Chapter IV (2)

The bacteria of the blues of course always seize on a favorable culture medium. Probably the best of such media is a settled and exaggerated consciousness of the possibility of disaster, which soon becomes magnified into a probability. Some people feel as if they were always treading on a thin crust over a volcano. Your doctor can do a good deal for one cause of that. The other cause is what Bacon called defective enumeration--generalizing from the remarkable, instead of the usual--the most frequent of all fallacies. Hundreds of people can be killed in automobiling without your considering it more dangerous than other sports, but as soon as somebody very near to you is killed, you think the sport dangerous. Now as to danger in general, think of the facts. At any moment, perhaps one person in five hundred actually is in danger of disease or other misfortune. But the remaining four hundred and ninety-nine are not, except in the distorted imagination of far too large a proportion of them. There’s a big chance--perhaps one in three or four, that you who read these lines, being a person who lives not merely on the surface of things, are in the habit of letting your imagination play too much with what is under the surface. Now stop it! You _may_ of course be actually the victim of ill fortune; but even if you are, there’s a chance that, in compensation, you have been made a saint by it, and that you really get more out of life than do most people more happily situated: for that’s the way of saints, as you can tell by looking at their serene expression.

True, a few terrible disasters must be expected, but they are generally so much like surgical operations that, unless they are fatal, the character recovers with some of its evil elements removed. And most strange to say, outside of character, and merely in relations to the external world--to wealth, opportunity, friendship,--the very worst disasters are often blessings in disguise. It pays as well to seek for the bright side of our miseries, as it does to count our mercies. “Count yo’ mahcies, Honey, count yo’ mahcies!” recommended the old colored auntie. You will remember it in that shape.

I have heard one of my ink-diffusing friends confess that having had an infirmity that interfered with his sleep, he long grieved over it as lessening his production. But at last he realized that the sleeplessness had enforced economy of time, in which, before the infirmity, he had been sadly lacking, and that his waking hours, in the undisturbed night, had bred the best of the thoughts which have contributed to his share of fame and fortune, and to the philosophy which secures his happiness.

But the realization of hidden blessings in misfortunes to ourselves generally requires a long experience: so let us take a case concerning everybody. It is not long since the civilized world experienced from the earthquakes in Sicily and Calabria, a thrill of moral stimulus probably the most intense it ever knew.

At first, on reading of such widespread and merciless destruction--maiming, killing, starving, roasting of children to death before the eyes of pinioned mothers, mothers pinioned before strong sons also pinioned from helping; large communities destroyed, and the survivors driven mad; horror piled on horror until the mere reader suffers, the imagination shrinks back miserable and incapable, and the mind loses faith in a beneficent cause and control of the universe. But after the first intense revolt of feeling has spent itself, and the reason attempts calmly to estimate the evil and what there may be of resultant good, the preponderance of the good, even in such an extreme case, may not seem impossible. The disaster evoked a universal burst of charity that turned fleets of battleships into engines of mercy. The moral advantage to humanity was colossal--nothing less than a distinct injection of kindness into all the relations of men.

It involved the death of but one in hundreds of thousands of the inhabitants of the civilized world. Most of the survivors received distinct moral benefits, not to speak of the advantage to future generations from the effect on the moral quality of the race.

Moreover, the case cannot be justly put without noting that the sufferers were of a people notoriously lawless (the Northern Italians are reported to have said: “After all, they’re nothing but Calabrians and Sicilians”), and that the survivors received a powerful call to righteousness.

But reason on them as we may, and get from them what moral good we can, great tragedies tend to breed a terrible uncertainty regarding the stability and goodness of life--and indeed of the universe and the moral law. Yet though much uncertainty is very apt to start from great troubles, it is by no means sure to wait for them. This skepticism is the bottom horror. I have wondered if Sill was thinking of it when, in his poem “Truth at Last” about the Alpine guide hurled down by the snow slide, he asks:

Did he for just one heart-throb--did he indeed
Know with certainty, as they swept onward,
There was the end....
’Tis something if at last,
Though only for a flash, a man may see
Clear-eyed the future as he sees the past,
From doubt, or fear, or hope’s illusion free.

