Greek and Roman, which succeeded in limiting themselves in
everything else, misused games. Is it likely that our civilisation,
which misuses toilsome activities like work, will easily preserve
a just measure in amusements? Besides, you have only to look round
you to see interests forming groups, coalitions, and organisations
for the purpose of exploiting, in this field also, the morbid need
for excitement which has taken hold of the masses; their desire for
amusements and distractions and even their incorrigible weakness
for games of chance. Those, then, who wish to purge sport of its
elements of haste and crowd, to transform it—I borrow once more M.
de Coubertin’s happy phrase—into the “Empire du Matin Calme,” will
have a singularly difficult task before them. If, however, the task
is difficult, it is for that all the nobler. The modern world has
need, great and urgent need, of balance, measure, and harmony, if it
is not to run the risk of being stifled by the excess of its energy.
Do not let yourselves be deceived by its assurance, its pride, the
blind confidence in its powers which it affects, the haughty challenge
it so often throws to the humble wisdom of past generations. We are
richer, wiser, more powerful than were our grandfathers. But because
we have discovered America and invented railways we have not become
demi-gods; we are still only men. All the weaknesses of human nature
which the moralists of olden times discovered and analysed so subtly
still subsist in us, and still distract us; we must pay nature, the
great equaliser, the price for the advantages secured to us by the sum
of the work of preceding generations; and many are the forms in which
that payment is made. Nervous illnesses, insanity, and suicides are on
the increase. Sterility is spreading, especially in the peoples and
countries that have been most highly favoured by the development of
modern civilisation.
A discontent as deep as it is unreasonable seems to pervade the world,
with each improvement in the conditions of every class. One might
say that man has become insatiable. The more blessings are heaped
upon him, the more he complains. The more he possesses, the more he
thinks himself poor and needy. The fewer are the causes for grief and
the dangers around him, the more wretched he feels. These apparent
paradoxes, these inexplicable contradictions are only the warnings
life utters to remind men of the μηδὲν ἅγαν of ancient wisdom. The
modern world suffers from the excesses to which it abandons itself,
even if it will not acknowledge this fact. Those who try to recall the
modern world to a more harmonious ideal of life do it a service whose
usefulness is most strikingly proved by the attitude of resentment it
assumes towards their efforts.
Ladies and Gentlemen: I feel somewhat ashamed that my contribution
to your work must be merely these few general considerations.
Dissertations on the ends to be aimed at are easy enough to concoct,
but the task is apt to be a theoretical one of little enough utility.
The important thing in all the great social problems is the means of
attaining those ends. That is the point upon which all our efforts,
all our intelligence, all our wills, must converge. I cannot be of any
use to you in that, by reason of my incompetence. I can only attend
this congress as an onlooker anxious to learn, come not to purvey
information but to convey it away. I must then confine myself at the
conclusion of my speech to wishing your task and your labours all the
success which your energy, your enthusiasm, and your faith deserve. But
this wish of mine, though sterile in itself, owing to my inability to
take an active part in your work, is none the less cordial. By birth,
by natural tendencies, and by education, I belong to a culture which
has always tended to harmony, moderation, and equilibrium. I have
passed a portion of my life in studying the ancient civilisations which
created so many beautiful and profound things because they succeeded
in limiting themselves. I have visited and studied also those vast
new civilisations on the other side of the Atlantic, which seem to
be aiming at the realisation of the perfect type of the unlimited
civilisation.
It is not possible to have been born in Italy, to have studied ancient
civilisations, and to have examined at first hand the tendencies of
modern civilisation in Europe and America, without being convinced that
our epoch is allowing itself to be seduced by too material and gross a
conception of progress. Progress cannot be merely the accumulation of
wealth, accelerated by the inventions and great discoveries of science,
nor the hurried transformation of everything, the perpetual change
which is the mania of our epoch. There is, there must be, another
conception, more lofty than this conception of progress; a conception
of progress as the accumulated effort of generations. Is it not true
that each generation creates forms of beauty, and discovers new truths
and virtues? Can we not say that generations really do show progress,
if they succeed in preserving the creations of preceding epochs, and
in erecting on them as a basis more complex and elevated creations of
their own?
Often and often, reflecting on the differences between the ancient
world and our epoch, have I said to myself that the history of the
world would be able to chronicle a great step forward on the day that
we succeeded in uniting in modern sport the æsthetic sense of the
Greeks, the modesty and decency for which Christianity is responsible,
and the democratic, practical, and active spirit of our epoch. Is that
simply the dream of an ignoramus who does not know what is possible
and what is not? You may say so. But if your congress can bring our
civilisation any nearer to this ideal, it will have done something for
real progress, a work which will merit the approbation of all those
who wish to see man’s every effort concentrated on the betterment of
the spiritual life. I give you then, my good wishes for your success
in your efforts in this direction; and I hope that you will not take
my good wishes amiss, even though they come from a writer who is not
competent to appraise at its true value the full worth of your noble
efforts.
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Misspellings of non-English words have been retained.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.