Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/777

 THE GAMING INSTINCT 763

expression in emotional activities to which some social value can be attached.

Or if again we consider the violence with which a game, the game of golf for instance, may lay hold of the world in gen- eral, we see the ease with which the man of affairs and the scientist lapse from their acquired habits of industry into their instincts. What they are interested in as a recreation the sport- ing man is interested in as a constant thing. The members of the sporting class are not, in the main, abnormal to a degree which renders them socially unmanageable, but represent rather social and pedagogical neglect. The young man of good family when sowing his wild oats is temporarily a sporting man, fol- lowing for the time the instincts of the race. But his connec- tions are such that the dragnet of social habits is finally gotten around him and he is drawn into a reputable profession. In the case of the professional sport this has not happened. Most men profess, anyway, that they have found their occupations in life accidentally, and so long as this is so, it is not surprising that a number of men should miss the regular occupations altogether.

W. I. THOMAS. THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.