THE ORIGIN OF PROVINCIALISM 289 



eviscerate the largest number of their fellow- 

 beings in a given time. 



Games and other performances in which interest 

 is aroused by contending or killing are all of them 

 entertainments gotten up primarily for the amuse- 

 ment of the under-exercised savage within us. 

 The bloody carnivals of the ancient Romans, 

 which seem so incomprehensible to the people of 

 to-day, find their diabolical parallels right here in 

 our high-sniffing civilisation. The bull-pen, where 

 poor quadrupeds are baited by gorgeous assassins 

 for the amusement of Castilian communities, and 

 the cockpit and the prize-ring, where irate fowls 

 and naked thugs peck and pound each other to 

 insensibility for the entertainment of blood-loving 

 mobs, are the legitimate succcessors of the gladia- 

 torial arena of the Romans. The gladiatorial 

 horror is not changed, either in its nature or 

 functions, by changing the combatants to cocks 

 and bulls. The ringside roars that rise to-day 

 beside the Tagus and the Hudson over the fatal 

 thrust of the matador or the knockout lunge of 

 the pugilist are howls of barbaric elation arising 

 from the satisfaction of the same instincts as those 

 which seventeen centuries ago made amphitheatres 

 thunder at the spectacle of gutted Gauls. The 

 ability to enjoy strife and suffering in one form is 

 not different in kind from the ability to be enter- 

 tained by strife and suffering in any other form. 

 Beings who can follow in riotous glee the terrified 

 form of a fleeing stag, or shout ecstatically at 

 sight of the death-stagger of a mangled ox, are 



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