Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 171, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 July 1911 — A Boy’s Motives [ARTICLE]

A Boy’s Motives

▲ boy la more apt to have fairly good motives than false ones. He starts out In life with something In him that will grow Into a sense of right, and. If he gets tangled. It will be because he Is taught it, through the eye or the ear or In both ways. If a boy's motives are entirely bad, he is seldom. If ever, entirely to blame for It There Is a reason. It may be, in fact a case of atavism, In which he has gone back and appropriated the fetid tastes of some vile ancestor and his parents were not wise enough to protect him against the ravages of the atavistic beast At the outset, we must concede the difficulty of knowing exactly what a boy's motives are, for his deepest most dominant motive is often tangled with superficial, secondary and temporary ones; and these may be so complex and active as to discourage us. How we can ever detach the real motive from this tangle of Impulses and make it the dominant thing is the problem. If he asks you a question. you are never sure of his pur pose. It may be fun or fancy or an evasion of duty. Two things encourage us. One is that these surface motives are not the deepest things about him. They are not the symptoms of anything bad. but of a new stage that he has reached, when new forces of the body and faculties of the mind are being released. He hardly knows what hurts him, but something is keeping his eyes wide open and his nerves all jumping. The other encouragement Is that these are the curious ways In which his very deepest and truest nature is finding Itself. His devotion to the gang is the spirit of loyalty starting toward universal brotherhood; his fondness for contests is the first exhibition of the warrior instinct getting ready to fight the good fight of faith; his Bohemianism. an incipient coimo-

polltanism; bls local attachments, the prelude to patriotism; his battles tor his partners, the forerunners of his battles in the higher Interest of his fellow men. “S; His motives will need several things. First of all they must be discovered and recognized by the older people. A young man who had lost a position, because of inefficiency, was employed by another firm, because they were compelled to have some one and he was the only one they could get. Soon they noticed that be had good suggestions to make and he found that they would listen. He began to climb and. before long, was in a very responsible position and was indispensable to the firm. When asked why he oould not keep his first job. be replied “they treated me as If I was a fool.

and I acted like one.” That discloses a reason why a boy's best must be recognised. To attribute a bad motive for the freakish and prankish ways of a boy is one way of making them bad, while the surest way to make them good is to consider them so and let him know that you do. His motives will also need protection. Those that are temporary, like temporary teeth, may be treated in a way to disfigure him for life; in fact, the temporary may bs made the permanent by false treatment. A brutal attempt to suppress the outflow of his tumultuous nature may make it ingrowing, may bottle it up to be*emitter, all his life, in Inopportune ways. The war-whoop may become malignant, if it is not allowed to come out in all its innocence. The genuine good will must be allowed to effervesce in its own way, as a protection to his whole nature. His motives will also need Infection from without, so as to correct and complete them. Our growth is always by expansion from within and infection from without. If one wants to get yellow fever, he only needs to let some ambitious mosquito bore Into his cuticle, with a bill that has been dipped in a cauldron of germs, and crawl over him with feet that have a good assortment of germs clinging to them. Then the victim is ready for the worst. One can also have health infection, as in antitoxin and in the infusion of pure fresh blood from some one. Judge Baldwin of Oak Park gave his Invalid daughter some of his own vigorous blood, not long ago, by infusion. It is of the highest Importance that a boy's motives be frequently purified by fresh infusions of motives of the highest kind. When he is thus assisted, direction will be needed more than correction. Formation is a good substitute for reformation; if the former is right, the latter will not be necessary. To discover his best motives, to discriminate them from the secondary and temporary, to direct them in righteous and rational ways—this is some one's high and inescapable duty. One thing more, and it cannot be said too frequently and forcibly, he must have concrete instance of the very best motives that can be produced and must find them in those people who, because of their natural relationship to him and their personal attractions for him. are charged with sacred responsibilities for him—these who create the atmosphere that enters into his. fiber, furnish him a conscience before his own is in command and supply him with motives that reshape and guide his own.