THE LIMIT OF SPORT1

“Αριστον ὕδωρ,” says Pindar. “Water is good,” as it is often translated. But why should a hymn in honour of a victor in the games begin with a sentiment which would be much better suited to an anti-alcoholic league? ὕδωρ here does not mean water; it is the corresponding word to the Latinsudor, which means sweat,—the symbol of the physical effort made by the athlete. “Excellent is sweat,” that is to say, the effort made by the victor in training himself and in winning an arduous victory.

1Speech delivered at the opening of the Congress of the Psychology of Sport at Lausanne, May 6, 1913.

Αριστον ὕδωρ, then, says the clarion voice of one of the noblest sons of Greece, the great poet who, in honour of the sport of his times, has clothed in lyric poetry the dazzling myths of Hellenic polytheism. The motto has travelled down the ages, and we, too, are assembled here to interpret it after the fashion of our times. Is it not inevitable that the speech I have to make should be merely a development of this undying theme, ἄριστον ὕδωρ? And yet you would be justified in asking why this task should devolve on this occasionupon a man who spends his whole life in plying a tool—the pen—which is too light to convince him of the truth of Pindar’s apothegm. It is true that there was a time when he who has the honour of addressing you was not yet an examiner of historical documents nor a student of philosophical problems; when he was, on the contrary, an ardent gymnast. I will even confess to you that the first time his name appeared in the newspapers, it was in the accounts of gymnastic and athletic meetings, in connection with which some amiable reporters thought it proper to comment on his squirrel-like agility. But those times are, alas! long past. The over-violent passion for physical exercises which was his between the ages of ten and fifteen years obliged him suddenly to drop them. He has allowed his muscles gradually to be invaded and eaten up by that physical laziness which enervates so many thinkers of the present day, and which upsets the balance of their bodily forces.

You see, then, that these far-distant memories cannot give me authority to claim a right, however small, to address you on this occasion. I am a stranger in this world of sport, which has developed so rapidly in the last thirty years. I have followed only at a distance the movement which has given it birth, and I should find myself in great difficulties if I had to discuss in its details one of the numberless questions attaching to this form of contemporary activity. What authority, then, have I for addressing you on thisoccasion? None. And the kindness which Baron de Coubertin has shown in honouring me with an invitation to address you, though most flattering to me, cannot fill the void left by manifest incompetence for the task. You will tell me that I should have done better to remember the wise advice Homer gave the cobbler, and to refuse this honour of which I was not worthy. And you will be right. But I would excuse myself by telling you first of all that it is difficult to refuse anything to so distinguished and amiable a man and to so ardent an advocate of the causes he makes his own as M. de Coubertin. Secondly, if I am a sportsman who long ago has made his final exit, I am also a man who tries, as far as his feeble wits will allow him, to understand that life outside himself in which he can take no immediate and direct part.

Is not that the rôle, and in a certain sense the obsession, of the historian? The historian must understand all the forms and phenomena of life; crimes, intrigues, battles, wars, revolutions, loves, hatreds, perfidies, the hidden weaknesses of great men, the blind impulses of the masses, the noblest and the basest sentiments which actuate the human mind. If we were required to have experienced everything that we are required to understand, the profession of historian would be the most difficult and the most dangerous in the world; for, in order to qualify, a man would have at least to run the risk of the galleys or of the scaffold. Without a doubt, this necessity of understandingall the forms of the life outside is also one of the great weaknesses of historians. Often they make mistakes; even more often, the picture they give of things seems but pale by contrast with the living reality, to those who have actually lived that reality. I am quite sure that this will be my fate, if I talk to you about things which you know better than do I. That, however, is the inevitable drawback of the profession, and I shall go through with my task, relying on your kind indulgence.

