The Minister and the Boy: II. An Approach to Boyhood

Abstract

If minister is to do intelligent work with boys he must have some knowledge of ground plan of boyhood and he must believe that boy both demands and merits actual study. Specific acquaintance with each one severally, alert recognition of individuality, variety, and even sport, and an ample allowance for exceptions to every rule will greatly aid in giving fitness to one's endeavor; but beneath all of these architectural peculiarities lies common biological foundation. To know human organism genetically, to have some knowledge of processes by which it reaches its normal organization, to appreciate crude and elemental struggle that has left its history in man's bodily structure, to think in large biological terms that include, besides the physics and chemistry of living matter, considerations ethnological, hereditary, and psychological, is to make fundamental preparation for understanding of boyhood. For family to which boy belongs is human family. His parents alone and their characteristics do not explain him, nor does contemporary environment, important as that is. His ancestry is human race, his history is their history, his impulses and his bodily equipment from which they spring are result of eons of strife, survival, and habit. Four generations back he has not two but sixteen parents. Thus he comes to us out of great physical democracy of mankind and doubtless with a tendency to re-live its ancient and deep-seated experiences. This theory of race recapitulation as applied to succeeding stages of boyhood may be somewhat more poetic than scientific.