If that was not a manifestation of pure idealism, then is human conduct void of symbolism, and our public squares are cumbered in vain with monuments erected in commemoration of human deeds. But we read men's souls in their actions, and we know that they who flock to the schools are the spiritual kindred of those who founded them; they who cherish a book are passing along the torch kindled by him who wrote it. They pay the highest tribute to an inventor who show the most eagerness to adopt his invention. The great New England invention of compulsory education is more eagerly appropriated by the majority of our immigrants than by native Americans of the corresponding level. That is what the school-teachers say, and I suppose they know. They also say,--they and all public educators in chorus,--that while one foreign nationality excels in the love of letters, another excels in the love of music, and a third in the love of science; and all of them together constitute an army whose feet keep time with the noble rhythms of culture.
Let a New Yorker on Friday night watch the crowd pushing out of a concert hall after one of Ysaye's recitals, and on Saturday afternoon let him take the subway uptown, and get out where the crowd gets out, and buy a ticket for the baseball game. If he can keep cool enough for a little study, let him compare the distorted faces in the bleachers with the shining faces of the crowd of the night before; and let him say which crowd responded to the nobler inspiration, and then let him declare in which group the foreigners outnumbered the Americans.
The American devotion to sport is no reproach to the descendants of the Puritans, since it can be demonstrated from various angles that the baseball diamond may supplement the schoolroom and the pulpit in the training of American citizens. Indeed, it is not difficult to accept that interpretation of the national sport which reduces a good game of baseball to an epitome of all that is best in the lives of the best Americans. At the same time we need to remember that the love of art is more generally accepted as a mark of grace than the love of sport. Thus, when we speak of the glory of old Athens we have in mind not the Olympian games, noble as they were, but the poets and sculptors and philosophers who uttered her thoughts. The original of the Discobolus must have been a winner,--I can imagine Athenian mothers lifting up their beautiful bare babies to see the hero over the heads of the throng,--but who can tell me his name to-day? Meanwhile the name of Myron has been guarded as a talisman of civilization.