of the accessory motor parts and powers, and erethic diathesis that makes steady
and continued mental toil seem monotonous, dull, and boresome.
The propensity to codify sports, to standardize the weight and size of their
implements, and to reduce them to what Spencer calls regimentation, is a
outcrop of uniformitarianism that works against that individuation which is one
of the chief advantages of free play. This, to be sure, has developed old-
fashioned rounders to modern baseball, and this is well, but it is seen in the
elaborate Draconian laws, diplomacy, judicial and legislative procedures,
concerning "eligibility, transfer, and even sale of players." In some games
international conformity is gravely discussed. Even where there is no tyranny
and oppression, good form is steadily hampering nature and the free play of
personality. Togs and targets, balls and bats, rackets and oars are graded or
numbered, weighed, and measured, and every emergency is legislated on and
judged by an autocratic martinet, jealous of every prerogative and conscious of
his dignity. All this separates games from the majority and makes for specialism
and professionalism. Not only this, but men are coming to be sized up for
hereditary fitness in each point and for each sport. Runners, sprinters, and
jumpers,[18] we are told, on the basis of many careful measurements, must be
tall, with slender bodies, narrow but deep chests, longer legs than the average for
their height, the lower leg being especially long, with small calf, ankle, and feet,
small arms, narrow hips, with great power of thoracic inflation, and thighs of
small girth. Every player must be studied by trainers for ever finer individual
adjustments. His dosage of work must be kept well within the limits of his
vitality, and be carefully adjusted to his recuperative power. His personal
nascent periods must be noted, and initial embarrassment carefully weeded out.
The field of play is as wide as life and its varieties far outnumber those of
industries and occupations in the census. Plays and games differ in seasons, sex,
and age. McGhee[19] has shown on the basis of some 8,000 children, that
running plays are pretty constant for boys from six to seventeen, but that girls
are always far behind boys and run steadily less from eight to eighteen. In games
of choice, boys showed a slight rise at sixteen and seventeen, and girls a rapid
increase at eleven and a still more rapid one after sixteen. In games of imitation
girls excel and show a marked, as boys do a slight, pubescent fall. In those
games involving rivalry boys at first greatly excel girls, but are overtaken by the
latter in the eighteenth year, both showing marked pubescent increment. Girls
have the largest number of plays and specialise on a few less than boys, and
most of these plays are of the unorganized kinds. Johnson[20] selected from a far