If for a moment a practical application of the foregoing principles and kinds of kicking be made to contemporary American life, it is evident that we do not, on the whole, frown sufficiently at the varied assortment of specific objects at our feet. That is the charge often brought against us by observant foreigners. Whether in our eager individual pursuit of the main chance we neglect the details that lie along the way, or whether we do not like to interfere with what is not our own particular business, it is certain that we put up with abuses and impositions that would not be tolerated in other lands. Every country, to be sure, has its special crop of abuses, which are more apparent to the foreigner than to the native, and there can be no harm in the visitor’s indulging in the very common pastime of plucking them out if the act helps him to consider the beam in his own eye. Yet our attitude is seldom so correct as that of the old deacon who said, “When you see a fault in me, mend it in yourselves, brethren.” It is really much easier,—and quite as futile,—to rail at what we don’t like in other lands—the lack of hot bread and ice-water in England, of swift and slaughterous railways in Germany and France, of public control of beggars in Italy and Spain—than to set our own house in order. But kicking, like charity, should begin at home. It ought to be the duty of everybody at home to object, persistently and effectively, to the specific overcrowded street-car, the badly paved road, the encroaching door-step, the neglected yard, the malodorous cesspool, the irresponsible automobile, and the reckless railroad—especially if he have any personal part in the maintenance of similar abuses. If the tendency of these evils were rightly apprehended, if a part only of the effort that is expended, presumably, in objecting to generalized, foreign and futile subjects, were bestowed on specific and tangible details, if we would forego the emotional pleasure of the impersonal “muck-rake,” to assail the evil at our very feet,—especially if each one of us were careful to avoid offence in matters of the same kind—our country would surely be a much fairer one.
If we are to distinguish good kicking from bad the matter remains to be looked at from a somewhat different point of view, that of method and technic. The matter is important enough to run some risk of repetition. I am far from following a school of thinkers who seem to imply that when the method of a subject,—as of teaching, brick-laying, railroading, etc.,—is properly apprehended, the learner may ride gaily away on a successful career without reference to the facts of his business. Nor is method easy to define; all that I know is that it is very important. In addition to the inspiration and animus of a good, or at least a plausible, motive and to a judicious choice of object, good kicking should also be in the right direction. Let us see what is actually in vogue.
A common kind of kick might be called conservative. Under the loose figure of the “gridiron” we may imagine certain more spirited and adventurous souls who wish to propel the game toward a more or less distant and obscure goal; they have some idea of tendency. In their efforts they are constantly hampered, checked, and tripped by an equally numerous body of players, who desire to keep the game where it is, alleging that there is no fairer prospect than the fields that have already been played over, that every advance is sure to lead to the bog and the morass. Life has nothing better to offer than what it has already offered; their efforts are to keep the ball in the middle of the field; no score games are best. Now this conservative kick certainly has manifest advantages; it may be used, for example, with great effect against the common cry that we are better than anybody else, or against rash and hasty innovation. But in its extreme form it is peculiarly irritating. This extreme form may be called the reactionary kick, a favorite pastime in all the ages. Let me take an example that I happened to come across a day or two ago. In The School of Abuse, Stephen Gosson said among many other things of like reasonable tenor and sense of fact,—
“Consider with thy selfe (gentle reader) the olde discipline of Englande, mark what we were before, and what we are now: Leave Rome a while and cast thine eye backe to thy Predecessors, and tell mee howe wonderfully wee have been chaunged, since wee were schooled in these abuses. Dion saith, that english men could suffer watching and labor, hunger and thirst, and beare of al stormes with hed and shoulders, they used slender weapons, went naked, and were good soldiours, they fed uppon rootes and barkes of trees, they would stand up to the chin many dayes in marishes without victualles: and they had a kind of sustenaunce in time of neede, of which if they had taken but the quantitie of a beane, or the weight of a pease, they did neyther gape after meate, nor long for the cuppe, a great while after. The men in valure not yeelding to Scithia, the women in courage passing the Amazons. The exercise of both was shootyng and darting, running and wrestling, and trying such maisteries, as eyther consisted in swiftnesse of feete, agilitie of body, strength of armes, or Martiall discipline. But the exercise that is now among us, is banqueting, playing, pipyng, and dauncing, and all such delightes as may win us to pleasure, or rocke us a sleepe.”
This is amusing; we are so far from Gosson’s time that we are not afraid to laugh at it; we recognize its absurdity, as we recognize the humor of the quack medicine vendor in Punch (Dec. 24, 1913): “Here you are, gents, sixpence a bottle. Founded on the researches of modern science. Where should we be without science? Look at the ancient Britons. They hadn’t no science, and where are they? Dead and buried, every one of ’em.” But, mutatis mutandis, Gosson’s words are a reactionary formula of all the ages: we find it, more persuasively and more subtly, in the Past and Present of Carlyle, in some of the criticism of Arnold, in many of the denunciations of Ruskin, and it is even betting that one will not find an example of it any day in the pages of our more staid journals. It objects to most modern enterprises, to imperialism, to the increase of foreign trade, to modern science, to psychical research, to the Ph.D. degree, to children’s courts, to scientific philanthropy, to eugenics, to the Panama Canal, to a thousand other things, not because there may be a reasonable and conservative scepticism regarding the outcome of these matters and the facts on which they are alleged to rest, but because they were not recognized by the pre-Baconian philosophers, and fail to be specifically commented on by Aristotle or Marcus Aurelius or St. Paul.
Whereas it must, of course, be evident to common sense that the enterprises of an age may be properly criticised, for the most part, only in terms of the age. One’s own age is usually regarded as a particularly enterprising one, and an enterprising age is one full of experiment. All that experience has to teach us about new enterprises in the main is that they have never been tried before, and that we were best not to be over sanguine of their success. But that is merely reasonable caution,—such as doubtless mingled with the loftier spirit of a Themistocles, a Pericles, a Michael Angelo, a Raleigh, a Bismarck, a Wilbur Wright, a Scott, in the ages that we are accustomed to think of as great. The enterprising age has always tried to find better houses, better ships, better laws,—to find its north pole,—and it is good much in proportion as it tries to find these things. Many of the attempts are failures, and the way to success is strewn with bones of men, but they are failures because they do not attain the goal for which they are striving, because they do not win the satisfactions of their own times; not because they do not conform to the achieved success or to the reactionary formula of a past age.
The reactionary kick is not without virtue; it is usually a gentleman’s instrument. It may even be charming, as with those dear ladies in Cranford who never used any word “not sanctioned by Johnson.” The charm may arise from the fact that the reactionary kick really requires no thought at all; a fair acquaintance with the literature of past ages, of one past age in particular,—the Periclean, the Medicean, the Spenserian, the Johnsonian,—is all that is necessary. Therefore one can put one’s effort on manner and style, and may produce the effect of great suavity and wisdom. The reactionary kick is really terribly easy, possibly the easiest of all intellectual exercises,—indeed, it barely merits the name of intellectual; for it really consists in putting some standard on ice, and taking it off from time to time whenever a warm modern idea is thought to be in need of cooling. Whereas, on the other hand, the man in the thick of an active enterprise must work and think with all his might, and etiquette and style are of minor moment.
Yes, on the whole, the reactionary kick must in turn react on the intellectual and moral quality of its operator and cause his fibre to degenerate through easefulness. But this we seldom notice. The poet says:
“The crown of olive let another wear;