he feels and
sometimes dreads and endeavors to evade, the sporting man's views are
also less specific, less integrated and differentiated. The basis of his
gambling activity is, in great measure, simply an instinctive sense
of the presence of a pervasive extraphysical and arbitrary force or
propensity in things or situations, which is scarcely recognized as a
personal agent. The betting man is not infrequently both a believer
in luck, in this naive sense, and at the same time a pretty staunch
adherent of some form of accepted creed. He is especially prone to
accept so much of the creed as concerts the inscrutable power and the
arbitrary habits of the divinity which has won his confidence. In such a
case he is possessed of two, or sometimes more than two, distinguishable
phases of animism. Indeed, the complete series of successive phases of
animistic belief is to be found unbroken in the spiritual furniture
of any sporting community. Such a chain of animistic conceptions will
comprise the most elementary form of an instinctive sense of luck and
chance and fortuitous necessity at one end of the series, together with
the perfectly developed anthropomorphic divinity at the other end, with
all intervening stages of integration. Coupled with these beliefs in
preternatural agency goes an instinctive shaping of conduct to conform
with the surmised requirements of the lucky chance on the one hand,
and a more or less devout submission to the inscrutable decrees of the
divinity on the other hand.

There is a relationship in this respect between the sporting temperament
and the temperament of the delinquent classes; and the two are related
to the temperament which inclines to an anthropomorphic cult. Both
the delinquent and the sporting man are on the average more apt to be
adherents of some accredited creed, and are also rather more inclined
to devout observances, than the general average of the community. It is
also noticeable that unbelieving members of these classes show more of
a proclivity to become proselytes to some accredited faith than the
average of unbelievers. This fact of observation is avowed by the
spokesmen of sports, especially in apologizing for the more naively
predatory athletic sports. Indeed, it is somewhat insistently claimed as
a meritorious feature of sporting life that the habitual participants in
athletic games are in some degree peculiarly given to devout practices.
And it is observable that the cult to