THIS research was based on the possibility that a study of the motives for exercise and physical education in a limited historical period would have interest that extended beyond the antiquarian. It started from the premise that these motives could

not be isolated from the rest of human thought and action, and that an examination of the various pressures to which men's attitudes towards physical activities have proved susceptible in the past might therefore have useful insights for the twentieth century, where sport has become part of sociology, part of government, and important in international affairs, and where physical education has achieved a wide, if not always clearly rationalizing, acceptance. We might become aware, in fact, not only of 'the pastness of the past', but also of its presence, to use T. S. Eliot's terms.