Sporting instinct

“ 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 naïve 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. ”

“ How shall we explain the absorbing interest in baseball and football as well as in horse-racing and prize-fighting?
In baseball we have a game combining three of the most deep-seated racial instincts, the instinct to throw, to run and to strike. During untold periods of the life history of our race, survival has come to him who could throw the straightest, run the swiftest and strike the hardest. To throw something at something is almost as natural for a boy as to breathe. ”

“ Their notions of sporting and ours, then, widely differ; they take every advantage, while we give every advantage; they delight in the certainty of killing, while our pleasure consists in the chance of the animal escaping.
I would always encourage the love of sport in a lad; guided by its true spirit of fair play, it is a feeling that will make him above doing a mean thing in every station of life, and will give him real feelings of humanity. ”

“ To the sportsman in training, full of health and strength, and well appointed, it is of little consequence whether there be game or not. The inspiriting character of the sport, and the wild beauty of the scenery, so different from what he is elsewhere in the habit of contemplating, hold out a charm that dispels fatigue! ”

“ Seasons come and go, each in its turn bringing us nearer to the last, those that remain for our enjoyment growing steadily and inevitably fewer. But the instinct of sport, inbred in most of us, dies hard. ”

“ So many self-styled sportsmen are trying to spoil sport by artificial means—hunting, shooting and coursing semi-tame animals, and calling it sport. We, in my humble judgment, have the greatest need to uphold true, honest, genuine sport rather than its counterfeits, which only go to make our enemies blaspheme at us with some cause. ”

“ Many have no feeling for sport; it's left out of them and they seem to be able to live comfortably without it. Instead they develop an instinct for something else. Generally it's deadly from the sportsman's point of view; but it seems to take the place of sport to the sportless. How old ruins, or church bells, can supersede a vital, living thing, like the sport of a nation, of course you and I can't explain ”

“ This, however, does not alter the fact that the real sportsman must be a man of untiring zeal and energy, a man of muscle and yet of brain. All outdoor sports, unless indulged in to excess, are health-giving; those savage ancestors of ours built up a race with iron muscle, inured to hardship, and, so far as venery was concerned, with brains superior to the creatures they hunted. ”

“ As for the training that the eye receives you may realize this by remembering that unless a man anticipates exactly the flight of the ball and its direction, he must inevitably fail to make his catch. Moreover, the wits are sharpened by the game: you have to think carefully how best to stop your opponent, and not drop the ball yourself. Thought by itself makes a man thin; but when it is combined with exercise and the pleasant rivalry of a sport it is of the very greatest benefit. The body improves in health, the mind is turned to practical knowledge. ”

“ Can anything be conceived more callous or more cowardly? Yet educated, and, presumably, thinking men, and women too—Heaven save the mark!—stand by and enjoy the fun! Such is the debasing effect of “sport” upon the human mind and character! ”

“ Children obtain the necessary exercise in their plays, and the natural instinct of the child causes it to indulge in games and sports. Men, if they are wise, vary their mental labour and sedentary lives with sports and games. The success which has attended the introduction of golf and kindred games of recent years, shows that the old natural instinct of man is not dead. ”

“ There is no finer sight among the long catalogue of athletic sports, more exhilarating and amusing to the true sportsman, than to see a walking-match carried out to the strict letter of the meaning, each moving with the grandest action of which the human frame is capable, at a pace which the feeble frame and mind is totally unable to comprehend, and must be witnessed to be believed. ”

“ The high sport of such intelligence—between gentlemen, to the senses of any other than whom it must surely be closed—demanded and implied in its own intimate interest a certain amenity. Yes, accordingly, I had promptly got the answer that my wonder at his approach required: he had come to me for the high sport. He would formerly have been incapable of it, and he was beautifully capable of it now. It was precisely the kind of high sport—the play of perception, expression, sociability—in which Mrs. Server would a year or two before have borne as light a hand. ”

“ For we make a mistake when we think of athletic games as contributors only, or even chiefly, to muscular development and to soundness of body. Their most important function is to train the nervous system, the intelligence, and the will. ”

“ He devoted himself to boating, tramping, running, and vigorous exercise generally, to the limit of his ability, and by force of will, that he might transform his frail body into a strong and responsive instrument for his spirit and will; and seeing that the lack of physical strength is a hampering hindrance to any career in life, by his personal resolution and by life in the open, he at length became the athlete, the hardy hunter and horseman whom the world knows through his books and his deeds. ”

“ To retain one's balance, acquire quickness of stroke, and withal to regulate the aim so as to allow for the refraction of the light in the water, all tend to invest the sport with a degree of skill which only experience can master. ”

“ Just so is the sportsman, shooting quite skilfully and coolly without the faintest sense of any murderous excitement, and with no personal feeling against the birds, really further from salvation than the man who is humane enough to get some sense of wickedness out of his sport. ”

“ Nay more, in any other contests of strength and endurance, I believe they would more than hold their own against any younger athletes; and would overwhelm any similar number of non-athletes of the same or any other age. As contests I should select a hard day's shooting over dogs, cross-country riding, tug-of-war, boxing, long-distance rowing, or, in fact, any contest in which the special element of racing in light ships has no part. ”

“ There is no harm whatever in rowing as an exercise, but when it comes to racing that is a different matter. It is the great strain on the heart, together with the excitement which constitute the sources of risk. The other varieties of exercise, namely, gardening, the different games, cricket, football, tennis, &c., need not be particularized as they all subserve the same purposes, and are in consequence very desirable.
In all the preceding I have endeavoured to show that daily exercise is absolutely necessary for the proper maintenance of health. ”

