89 YOUTH: ITS EQUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE the hornpipe and reel of Scotland, the Reihen of Ger- many, the rondes of France, the Spanish tarantella and cliaconne, the stratlispey from the Spey Valley, the Irish jig, etc., express racial traits. Instead of the former vast repertory, the stately pavone, the graceful and dig- nified saraband, the wild salterrelle, the bourree with song and strong rh5i:hm, the light and skippy bolero, the courtly bayadere, the dramatic plugge, gavotte, and other peasant dances in costume, the fast and furious fandango, weapon and military dances; in place of the pristine power to express love, mourning, justice, pen- alty, fear, anger, consolation, divine service, symbolic and philosophical conceptions, and every industry or characteristic act of life in pantomime and gesture, we have in the dance of the modern ballroom only a degen- erate relict, with at best but a very insignificant culture value, and too often stained with bad associations. This is most unfortunate for youth, and for their sake a work of rescue and revival is greatly needed; for it is perhaps, not excepting even music, the completest language of the emotions and can be made one of the best schools of sen- timent and even will, inculcating good states of mind and exorcising bad ones as few other agencies have power to do. ' Right dancing can cadence the very soul, give ner- vous poise and control, bring harmony between basal and finer muscles, and also between feeling and intellect, body and mind. It can serve both as an awakener and a test of intelligence, predispose the heart against vice, and turn the springs of character toward virtue.^/ That its present decadent forms, for those too devitalized to dance aright, can be demoralizing, we know in this day too well, although even questionable dances may some- times work off vicious propensities in ways more harm- less than those in which they would otherwise find vent.
90 PLAY, SPORTS, AND GAMES Its utilization for and influence on the insane would be another interesting chapter.
Very interesting scientifically and suggestive practi- cally is another correspondence which I believe to be new, between the mode of spontaneous activity in youth and that of labor in the early history of the race. One of the most marked distinctions between savage and civilized races is in the longer rhythm of work and relax- ation. The former are idle and lazy for days, weeks, and perhaps months, and then put forth intense and pro- longed effort in dance, hunt, warfare, migration, or construction, sometimes dispensing with sleep and mani- festing remarkable endurance. As civilization and spe- cialization advance, hours become regular. The cultured man is less desultory in all his habits, from eating and sleeping to performing social and religious duties, al- though he may put forth no more aggregate energy in a year than the savage. Women are schooled to regular work long before men, and the difficulty of imposing civilization upon low races is compared by Biicher ^ to that of training a cat to work when harnessed to a dog- cart. It is not dread of fatigue but of the monotony of method that makes them hate labor. The effort of sav- ages is more intense and their periods of rest more pro- longed and inert. Darwin thinks all vital function bred to go in periods, as vertebrates are descended from a tidal ascidian.^ There is indeed much that suggests some other irregular rhythm more or less independent of day and night, and perhaps sexual in its nature, but not lunar, and for males. This mode of life not only preceded the industrial and commercial period of which regularity is a 1 Arbeit und Rythmus. Triibner, Leipzig, 1896.
2 Descent of Man. D. Appleton and Co., 1872, vol. 1, chap, vi, p. 204 et seq.
91 YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE prime condition, but it lasted indefinitely longer than the latter has yet existed; during this early time great exer- tion, sometimes to the point of utter exhaustion and col- lapse, alternated with seasons of almost vegetative exist- ence. We see abundant traces of this psychosis in the muscle habits of adolescents, and, I think, in student and particularly in college life, which can enforce regularity only to a limited extent. This is not reversion, but partly an expression of the nature and perhaps the needs of this stage of immaturity, and partly the same instinct of re- volt against uniformity imposed from without, which rob life of variety and extinguish the spirit of adventure and untrammeled freedom, and make the savage hard to break to the harness of civilization. The hunger for fatigue, too, can become a veritable passion and is quite distinct from either the impulse for activity for its own sake or the desire of achievement. To shout and put forth the utmost possible strength in crude ways is an erethic intoxication at a stage when every tissue can become erectile and seems, like the crying of infants, to have a legitimate function in causing tension and flushing, en- larging the caliber of blood vessels, and forcing the blood perhaps even to the point of extravasation to irrigate newly growing fibers, cells, and organs which atrophy if not thus fed. When maturity is complete this need abates. If this be correct, the phenomenon of second breath, so characteristic of adolescence, and one factor in the inebriate's propensity, is an ontogenetic expression of a rhythm trait of a long racial period. Y^outh needs overexertion to compensate for underexertion, to under- sleep in order to offset oversleep at times. This seems to be nature's provision to expand in all directions its possi- bilities of the body and soul in this plastic period when, without this occasional excess, powers would atrophy or 92 PLAY, SPORTS, AND GAMES suffer arrest for want of use, or larger possibilities would not be realized without this regimen peculiar to nascent periods. This is treated more fully elsewhere.
