we must, then, so far as we are good evolutionists, look upon the boy’s gang as the result of a group of instincts inherited from a distant past. so far as, in addition, we are good darwinians, we must suppose that these gang instincts arose in the first place because they were useful once, and that they have been preserved to the present day because they are, on the whole, useful still.
fortunately or unfortunately, however, the social evolution of homo europeus during, let us say, the last three or four centuries, has been vastly more rapid than any strictly biological evolution can possibly be. inevitably, therefore, the bodily structure of man and his equipment of natural instincts, has of late years tended to fall behind the demands of civilization. witness, for example,84 the professional man who falls in love at twenty, but must wait till thirty before he can support a wife; or the inconvenient superfluity of bone, muscle and lung in many an office worker. one notes incidentally how much better fitted for civilization, both in mind and body, women are than men. they were, the ethnologists tell us, civilized first.
certain of the gang instincts, therefore, tend to fit the growing boy for conditions which no longer obtain, rather than for those which he will actually have to face as a man. to no small extent, the ancient virtues of savagery have become vices of civilization, so that the instincts on which they are based are by no means desirable in a modern boy.
consider, for example, the “plaguing people” which, as we have seen, occurs in forty-four of our sixty-six reports. this is, of course, sheer savagery. “most savages,” as darwin says, “are utterly indifferent to the sufferings of strangers, or even delight in witnessing them”; and the modern boy does not fall far behind the ancient savage as85 every chinaman and jew and policeman can testify. the gang considers it the proper thing also to attack and misuse every strange boy who appears in its precincts. it gets no small part of its pleasure in giving displeasure to others.
yet, after all, the cruelty of our savage forefathers was a hard necessity. a little tribe, perpetually fighting for its life against its rivals, could not afford to be sympathetic toward the discomfort of outsiders. in the primitive struggle for existence, the kindly tribe would pretty certainly be beaten by the cruel one.
so the boy is cruel and plagues people. but his cruelty is largely collective rather than individual, like that of the wolf rather than the tiger. as his ganginess fades with later adolescence, much of his native barbarity will go with it. till that time comes, the wise adult will not attribute to thoroughgoing depravity what is only a temporary stage in the boy’s psychic evolution.
in part, therefore, the boy comes honestly by his teasing instincts. but “plaguing people”86 arises in part also from race prejudice; and so far as it does thus arise, it is entirely the fault of us adults. boys, untaught, have no prejudice against any particular kind of stranger, so that the fault being ours, the remedy is quite in our own hands.
to a large extent, moreover, the practice of being disagreeable is, as the boys themselves report, merely “to get the chase.” “plaguing people” is an exciting sport, which satisfies a natural thirst for adventure, and which is therefore most naturally controlled by judicious doses of adventure in other forms. the joy of getting the chase necessarily departs as soon as the running instincts begin to fade, and the growing boy begins to encounter the gang’s prejudice against fleeing from a pursuer not much stronger than himself.
still, for the most part, this inconvenient impulse of boyhood is largely a spontaneous instinct, allied to the disposition to tease and bully. it is doubtful if it has any pedagogical value whatever. its proper cure is in about equal measure, firm repression and87 a cultivation of the sympathetic imagination. but let the parent beware of cultivating a sympathy which is in the least sentimental. it is better to let the boy stay naturally cruel for a few years, and then as naturally outgrow it, than to make him morbidly philanthropic for life. after all, cruelty, however hard on the victim, so long as it is unconscious, does little moral damage to the perpetrator.
the tendency to plague the girls, however, seems to be an instinct of a different sort. in general, boys at the gang age do not naturally associate with girls, do not allow them in their organizations, nor have any interests in common with them. in fact, boys seem to be impelled by a well defined impulse to make themselves disagreeable to the other sex.
only eleven of my reports so much as recognize the existence of the beings who, five years later, will become the most absorbing objects in life; while even in these, the information came only on inquiry, not spontaneously. to the question: “how does your gang treat girls?” typical answers88 are: “we never used to think of girls. i don’t know how to treat them. i never tried it.” “we never used to go with any girls.” “they never go round with any girls. they never say nothing to them. sis at them.” “sometimes do mean things to them. swear at them. fight them. steal things off them. call them names.”
