Part 6

But if this be so, he is not alone. If we have defined the sporting instinct rightly, there are numbers of other people masquerading as sportsmen who have no proper claim to the title. Chief among these are all hunters and shooters of any kind whatsoever. There can be no true sporting relation between a man and a beast, except possibly in the cases of Achilles and the tortoise and the boxing kangaroo. The hunter or shooter wants to kill his prey, and the prey merely wants to escape from or--in the case of big game--to eat his adversary; neither party at the end of a contest wishes his antagonist well or hopes that he will return to renew the struggle. Indeed, there is much more sportsmanship in war than in hunting; for the victorious nation, while glad to have won, always feels a chivalrous regret that in so doing they have, accidentally, killed a number of their gallant foes. The hunter is far from such a feeling; the furthest he will go is to bar out certain obvious ways of killing, such as shooting foxes or netting salmon; but this is not entirely out of consideration for the feelings of the fox or salmon.

The conception of sport, even in its narrowest sense of a fair struggle, cannot be applied to the hunting activities except by a series of violent strains. In the case of fox-hunting, the only struggle is between the speed and sagacity of the hounds and the natural cunning of the fox, and the sole connection which hunters have with this very unsportsmanlike struggle is that they are able to sit on horses, which go as fast as the hounds, which are _ex hypothesi_ having a fair struggle with the fox, who, under the fortieth article of the orthodox rural faith, really enjoys it. Otter-hunting and beagling are perhaps one degree less remote from sportsmanship, since the combatants rely on their own legs without the interposition of a horse. But when we come to grouse-shooting the strain becomes almost unbearable, since in this case we are asked to believe that the grouse is blithely dodging the shots with a keen appreciation of the sporting interest involved. The plain fact is that all these activities arise simply from the hunting instinct--the natural impulse to kill or capture something which tries to escape. It is a fundamental and, no doubt, a valuable instinct; but it has nothing to do with the sporting instinct, and does not in itself entitle a man to be called a sportsman.

I need hardly add that in making these remarks I do not in the least wish to disparage the morality of hunting and shooting. I only wish to point out that whatever moral character they have must be derived from other, and no doubt nobler, attributes than sportsmanship. What these attributes are, this is no place to inquire; but arguments on the subject are full of interest. It is pointed out, for example, that without hunting and shooting, the well-to-do would cease to reside in the country, with disastrous economic and social results; that foxes have to be destroyed anyhow, for the sake of the poultry, and that this being so, any fox worthy of the name much prefers an exhilarating run across country with the chance of getting away to the certainty of being shot; that without fox-hunting there would be nothing for fox-hounds to do; and so forth. This only shows us what we lose by the present loose use of the term ‘sport’ to cover both hunting and football. People who object to hunting are thereby prejudiced against football; while fox-hunters are saved from the necessity of justifying themselves, and so of working out in detail the fascinating speculations in rural economy, teleology, and the psychology of foxes indicated above.

We are left, then, with the conclusion that on a strict construction of the term ‘sport,’ walking, hunting, and shooting are outside the pale of sportsmanship. The natural resentment of walkers, hunters, and shooters is by no means assuaged when they consider who are inside the pale--not only cricketers and golfers and footballers and lacrosse-players, but billiard-players and chess-players and draught-players, and even lawyers and politicians, all of whom love a fair struggle with a human opponent. The outcasts may well ask how it is that a term which covers all these activities, and covers them equally, as ‘sport’ appears to do, can really have a complimentary meaning. Is it much of a compliment to be compared to a draught-player? Need a man gnash his teeth if he is denied kinship with a ludo champion? Must there not be something else in the conception of sport beside the pure sporting idea? For an answer we have only to turn to the so-called sporting columns of the press. The place of honour is still given to horse-racing, but this is more for economic than for purely sporting reasons. The backbone of the sporting columns, the things which people really admire, the main themes on which the reporters exercise their amazing virtuosity, are the great staple forms of athletics, cricket, football, rowing, lawn-tennis, golf, running and the rest.

