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.
Addiction to athletic sports, not only in the way of direct
participation, but also in the way of sentiment and moral
support, is, in a more or less pronounced degree, a
characteristic of the leisure class; and it is a trait which that
class shares with the lower-class delinquents, and with such
atavistic elements throughout the body of the community as are
endowed with a dominant predaceous trend. Few individuals among
the populations of Western civilized countries are so far devoid
of the predaceous instinct as to find no diversion in
contemplating athletic sports and games, but with the common run
of individuals among the industrial classes the inclination to
sports does not assert itself to the extent of constituting what
may fairly be called a sporting habit.
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