Did Sill mean that even death may be preferable to that haunting uncertainty which is the worst of the blues? Early in life he had more than his share of it, but he lived it down.

If any man can look on birds and flowers and most women and children and some men, and upon the manifold beauties of earth and sea and sky, from dawn on to dawn, if any man can realize that we might have been driven by pain more effectively than even attracted by pleasure, to feed ourselves and reproduce ourselves--if any man can see these things, and not be certain that behind the universe there is intention, and effective intention, to produce happiness, that man simply has, at least temporarily, an abnormal mind. But he is the very kind of man who gets the blues. All that can be done for him is to help him see the other side of the shield. As for mere argument, sometimes one might almost as well use it against paresis as against pessimism.

Neither can much be done for fools. But there are degrees and kinds of fools. The worst are probably those who, having committed a folly of lasting consequences, sulk over it instead of facing it cheerfully and trying to make the best of it. When we can’t get happiness, we can at least get discipline. But the hopeless thing about a fool is that he can never be convinced that he is one: his follies are always in the past tense.

Next to doubting too much, is expecting too much. Aside from the few great disasters of a lifetime, the worst things are proverbially those that never happen. This paper has not much to say about things that _do_ happen. They may involve feelings not to be remonstrated against, or even mentioned lightly. But still those feelings, often very sacred, should, like everything else, be limited to their proper range. The chief cause (and the chief consequence) of the blues are _borrowed_ troubles. One of the most effective ways of borrowing them is to take for granted that a bad situation will not right itself, and then, instead of merely taking care of the immediate issue, letting the imagination work at all possible issues, and devising means of taking care of them. This is often promoted by a mistaken notion that such constant thought over the matter is a duty--that if the worst comes, one will at least have done one’s best. Generally one’s best really is to drop the subject. But that is not so easy. Just as the tongue always seeks the uneasy tooth, so the mind always seeks the uneasy question. But the tooth is not always under control, and the question generally is, or ought to be. Rigid discipline will develop a habit of leaving it alone except as something can be done about it. The true method generally is to decide what the moment admits of, and then to await the next real occasion for decision, and meanwhile to keep the mind occupied with other things. Usually thought between times is worse than wasted. An occasion when it is not, is usually not between times, but one of the times. Of course one does not want to be taken unawares, but not a tithe of the imagined situations ever occur, and those actually to be met are often not foreseen at all: so most of the devising is wasted, attention is distracted from the immediate requirements of life, and time is spent in a continuous overshadowing of the blues. All this takes tissue, and when the next issue comes, the power to meet it is dulled. The strength of the great fighters--generals, lawyers, parliamentarians, depends largely on temperaments which preserve them from such waste of their powers. “The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man dies but one,” and exaggerated anticipation of evil is simply cowardice.

* * * * *

Akin to doing work that never is called for, is over-refinement in needed work. True, “perfection consists in trifles,” but don’t forget that “trifles can’t make perfection.” There comes a point beyond which the most conscientious workman can really do no more. Part of the equipment of a true artist is the capacity to recognize that point. After every essential thing is done, there remain non-essentials which may as well go one way as the other. They raise the hardest questions, if they are permitted to raise any, because they are as nearly balanced as the load of Burridon’s ass. Moiling over them is threshing straw: it leads to no result but fatigue and monomania. Monomania is generally the first step in insanity, and nearly every step in insanity is attended by the blues.

But objections to superfluous work and over-refined work, are not objections to hard work, especially when one is in trouble. Carlyle says (I quote from memory): “To him who can earnestly and truly work, there is no need for despair.” But that advice is generally superfluous for an American. He is more apt to need advice to play hard--to mount his hobby or get hold of a new one, and ride it hard.

