The best of men are likely to have a secret satisfaction in their boys’ fights, and the bravest of mothers will deplore them.  The fathers know how hard are the knocks that life is going to give; the mothers hope that the boys can be saved from blows.  A man’s life is often pretty much of a fight, every day struggling in competition and rivalry; we have not yet learned the lesson of co-operation, and we still tend to think of business as a battlefield.  Something in us calls for fighting; we have to use the utmost strength at our command to fight the evil tendencies of our own hearts; often we rejoice in life as a conflict.  It feels good to find causes worth fighting for.  If all this is true of the man, it is not strange that the small boy, scarce more than a young savage, will find opportunities for conflict.  He is more dependent on the weapons of force than is his father.  He cannot cast out the enemy with a ballot, nor with a sneer or biting sarcasm, nor by some device or strategy of business or affairs.  He can only hit back.  Taken altogether, boys settle their differences as honestly at least as do men.

Moreover, children’s fights are not as cruel as they seem to be; even the bloodshed means little either of pain or of injury.  A boy may be badly banged up today and in full trim tomorrow; it is quite different with the wounds bloodlessly inflicted by men in their conflicts.

Does all this mean that boys should be encouraged to fight?  No; but it does mean that when Billy comes home with one eye apparently retired from business, we must not scold him as though he were the first wanderer from Eden.  That fight may have been precisely the same thing as a croquet game to his sister, or any test of skill to his big brother, or a business transaction to his father; it was a mere contest of two healthy bodies at a time when the body was the outstanding fact of life.  The fight may give us our chance, however, to aid him to a sense of the greatness of life’s conflict, to a sense of the qualities that make the true fighter.  It may leave him open to the appeal of true heroism.  We must make light of the victory of brute strength, just as we may make light of his wounds and scars, and glorify the victory of the mind and will.

The boy who fights because he lacks control of temper needs careful training.  He gets a good deal of discipline on the playground and street, but it is not always effective; the beatings may only further undermine control.  But the lack of self-control will manifest itself in many ways and must be remedied at all points.  The discipline of daily living in the family must come into play here.

Sec. 3.  SELF-CONTROL

The matter of self-control is not separable into special features; one cannot learn control under one set of moral circumstances without learning it for all.  The boy who strikes without thinking is simply one who acts without thinking.  He tends to throw away the brakes of the will.  The regain of control comes only through training at every point in deliberation of action.