托福写作高分范文：The Origin of Sports

英语自学网

　　When did sport begin? If sport is, in essence, play, the claim might be
made that sport is much older than humankind, for , as we all have observed, the
beasts play. Dogs and cats wrestle and play ball games. Fishes and birds dance.
The apes have simple, pleasurable games. Frolicking infants, school children
playing tag, and adult arm wrestlers are demonstrating strong, transgenerational
and transspecies bonds with the universe of animals - past, present, and future.
Young animals, particularly, tumble, chase, run wrestle, mock, imitate, and
laugh (or so it seems) to the point of delighted exhaustion. Their play, and
ours, appears to serve no other purpose than to give pleasure to the players,
and apparently, to remove us temporarily from the anguish of life in
earnest.
        　　Some philosophers have claimed that our playfulness is the most noble part
of our basic nature. In their generous conceptions, play harmlessly and
experimentally permits us to put our creative forces, fantasy, and imagination
into action. Play is release from the tedious battles against scarcity and
decline which are the incessant, and inevitable, tragedies of life. This is a
grand conception that excites and provokes. The holders of this view claim that
the origins of our highest accomplishments ---- liturgy, literature, and law
---- can be traced to a play impulse which, paradoxically, we see most purely
enjoyed by young beasts and children. Our sports, in this rather happy,
nonfatalistic view of human nature, are more splendid creations of the
nondatable, transspecies play impulse.