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,84 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 as85 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”86 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 and87 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 answers88 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.” “Sometim............