These are so much the commonplaces of existence that few people realise what a stupendous growth they represent. Games of various kinds have always flourished in this country, but the growth of athletics since 1870 or so is something too huge, both in bulk and variety, to be ascribed to any normal development. Since that time cricket must have increased at least tenfold; football has developed into three colossal and quite distinct branches, not to mention Colonial and American variations and the historic cults of English schools; golf has grown from the recreation of a few Scots to the business of ten thousand Britons; lawn-tennis, purged of its garden-party birthstain, has become a game of the first rank; hockey has lived down the derision of its youth and commands its thousands of devotees; cross-country running holds its head high; lacrosse has become a bond of Empire; _quid plura_? I have not even mentioned women’s athletics. If Lord Macaulay were to return to earth to-morrow, he would be surprised at many things--at our style of drawing-room furniture, at the respect paid to Plato, at the universal prevalence of pipe-smoking, not to speak of Marconigrams and promenade concerts; but his biggest shock would come if he stood at a London terminus at two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and watched the youth of the nation--and its middle-age, too--speeding forth in their thousands on athletic pursuits, to toil and labour and sweat, and even to spend money, for an idea.

This enormous growth in the staple forms of sport cannot be attributed only to the sporting instinct. There must be some other element in them which commands general support and admiration, whether or no a strictly sporting struggle is involved. Now, what is the common character of these activities? Three points are clear at once: they all take place in the open air; they all involve some physical expertness; they all involve, what is quite a different thing, hard physical exercise. Or, to put it negatively, they can none of them be undertaken in a house, by an incompetent, without bodily labour. These three things, far more than the pure sporting instinct, are the fundamental characters of the athletic movement; it is these which really evoke popular admiration. And because most of the sporting activities and some of the hunting activities share in these characters, all sporting activities and all hunting activities are lumped together in the popular mind as ‘sport,’ and this term, thus endowed with favourable associations of fresh air, physical expertness and exercise, is then applied alike to billiards, grouse-shooting, and betting on horse-races.

Even so, the claims of walking to a place among the staple forms of athletics seem dubious. Every one would agree that it takes place in the open air, not many that it is hard exercise, fewer still that it involves physical expertness. It may be admitted at once that there are certain physical states to which the walker can never attain. He never knows what it is to concentrate all his energies, like the runner or rower or footballer, within five minutes or twenty minutes or seventy minutes, reaching at the end that complete and satisfying state of exhaustion, that sense of having come to the end of the tether, which uplifts the soul like death or exile or any other finality. His fatigue is a slower and less inspiring sensation, a thing of muscle rather than wind. Nor, again, has he ever the feeling of having done something really clever and unusual with his body, like the three-quarter when he swerves or the rower when he gets his hands away. The walker’s motions are things, apparently, which any one can do.

None the less, walking at its best comes very near the greater athletics. A full day’s walk at a good pace is not a thing to be despised; the worst that can be said is that it does not need that superfine concert pitch of physical competency, that little extra cleanness of wind and limb above the normal, to which rowers and runners attain for about ten days in each year. Granted this, still walking is no activity for the grossly untrained or incapable. There are moments in it which test the body as keenly as any football or hockey; there is the peculiar and special demon of inertia always waiting for you at the eighth mile, and again about the eighteenth, ready to seize on the slightest weakness, a demon only to be exorcised by a genuine effort. If you can conquer him, you may at least claim a leaf from the athlete’s crown. Even in the matter of physical expertness, where walkers contrast most strongly with other athletes, they are not altogether beneath consideration. A proper stride is not a mere gift of the gods; it can be cultivated, increased in ease and length, made a more useful servant. There is no little difference at the end of the day between the walker who can move his feet lithely and delicately, making a rhythmic bar of each stride, and the walker who hoists them up anyhow and lets them fall with a bang, like instruments of percussion. The adjustment of gait to slopes and to varying kinds of ground is also a matter of some expertness. And, above all, there is the very subtle art, when you are coming down a steepening hill, of knowing the moment at which to abandon care, swing out and run.

Running on a walk is a subject strictly outside the ambit of this work, but I cannot pass it by unpraised. It is quite unlike ordinary running; it generally takes place down a violent slope and could not possibly be managed in spiked shoes and bare legs. It is of many kinds, all of them good. Running down a hard grass hill is good, on the flat of the foot, with short strides, each step sending a jerk from the extreme toe to the topmost hair; then, as the slope flattens near the bottom, you swing out, stride enormously and fly. (Thus do, descending from Scarf Gap to Buttermere, and turn to the left at the foot beyond the stream, to the pool with the grassy promontory which washes you clean of mortal ills.) Screerunning is good, when you have clambered gingerly down the crags, and find them issuing below in fine slopes of shale; here forget your toes, trust only to your heels, and look out for rocks. But best of all is the grassy head of a valley, soft with moss and hidden bog; here you must rush at full stride, watching your leader (if there is one) for bog-holes; if not, trusting in Providence. If your foot fall on good ground, it is well; if there be a sudden yielding beneath it, leap but the more wildly off the other, and it will rise from the bog with a sound like a giant’s kiss, and a tingle of cold water within your boot. Thus come wise men from Esk Hause to Borrodale by Grain Gill, forsaking the path of the foolish by Styhead Pass; and at the bottom there is a pool for them only less worthy than that of Buttermere, and thereafter they move down Borrodale in the dusk among silent sheep-folds, ennobled and perfected men, the long memories of the day rounded with the rapture of their run.

