The other
assault is more intelligible. Our critics admit that we have a pleasure;
but assert that it is a puerile pleasure--that it leads to an irreverent
view of mountain beauty, and to oversight of that which should really
most impress a refined and noble mind. To this I shall only make such an
indirect reply as may result from a frank confession of my own regrets
at giving up the climbing business--perhaps for ever. I am sinking, so
to speak, from the butterfly to the caterpillar stage, and, if the
creeping thing is really the highest of the two, it will appear that
there is something in the substance of my lamentations unworthy of an
intellectual being. Let me try. By way of preface, however, I admit that
mountaineering, in my sense of the word, is a sport. It is a sport
which, like fishing or shooting, brings one into contact with the
sublimest aspects of nature; and, without setting their enjoyment before
one as an ultimate end or aim, helps one indirectly to absorb and be
penetrated by their influence. Still it is strictly a sport--as strictly
as cricket, or rowing, or knurr and spell--and I have no wish to place
it on a different footing.
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