THE MIND AND THE BODY.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1 SIR,—I have read the article entitled " The Mind and the Body," in the Spectator of May 30,h, with some surprise, for the writer of it seems to have done the very thing which the writer of another article in the same number condemns; he has apparently adopted a " literary convention" without per. sonal knowledge. The literary convention in this case is that at the Universities athletics are placed above intellect. "All the higher ambition of the Universities," your contributor declares, " is ambition to succeed in amusements." " We may be sure that the kind of men who are now earning the greatest influence with middle class and public schoolboys are not the kind to awaken in them the highest intellectual faculties, the keenest sense of duty, or the thirst for know- ledge." Starting with this baseless literary convention the writer might well be excused for "looking with alarm on the steady decline of the higher intellectual interests." May I, as an Oxford man,—not claiming to know very much of Cambridge, but believing that what I shall say applies to Cambridge too,—point out the fundamental error in this position ? It is the assumption that there is a gulf between the athletic and the reading men. That may or may not have been true twenty or thirty years ago ; it is certainly not true now. The practice of reading for honours is increasing rather than diminishing, and the men who read for honours are drawn very largely from the athletic sets. It is the idlers, for the most part, who now take pass-schools ; the honour. lists are almost as full of "Blues" and representatives of college athletics as of professedly intellectual men. Of course, there are athletes who are too dull or too lazy to do well in the schools, but these are fewer now than when I came up, and they were fewer then than ten years previously. The average "Blue " of to-day may not take a First Class,— though I could mention several who have,—but he generally reads with considerable determination and acquires consider- able knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, his subject. Last year, for instance, four members of the athletic team, three of the cricket eleven, five of the Association eleven, two of the Rugby fifteen, and four of the 'varsity crew took classes in final honour schools. I should like to see " the elementary schools turning out men" capable of "looking down" either physi- cally or intellectually on such sound minds and bodies as these
I would also quote the example of my own college, which was head of the river not so very long ago, and is rather above the average, we flatter ourselves, in athletics. A year or two since the captains of the four chief athletic clubs of the college were all scholars. Of these one was constitution. ally delicate and unable to do himself justice in either work or play. The second, who gained an international cap at
football, was laz:, like many clever men, and only took a Third in honour Mods., though his "compositions " were said to have been the best of his year. The third only just missed his First in Mods. and took a very good Second in Greats, besides playing frequently for the 'varsity Association, team and getting his lawn tennis "Blue." The fourth, who was captain of both the college rowing and Rugby clubs, took a brilliant First in Mods., a sound Second in Greats, and a high place in the I.C.S. Yet all these men had the keenest interest in intellectual matters, and with the encouragement of one of the newer dons (himself enthusiastic for games) founded a College Dialectical Society which regularly discusses all topics, from fine questions of morality to broad questions of metaphysics.
Finally, let me instance the attitude of the Union. Though that Society represents " the average man," the "Blue " is by no means so much its hero as on your contributor's assump- tion he should be. Indeed we should have to look back many years to find one in office, while of the last seven presidents, five have taken Firsts. This again hardly looks as if "all the higher ambition of the Universities is to succeed in amuse- ments." The fact is that the writer of the article has neglected to take into account the changed oonception of education. He talks of "such questions as nominalism and realism, or idealism and materialism, or necessity and free- will," and laments that they are no longer studied. In this he is mistaken. The history of these endless discussions is still studied, and if any of the subjects themselves have ceased to excite much interest, it is because they have at last been recog- nised as vain and unprofitable questions. To-day social and political questions (which require at least as much study) have taken their place, and have proved their right to do so by re- viving the drooping interest of the young men of the present The dividing line at the University nowadays is not between the athlete and the reading man, for the former reads while he runs or rows, and the latter runs or rows while he reads (and, being English, they both try to excel in both), but primarily between the idle man (who " despises " athletics no less than reading) and the strenuous man; and, to sub- divide this latter class, it lies secondarily between the strenuous and scholarly man-of-affairs and the strenuous scholar pure and simple. You can of course say that a University is meant for the latter and not for the former of this sub-species. But the history of English Universities has been one long protest against this idea.—I am, Sir, &c., W. K. S. [It is probable that we overstated the case ; but we are quite sure that even granting that the intellectual interests of the average athlete have considerably improved, the in- tellectual standard of the best set of reading men in either University does not approach the standard of forty or fifty years ago.—En. Spectator.]
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