THE CONTROL OF THE MORE PRIMITIVE IMPULSES
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, 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 as 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” 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 and 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 answers 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, and 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 between 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
defend 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 has 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 ought 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.”