It is especially bad to let the mind run on worries at night; and to take them to bed with one is madness. This is a special reason for seeking society or the theatre: other people, in real life or on the stage (better in real life, of course, because there one has to talk back) can best pull one out of oneself when one’s own powers are utterly inadequate. When actual causes of anxiety seem overwhelming, if one can be made to forget them for a time, hope comes into the ascendant.

One most important point is that worries are apt to settle themselves during sleep. There may be a subconscious mental action, or one may wake up with the thinking powers invigorated; but whatever the reason may be, people go to bed in perplexity, and soon after waking, do certainly often find that all the considerations have slipped into their relative places, and that the perplexity has cleared.

The best of all remedies is perhaps the most difficult, though not impossible. It is to “rise superior” to your troubles--to convince yourself, lift yourself, force yourself into the feeling of directorship--of competent and confident directorship of all your affairs. Add “with God’s help” if you want to: for that may back up our worthy intentions more even than our ancestors began to realize--whatever they professed to believe. This feeling of calm adequacy does much to _secure_ adequacy, and what is of perhaps more importance, compels peace.

But adequacy is only adequacy to do the best that circumstances permit. To attempt more than circumstances permit is at once inadequacy--to put yourself on the weak side of a false equation. Attempt only what you can do, and you never need fail. Yet unless you attempt the best you can do, you do fail--fail just so far as the difference between the actual and the best possible. But if you are reasonably brave and wise, that difference will be slight; and the healthy conscience, like the law, takes no account of trifles.

Shoot your arrow at the sun, and hitch your wagon to a star, all you want to--as religious exercise; but in your daily work shoot only when game is within range, and hitch only to something which will hold tight, and is reasonably sure to draw.

And don’t be misled by shrewd Yankees who make divine phrases, but who regulate their actions in daily life as cannily as other Yankees who never make phrases at all.

Absence of work, and no less absence of play,--the mere opportunity to brood, is dangerous to those subject to the blues. When we are in the busy haunts of men, their activity inspires ours, and keeps our thoughts away from introspection and baleful notions; but if we are alone, even with Nature in her loveliest aspects, the mind is apt to seek the profundities, and to drag the spirits with it.

Interest in this subject has brought me some confidences. I knew a man beyond middle life, who had long longed for more opportunities of study and meditation. At last he obtained the cherished desire in the most desired way--in a lovely home amid the loveliest scenery. He took three solid months of it, and found himself low-spirited, ailing, and in need of tonics. But when he was called to the city, the first time he walked down Fifth Avenue, he felt that he didn’t need any other tonic. Yet the habit of years had put him, all unconsciously, in chronic need of that one. He took it at monthly intervals, and it did its work. But it cost time. As he approached old age, he realized in himself a tendency to melancholy, that, in spite of the city life that had been efficacious for himself, had given the declining years of one of his parents much unhappiness. He was frightened: he felt that external aid, like all tonics, must lose its effect in time; and so he worked hard to develop powers in himself that would put him above the need of it. After a few years, circumstances led again to three months away from the city, and so effectually had he enlightened and trained himself that it was a period of greater cheerfulness, health and fruitfulness than he had ever known.

His bottom principle was: “Kill the thing at the start. Watch! As soon as the serpent’s head shows itself through the egg, scotch it. If you don’t, your mind will become the abode of monsters.”

* * * * *

Of course to those who believe in immortality, a faith in the ultimate goodness of the universe is almost unescapable. Beliefs cannot be made to order, but looked at in the most Philistine way, this one fills so many otherwise apparent gaps in the order of the universe, saves so many apparent wastes, changes so much chaos into kosmos, that, when relieved of some of its absurd accompaniments from the past, the belief seems, in the broadest view, almost a matter of course; and the narrowing of one’s view of existence by physical death appears absurd. The belief in immortality is such a simple and inexpensive machine for settling bad problems that, as in the case of any simple and inexpensive machine that throws out good results, there is a presumption in favor of investing in it. This, I suppose, is what they call Pragmatism. It has its dangers: for its principle is apt to be misconstrued, and Hope tells such flattering tales! But apparently Pragmatism has no direct business with hopes, but only with cold hypotheses; and if one must choose between hypotheses, the preferable one is that which strings the facts into the most orderly coherence; and certainly without immortality, the universe is much nearer chaos than with it.

