Man is by nature a father, since he is made in the image of God. This fact must be central to any consideration of educating boys and young men.

He is also made to exceed his nature and to see God face to face, his intellect grasping the form of God directly, unmediated by sense, in other words to take on perfectly the form of God in his soul. This perfection cannot be complete in this life.

But in one single respect, he has an opportunity to participate in the life of God now which will be absent in heaven-- to create other images of God meant for heaven.

A woman conceives a new soul in her body.  But a man conceives of a new soul first in his mind, before the child is born,  with an image of what form that soul should take. All of the qualities of a father-- teaching,  protecting, ruling, guiding-- are directed towards realizing the image that he conceives of his son.

A practical man, who imagines only temporal ends for his son, will arrange a useful education for him, to prepare him for social, or economic, or some other subordinate good.

But a father who intends his son for an eternal end will need to form his own imagination properly.  He will need, of course, to understand clearly the final end meant for his son. But a father will also need to understand his son as his particular son is, and not as he, his father, imagines his son to be.

A father who imagines the wrong end for his son, or does not hold a correct image of his son, can only impose, through a sort of tyranny, a false image on him. This failure will be akin to man's misuse of constructive arts to dominate nature rather than guide it.

Because a woman conceives of a child in her flesh, her maternal nature is in a way manifest and undeniable. But because the nature of a father begins as an abstract image, it must be tested against nature, against the world as it is. At a certain age, a man has to undergo some trial of the image according to which he has been formed.  If he does not, he will always be troubled by uncertainty about his form, and rightly, since it will not have had its flaws brought to light.

But more than that-- when a man is tested by the world, he also tests the world and comes to a proper understanding of it, and his relation to it. First-hand knowledge, from experience, is necessary to live properly as a man in the world.  This requires encountering its hard edges, learning from cold, heat, weight, fatigue, even injury, the firm unyielding nature of creation.

A small boy cooperates eagerly with his father's ideas of being a man, imitating his father's every action.  But in adolescence, he begins to test that image, to push against it, to see if it proves equal to reality. He naturally looks to other men for this.

For these reasons, an education for boys requires at a certain age the involvement of other men. For one thing, few fathers, on their own, can provide the necessary

circumstances and experiences. But more importantly, since the father's own conception of his son is what is being tried, other men are required for a true test.