I shall talk to you, then, about sport in modern life as a man who has considered it from outside. I shall philosophise awhile about sport, if you will allow me; for to philosophise about a thing is often a polite way of talking about a thing regarding which the speaker has little knowledge to people whose knowledge regarding it is considerable. And I will ask myself this question: What is and what ought to be the function of sport in modern society? What is its rôle, and what are its limits? Put thus, the question is but a particular form of a more general question which philosophers have long been asking themselves: What is the mutual and reciprocal rôle of the different human activities? It is a well-known truth that with the advances of civilisation social life undergoes an inward process of differentiation. Commerce separates from industry, industry from war, war from government, government from the intellectual activities, which in their turn become specialised,—art, science, religion,etc. We get professions, corporations, institutions, and classes corresponding to all these different activities; men, that is to say, who have passions, ambitions, desires, needs, and interests, and who quickly come into conflict with one another. What parts ought to be allowed to all these different activities? Which is the most necessary, the most noble, and the most exalted? Which ought to be surrounded with the greatest respect, covered with the greatest honours, and recompensed with the most considerable rewards?

Men have answered this question in countless different ways. It is, however, easy to discover in many of these answers a common tendency that is a proneness to consider as first and all-important the corporation, profession, or institution to which each inquirer belongs. A savant is easily convinced that the end of life is the search after the truth. In his eyes, the universe must exist only in order that men of science may discover its laws and its secrets. For artists, on the other hand, the world has been created to enable them to adorn it with pictures, statues, or buildings. For the soldier war is the end of existence, while the merchant sees in commerce the beneficent force which makes the world go round. And so on. All these theories seem sober fact to those who formulate them; unfortunately the others, those who belong to a different class or profession, reject them as absurd and ridiculous errors.

How are the various views to be reconciled? A certain number of philosophers have tried to raise themselvesabove these too narrow or too biassed points of view, and to find solutions of general value. Many have been proposed; now is not the time to discuss the principal ones. So I will confine myself to expounding to you that one of these theories which seems to me the simplest, the most ingenious, and the most useful for the resolution of the problem which we have set ourselves in connection with sport. It is the theory of the limits. All human activities ought to be reciprocal limits.

Take art and morality for instance: What relation ought they to bear to each other? The question has been discussed with ardour. Artists, and many of their friends, have tried to postulate a violent schism between the two, proclaiming that art has the right to search for beauty wherever she can find it, without bothering herself about morality. Super-moralists, on the contrary, have tried to make art the slave of morality, asserting that the former ought to be always ready to obey its orders and to sacrifice herself to its demands. But would it not be more reasonable and more human to say that art and morality are reciprocal limits? Morality is one of art’s limits; without wishing to make her its slave, it can and must prevent her from seeking beauty in certain subjects and certain incidents which would be dangerous to morals or to the pure-mindedness of the public. The forms of beauty are so numerous. Why should not art refrain for moral reasons from seeking for some of them? But art on her sideis a limit of morality; she is in no way anxious to dominate it, but she can and must prevent morality from going astray in its search for perfection. Those who are familiar with history know that a spice of artistic taste has always been the best remedy for the most dangerous or the most repugnant excesses of asceticism.

Let us take another example. A question which has much exercised men’s minds is whether art and science ought to set before themselves practical ends, or whether they are in themselves ends. There are people who would like to subordinate the rest of the world to art and to science. This entails requiring of art and science that they should seek beauty and truth without having in view any utilitarian end, without troubling themselves to ask whether they are useful or hurtful to man. Others again propose to subordinate art and science to the rest of the world, asserting that every art and every science which does not serve practical ends is a waste of time and trouble. Here, too, it seems to me that it would be more human to say that science and art seek truth and beauty, not utility. Utility, then, is not the end of art and of science; but it is one of their limits. The truths which the human mind can discover, like the forms of beauty which it can create, are infinite.

Is it strange, then, that man, unable to discover all the truths or to create all the forms of beauty, should choose for preference those which, in addition to conferringintellectual or æsthetic pleasure, help him to live? Can anyone see anything absurd in this? If a man set to work to build edifices with the sole object of pleasing the eye through harmonious lines, he could build them as fancy prompted him; there would be no limit either to the variety of forms or to the number of different constructions. Will anybody be found to maintain that art has the right to fill the world with beautiful edifices which are of no use for anything? No, practical considerations have their claim. Even the epochs in which architecture flourished most bravely built edifices which, while beautiful to look at, served also definite ends; and nobody has ever protested against the limitations which this practical consideration imposed.

