Henry Baird Favill, AB, MD, LL.D., 1860-1916, a ... - University Library

200 HENRY BAIRD FAVILL
Whatever may be the fate of the horse industry, I cite
this to illustrate, first, the effect upon a great industry of
an intercurrent idea, and second, the difficulty of substituting
for a primary and so to speak human impulse an
academic design.
When the lust of preeminence, concentrating all energies
upon a winner, becomes so great as ruthlessly to
sacrifice the mass out of which the prodigy arises as a
specialized offshoot, the good of the process to the mass
disappears.
The analogy between this illustration and the subject
that I am discussing is restricted, but at a point definite.
Specialization, selection, and forcing, having as an end victorious
contest,
can react as a developmental influence to
the advantage of the mass of individuals only in so far as
it combines some effective stimulus and opportunity to the
more limited, and when it by chance creates conditions
that interrupt stimulus and restrict opportunity it becomes
increasingly a bar.
These are essentially the factors in the problem of American
athletics to-day, barring any opportunity to control
the product by breeding.
Let us take athletics as organized in our colleges as a
type.
Right at the outset I might as well meet my disputant,
who will deny that the end of athletic method in college is
to produce winners.
I can only affirm, and maintain by reference to common
observation. No one can fairly weigh the facts and
fail to reach that conclusion.
Irrespective of the moral obliquity, the intrigue and
chicanery that creep into the practical operations of the
machinery of winning contests, the thing itself in its narrowness
of specialization is an inhibitory influence upon
the conscious and intentional culture of the great mass of
students.