How are the various views to be reconciled? A certain number of philosophers have tried to raise themselves above 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 side is 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 conferring intellectual 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.
* * * * *
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 his Essais 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 pouvoir et 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 any limit 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 that principle 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 sport as 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.