who can question that this instinctive hostility of boys to girls is a wise provision of nature, and a good thing—at least for the boys? it is a temporary stage which passes all too soon, and leaves the youth at the mercy of the first attractive girl who makes the sweet eyes at him. from ten years to sixteen, nature tries to keep the sexes apart; presumably she knows what she is about, and we shall do well to accept the hint which she offers us.
closely allied to plaguing, and even more nearly universal in normal gangs, is fighting. unlike plaguing, however, fighting is on the whole a virtue of the gang rather than a vice, notwithstanding its many regrettable aspects. boys enjoy fighting, and89 they ought to. we come of a stock which has fought its way up from barbarism, and has known the joy of battle these hundred centuries. “we, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smouldering and sinister traits of character by which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed.”
“they have rights who dare maintain them,”
and many a long century will go by ere the world loses the necessity for the old fighting instincts. one may well believe that the men who are fighting corrupt political gangs in their manhood, fought the gangs of the next street in their youth, and so learned the fighting habit.
fighting is like plaguing in being an anti-social impulse. unlike the latter, on the other hand, it possesses great pedagogical value. there is nothing like a fight between90 individuals to teach physical and moral courage, self-reliance and self-control; and when, in addition, the battle involves the honor of the gang, it becomes one of the most forceful of lessons in the social virtues. either the fighting experiences of boyhood, or the fighting instincts which persist into adult life, or both together, make it impossible for men ever to treat one another as rudely as women often do.
nevertheless, this feature of boy life does present troublesome problems. we come suddenly upon two boys fighting, and our grown up standards of conduct compel us to separate them. afterwards, when we think it over, we are apt to regret that we happened to appear on the scene at that precise moment. it would have been just as well, we realize, for all parties, if the battle had been fought out.
as a rule, boys do not need to be encouraged to fight,—but neither should they be discouraged without careful consideration both of the boy and of his environment. there are times when every boy must defend91 his own rights if he is not to become a coward, and lose the road to independence and true manhood. the boy who is a bully needs a good thrashing—and usually gets it. the strong-willed boy needs no inspiration to combat, but often a good deal of guidance and restraint. if he fights more than, let us say, a half-dozen times a week,—except, of course, during his first week at a new school,—he is probably over-quarrelsome and needs the curb. the sensitive, retiring boy, on the other hand, commonly needs encouragement to stand his ground and fight. time is well spent with boys of this sort, in teaching them to wrestle and box. such encouragement and instruction may spare them the lifelong habit of timidity.
on the whole, for the average boy, the ground is pretty well covered by two rules of an old sea captain on the kennebec river down in maine:—
“rule 1. if my boy comes home and has given a smaller boy than he is a licking, i give him another.
“rule 2. if my boy comes home and has92 let a bigger boy than he is give him a licking, i give him another.”
i ought to add, by way of commentary, for the benefit of readers of the peaceable sex, that in the technical vocabulary of the human male, to let another person “give one a licking” does not mean to be beaten after a brave fight, but to “take it lying down,” that is to say, without putting up a decent resistance against overwhelming odds. according to the code of honor of boyville, when one is struck he is to strike back. it is not for him to consider the outcome.
the bellicose impulse, furthermore, tends gradually to limit itself, as successive combats make it more and more clear which boy can “lick” which, and as the boys slowly learn justice and toleration under the discipline of associate life. like most of the anti-social instincts of boyhood, it is essentially transient; if left alone, it will largely cure itself. circumstances over which we do have a great deal of control, however, fix these instincts as habits. it is our duty to see that they do not, but the fighting impulse ought93 to die a natural, not an artificial death. to us is applicable, therefore, the parable of the tares among the wheat. we shall do well to keep our fingers off the tares, except when we are pretty certain that in gathering up the tares we shall not “root up also the wheat with them.”
