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.” CHAPTER VIII THE MANAGEMENT OF THE PREDATORY IMPULSES We are to look upon the gang as an association essentially instinctive. The boy at a certain age joins a gang, the gang pursues a definite set of activities, from motives that are primarily irrational. The boy is simply made that way. His behavior has the same instinctive basis as the acts of any other wild creature. It is, so the psychologists tell us, a peculiarity of instincts among the higher animals, and especially of the instincts of mankind, that they are essentially transitory. They arise at the proper period of existence, persist in some cases only until the acts which they inspire have time to become habits, and then fade away. The squirrel born in a cage tries to bury nuts in the tin bottom. He tries it once or twice, and fails. He does not try it again; and probably would not, even though he returned to the woods. The tame beaver which builds its dam of chairs and umbrellas across the parlor floor, does it only once. The hen which cackles distractedly when her first brood of ducklings takes to the water trots calmly off to the pond with her third or fourth. But the duckling, kept away from the water for the first weeks of its existence, fears it forever afterwards.