Sport

Abstract

AS WE turn the pages of a well-planned newspaper we see that in modern life certain activities are so segregated as to achieve some measure of autotelic and autonomous organization: for instance, medicine, religion, industry, art, science, government, education, sport, etc. In democratic societies these segregations are more complete, at least in the negative sense that no external influence presumes in general to dictate. "Sport," for example, goes its way with but sporadic interference from medicine, education, religion, or government. But at present, within each such field of segregation, one finds little positive insight into the whole range of the activities that are involved, and of the several distinct, indispensable factors that enter into the situation, of which each calls for development peculiar to itself. So we see that in religion, beside the religion of the "churches," we must recognize that secular, political, and theocratic religion all enter into every concrete situation where a religious problem arises.' Failure to recognize this essential manifoldness of the religious problem gives rise to moralizing and contention rather than to fresh vision and inspired achievement. Similarly in matters of sport we see a round condemnation of procedures in one phase of sport in terms of criteria applicable only to another; while there is lacking such broad and discriminating cultivation of sport in all its phases as most diversifies, invigorates, and gladdens life. Surveys of each such field of segregated activities are one chief function of ethical study, so that in making a practical decision we may do so with some vision of the entire field within which that decision will produce effects. All such segregations do indeed interact, and a broader survey will bring this interaction into clearer view. First, however, we need more adequate surveys than we now have of each segregation, for the purpose of winning for every indispensable factor therein due recognition and full development. In every such segregation we must first appreciate that factor of feeling