Most of our upsets come from lack of health, or money or friends. Now if the universe holds for us ultimately an existence where we shan’t have to bother with such vile bodies, or such demands as they make for money, and where we may recover all the friends we have lost here, and if our troubles here aid in our development, as they certainly do, the universe appears much more orderly, and our worst problems are fairly settled. Perhaps a strong proud effective soul might not care much for a future existence that, in such brief outline, seems so easy; but I don’t know that our wide and exact knowledge of that existence contains anything to indicate that in it one will not have at least as good a chance as here to make his own way, or the way of those he cares for; and while doing this, to make his own additions to the gayety of nations, or their celestial equivalent. I don’t see, either, any indication warranting any shameless, weak and impotent soul--one like yours and mine when we have the blues--in refraining from doing its little best here, on the ground that everything will be made straight there, and that therefore it is just as well to wait. For there appear more and more weaknesses in the demonstration that even shining garments and harps and halos are to be passed around free, or indeed that anybody will start there with anything more than he takes with him. There does not seem, however, aught to negative the guess already hazarded regarding health and fortune and friends--that what capacity for winning them one does take, may have a better chance for activity there than it has here. And as capacity improves by practice, all this plain paragraph is an argument for doing one’s best here, and not sitting around indulging in the blues.

I freely admit, however--most freely--that such views, especially regarding the gayety, have not the sanction of very old or very wide acceptance; but with the decay of Puritanism, they seem on the way to more.

* * * * *

Before we leave old-fashioned remedies, under however new-fashioned aspects, it may be well to consider another one that greatly helped our ancestors--the belief in an over-ruling Providence that really does help those who help themselves. In the form the belief was known to them, it is not known to many of us; but we may have it in a better form. For the narrow conception of an anthropomorphic god constantly tinkering at the universe, we can substitute the idea of an intelligence so great that it does not need to watch each act, and specifically adjust each result; but has established a law so comprehensive as to give each of our motives its legitimate consequences--a law that in some ways rewards each of our good intentions, even when it seems to fail, and punishes each of our evil ones, even when it seems to succeed. Faith in such a law makes us feel secure in spite of the haunting anxiety lest we break through the volcano’s crust. The sparrow’s flight may be free if compensation awaits its fall. And we may know a higher freedom and a fuller meaning, even a creative joy, in the feeling that when we shape our acts toward the best ends we know, we can leave the rest to a benign law that goes deeper into motive than human gropings can, gives rewards better than we can devise, and punishments that do not merely afflict but tend to cure.

* * * * *

But all these faiths are another story. Faiths are good when they are not counter to reason, and the most matter-of-fact of us act on them every hour. But the big ones won’t come at mere bidding. What I have been principally trying to get you to do, in case you are subject to the blues, is to take hold and keep hold of the actual prosaic fact that in our year and place of grace, life has reached a fairly substantial foundation, and that throwing oneself open to every possible attack of the blues, through a chronic feeling that life is on a very ticklish basis, not only permits a great many needless attacks, but goes counter to the facts--is mathematically absurd. When you are scared, it is not because the universe is going to turn turtle, but because you are confusing its center of gravity with your own, and developing too much of a wrong sort of gravity above your own. Hopefulness is really the only reasonable attitude; at worst you lose nothing by it, unless it makes you careless.

Life is fairly reliable, and death at worst is simply nothing, while there are growing reasons to believe that it is better than life. And yet it is the one unfailing subject of abnormal brooding. It is possible at any moment, inevitable at some moment; and for that very reason it is, from most aspects, as a subject of worry, absurd at any moment. One of the sanest and sweetest men I ever knew, who lived to be nearly ninety, told me that he never thought of it.

