d blame follows upon this. The
amount of card playing among men--and the amount of money lost and won,
does not produce an equivalent comment.

Quite aside from this one field of dissipation, look at the share of
life, of time, of strength, of money, given by men to their wide range
of recreation. The primitive satisfaction of hunting and fishing
they maintain at enormous expense. This is the indulgence of a most
rudimentary impulse; pre-social and largely pre-human, of no service
save as it affects bodily health, and of a most deterring influence
on real human development. Where hunting and fishing is of real human
service, done as a means of livelihood, it is looked down upon like any
other industry; it is no longer "sport."

The human being kills to eat, or to sell and eat from the returns; he
kills for the creature's hide or tusks, for use of some sort; or to
protect his crops from vermin, his flocks from depredation; but the
sportsman kills for the gratification of a primeval instinct, and under
rules of an arbitrary cult. "Game" creatures are his prey; bird, beast
or fish that is hard to catch, that requires some skill to slay; that
will give him not mere meat and bones, but "the pleasure of the chase."

The pleasure of the chase is a very real one. It is exemplified, in
its broad sense in children's play. The running and catching games, the
hiding and finding games, are always attractive to our infancy, as
they are to that of cubs and kittens. But the long continuance of this
indulgence among mature civilized beings is due to their masculinity.
That group of associated sex instincts, which in the woman prompts to
the patient service and fierce defence of the little child, in the man
has its deepest root in seeking, pursuing and catching. To hunt is more
than a means of obtaining food, in his long ancestry; it is to follow at
any cost, to seek through all difficulties, to struggle for and secure
the central prize of his being--a mate.

His "protective instincts" are far later and more superficial. To
support and care for his wife, his children, is a recent habit, in plain
sight historically; but "the pleasure of the chase" is older than that.
We should remember that associate habits and impulses last for ages upon
ages in living forms; as in the tree climbing instincts of our earliest
years, of Simian origin; and the love of water, which dates back through
unmeasured time. Where for millions of years the strong