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.