Perhaps next to dancing in phyletic motivation come personal conflicts, such as wrestling, fighting, boxing, dueling, and in some sense, hunting. The animal world is full of struggle for survival, and primitive warfare is a wager of battle, of personal combat of foes contesting eye to eye and hand to hand, where victory of one is the defeat and perhaps death of the other, and where life is often staked against life. In its more brutal forms we see one of the most degrading of all the aspects of human nature. Burk ^ has shown how the most bestial of these instincts survive and crop out irresistibly in boy- hood, where fights are often engaged in with desperate abandon. Noses are bitten, ears torn, sensitive places kicked, hair pulled, arms twisted, the head stamped on and pounded on stones, fingers twisted, and hoodlums sometimes deliberately try to strangle, gouge out an eye, pull off an ear, pull out the tongue, break teeth, nose, or bones, or dislocate jaws or other joints, wring the neck, bite off a lip, and torture in utterly nameless ways. In un- restrained anger, man becomes a demon in love with the blood of his victim. The face is distorted, and there are yells, oaths, animal snorts and grunts, cries, and then exultant laughter at pain, and each is bruised, dirty, dishev- eled and panting with exhaustion. For coarser natures, the spectacle of such conflicts has an intense attraction, while some morbid souls are scarred by a distinct phobia for everything suggestive of even lower degrees of opposi- tion. These instincts, more or less developed in boyhood.
^ Teasing and Bullying. Pedagogical Seminary, April, 1897, vol.
93 YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE are repressed in normal cases before strength and skill are sufficiently developed to inflict serious bodily in- jury, while without the reductives that orthogenetic growth brings they become criminal. Repulsive as are these grosser and animal manifestations of anger, its im- pulsion can not and should not be eliminated, but its ex- pression transformed and directed toward evils that need all its antagonism. To be angry aright is a good part of moral education, and non-resistance under all provo- cations is unmanly, craven, and cowardly.^ An able- bodied young man, who can not fight physically, can hardly have a high and true sense of honor, and is gen- erally a milk-sop, a lady-boy, or a sneak. He lacks virility, his masculinity does not ring true, his hon- esty can not be sound to the core. Hence, instead of eradicating this instinct, one of the great problems of physical and moral pedagogy is rightly to temper and direct it.
Sparta sedulously cultivated it in boys; and in the great English schools, w^here for generations it has been more or less tacitly recognized, it is regulated by custom, and their literature and traditions abound in illustra- tions of its man-making and often transforming influ- ence in ways well appreciated by Hughes and Arnold. It makes against degeneration, the essential feature of which is weakening of will and loss of honor. Real vir- tue requires enemies, and women and effeminate and old men want placid, comfortable peace, while a real man rejoices in noble strife which sanctifies all great causes, casts out fear, and is the chief school of courage. Bad as is overpugnacity, a scrapping boy is better than one who 1 See my Study of Anger. American Journal of Psychology, July, 94 PLAY, SPORTS, AND GAMES funks a fight, and I have no patience with the sentimental- ity that would here ' ' pour out the child with the bath, ' ' but would have every healthy boy taught boxing at ado- lescence if not before. The prize-ring is degrading and brutal, but in lieu of better illustrations of the spirit of personal contest I would interest a certain class of boys in it and try to devise modes of pedagogic utilization of the immense store of interest it generates. Like dancing it should be rescued from its evil associations, and its educational force put to do moral work, even though it be by way of individual prescriptions for specific defects of character. At its best, it is indeed a manly art, a su- perb school for quickness of eye and hand, decision, force of will, and self-control. The moment this is lost stinging punishment follows. Hence it is the surest of all cures for excessive irascibility and has been found to have a most beneficent effect upon a peevish or unmanly disposition. It has no mean theoretic side, of rules, kinds of blow and counters, arts of drawing out and tiring an opponent, hindering but not injuring him, defensive and offensive tactics, etc., and it addresses chiefly the funda- mental muscles in both training and conflict. I do not underestimate the many and great difficulties of proper purgation, but I know from both personal practise and observation that they are not unconquerable.
