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THE REGULATION OF ATHLETIC SPORTS IN. COLLEGES. 63% 
instinct,” made gymnastic games a part of his system, thus bringing the 
most constant and prominent characteristic of the child’s nature strongly 
to bear on his education and development. 
Hap-hazard as their regulation is, athletic sports have had a powerful 
mnfluence in molding the lives of men. Wellington’s historical remark : 
“All the victories of my life were fought years before on the football 
elds in England,” is as true to-day as it was then. 
Our modern college education is sometimes a process of over-refine- 
ment ; the intellectual is so emphasized that men are made unfit for the 
rough-and-tumble fight of life by their lack of physical courage. The 
struggle is distasteful to them. “The need of the pre-scientific age was 
knowledge and refinement ; the need of our age is health and sanity, cool 
heads and good digestion.” On the campus a man is disciplined in quick 
decision and prompt action, and learns resolute pluck when opposing 
forces are greater than his own. The timid boy, needing such discipline 
most, gets it least. 
Let us be glad, with Wadsworth, that ¢“ the spirit of athletics is abroad 
among our young men, enlarging muscles, broadening shoulders, and 
deepening chests. The result will be a fine race, and that paragon of 
animals, the noblest result of the ages, a strong man.” 
The Greeks as a nation cultivated athletic sports with a passionate 
enthusiasm. Their games were warlike, as became their social conditions 
and environment, but even they distinguished educational from military or 
athletic gymnastics. The modern city does not, for walls, need the bodies 
of her young men as did Sparta, but in the nineteenth century, when life 
is a keener struggle than ever for existence, the man with the most physi- 
cal stamina will produce the most work and the best, other things being 
equal, just as surely as the disciplined soldier of Rome proved himself 
superior to the untrained barbarian in the hand-to-hand conflicts of his 
lay. 
As the hypertrophy of any muscle or set of muscles is produced at the 
expense of the whole body corporate, so the undue prominence of this 
teature of college life may become an abuse, and seriously interfere with 
che work of the classroom. 
Those who see little if any value in athletic games say that time so 
spent is not only wasted but is stolen from the useful and legitimate col- 
tege studies. This objection, which is heard usually from the teaching 
staff, certainly has foundation when a large amount of class-work has to 
oe done in a short term. ‘Why not settle this disagreement in the manner 
proposed by the little boy about to be spanked by his mother: * Don’t 
strike; let’s arbitrate ” ? 
From the standpoint of hygiene, Professor Mosso, of the University of 
Turin, backed by able medical authorities, including the Lancet, proves 
that mere strength of limb tends to weaken and impoverish the body ;