Of all the humbugs of priestcraft, it is the greatest. The priests, who once owned a third of England, and probably more than a third of Italy, made more money out of death and its accessories than out of all the rest of the paraphernalia in their kit. Hell and purgatory and poor dear Dante’s scenery and properties were all part of the machinery. How shocked Dante would have been if he had realized how he was furnishing such ammunition! (A friend, on reading this, was surprised at my calling Dante “dear,” because he is generally regarded as so austere a man. To me he is not only dear, but like nearly all great geniuses, “as a little child.”) And some four centuries later, how shocked would have been another poet--not so poor or quite so dear, if he could have realized what a part he was playing in the same loathsome game! With them, one thinks of the geniuses who wrote the _Dies Irae_ and those other wonderful hymns, and questions what they too might have felt if they had realized all they were doing. Then come to mind some other contributors to the humbug, who as a rule were not poor, and were not dear at all, and who stole the sheet-iron thunder and resin lightning--John Calvin and Cotton Mather, and so on down to some poor dear men even so late as when the older of us were in college, who made us get up before daylight in winter, and go and hear them pray, because they feared that if they didn’t, and we didn’t, we should all go to Dante’s or Milton’s or some other man’s Hell.

Well, perhaps we who have a new century to play with, especially the younger of us, fancy among its fresh attractions a thorough emancipation from these old superstitions. But they are in the very blood our fathers transmitted to us. Many have had all the anti-toxic serum needed for immunity from serious attacks, but we are all liable to twinges--hours, perhaps days, of discomfort from that identical disease, when we don’t know what’s the matter with us.

Fear of pain is part of the equipment of self-defense evolved in the higher animals, but whether those below man fear death, is, I suppose, open to question. I believe horses and sheep, at least, show fear or aversion from the dead of their own kind. I have known it instantly shown by a child supposed too young to know anything of the subject. But be all that as it may, you can get far above the mere animal instinct, up into the tender human affections like those of my dear old friend, and find it probably true that normal creatures do not think about death, unless some external circumstance leads them to. Yet my old friend, with intelligence enough for the ordinary demands of life and the most delicate of its courtesies, would not have been called a thoughtful or imaginative man. But another dear old friend who was both (I don’t know why I shouldn’t say that I’m thinking of Stedman), I don’t believe ever thought much about death, except in the abstract, unless some distinct external circumstance led him to. And he was a very unusually normal man. On the whole, I don’t believe normal people do think about it, in the concrete, unless they have to. Well then, most of the thought about it in the concrete is abnormal, and in more senses than even the priests made it, death is a humbug.

Don’t let us get the blues about it then. If we want an excuse for them, let’s find it reasonably, in being obliged to survive when we prefer to follow. But there are few such cases, and Time takes care of them; and, as reasoning beings, let us realize that it is sweet and normal that he should, and let us no more resist Time in our perverse ways, than we would in the ways of the Egyptians.

And our ways are very perverse when they make us cling to some of the most absurd fashions from older civilizations, and neglect the wise ones. How long will it take us to put the Greek symbol of the lovely youth with the inverted torch, in place of the skull and cross-bones on the Puritan tombs? But we are coming on well when we bring forward the symbols of love to cover grief, and put flowers with the crape outside the door, and over the coffin. But we are not doing equally well when, after we let a woman have a veil, or a man slink down a side street, because they don’t want to recognize people, we, after they have got beyond that, still compel them to keep away from people, and even from music and the theatre, when they most need them. We can generally count on mourners suffering enough without any aid from such fashions.

But leaving out our relations to other people, in the deepest part of our very selves--the part that gets the blues, why have them over the certainty of death? When we were boys, wasn’t it a good way to avoid them before going back to school, to make the most of the last days? Today may be the last day.

If the best way out of worry is work, don’t sit around moping about that journey, but work. Pack up. You can’t take too much baggage--of the right kind. There are some reasons to suspect that in the new country you’ll find more use than you had here for all that you can get together of learning and wisdom and aspirations and affections: love is giving rather than receiving, you know--even to the point of giving unrecognized. Why not there as well as here? True, your constitution may not be up to that one-sided kind forever, but you may not have to wait so long as that.

