and a more or less devout submission to the inscrutable decrees of the
divinity on the other hand.
There is a relationship in this respect between the sporting temperament
and the temperament of the delinquent classes; and the two are related
to the temperament which inclines to an anthropomorphic cult. Both
the delinquent and the sporting man are on the average more apt to be
adherents of some accredited creed, and are also rather more inclined
to devout observances, than the general average of the community. It is
also noticeable that unbelieving members of these classes show more of
a proclivity to become proselytes to some accredited faith than the
average of unbelievers. This fact of observation is avowed by the
spokesmen of sports, especially in apologizing for the more naively
predatory athletic sports. Indeed, it is somewhat insistently claimed as
a meritorious feature of sporting life that the habitual participants in
athletic games are in some degree peculiarly given to devout practices.
And it is observable that the cult to which sporting men and the
predaceous delinquent classes adhere, or to which proselytes from
these classes commonly attach themselves, is ordinarily not one of the
so-called higher faiths, but a cult which has to do with a thoroughly
anthropomorphic divinity. Archaic, predatory human nature is not
satisfied with abstruse conceptions of a dissolving personality that
shades off into the concept of quantitative causal sequence, such as the
speculative, esoteric creeds of Christendom impute to the First Cause,
Universal Intelligence, World Soul, or Spiritual Aspect. As an instance
of a cult of the character which the habits of mind of the athlete and
the delinquent require, may be cited that branch of the church militant
known as the Salvation Army. This is to some extent recruited from the
lower-class delinquents, and it appears to comprise also, among its
officers especially, a larger proportion of men with a sporting record
than the proportion of such men in the aggregate population of the
community.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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