Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/709

 duty. But the athletes are not the only ones affected. Wherever athletics are very popular, around the coterie of successful gamesters is formed a large hoard of hangers-on, boys who admire muscle without possessing it, and who, formed by nature for a very different line, adopt the habits and opinions of the superior class, till, perhaps without participating, their interest, too, is absorbed by the prevailing rage, and the tone of the whole community is affected. Under these conditions, work, honest, spontaneous effort in other lines but amusement, is impossible."

The potent fascination of athletic games for boys is undeniable, and that they must greatly interfere with legitimate school-work it would be also folly to question. But, admitting that they hinder intellectual progress, it is common to affirm that there is a great compensation for this loss in the moral benefits of athletic training. It is said that there is a much more important thing in schools than book learning, and that is to improve the moral tone of students. But Mr. Littleton insists that it is far from being established that athletic games intensely pursued are any check upon vicious tendencies. He maintains that, where athleticism is so engrossing as to stunt the higher life of a school, it is not promotive of virtue, and that, "among schoolboys, the mere students are as a body more virtuous than the mere athletes." He does not affirm that among university students the athletes are more immoral than those who neglect physical recreations. The main question, however, here, is one of mental indolence and vacancy, and Mr. Littleton says: "An energetic athlete, without an idea of any other pursuit whatever, is better off and less likely to turn out vicious than a wholly idle university man or schoolboy; and the appreciation of this fact seems to have led people into investing athletics with a power of stemming vice; the truth being that they are in a limited degree obstructive of it—but only in a limited degree; and it is quite erroneous to suppose that in any educational institution a predominance of athleticism necessarily brings with it a high standard of morals." It is the absolute supremacy of recreation over study and the resulting lack of steady and wholesome mental occupation that lead to immoral consequences. A positive and serious evil of athleticism is, that it tends to become a power in the schools, rivaling the constituted authorities, and that is capable of becoming an enemy to discipline. The spirit of athleticism becomes organized, and the class devoted to it, representing the most powerful feeling in the institution, grows formidable, so that the teachers must ally themselves with it, or lose their control over the pupils. "As is sometimes remarked, no public functionary, no clergyman, no military commander, certainly no prime minister, assumes his powers intrusted with such absolute and unquestioning confidence as does a prominent public schoolboy. His opinions are not disputed, no opposition benches are ranged against him; but his lightest utterance carries law with it, and in questions of