This form of personal conflict is better than dueling even in its comparatively harmless German student form, although this has been w^armly defended by Jacob Grimm, Bismarck, and Treitschke, while Paulsen, Pro- fessor of Philosophy and Pedagogy, and Schrempf, of Theology, have pronounced it but a slight evil, and sev- eral Americans have thought it better than hazing, which it makes impossible. The dark side of dueling is seen in the hypertrophied sense of honor which under the code 95 YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE of the corps becomes an intricate and fantastic thing, prompting, according to Ziegler,^ a club of sixteen students to fight over two hundred duels in four weeks in Jena early in this century. It is prone to degenerate to an artificial etiquette demanding satisfaction for slight and unintended offenses. Although this profess- or, who had his own face scarred on the mensur, pleaded for a student court of honor, with power to brand acts as infamous and even to expel students, on the ground that honor had grown more inward, the traditions in favor of dueling w^ere too strong. The duel had a religious romantic origin as revealing God's judg- ment, and means that the victim of an insult is ready to stake body, or even life, and this is still its ideal side. Anachronism as it now is and degenerating readily to sport or spectacle, overpunishing what is often mere awkwardness or ignorance, it still impresses a certain sense of responsibility for conduct and gives some physi- cal training, slight and specialized though it be. The code is conventional, drawn directly from old French military life, and is not true to the line that separates real honor from dishonor, deliberate insult that wounds normal self-respect from injury fancied by oversensitiveness or feigned by arrogance; so that in its present form it is not the best safeguard of the sacred shrine of personality against invasion of its rights. If, as is claimed, it is some diversion from or fortification against corrosive sensuality, it has generally allied itself with excessive beer-drinking. Fencing, while an art suscep- tible of high development and valuable for both pose and poise and requiring great quickness of eye, arm, 1 Der deutsche Student am Ende des 19 Jalirhunderts, 6th ed., Goschen, Leipzig, 1896. See also H. D. Sheldon: History and Pedagogy of American Student Societies, New York, 1901, p. 31 et seq.
96 PLAY, SPORTS, AND GAMES and wrist, is unilateral and robbed of the zest of inflict- ing real pain on an antagonist.
Bushido,^ which means military-knightly ways, des- ignates the Japanese conception of honor in behavior and in fighting. The youth is inspired by the ideal of Tom Brown " to leave behind him the name of a fel- low w^ho never bullied a little boy or turned his back on a big one." It expresses the race ideal of justice, patriotism, and the duty of living aright and dying nobly. It means also sympathy, pity, and love, for only the bravest can be the tenderest, and those most in love are most daring, and it includes politeness and the art of poetry. Honor is a sense of personal dignity and worth, so the hiishi is truthful without an oath. At the tender age of five the samurai is given a real sword, and this gives self-respect and responsibility. At fifteen, two sharp and artistic ones, long and short, are given him, which must be his companions for life. They were made by a smith whose shop is a sanctuary and who begins his work with prayer. They have the finest hilts and scabbards, and are besung as invested with a charm or spell, and symbolic of loyalty and self- control, for they must never be drawn lightly. He is taught fencing, archery, horsemanship, tactics, the spear, ethics and literature, anatomy, for offense and defense; he must be indifferent to money, hold his life cheap beside honor, and die if it is gone. This chivalry is called the soul of Japan, and if it fades life is vulgar- ized. It is a code of ethics and physical training.
Football is a magnificent game if played on honor. An English tennis champion was lately playing a rub- ber game with the American champion. They were even 1 Bushido: The Soul of Japan. An exposition of Japanese thought, by Inazo Nitob6. New York, 1905, pp. 203 et seq.