And even if you’re lost, baggage and all, it will not have been wasted: for it will have done its service here, and it will not need to be renewed. And you can’t be sure now that you won’t want it. And how ineffably silly it is to worry over the possibility of oblivion! That surely can’t hurt. But if anybody believes that consciousness continues, shut up in a Pozzi-like darkness, deprived of an opportunity to enjoy this beautiful universe or any other, _that’s_ something to worry over. But did anybody ever invent such a Hell as that, or if anybody did, has anybody now any justification for having the blues over it? If you are worried by Scripture, probably you know that of the three uses of “outer darkness” in Matthew, two plainly refer to earthly conditions, and the third may fairly be taken in the same sense.

If you get tired packing, and need more work in view of departure, don’t go back to moping, but get right up and put things in shape for those you’re going to leave behind. But don’t bother them, or do foolish things. One of the best things about that journey is that nearly all the wise preparations for staying here are equally wise for going. So you would be foolish to make very many _specific_ preparations for going. In fact specific preparations for that journey have involved more of the waste and tomfoolery of the world than almost anything else--perhaps more than even war or fashion.

But be ready to go when you’re called.

Meantime circumstances may be so against you that you can’t have a happy life; but probably you can, if you so will, have at least a cheerful one, and those who have had the experience say that it’s pretty hard to tell the difference--that they amount to about the same thing, except that, on the whole, the cheerful life is the more effective; and that, at best, happiness is but a by-product.

All this simple advice may be easier to follow than you think, and if you do follow it, probably you won’t have the blues.

THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF KICKING

Now, at this present moment, and for the next two months, twenty million American youth,--turning from syndicalism, the new morality, forgotten virtues, capitalism, psychical research, sociology, trust-busting, fly-swatting, preventive medicine, the evils of alcohol and tobacco, and other of the million burning questions of the day,--are and will be chiefly occupied with the important historical problem as to whether Mr. Charles Brickley, captain of and kicker-in-extraordinary to the Harvard football team, is a mightier man than the ancient heroes of the kicking game,--Moffatt, Bull, Brooke, Trafford, O’Dea, Poe, Sharpe, Eckershall,--and with this discussion they will couple the practical ambition and personal hope of joining the great galaxy.

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.

One may believe in Votes for Women, rejoice over the improvement of the position of workingmen, and hope to see many of the ideals of socialism prevail,--and yet lament clumsiness and maladroitness in the use of motive. For all causes need the aid of the judiciously selected method, the appeal to high expediency, whereas they have to some degree fallen into the hands of extremely clumsy operators, the Pankhursts, the Carons, the Tannenbaums, who recall Newman’s words: “Others are so intemperate and intractable that there is no greater calamity for a good cause than that they should get hold of it.” They also recall Shakespeare’s version of the words of Antony, which may be regarded as the epitome of good form in kicking, so far as motive is concerned:

“This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators, save only he,
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He only, in a general honest thought
And common good of all, made one of them.”

