130 "THE COMING OF MAN 



battles. If his father will help him, let the father renew his 

 youth; it will not hurt him. 



It is the epoch of the reign not of cold judgment but of the 

 heart out of which are the issues of life. Feelings and emo- 

 tions are racial, crystallized out of ages of human experience, 

 sifted, tried and tested. Opinions, and most of our theories, 

 are individual, of yesterday, and will be forgotten to-morrow. 

 Trust his feelings. Deal honestly and squarely, play fair with 

 him; and the harder you apply curb and spur, the better he 

 will like you in the end. He is searching for a leader, and 

 usually, like St. Christopher, he will begin by following the 

 strongest. In time he will find his hero and king. 



He is overflowing with loyalty. He has probably been con- 

 verted at fourteen or sixteen, the years of rapid increase in 

 girths and lung-capacity, marking rapid increase in vitality 

 and vigor. Give him a virile Christianity, and you have the 

 stuff of a hero and martyr. If he is healthy, he is an idealist. 



He is a fine target for criticism. We can hardly fail to 

 hit and probably wound him, if that is what we wish; though 

 he will probably not show it, and our missiles may 

 rebound. If we wish to correct him we must look back a 

 few years, remember and confess some of our own vast igno- 

 rance, a few choice specimens of our blunders and follies, our 

 perversity and stupidity, not to mention sins and transgres- 

 sions. Then he may listen to us. If we are too superior, we 

 cannot meet him on his own ground of experience. If he has 

 little respect for us and our opinions, the fault may be partly 

 ours. This, again, seems quite obvious. 



At his best he is a very attractive and exasperating, crude, 

 immature, inexperienced irresponsible young barbarian, re- 

 minding us of the primitive Achaean or Celt. As the Irish 

 woman said of her son: " 'Twixt the plague of his living 

 and the fear of his dying I have no peace in life." We enjoy 

 the vigor and boldness of his thought and expression; the 

 freshness and freedom of his argument or assertion untram- 

 meled by logic, facts or experience. He will have experience. 