This, however, is by the way: the fact that some walkers run on a walk does not make walking a form of athletics any more than the fact that some company promoters write poetry in the evenings makes stockbroking a branch of poetry. Of the legitimate claims of walking in itself and by itself to be considered a form of athletics, the athletes will probably remain unconvinced. They will continue to regard it as a thing any one can do, and to rate walkers on a level with grouse-shooters and beaglers, and only a little higher than rabbit-shooters. Let it be so; if a little exclusiveness is needed to maintain the aristocracy of physique, no walker will grudge it. But when this has been fully granted, and the primacy of athletics proper firmly established, let the athletes remember that they themselves make use of walking. I do not mean only that they walk down the street when they cannot afford a cab; I mean that often in the utmost rigour of their training they use walking as one of the most effective means to that training. This is notably the case with boxers, who of all athletes need to be the most carefully and scientifically trained. There must surely then be something in walking akin to, if not identical with, the highest capacities of the body; when a man is reaching his physical maximum, he does not grouse-shoot or beagle or dance or play billiards, but he does walk.

The reason of this can be understood, and the tone of this discussion raised, by the help of a moral analogue. Consider some athlete of action--a statesman, a general, a bishop, or a merchant-prince; when he is preparing for some supreme feat--a bill, a battle, a wholesale conversion, or a corner in nitrates--he does not keep his energies entirely on the lofty plane which such feats demand; he busies himself, if wise, with a number of minor affairs requiring only his ordinary capacity and not the special effort of the feat. In other words, he exercises his normal powers to the full, and so prepares himself for an abnormal strain. It is the same with the athlete; when he is getting ready for the abnormal strain of a race or a cup-tie, he needs to keep his normal physical powers in good condition; hence, as the most normal and central of all bodily activities, he walks. I do not in the least mean by this that he needs special muscles for his main feat and resorts to walking because this uses other muscles; this would be untrue, would spoil the analogue, and, worst of all, would be quite out of date. The physiology which divided a man’s bodily activities by muscles, is like the old psychology which divided his mental activities by ‘faculties’; nobody now believes such things, except possibly some physiologists or psychologists. The man, whether mentally or physically, is a whole: he has a normal mental self and a normal bodily self, and the two are closely allied. In either case, he must keep the normal self in full swing by means of its most congenial activities when he is preparing for an abnormal effort.

Consider the analogue further, and a second profound truth emerges. Not only will the normal activities of the statesman, general, bishop, or merchant-prince conduce to great feats, but also the high condition they are in will react on the performance of their normal activities. The week before the great feat takes place, the statesman will deal with questions and estimates in a particularly masterly way; the general’s regulation of camp routine will be a marvel; the bishop’s diocese will be a Utopia; and the merchant-prince will forecast the fluctuations of stock with deadly accuracy. Each of them will feel that he is taking ordinary affairs (note this metaphor) in his stride, and with a peculiar sensation of completeness, confidence, and well-being he will march to meet the event of the week following. And whenever, in the course of years, he resumes and maintains this high condition of training, there will be the same superb feeling of mastery, the consciousness of a fine faculty fully exercised, the recollection of the great moments of the feat.

Need I point the parallel? Every foot-pound which the athlete adds to his physical capacity is felt in his walking. There is nothing you can do in your physical life which will not affect you for better or for worse as you walk. Walking is the book of the recording angel of the body, who never forgets or forgives. If you have sat up late, or eaten and drunk unwisely, or breathed foul air, or listened to or participated in waltzes, or done all these things simultaneously, which is quite easy--you will know it at the eighth mile next day. But if you have trained your body, and given it its due of food and drink and sun and air, then you will walk with a peculiar exaltation; you will swing your legs to the full rhythm of your physical being; you will feel yourself one with all the greatest moments of your bodily past--that last sprint up the straight, when your legs felt like somebody else’s; those forty-five frenzied seconds in the wash of the boat in front, until your nose grated on her stern; that wild gallop down the left wing with the half-back in pursuit and that sweeping centre which the inside right did (or did not) put through.