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Similarly sport must, in my opinion, be considered as a limit; the limit necessary to the excesses of an intellectual and sedentary civilisation, which exposes the nervous system to formidable trials. M. de Coubertin has analysed this aspect of modern life so well in hisEssais de psychologie sportive, that I beg leave to quote one of the numerous fine passages from that book:

La vie moderne n’est plus ni locale ni spéciale; tout y influe sur tout. D’une part la rapidité et la multiplicité des transports ont fait de l’homme un être essentiellement mobile, pour le quel les distances sont de plus en plus insignifiantes à franchir et sollicitent, par conséquent, de fréquents changements de lieu; d’autre part l’égalisation des points de départ et la possibilité d’élévations rapides vers le pouvoiret la fortune ont excité les appétits et les ambitions des masses à un point inconnu jusqu’ ici.... Ce double élément a transformé de façon fondamentale l’effort humain. L’effort d’autre-fois était régulier et constant; une certaine sécurité résultant de la stabilité sociale, le protégeait. Surtout, il n’était pas cérébral a un degré excessif. Celui d’aujourd’hui est tout autre. L’inquiétude et l’espérance l’environnent avec une intensité particulière. C’est que l’échec et la réussite ont dé nos jours des conséquences énormes. L’homme peut à la fois tout craindre et tout espérer. De cet état de chose est née une agitation que les transformations de la vie extérieure encouragent et accroissent. Au dedans et au dehors le cerveau est entretenu dans une sorte d’ébullition incessante. Les points de vue, les aspects des choses, les combinaisons, les possibilités, tant pour les individus que pour les collectivités, se succèdent si rapidement qu’il faut pour en tenir compte et les utilises au besoin se tenir toujours en éveil et comme en une mobilisation permanente.

This picture of modern life is perfect. Never has man lived in such a state of permanent and growing excitement. If the men of the ancient world could come to life again, their first impression, you may be sure, would be that mankind had gone mad. It is this excitement which has produced the formidable explosion of energy that we are witnessing on our little planet, which for ages had lived in comparative tranquillity. But has not this formidable tension of the world-soul itself need of limits? Can we conceive its being allowed to increase indefinitely until the time when the nervous system breaks down as inevitably it must? Can we conceive our perpetual agitation being left without anylimit save exhaustion, insanity, or death? The question answers itself. The limits to the over-excitement of our nerves raise one of the most serious problems of our epoch; a problem with a thousand different aspects, which involves morals as well as hygiene, politics as well as the intellectual life. Now sport may be one of these limits, if it be practised—again I borrow from M. de Coubertin—with calmness, “s’il devient cet empire du Matin Calme d’où les deux vampires de notre civilisation—la hâte et la foule—sont chassés”; if it be made, not one more in the long list of causes of excitement and exhaustion, but a health-giving diversion, a beneficent force capable of spraying the nerves with that divine ambrosia, now so rare and so precious—healthy sleep and peace of mind. No one who is convinced of the supreme necessity for limits can doubt that this conception of sport is the truest, worthiest, and most beneficial; indeed, the only one that is in its turn susceptible of a limit and runs no risk of losing itself in excesses,—those excesses of sport, in its quality of spectacle for the masses, whose brutalising and corrupt effects are notorious.

A balancing force, a counterpoise to the intellectual excesses of a sedentary, nervous civilisation which is agitated by a perpetual excitement, that is what sport ought to be. I hasten to add that I cannot claim the credit for this definition, not that it is in itself a very striking discovery. An opponent might even say that it is almost a platitude; a special application of thatprinciple which is as old as the hills, and which the Greeks expressed in their formula, μηδὲν ἅγαν, nothing in excess. Granted; but it is sometimes a good thing to repeat platitudes, for human wisdom is not an inexhaustible mine of ever-new principles and ideas. Its treasure-house is stored with platitudes, which have only become such because man is always requiring their repetition. Besides, when questions touching moral and social life are under discussion, the intellectual point of view is not by any means the most important. Those principles of wisdom which seem the easiest and simplest to announce are not those which are always the simplest in practice, and the easiest to carry into execution. μηδὲν ἅγαν—nothing in excess—has been to men the cry of wisdom since the beginning of time. Is it not the clearest and the simplest of principles? Need one be a profound philosopher to understand that moderation in the use of everything, even of good things, is necessary? This truth is indeed one which the simplest mind is capable of understanding. Yet life is but an eternal struggle against excesses of all sorts, to which man is continually tempted to give way. Why? Because though the precept be clear and evident, to apply it man has to struggle with his passions, with his own interests, and those of others, and with the illusions and errors that assail him on all sides. Consequently, he must be under no illusion.

