ABSTRACT

Fighting, hunting, fishing, climbing, exploring, reduced to sports, contain just as much ‘realism’ as is needed to evoke the pleasurable excitement which sustained these skilful efforts when they belonged to the struggle for life. Some of the imitations may be so close to reality as to recall in almost its full intensity the primal thrill, as in tiger-stalking, in boxing, or rock climbing. In ball-games the fictitious circumstances call for more imagination, though the pleasure of the actual stroke is chiefly a race memory of a blow struck at an enemy, or of a blow warded off. No one can doubt the nature of the fierce pleasure of the football scrimmage with its mortal make-believe.