Page:You Gentiles (1924) by Maurice Samuel 1895-1972.djvu/42

 most amazing thing in your life, the most in contrast with ours, is its sport. By this I do not mean simply your fondness for physical exercise, your physical exuberance, but the psychological and social institutionalization of sport, its organization, its predominant rôle as the outlet and expression of your spiritual energies.

I will not go into the history of sports among you, contrasting it with its absence from our records and emotions. But surely there is something of extraordinary significance in the predominance of sports in your first high civilization, their religious character and their hold on the affection and attention of the masses. That the overwhelming significance of this manifestation of life has been ignored is due essentially to the pomposity of historians, who care for dignity and 38