You are at one in a conception of sport which is the noblest and wisest possible, because it regards sportas a balancing force between the diverse elements of social life. You band together and join forces in order to popularise this conception. It is a useful and a wise task; but it will expose you to wearisome struggles, and you must be prepared for many a bitter disappointment. In every epoch, those who have wished to introduce equilibrium into life have had to struggle against this mysterious force which drives men into every excess. But in no epoch and in no civilisation perhaps has this struggle been so difficult and wearisome as it is in contemporary civilisation. It is a phenomenon which few people nowadays take clearly and precisely into account; but which is, nevertheless, the keystone of the greatest difficulties by which our civilisation is beset. Yes, there is no doubt about it, we are living at an extraordinary crisis in history. Man has never been so powerful, so wise, so rich, so sure of himself and of his future. He has dared to lift his eyes and gaze steadily at the sombre mystery of things, before which he had for so many centuries bowed his head in trembling. He has conquered the world and torn from it its most recondite treasures. He has cast aside all the supports which sustained our ancestors in their toilsome march through life—traditions, religions, beliefs, all the principles of unquestioning obedience. He had succeeded to a certain degree in conquering space and time. All the civilisations which preceded the French Revolution seem, if we compare them with ours, small, limited, timid, poor, and inadequate.

Yet modern man does not seem to have any very distinct and sure consciousness of his actual greatness. He may be elated by an occasional fit of glowing pride, but as often as not he is discontented. He grumbles; he sincerely deplores the vices and imperfections of his day. A broad and deep current of pessimism flows through the fabulous wealth and the wonders of our times. Why? Because our civilisation is by the very nature of its constitution unable to thrive save on excesses; and it can thrive only on excesses because it has acquired so much power by overturning nearly all the limits within which previous civilisations had confined themselves.

How marvellous an epic, but how disquieting in its novelty and its grandeur, is this gradual awakening of human daring and pride, of which the history of the last four centuries is full! For its first appearance dates back to the great geographical discoveries of the fifteenth century, and to that which was the greatest of all those discoveries—America.

A few years later saw the astronomic revolution. Ancient thought, after long deliberation, had decided to enclose the universe in a confined system, with established limits. Copernicus took no notice of these limits, and launched out in thought into the infinite. The impression produced on the men of the sixteenth century by these two great events was profound. The bold spirits who had dared to cross the two limits considered insuperable on earth and in the sky had come back with a rich booty of land and stars.

Was the world then greater and man more powerful than the ancients had thought, and had the ancients been wrong in seeking to limit the efforts of human genius so strictly? Gradually, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the effort of the human spirit to free itself from the ancient limits continued, increased, and became bolder and more methodical. Subtle and ingenious philosophies delivered masked but clear attacks on the limits which marked the bounds of Good and Evil, Truth and Error; on tradition, on century-old institutions, on authority in all its forms. They pretended to wish to ascertain whether the limits were solidly planted in the right place; but in reality they undermined their foundations. Little by little an idea crept into men’s minds, an idea which was the negation of all the limits within which the world had lived until then; an idea which was bound to upset the conception of social and moral life; the idea of liberty, applied to religion, culture, and politics. At the same time, by means of science and fire, man sought very timidly, if not to free himself from, at least to enlarge, the limits which nature seemed to have set to his forces. The strata of coal began to be discovered and exploited. Men set themselves to invent machines more complicated and more rapid than those of which their fathers made use; the steam-engine, the fountainhead of all the formidable agitation which has invaded the world, made its appearance; the great era of iron and of fire began. And lo! finally aformidable cataclysm, of which man had never seen the like in a few years, upset traditions, and wrought havoc amongst states, institutions, and old-established laws. To the strains of theMarseillaise, on the ruins of the Bastile, on the fields of Marengo and Austerlitz, the work sketched out by Columbus and Copernicus, continued by Galileo, Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Kant, was completed. Man arose, tore up, and overturned all the ancient limits and planted the new ones with his own hands, at his own good pleasure, not only for himself but also for the authorities of Heaven and earth, who had until then imposed their limits upon him.

