Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene (2024)

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ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE

BY
G. STANLEY HALL, Ph.D., LL.D.
President of Clark University and
Professor of Psychology
And Pedagogy

PREFACE

I have often been asked to select and epitomize the practical andespecially the pedagogical conclusions of my large volumes onAdolescence, published in 1904, in such form that they may beavailable at a minimum cost to parents, teachers, reading circles,normal schools, and college classes, by whom even the larger volumeshave been often used. This, with the coöperation of the publishers andwith the valuable aid of Superintendent C.N. Kendall of Indianapolis,I have tried to do, following in the main the original text, with onlysuch minor changes and additions as were necessary to bring the topicsup to date, and adding a new chapter on moral and religions education.For the scientific justification of my educational conclusions I must,of course, refer to the larger volumes. The last chapter is not in"Adolescence," but is revised from a paper printed elsewhere. I amindebted to Dr. Theodore L. Smith of Clark University for verificationof all references, proof-reading, and many minor changes.

G. STANLEY HALL.

CONTENTS

I.—PRE-ADOLESCENCE

Introduction: Characterization of the age from eight to twelve—Theera of recapitulating the stages of primitive human development—Lifeclose to nature—The age also for drill, habituation, memory work, andregermination—Adolescence superposed upon this stage of life, butvery distinct from it

II.—THE MUSCLES AND MOTOR POWERS IN GENERAL

Muscles as organs of the will, of character, and even of thought—Themuscular virtues—Fundamental and accessory muscles and functions—Thedevelopment of the mind and of the upright position—Small muscles asorgans of thought—School lays too much stress upon these—Chorea—Vastnumbers of automatic movements in children—Great variety ofspontaneous activities—Poise, control, and spurtiness—Pen and tonguewagging—Sedentary school life vs. free out-of-door activities—Moderndecay of muscles, especially in girls—Plasticity of motor habits atpuberty

III.—INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.

Trade classes and schools, their importance in the internationalmarket—Our dangers and the superiority of German workmen—The effectsof a tariff—Description of schools between the kindergarten and theindustrial school—Equal salaries for teachers in France—Dangers frommachinery—The advantages of life on the old New England farm—Itsresemblance to the education we now give negroes and Indians—Itsadvantage for all-sided muscular development

IV.—MANUAL TRAINING AND SLOYD.

History of the movement—Its philosophy—The value of hand training inthe development of the brain and its significance in the making ofman—A grammar of our many industries hard—The best we do can reachbut few—Very great defects in manual training methods which do notbase on science and make nothing salable—The Leipzig system—Sloyd ishypermethodic—These crude peasant industries can never satisfyeducational needs—The gospel of work; William Morris and the arts andcrafts movement—Its spirit desirable—The magic effects of a briefperiod of intense work—The natural development of the drawinginstinct in the child

V.—GYMNASTICS

The story of Jahn and the Turners—The enthusiasm which this movementgenerated in Germany—The ideal of bringing out latent powers—Theconcept of more perfect voluntary control—Swedish gymnastics—Doingeverything possible for the body as a machine—Liberal physicalculture—Ling's orthogenic scheme of economic postures and movementsand correcting defects—The ideal of symmetry and prescribingexercises to bring the body to a standard—Lamentable lack ofcorrelation between these four systems—Illustrations of the greatgood that a systematic training can effect—Athletic records—Greekphysical training

VI.—PLAY, SPORTS, AND GAMES

The view of Groos partial, and a better explanation of play proposedas rehearsing ancestral activities—The glory of Greek physicaltraining, its ideals and results—The first spontaneous movements ofinfancy as keys to the past—Necessity of developing basal powersbefore those that are later and peculiar to the individual—Plays thatinterest due to their antiquity—Play with dolls—Play distinguishedby age—Play preferences of children and their reasons—The profoundsignificance of rhythm—The value of dancing and also itssignificance, history, and the desirability of reintroducingit—Fighting—Boxing—Wrestling—Bushido—Foot-ball—Militaryideals—Showing off—Cold baths—Hill climbing—The playgroundmovement—The psychology of play—Its relation to work

VII.—FAULTS, LIES, AND CRIMES.

Classification of children's faults—Peculiar children—Real fault asdistinguished from interference with the teacher's ease—Truancy, itsnature and effects—The genesis of crime—The lie, its classes andrelations to imagination—Predatory activities—Gangs—Causes ofcrime—The effects of stories of crime—Temibility—Juvenile crime andits treatment

VIII.—BIOGRAPHIES OF YOUTH.

