Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/765

 THE GAMING INSTINCT 75 I

pattern, but we know from the geological records that the time and experiments were long and many, and the competition so sharp that finally, not in man alone, but in all the higher classes of animals, body and mind, structure and interest, were working perfectly in motor actions of the violent type involved in a life of conflict, competition, and rivalry. There could not have been developed an organism depending on offensive and defen- sive movements for food and life without an interest in what we call a dangerous or precarious situation. A type without this interest would have been defective, and would have dropped out in the course of development.

There has been comparatively little change in human struc- ture or human interest in historical times. It is a popular view that moral and cultural views and interests have superseded our animal instincts ; but the cultural period is only a span in com- parison with prehistoric times and the prehuman period of life, and it seems probable that types of psychic reaction were once for all developed and fixed ; and while objects of attention and interest in different historical periods are different, we shall never get far away from the original types of stimulus and reac- tion. It is, indeed, a condition of normal life that we should not get too far away from them.

The fact that our interests and enthusiasms are called out in situations of the conflict type is shown by a glance at the situa- tions which arouse them most readily. War is simply an organ- ized form of fight, and as such is most attractive, or, to say the least, arouses the interests powerfully. With the accumulation of property and the growth of sensibility and intelligence it becomes apparent that war is a wasteful and unsafe process, and public and personal interests lead us to avoid it as much as possible. But, however genuinely war may be deprecated, it is certainly an exciting game. The Rough Riders in this country recently, and more recently the young men of the aristocracy of England, went to war from motives of patriotism, no doubt, but there are unmistakable evidences that they also regarded it as the greatest sport they were likely to have a chance at in a lifetime. And there is evidence in plenty that the emotional