Note 29 — SPORTSMEN’S FALLACIES
Reading edition
This humane aspect of sport may be aptly illustrated by a passage in De Quincey’s essay on “Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts”:
“The subject chosen ought to be in good health, for it is absolutely barbarous to murder a sick person, who is usually quite unable to bear it. And here, in this benign attention to the comfort of sick people, you will observe the usual effect of a fine art to soften and refine the feelings. From our art, as from all the other liberal arts, when thoroughly mastered, the result is to humanise the heart.”