re they surely can and will do for him, and if
the pastor who thinks that he has no field or who is getting a bit weary
or professional in the routine ministry to unromantic middle life could
but behold within his parish, however small, this very essence of vital
reality, this allurement of unbounded possibility, this challenge of a
lively paganism, and this greatest single opportunity to bring in the
Kingdom of God, he would, in the very discovery of the boy and his
significance, re-create himself into a more useful, happy, and genuine
man. Is it not better to find new values in the old field than to pursue
superficial values in a succession of new fields?

CHAPTER II

AN APPROACH TO BOYHOOD[1]

If the minister is to do intelligent work with boys he must have some
knowledge of the ground plan of boyhood and he must believe that the 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 the common biological foundation. To
know the human organism genetically, to have some knowledge of the
processes by which it reaches its normal organization, to appreciate the
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
the understanding of boyhood.

For the family to which the boy belongs is the human family. His parents
alone and their characteristics do not explain him, nor does
contemporary environment, important as that is. His ancestry is the
human race, his history is their history, his impulses and his bodily
equipment from which they spring are the 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 the 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 the succeeding stages
of boyhood may be somewhat more poetic than scientific. Genetically he
does those things for which at the time he has the requisite muscular
and nervous equi