Morning journal and courier., 1883-03-26
The Great Usakfcked.

It has been maintained by certain phiIos,
 phers that all men are born with the san Intellects; it is a far safer induction frol
 experlenceShat all persons on coming int
 the world possess an equal quantity of GOT
 ceit, which somehow or other has to be taze
 out of them. There is only one procef
 which can prove effectual for this purpose
 and those who do not submit to it remai
 sources of discomfort to themselves and di,
 satisfaction to their feIlow-creatures to th
 end of the chapter. Unless given amour
 of that moral and physical discipline, whic
 IS best summed up in the familiar wor
 kicking" is gone through, the human nal
 will remain ever unregenerate, for kicking i
 to the physical what baptism is to the spir
 itual man. The unkicked will be like tn l uuvaccinated-ever liable to contract a ma
 ERnant disease, or like the adult who ha passed through childhood without the meas les, and who is doomed to make the ac
 qua1ntance of the infantile indispositiol l hereafter in shape abnormelly severe. Ala | for poor humanityi The sorrewful trutl ! must be told that there are natures incapabl of benefting by this wholesome ordeal per | sons who are kicked in due course, and wh, ' may be kicked to eternity. but on whom tn kicking produces no effect. These are tn
 unfortunate creatures who, like the member of famous dynasty, learn nothing and for I get nothing. They are foredoomed to fail because of that inordinate conceit which i \ 1mpervious to ehastisement, and of whicl they can no more divest themselves than O. { their personal identity. Much has been sait by moralists and ronlancists of the insolenc. ! of success and wealth but the insolence ot failure and poverty, in the case of the great
 unkicked, or, as they should be called, the great unk1ckRble, IS of an infinitely more wanton and aggressive kind There is no vanity in this world so hopeless and offensive as that of unredesmed dullness no people 50 drearily impracticable as those who pose as the professional victims of unmerited mis. fortune; no swagger so nauseating and suici dal as that which is displayed by the social waif and stray who, after five-and- twenty years of misadventure. is still without 6 ca
 reer, simply because he is constitutionalIy
 incapable of being kicked, or of profting by the operation. He is always turning up in a pitiful plight, always hugging a grievance against individuals or society in general, al-
 ways importunate for recognition or assis- tance. because. ever since the first applica.
 ton of the boyish toe to his person, he has
 remained impenetrable to the monitions of
 experience and to the teachings of adversity
 But the large majority of the great un-
 kicked are composed of persons of differ
 ent kind. Their calamity consists of the
 fact that they have from their first appsar-
 ance upon this earthly scene been removed
 beyond the reach of the christening foot.
 Either they have been the rose itself or they have dwelled 80 near the rose that they have grown up under the same luxurious condi- tions of development. Whatever part in life they may subsequently be called upon to play, sooner or later they will find reason to lament their predestination to a place in the category of the unkicked. They may be up- right, courteous, shrewd but they will i'm press observers with a sense that there is a something wanting in their characters cer- tain robustness of sympathy and sustained strength of insight, certain inability to see that, in Macaulay's words, Ca life of action must be 8 life of compromise" and that if existence is to be tolerable it must be con- ducted on the principle of give and take. Peers of the realm who have succeeded to their title at 8 tender age are especially be- set by the danger of complete exemption from kicks. A nobleman who takes his seat in the Upper House at the age of twenty one is not the same man as the nobleman who en- ters the assembly after having mixed, during 8 decade of the House of Commons upon equal terms with his untitled fellow men, The former has been brought up from the first in cotton-wool. When he went to school it was in the special charge of tutor, told off to screen him from anything like rude contact with his school-fellows The 1upe of every parasite who panders to his 'elflove, he might have been useful mem per of society had he received but mode ate share of that kicking which is liberally | .llotted to his interiors. As it is, his better l qualities will never reach maturity The | ons of great men, who blossom premature y into private secretaries, have special ten | Lency to gravitate to the ill-starred compane | # the great unkicked. Striplings who ary | onscious of distinguished parentage, and | Vho have definite ideas about 8 mission in | fife, are also in imminent danger of growing | p among the great unkicked. Amiability, | intelligence, ilial piety, and many other vir. ues may be theirs, but they have never suc- eeded in descending from 8 pedestal of im- ginary superiority to their contemporaries hey cannot emancipate themselves from an IF of condescension when they speak to oth- rs. They ape the airs of authority in 8 hammer which is not the less offensive be- ause it is ludicrous. Sooner ar later the enalty for royal roads and shortcuts to any oal has to be paid To go through the mill akes time, but it is the safest course, and it arries with it the comforting conviction that ne's nature has been improved and fortified uring the process. The scars inflicted by he judiciously distributed kicks are of igbly honorable kind.
 This is the age of educational experiments [owever satisfactory these may be to the arenfs and guardians who make them, they re to be deprecated in the interest of the ictims. It almost seems to be law of na are that English lads should pass through Xed series of vicissitudes on their progress ) manhood School and college, school and le army, school and apprenticeship to the oughnesses of professional ife-such are 1e sequences which best suit the English haracter. None of them is, perhaps, the Ieal arrangement; but when something else
 substituted for it the discipline of kicking
 omitted, and the consequences are appa- mt in the social product. A well to-do and ewy father discovers that his son has an ap- tude for scientific pursuits. He determines lat the boy shall not go to school, and that 3 shall be brought up by tutors and lectur- E under the parental roof little labora- rv is constructed for him, and he is pre- nted with 8 complete set of crucibles and torts Latin and Greek are not entirely ,glected, and he grows up with the power
 translating easy passages of the former i'd with at least a knowledge of the charac- rs of the latter, but with propensity to lse quantities which twenty years ago would we made his life at any grammar school a 1 lrden to him. In duo time the home-bred ripling is launched upon profession He s travelled, and has perhaps profted by his syels, takes wife, and possibly achieves l stinction in his profession but, unless he
 made of very exceptional clay it is too sar. from everything he does and says that belongs to the great unkieked. There is snug self-satisfaction, an assumption of cksureness, which are the notes of the hole class. He may not put on asides or Iwagger" in any very aggressive fashion, d, indeed, good deal both of sWagger and 1e is compatible with the experience of a rge amount of kicking; but there is a clear ference between the airs assumed by the cked and the unkicked. It is the angulari-
 of the unkicked which is really exaspera : lg; nor is it to be subdued in any other ay except by attrition with humanity, A aieh may be occasionally painful, but is in g long run unspeakably salutary The . cking is disagreeable while it lasts; but the of the uIkicked ia ,1nb1aased forever i