Then began the extraordinary drama of which we are the spectators. Rich, wise, and free, armed with fire and science, mistress of a large part of the earth and, in particular, of a continent so vast and rich as America, irked no longer by any limit, not by extent nor by weight nor by matter and its laws which it has conquered, thanks to discoveries and to machines, nor by God, whom it has banished to the infinite, itself usurping His earthly throne, our civilisation expanded in every direction, as it were, carried away by the intoxication of the unlimited. Man rose erect like a giant, to face nature and the past; and like a giant whom none can resist he swept on and conquered the world.

Like a giant, indeed, but like a giant who totters at every step. This civilisation of ours has become so powerful because it has overturned all the limits; butjust because it has overturned nearly all the limits, it has become increasingly difficult for it to limit itself in the good as well as in the bad; I mean to say, that the bad tends to become worse, and the good to become bad. If the strength of the forces of creation and initiative is in our epoch greater than ever it was in any previous epoch, the same may be said of the weakness of the forces of equilibrium, whose function it is to check the most dangerous exaggerations and excesses. What an interesting comparison might be made between the present and the past from this point of view; and how many instances could be cited in proof of this assertion! I shall instance just one, a simple and homely, but clear, one. Once delivered from all the bonds which limited his efforts of yore, man has succeeded in the last century in creating an abundance of material goods such as the world had never thought possible even when it dreamed of the Terrestrial Paradise, the Golden Age, and the Garden of the Hesperides; all of them myths in which man had been pleased, during centuries of the life of struggle, to objectify his most ardent desires. It is all very well for men of the present day to complain that life is difficult and full of struggles. Those who know the difficulties which beset preceding centuries will feel a strong temptation to laugh at their complaints. The modern world has contrived abundance in everything; in the necessities of life, such as bread, and in things which become very dangerous when they are over-abundant, like alcoholic drinks,tobacco, and all stimulants. Many are the reproaches hurled against our epoch on the score of the increase in alcoholism; many are the remedies devised for this evil. But would not the only and the simplest remedy be that adopted by our ancestors, the limitation of the production of liquors? The masses would no longer be able to poison themselves when the quantity of these liquors was scarcely sufficient—as it used to be—for the requirements of a moderate consumption. The world, on the contrary, will continue to get gloriously drunk, so long as the production of wine, beer, and spirits increases. Now why is it that this, the only efficacious remedy, is just the one which our epoch cannot bring itself to apply? Why do we see everywhere governments taking measures of more or less efficacy against alcoholism and at the same time contributing, directly or indirectly, to the increase in the production of alcoholic drinks?

The reason is, that nothing is more difficult for our civilisation than to impose a limit on anything. Its impetus carries it too far in everything. It is almost a law of its constitution. We have, to a great extent, lost the sense of just measure, because we have weakened or destroyed nearly all the authorities and moral forces which used to make the limits respected. Our greatness and our power are partly due to disequilibrium; and often enough we are called on to pay the tragic penalty for this at the moment when we least expect the call.

This is, however, a long digression, and you may with reason ask me to return to the matter which interests us. I have not lost sight of it; for this digression has a very close connection with our subject.

