ing their enemies' bodies. The civilized life of
our ancestors covers a period of only a few hundred years. The
pre-civilized life of our ancestors goes back probably thousands and
thousands of years. In the relatively short period of civilization, our
real, original nature has been little changed, perhaps none at all. The
modern man is, at heart, the same old man of the woods.

The improvements of civilization form what is called a social heritage,
which must be impressed upon the original nature of each individual in
order to have any effect. Every child has to learn to speak, to write,
to dress, to eat with knife and fork; he must learn the various social
customs, and to act morally as older people dictate. The child is by
nature bad, in the sense that the nature which he inherits from the past
fits him better for the original kind of life which man used to live
than it does for the kind of life which we are trying to live now. This
view makes us see that training a child is, in a very true sense,
_making him over again_. The child must be trained to subdue and control
his original impulses. Habits and ideals that will be suitable for life
in civilized society _must be built up_. The doctrine of the Bible in
regard to the original nature of man being sinful, and the necessity of
regeneration, is fundamentally correct. But this regeneration is not so
much a sudden process as it is the result of long and patient
building-up of habits and ideals.

One should not despair of this view of child-life. Neither should one
use it as an excuse for being bad, or for neglecting the training of
children. On the contrary, taking the genetic view of childhood should
give us certain advantages. It makes us see more clearly the _necessity_
of training. Every child must be trained, or he will remain very much a
savage. In the absence of training, all children are much alike, and all
alike bad from our present point of view. The chief differences in
children in politeness and manners generally, in morals, in industry,
etc., are due, in the main, to differences in training. It is a great
help merely to know how difficult the task of training is, and that
training there must be if we are to have a civilized child. We must take
thought and plan for the education and training of our children. The
task of education is in part one of changing human nature. This is no
light task. It is one that requires, in the case of each child, some
twenty