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 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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