But why bother about such matters? We cannot all, dear brother sports, become members of the firm of Brickley and Company. There is no use in trying. Besides, satisfaction for disappointment is ready at hand. As is common in human affairs, when we cannot do a thing literally, we may always turn to a metaphor. The turn has this advantage: whereas actual kicking is the prerogative of a few favored mortals, its practice, under the metaphor, may become the pastime of any person, however humble. For this use of the word there is the highest possible authority: the heavenly vision that appeared to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, was accompanied by a voice which said, “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” It is interesting to note, by the way, that these words were the only ones uttered in that famous conversation which bear any suggestion of rationality, and it is not unlikely that the great and able apostle, perceiving the hard-headed and common-sense quality of the advice, made haste to adopt a less futile pursuit than that of persecuting new movements.
Now this metaphor stands for an operation far more common than most of us are usually aware. Figuratively, we are all kickers, at least nearly all of us, in one way or another, at one time or another, for one cause or another. Illustrations are as common as football associations or earth worms. Thus that oracular Englishman, Mr. G. K. Chesterton, has all Victorian literature the outcome of various reactions against the “Victorian Compromise,” but, in less elegant phrase and from the point of view of the aforesaid “V. C.,” all Victorian literature might be said to have arisen from the Stossenslust, or desire to kick. And, whereas that desire, literally considered, is surging in the breast of every manly young American at this very moment,—the metaphorical function may be administered by young and old, male and female, alike. An extra strong cup of coffee, too many buckwheat cakes, too prolonged indulgence in prayer-meetings, will often do the trick, without those long years of patient practice which make certain of our football heroes distinguished above their kind.
Personally I like the easy way, and therefore I may, at the outset, and with all due modesty, lay a not-to-be-denied claim to some share in the function that I am describing. I admire the motives, and occasionally the works, of my colleagues in the noble art which we profess, the art of setting the world, the whole world, or the particular world, right,—perhaps of setting some parts of the world by the ears, who knows? I greatly admire such periodicals as are instruments and vehicles for the “registering of kicks” that will take the offender and the offence squarely and forcibly and leave the remains to be carted away by the scavengers of reform. I enjoy nothing more than a blithe, personally conducted “muck-rake”; I hope sometime to offer a Nobel kicking prize. Whatever makes against the crudeness, the carelessness, the complacency especially, and the contentment with mediocrity that so pervade some of the aspects of our modern civilization charms me. Doubtless we in America are eaten up with the heir-to-all-the-ages, we-can-do-as-we-like, America-for-the-Americans sort of feeling and sentiment. Though Mr. Wells is probably right in saying that “the United States of America remains the greatest country in the world, and the living hope of mankind,” yet anything that checks our bumptiousness is surely a good thing. But I do not halt here; far be it from me to delight solely in the advantages of my own land. I love to read about Ministerial and Opposition struggles, and the Austrian parliament and the French strikes are very merry spectacles. Kicking is really the most sacred tradition handed down to us from our puritan ancestors, themselves most accomplished in the art. Why should not one love it? But I dislike clumsy workers. As Matthew Arnold might have said, we want real kicking, real criticism, real objection. The vital question is as to the nature of good kicking and of bad kicking. What are the “pricks” to be shunned? for, as we have said, the advice of the heavenly voice would, in general, seem to be as sound as the Elizabethan semi-slang is lively. Into the answer enter considerations of motive, of object, of method, and of technic. In the interests of sound thinking, I am going to register my own demurrer against certain abuses of the noble pastime.
First as to the motive. Generally speaking this is dissatisfaction with the status quo and a desire to alter it. Altering may evidently be about anything one pleases. Hence the motive for kicking may be anything from crude envy to lofty altruism; it may be a simple reaction, scarcely more noble than the electrically stimulated kick of the frog’s leg in the classical experiment, or it may be quite rational and untemperamental. It is obvious that the artist, the Stossenskunstmeister, should avail himself of the high motive; and no matter how much he may personally pine, should at least assume the altruistic virtue. Skilful mammas customarily observe this principle when they spank their children, saying, with greater reference to an ideal than an actual world, “This hurts me more than it hurts you,” or “I do this for your own good,” or other equally convincing remarks. In contrast with this amiable and ambi-flagellatory or bipenal practice, may be placed the character and instance of the unjust judge who frankly admitted boredom as his motive for action.
It would seem as if the present generation, in America, at least, besides losing the old fashioned virtues of tact and reticence, had also to some degree lost the artistic sense of the selection of the proper motive, and in so far have become unskilful kickers. Perhaps the growth of democracy has engendered obtuseness to the more delicate arts, but what could be cruder, for example, than the motives of many suffragettes, of many trade unions, of many socialists. It is crude raw envy: “You have something that I haven’t got; I want it or something just as good.” Intellectually and morally this position is about as far advanced as that of a group of infants, whose conception of play seems to be the snatching of those toys that are for the moment most desired by their companions. “What is the city doing for women to make up for the money that has been stolen from the treasury to found a man’s college?” cries one, and another exclaims: “What is it all worth so long as we haven’t the vote?”
“What are all these kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?”
says Shelley, and the child in proportion to his infancy will not be happy until he gets the star, the watch, the rattle, or the cake of soap.