ports connotes a prevalence
of sharp practice and callous disregard of the interests of others,
individually and collectively. Resort to fraud, in any guise and under
any legitimation of law or custom, is an expression of a narrowly
self-regarding habit of mind. It is needless to dwell at any length on
the economic value of this feature of the sporting character.

In this connection it is to be noted that the most obvious
characteristic of the physiognomy affected by athletic and other
sporting men is that of an extreme astuteness. The gifts and exploits
of Ulysses are scarcely second to those of Achilles, either in their
substantial furtherance of the game or in the eclat which they give the
astute sporting man among his associates. The pantomime of astuteness
is commonly the first step in that assimilation to the professional
sporting man which a youth undergoes after matriculation in any
reputable school, of the secondary or the higher education, as the case
may be. And the physiognomy of astuteness, as a decorative feature,
never ceases to receive the thoughtful attention of men whose serious
interest lies in athletic games, races, or other contests of a similar
emulative nature. As a further indication of their spiritual kinship,
it may be pointed out that the members of the lower delinquent class
usually show this physiognomy of astuteness in a marked degree, and that
they very commonly show the same histrionic exaggeration of it that is
often seen in the young candidate for athletic honors. This, by the
way, is the most legible mark of what is vulgarly called "toughness" in
youthful aspirants for a bad name.

The astute man, it may be remarked, is of no economic value to the
community--unless it be for the purpose of sharp practice in dealings
with other communities. His functioning is not a furtherance of the
generic life process. At its best, in its direct economic bearing, it is
a conversion of the economic substance of the collectivity to a growth
alien to the collective life process--very much after the analogy of
what in medicine would be called a benign tumor, with some tendency to
transgress the uncertain line that divides the benign from the malign
growths. The two barbarian traits, ferocity and astuteness, go to make
up the predaceous temper or spiritual attitude. They are the expressions
of a narrowly self-regarding habit of mind. Both are highly serviceable
for individual expediency in a life looking