Even more various, important and interesting than the motive of kicking is the object of the kick, _l’objet d’appui, das Stossensstoff_. Judging from some specimens and examples still to be found among us, we may imagine that the primitive man always objected to specific and tangible things; if an acquaintance impinged too violently upon the person of the primitive, the latter replied by “handing out,” or footing out, a good “swift” blow. So too, now-a-days, the wise and simple person is not likely to go too far afield to kick, there being plenty of objects in the immediate neighborhood on which he can break his toes, such as little eccentricities in his neighbor’s or his own _ménage_. If he is wise, really wise, he takes exception to these things from the high impersonal motives that we have been examining, and only where he is pretty sure of success. But if he have a disinterested mind, a philanthropic temperament, a broad philosophical outlook on life, he will see a very large assortment of objects that are by no means those of his special field of activity. These are the generalized _objets d’appui_, and it may be said to the credit of our civilization that we have accumulated them in larger numbers than any of our predecessors. The fact is, indeed, that the primitive had none of them, or, if in his later aeons he recognized some of them, his attitude was religious, terrorful, abject. They apparently grow in number quite as rapidly as other inventions of the human mind; and as each of these latter has been devised and recognized, so its accompanying kick has been engendered, thereafter never quite to leave it; just as the louse of the dead Filipino accompanies him to the nether world. Thus the general recognition of something called Life, brings a kick at Life by those who are hard hit by it. This is on the whole the most idle of the manifestations of the _Stossenslust_. The most evident thing about life, for the individual, is that it apparently begins somewhere, through no fault whatever of the individual’s own, and ends for the individual in some way that he cannot specifically forecast. Evidently to object to the most hard and fast fact of the world, the time-honored premise that all men are mortal, is a most futile proceeding; and yet it has been made not only the subject of the most varied and legitimate inquiries, but also of wailings and gnashings of teeth, of religious terror, fervor and abnegation. So far as the subject of this paper is concerned, the reasonable kick at life is the kick at conditions that lie along the way; and it is a healthy sign of the times that our energies are being directed rather to improvement of affairs in this world than to a too active calculation about the compensations that the next one affords.

Another almost equally futile aim of the _Stossenskunst_ lies in a kind of objection to alleged tendencies. With the advance of civilization, to use Macaulay’s phrase, new tendencies and movements are thought to appear; and these naturally develop their own special crop of kickings. The decay of modern manners, the growing corruption of the English tongue, the growing impudence of modern youth, the encroachments of scepticism upon the domain of religion, the antagonism of classes, the sentimentality of democratic life, the general increase of foolishness,--these and a thousand other alleged tendencies, are really futile matter for fretting about. Here, indeed, the operation is something like this: the kicker goes forth to kick. He mistakes a balloon for a football and with an inflator proceeds to blow the balloon up, puffing it into enormous size with air (at 99F) from his own lungs. Then he paints on it the sign, “Degeneracy of modern times,” and kicks it a mile or two into the air in about any direction, except toward a goal. Meanwhile really skilful kickers are trying to score by accurate judicious kicks over a cross-bar.

The recognition of real tendencies, of movements, of purposes, of motives, on the other hand, is of course indispensable if the art of objecting is to be successfully practiced. If I were oblivious to the tendency of my neighbor to absorb small portions of my estate, of harum-scarum pictures and statues to oust a more sober art, of armaments to go on increasing, I should find myself bunkoed in a minute; I should be as inept as Piggy Moore in the story, who did not know one goal from another. If one looks up only when his toes are trod on, he will see little. Tendencies must be recognized; without them we could have no such thing as the anticipatory, the preparative, the restraining, the stimulating kick. But it is evident that little except by way of suggestion can come through treating these matters in general; the effective kick has a specific objective. And unless one’s criticism of tendency be based on facts, one does as the protagonists of the last paragraph, booting the self-blown air of vituperation or aspiration.

It is a pastime to kick at institutions as well as at tendencies. I once knew a man who for a whole long year never ceased to complain of the Subway; it was noisy, ill-ventilated, ill-mannered. The kick was very inapposite: I was not the president of the Metropolitan, and moreover I liked the Subway, in spite of some drawbacks. But the correct attitude is quite simple: one is under no undeniable compulsion to ride in the Subway; but even if one cannot escape, to destroy it is inconvenient and impossible; and therefore the only sensible course is to attack the abuses, by writing about them to the management, or to some benignant newspaper. In like manner many of us find a peculiar joy in attacking modern journalism, flats, pianolas, victrolas, automobiles, the modern drama, the study of rhetoric, the management of asylums, city life and many institutions of many descriptions. Whereas the judicious kicker usually aims only at the abuses that such institutions bring with them,--unless the evils are inherent and colossal, as possibly in Tammany Hall and war and the corner saloon. But even here kicking must be piecemeal.

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.