the boy's likes and deeds. At the same time the theory is to be used
suggestively rather than dogmatically, and the leader of boys will not
imagine that to reproduce the primitive life is the goal of his
endeavor. It is by the recognition of primitive traits and by connecting
with them as they emerge that the guide of boyhood may secure an
intelligent and well-supported advance.

Such an approach favors a sympathetic understanding of the boy. To
behold in him a rough summary of the past, and to be able to capitalize
for good the successive instincts as they appear, is to accomplish a
fine piece of missionary work without leaving home. Africa and Borneo
and Alaska come to you. The fire-worshiper of ancient times, the fierce
tribesman, the savage hunter and fisher, the religion-making nomad, the
daring pirate, the bedecked barbarian, the elemental fighter with nature
and fellow and rival of every kind, the master of the world in
making--comes before you in dramatic and often pathetic array in the
unfolding life of the ordinary boy.

Our topmost civilization, although sustained and repleted by this
original stuff, takes all too little account of these elemental traits.
In the growing boy the ascending races are piled one on top of another.
In him you get a longitudinal section of human nature since its
beginning. He is an abridged volume on ethnology; and because he is on
the way up and elected to rule, it is more of a mistake to neglect him
than it is to neglect any of those races that have suffered a
long-continued arrest at some point along the way. Of course anyone
expecting to note by day and hour the initial emergence of this or that
particular trait of primitive man will be disappointed. The thing for
the friend of the boy to know is that in him the deep-set habits which
made the human body the instrument it is, the old propensities of savage