Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/725

Rh present day can not be considered a favorable sign. Open-air sports, no doubt, conduce to physical development; but it may be questioned whether the interest which they inspire arises from any sense of their importance in this respect. Local rivalries and the spirit of faction have much more to do with it. Another point is that talk about sport is the easiest kind of talk for empty minds; and what floods of it are sweeping the land to day no one needs to be told. Considering the wealth of matter for conversation which the modern world affords, it is lamentable to think how many households among the comfortable classes seem almost incapable of discussing any other subject morning, noon, and night than games of one kind and another and the "records" made by pitchers, batters, throwers, runners, kickers, and sluggers. People of presumed education, who will only scan the head lines of the news in regard to important social and political movements, will read every line of the prolix reports devoted to the doings of the sporting world. In the language of the day a match between two football or hockey clubs is an "event." All this means, we do not hesitate to say, a hurtful amount of mental dissipation; and it means also, we fear, the cultivation of idle habits. To what extent the work of our educational institutions is impaired by the undue devotion of the young to sports, many leading educators are prepared to attest. It is not, they will say, the time actually spent upon games that counts against study, so much as the everlasting occupation of brain and tongue with the discussion of games. It is there the evil lies.

Here again we see a result of the material advance of society. People are more self-indulgent because they have the means of being so. They give more time and thought to amusements, because amusements are continually being brought to their very doors, and in a hundred ways forced on their attention. And yet there is a residuum in society that knows little of amusement. There is even a section of the community that lives below the level at which amusement is possible. A race enervated by self-indulgence is not in a fit condition to grapple vigorously with its social problems, and yet social problems too long neglected may take on some day a very alarming form. It is evident that there is much for serious-minded men and women to do to prevent an actual degeneration of character and intellect in our time. We want new and higher social ideals, and the question is how to create them. We want to destroy the fascination of mere money. We want more of equality in the community and less of caste; but the equality, or the approach to it, should be produced by a leveling up of those who are now below a decent standard of culture, not by any debasing of those who have reached such a standard. We want, of course we want, a purer tone in our politics; and that we can not have till those who make the politician are imbued with some sense of public duty. There are hundreds of agencies for good at work in the land; but many of these condemn themselves to partial sterility through the comparative narrowness of their aims, and sometimes through the exaggeration of language with winch they urge their special reforms. It is human nature at large that wants uplifting; and if the light is in the world—as it is—the light of reason, of truth, of charity, why may we not hope to make it shine more widely, and so create for ourselves a social state whereof we shall not need to be ashamed?