“ Fox-hunting, hare-hunting, rabbit-coursing, ferreting, ratting, badger-baiting—it [4] was all one to him so long as he could get “a bit of sport”! What higher character could a Briton possibly aspire to? No wonder the man was so popular with his neighbours, and so highly esteemed!
And so, if we begin to question the humanity or the propriety of any of these forms of amusement, the crushing answer invariably is, “But it’s sport!” Surely that is amply sufficient! Surely that is final! What more do you want? Sport is always excellent. Sport is an end in itself. ”

“ There is no pursuit, game, or amusement, in which a proficiency is to be obtained, can require a nicer eye, a steadier hand, a cooler head, or a more philosophic patience, than the SPORT before us. Sportsmen of experience waste neither their time nor their labour; they well know, according to the description not long since given, where to find the game, according to the time of the day; and are seldom seen hunting their dogs in unlikely places. ”

“ It is, I repeat, not a game, yet probably the only way to keep one’s temper at all is to regard it, for the time being, as a major sport, like football and deep-sea fishing and mountain-climbing, where you are expected to take some risks and not think too much about results as such. ”

“ Sport, because of the diversion of mind involved, is an ideal form of exercise. An exercise that becomes a mere routine and that can be eventually gone through with so mechanically as to leave abundant room for thoughts of business or study or worries of other kinds, loses sight of one of the principal purposes of exercise as nature demands it. ”

“ Whereas in all athletic sports the ego has to be pushed into the background, with all its interests; the day’s work left behind, and the entire attention concentrated on the play. This is a very distinct advantage to the individual. ”

“ The humane sportsman, if asked for arguments in favour of his pastime, will tell us that exercise in the open air, the necessary sharpening of the wits, and the pitting of knowledge and power against the inborn wariness of wild creatures, is health-giving and exhilarating. ”

“ Look around the parks, the roads, the athletic fields, the lakes and streams, the woods, and all out-of-door places in this country and you will find this man taking a brief rest from his prison cell, engaged in strenuous forms of muscular activity—tennis, golf, baseball, football, lacrosse, cross-country running, boating, swimming, yachting, motoring, horseback riding, hunting, fishing, exploring, mountain climbing, ranching—in many ways seeking to find an outlet for his stored-up physical energy. ”

“ And it is certain that those who have survived the risks of [Pg 9] these sports—the fittest—had developed bodies far superior in agility, and attained far greater command over the muscular system, as a whole, than would have been possible from practicing sports that do not involve risk. ”

“ The more clear it is that a sport or game requires knowledge, patience, courage, tact, and endurance, all of which make for success in everyday life, the more likely it is that it will become popular among sturdy men.
The best of our sports and games are, as we should expect, the most difficult, and require the most complete development in their patrons. Chess, whist, cricket, golf, fencing, sparring, riding across country, hunting, fishing, have kept their place, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. ”

“ When we are learning to walk, to ride, to swim, skate, fence, write, play, or sing, we interrupt ourselves at every step by unnecessary movements and false notes. When we are proficients, on the contrary, the results not only follow with the very minimum of muscular action requisite to bring them forth, they also follow from a single instantaneous 'cue.' The marksman sees the bird, and, before he knows it, he has aimed and shot. ”

“ Yet by strength alone no athlete can excel; success depends upon skill. He must have the strength to work with, but he must have the knowledge to apply it without wasting energy, and the ability to do this with precision. He must practise well the sport he intends to adopt—in other words, train his central nervous system.
Here, again, we must hark back to the main idea—the unity of the body. We have already dealt in this essay with the bodily needs in the way of food and exercise, and we must now consider the needs of its nervous components. ”

“ The manliest athlete and frankest amateur—who would blush at the praise of social equals—finds it hard to resist the apparently bluff outspoken applause of his inferiors bestowed on his prowess in field sports, whether rowing or riding, with rod or gun. Of course it frequently happens that the sportsman really does excel as a shot ”

“ Alluding to some explanations, though not in order to endorse them, will help to show how diversity of sports experiences resulted in diversity of interpretations.
The basic assumption of this entire book, human self-constitution in practical experiences, translates into the statement that sports is not a reflective but a constitutive experience. Indeed, through running, jumping, wrestling, or otherwise participating in some game, human beings project themselves according to physical characteristics and mental coordination that facilitate physical performance in the reality of their existence. ”

“ The main principle which he inculcates is the necessity of a thorough knowledge of the human body, and of suiting the training to the individual’s requirements. He discusses at length the various physical qualities which are best for different sports,—the qualities of the boxer, the wrestler, or the runner,—and gives a fanciful classification of the different types of athletes, the lion type, the eagle type, the bear type, the plank type, the rope type! ”

“ Now the athlete, the true sportsman, depends as much upon the condition of his brain for success as upon the condition of his body.
[Pg 181]
That is the finest thing about sport, and in many quarters it is the least understood thing about it.
Now if we pursue the analogy of the confirmed inebriate we are able to detect exactly the same symptoms, though in an infinitely less degree, in the player of games who consciously or unconsciously drinks more than is good for him. ”

“ So much of the success of a player depends upon his legs that they must be in good condition, requiring a special education in the art of sudden leaping and springing, and of suddenly arresting the speed, which the practice of ordinary running does not give. ”