This epoch which misuses everything, misuses and will misuse sport. It will make it—it has already begun to make it—one more of the elements of excitement, of competition, and of exhaustion, already alas! only too numerous. No illusions are possible on this score. It might even be said that sport is one of the things of which our epoch will probably make the greatest misuse. History justifies us in this fear, for it proves to us that even those civilisations, like the Greek and Roman, which succeeded in limiting themselves in everything else, misused games. Is it likely that our civilisation, which misuses toilsome activities like work, will easily preserve a just measure in amusements? Besides, you have only to look round you to see interests forming groups, coalitions, and organisations for the purpose of exploiting, in this field also, the morbid need for excitement which has taken hold of the masses; their desire for amusements and distractions and even their incorrigible weakness for games of chance. Those, then, who wish to purge sport of its elements of haste and crowd, to transform it—I borrow once more M. de Coubertin’s happy phrase—into the “Empire du Matin Calme,” will have a singularly difficult task before them. If, however, the task is difficult, it is for that all the nobler. Themodern world has need, great and urgent need, of balance, measure, and harmony, if it is not to run the risk of being stifled by the excess of its energy. Do not let yourselves be deceived by its assurance, its pride, the blind confidence in its powers which it affects, the haughty challenge it so often throws to the humble wisdom of past generations. We are richer, wiser, more powerful than were our grandfathers. But because we have discovered America and invented railways we have not become demi-gods; we are still only men. All the weaknesses of human nature which the moralists of olden times discovered and analysed so subtly still subsist in us, and still distract us; we must pay nature, the great equaliser, the price for the advantages secured to us by the sum of the work of preceding generations; and many are the forms in which that payment is made. Nervous illnesses, insanity, and suicides are on the increase. Sterility is spreading, especially in the peoples and countries that have been most highly favoured by the development of modern civilisation.

A discontent as deep as it is unreasonable seems to pervade the world, with each improvement in the conditions of every class. One might say that man has become insatiable. The more blessings are heaped upon him, the more he complains. The more he possesses, the more he thinks himself poor and needy. The fewer are the causes for grief and the dangers around him, the more wretched he feels. These apparent paradoxes, these inexplicable contradictionsare only the warnings life utters to remind men of the μηδὲν ἅγαν of ancient wisdom. The modern world suffers from the excesses to which it abandons itself, even if it will not acknowledge this fact. Those who try to recall the modern world to a more harmonious ideal of life do it a service whose usefulness is most strikingly proved by the attitude of resentment it assumes towards their efforts.

Ladies and Gentlemen: I feel somewhat ashamed that my contribution to your work must be merely these few general considerations. Dissertations on the ends to be aimed at are easy enough to concoct, but the task is apt to be a theoretical one of little enough utility. The important thing in all the great social problems is the means of attaining those ends. That is the point upon which all our efforts, all our intelligence, all our wills, must converge. I cannot be of any use to you in that, by reason of my incompetence. I can only attend this congress as an onlooker anxious to learn, come not to purvey information but to convey it away. I must then confine myself at the conclusion of my speech to wishing your task and your labours all the success which your energy, your enthusiasm, and your faith deserve. But this wish of mine, though sterile in itself, owing to my inability to take an active part in your work, is none the less cordial. By birth, by natural tendencies, and by education, I belong to a culture which has always tended to harmony, moderation,and equilibrium. I have passed a portion of my life in studying the ancient civilisations which created so many beautiful and profound things because they succeeded in limiting themselves. I have visited and studied also those vast new civilisations on the other side of the Atlantic, which seem to be aiming at the realisation of the perfect type of the unlimited civilisation.

It is not possible to have been born in Italy, to have studied ancient civilisations, and to have examined at first hand the tendencies of modern civilisation in Europe and America, without being convinced that our epoch is allowing itself to be seduced by too material and gross a conception of progress. Progress cannot be merely the accumulation of wealth, accelerated by the inventions and great discoveries of science, nor the hurried transformation of everything, the perpetual change which is the mania of our epoch. There is, there must be, another conception, more lofty than this conception of progress; a conception of progress as the accumulated effort of generations. Is it not true that each generation creates forms of beauty, and discovers new truths and virtues? Can we not say that generations really do show progress, if they succeed in preserving the creations of preceding epochs, and in erecting on them as a basis more complex and elevated creations of their own?

Often and often, reflecting on the differences between the ancient world and our epoch, have I said to myselfthat the history of the world would be able to chronicle a great step forward on the day that we succeeded in uniting in modern sport the æsthetic sense of the Greeks, the modesty and decency for which Christianity is responsible, and the democratic, practical, and active spirit of our epoch. Is that simply the dream of an ignoramus who does not know what is possible and what is not? You may say so. But if your congress can bring our civilisation any nearer to this ideal, it will have done something for real progress, a work which will merit the approbation of all those who wish to see man’s every effort concentrated on the betterment of the spiritual life. I give you then, my good wishes for your success in your efforts in this direction; and I hope that you will not take my good wishes amiss, even though they come from a writer who is not competent to appraise at its true value the full worth of your noble efforts.

THE END

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