All the races,
and games, and athletics cultivated so assiduously at school seem
now to have very little aim in view. It is not important for
ordinary life to be able to run a hundred yards, or even three
miles, faster than another man; the judgment, the quickness of eye,
the strength and swiftness of muscle needed to make a man a good
batsman were all well enough in days when a man's life might
afterwards depend on his use of sword and battle-axe. But now it
only enables him to play games rather longer than other people, and
to a certain extent ministers to bodily health, although the
statistics of rowing would seem clearly to prove that it is a
pursuit which is rather more apt to damage the vitality of strong
boys than to increase the vitality of weak ones.
So, if we look facts fairly in the face, we see that much of the
training of school life, especially in the direction of athletics,
is really little more than the maintenance of a thoughtless old
tradition, and that it is all directed to increase our admiration
of prowess and grace and gallantry, rather than to fortify us in
usefulness and manual skill and soundness of body.
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