97 YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE and near the end when the American made a bad fluke which would have lost this country its championship. The English player, scorning to win on an accident, intentionally made a similar mistake that the best man might win. The chief evil of modern American foot- ball which now threatens its suppression in some col- leges is the lust to win at any price, and results in tricks and secret practise. These sneaky methods impair the sentiment of honor which is the best and most po- tent of all the moral safeguards of youth, so that a young man can not be a true gentleman on the gridiron. This ethical degeneration is far worse than all the bruises, sprains, broken bones and even deaths it causes. Wrestling is a form of personal encounter which in antiquity reached a high development, and which, al- though now more known and practised as athletics of the body than of the soul, has certain special disciplinary capacities in its various forms. It represents the most primitive type of the struggle of unarmed and unpro- tected man with man. Purged of its barbarities, and in its Greco-Roman form and properly subject to rules, it cultivates more kinds of movements than any other form — for limbs, trunk, neck, hand, foot, and all in the upright and in every prone position. It, too, has its manual of feints, holds, tricks, and specialties, and calls out wariness, quickness, strength, and shiftiness. Vic- tory need involve no cruelty or even pain to the van- quished. The very closeness of body to body, em- phasizing flexor rather than extensor arm muscles, im- parts to it a peculiar tone, gives it a vast variety of possible activities, developing many alternatives at every stage, and tempts to many undiscovered forms of per- mament mayhem. Its struggle is usually longer and less interrupted by pauses than pugilism, and its situations 98 PLAY, SPORTS, AND GAMES and conclusions often develop slowly, so that all in all, its character among contests is unique. As a school of posture for art, its varieties are extremely manifold and by no means developed, for it contains every kind of emphasis of every part and calls out every muscle group and attitude of the human body; hence its train- ing is most generic and least specialized, and victories have been won by very many kinds of excellence.
Perhaps nothing is more opposed to the idea of a gentleman than the sceva animi tempestas ^ of anger. A testy, quarrelsome, mucky humor is antisocial, and an outburst of rage is repulsive. Even non-resistance, turning the other cheek, has its victories and may be a method of moral combat. A strong temper well con- trolled and kept in leash makes a kinetic character; but in view of bullying, unfair play, cruel injustice to the weak and defenseless, of outrageous wrong that the law can not reach, patience and forbearance may cease to be virtues, and summary redress may have a distinct ad- vantage to the ethical nature of man and to social order, and the strenuous soul must fight or grow stagnant or flabby. If too repressed, righteous indignation may turn to sourness and sulks, and the disposition be spoiled. Hence the relief and exhilaration of an out- break that often clears the psychic atmosphere like a thunderstorm, and gives the ' ' peace that passeth under- standing " so often dilated on by our correspondents. Rather than the abject fear of making enemies what- ever the provocation, I would praise those whose best title of honor is the kind of enemies they make. Better even an occasional nose dented by a fist, a broken bone, a rapier-scarred face, or even sometimes the sacrifice of 1 Fierce tempest of the soul.
99 YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE the life of one of our best academic youth than stagna- tion, general cynicism and censoriousness, bodily and psychic cowardice, and moral corruption, if this indeed be, as it sometimes is, its real alternative.
So closely are love and war connected that not only is individual pugnacity greatly increased at the period of sexual maturity, when animals acquire or develop horns, fangs, claws, spurs, and weapons of offense and defense, but a new spirit of organization arises which makes teams possible or more permanent. Football, baseball, cricket, etc., and even boating can become schools of mental and moral training. First, the rules of the game are often intricate, and to master and ob- serve them effectively is no mean training for the mind in controlling the body. These are steadily being re- vised and improved, and the reasons for each detail of inner construction and conduct of the game require experience and insight into human nature. Then the subordination of each member to the whole and to a leader cultivates the social and cooperative instincts, while the honor of the school, college, or city, which each team represents, is confided to each and all. Group loyalty in Anglo-Saxon games, which shows such a marked increment in coordination and self-subordina- tion at the dawn of puberty as to constitute a distinct change in the character of sports at this age, can be so utilized as to develop a spirit of service and devotion not only to town, country, and race, but to God and the