Once this is understood, further argument about the relative merits of walking and athletics becomes futile and absurd. The two are simply different but related modes of expressing one idea, the idea, that is, of realising the body’s capacity as a thing good in itself. This common interest outweighs any differences of expression. Walkers and athletes are working to the same end, and are closely allied. Indeed, it is no matter for argument; for the idea, like other ideas, can never be completely proved. We only know, instinctively, that athletics are good, that in training and exercising ourselves to the full we feel a natural satisfaction, and that walking at its best shares in this feeling. The idea works itself out in the usual way of idealism; in the beginning it calls to us dogmatically to exercise our bodies, and only as we continue in the process do we begin to realise its meaning; we can never completely justify it in argument, since it is an idea, and therefore demands faith as well as reason. But this at least can be said, that any other explanation breaks down. If we try to explain athletics and walking by reference to any standard outside themselves--to anything other than the pure bodily idea--utter confusion ensues.

There is one particularly insidious line of argument which starts from the conception of Health, and exhibits walking and athletics and most other things as part of a general Health Movement. It looks extremely attractive--the single cause exhibiting itself in a numerous and varied selection of phenomena, sanitation laws, food reform, fresh air, physical training, the simple life, hygiene, health-conscience, _mens sana in corpore sano_ and the rest. On this view, we walk and undertake athletics for the same reason which makes us open our windows and keep regular hours and observe moderation in food and drink--namely, to preserve health. It is all very impressive and scientific, until we begin to apply it in detail, and consider various forms of athletics from the health standpoint. Disturbing questions then arise. Is it not the fact that running is apt to strain the heart? Does not rowing need to be supplemented by something a little more jerky to keep the liver in order? Does not football lead to an abnormal and ill-distributed development of the frame, so that the professional footballer is neither hygienically nor artistically a model? Is not walking, as a mild and equable form of exercise, really healthier than any other form of athletics, operating more beneficially upon the heart, liver, lungs, digestion, motor-centres, blood-corpuscles, opsonin index, and the rest of the catalogue of modern psychology? Finally, is not the best exercise, from the health standpoint, a carefully graduated system of physical culture, nicely adapted by an expert to each individual’s needs, and performed in correct clothing in a sterilised atmosphere of 57° Fahrenheit?

This argument is dangerous in many ways. It goes near the truth and just manages to miss it completely. It holds out a bait to walkers to desert the cause of athletics that their own craft may be exalted. It encourages people who dislike athletics, but can walk in a fashion, to distinguish between walking and sport and say that all sport is unhealthy as well as demoralising. It sets a gulf between athletics and physical training, so that the man who pursues both is in an equivocal position. It encourages doctors to talk about health, which they misunderstand, being preoccupied with illness. Finally, it lets in philosophers, who begin to say that a healthy activity must be spontaneous, that all health movements, including athletics, are fads, and that the only sound rule is to do what you like and eat what you like and drink what you like--particularly this last. So in the end walkers, athletes, doctors, hygienists, physical trainers and philosophers are set by the ears and the intellectual Riot Act is read.

The whole trouble arises from treating ‘health’ as something that can be analysed and defined. Really, it is one of the ultimate terms, like happiness or virtue or poetry. Doctors can, of course, define health in a limited and negative way as the absence of specific disease; and so far it may be possible to analyse the body into a catalogue of organs, to enter against each item the effects of the different kinds of exercise, and then to add up the entries and pronounce a result. Granted that this is a genuine scientific process, and not gross empiricism got up so as to impress the statistically susceptible, it still does not carry us very far. Health in the true sense is a single and positive thing: it is the active well-being of the body. To prove a man healthy, it is not enough to go through the items in his catalogue and give each a satisfactory mark; it is not enough even to group his items and show that A. B. C. prove that he can breathe properly, and D. E. F. that he can digest food, and X. Y. Z. that he can sleep. Health is not, any more than morality, the capacity to do things: it is the actual doing of them. It is good for a man to jump and run and walk and breathe and eat and sleep--not medically good in the sense that vaseline is good for chapped hands, but fundamentally and categorically and inexplicably good: it is what the body was made for, the realisation of its idea. Whether these activities are also good in the medical sense, whether, that is, they keep A. B. C. and the other items in good condition, is of quite secondary importance. As a matter of fact, if we disregard medical evidence for and against, it is pretty clear that they are good in this sense: the things which the body naturally finds good also tend to preserve and strengthen it. This, after all, is only what we should expect, assuming the body not to have been invented as a bad joke. But the medical consequences are secondary: the primary thing is the activity itself.