Knightly ideals and honor—Thirty adolescents fromShakespeare—Goethe—C.D. Warner—Aldrich—The fugitive nature ofadolescent experience—Extravagance of autobiographies—Stories thatattach to great names—Some typical crazes—Illustrations from GeorgeEliot, Edison, Chatterton, Hawthorne, Whittier, Spencer, Huxley,Lyell, Byron, Heine, Napoleon, Darwin, Martineau, Agassiz, MadameRoland, Louisa Alcott, F.H. Burnett, Helen Keller, Marie Bashkirtseff,Mary MacLane, Ada Negri, De Quincey, Stuart Mill, Jefferies, andscores of others

IX.—THE GROWTH OF SOCIAL IDEALS.

Change from childish to adult friends—Influence of favoriteteachers—What children wish or plan to do or be—Property and themoney sense—Social judgments—The only child—First socialorganizations—Student life—Associations for youth controlled byadults

X.—INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION AND SCHOOL WORK.

The general change and plasticity at puberty—English teaching—Causesof its failure, (1) too much time to other languages, (2)subordination of literary content to form, (3) too early stress on eyeand hand instead of ear and mouth, (4) excessive use of concretewords—Children's interest in words—Their favorites—Slang—Storytelling—Age of reading crazes—What to read—The historicsense—Growth of memory span

XI.—THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.

Equal opportunities of higher education now open—Brings new dangersto women—Ineradicable sex differences begin at puberty, when thesexes should and do diverge—Different interests—Sex tension—Girlsmore mature than boys at the same age—Radical psychic andphysiological differences between the sexes—The bachelor women—Neededreconstruction—Food—Sleep—Regimen—Manners—Religion—Regularity—The topics for a girls' curriculum—The eternally womanly

XII.—MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING.

Dangers of muscular degeneration and overstimulus ofbrain—Difficulties in teaching morals—Methods in Europe—Obedienceto commands—Good habits should be mechanized—Value of scolding—Howto flog aright—Its dangers—Moral precepts andproverbs—Habituation—Training will throughintellect—Examinations—Concentration—Originality—Froebel and thenaive—First ideas of God—Conscience—Importance of Old and NewTestaments—Sex dangers—Love and religion—Conversion

CHAPTER I

PRE-ADOLESCENCE

Introduction: Characterization of the age from eight to twelve—Theera of recapitulating the stages of primitive human development—Lifeclose to nature—The age also for drill, habituation, memory, work andregermination—Adolescence superposed upon this stage of life, butvery distinct from it.

The years from about eight to twelve constitute a unique period ofhuman life. The acute stage of teething is passing, the brain hasacquired nearly its adult size and weight, health is almost at itsbest, activity is greater and more varied than it ever was before orever will be again, and there is peculiar endurance, vitality, andresistance to fatigue. The child develops a life of its own outsidethe home circle, and its natural interests are never so independent ofadult influence. Perception is very acute, and there is great immunityto exposure, danger, accident, as well as to temptation. Reason, truemorality, religion, sympathy, love, and esthetic enjoyment are butvery slightly developed.

Everything, in short, suggests that this period may represent in theindividual what was once for a very protracted and relativelystationary period an age of maturity in the remote ancestors of ourrace, when the young of our species, who were perhaps pygmoid, shiftedfor themselves independently of further parental aid. The qualitiesdeveloped during pre-adolescence are, in the evolutionary history ofthe race, far older than hereditary traits of body and mind whichdevelop later and which may be compared to a new and higher storybuilt upon our primal nature. Heredity is so far both more stable andmore secure. The elements of personality are few, but are wellorganised on a simple, effective plan. The momentum of these traitsinherited from our indefinitely remote ancestors is great, and theyare often clearly distinguishable from those to be added later. Thusthe boy is father of the man in a new sense, in that his qualities areindefinitely older and existed, well compacted, untold ages before themore distinctly human attributes were developed. Indeed there are afew faint indications of an earlier age node, at about the age of six,as if amid the instabilities of health we could detect signs that thismay have been the age of puberty in remote ages of the past. I havealso given reasons that lead me to the conclusion that, despite itsdominance, the function of sexual maturity and procreative power ispeculiarly mobile up and down the age-line independently of many ofthe qualities usually so closely associated with it, so that much thatsex created in the phylum now precedes it in the individual.

Rousseau would leave prepubescent years to nature and to these primalhereditary impulsions and allow the fundamental traits of savagerytheir fling till twelve. Biological psychology finds many and cogentreasons to confirm this view if only a proper environment could beprovided. The child revels in savagery; and if its tribal, predatory,hunting, fishing, fighting, roving, idle, playing proclivities couldbe indulged in the country and under conditions that now, alas! seemhopelessly ideal, they could conceivably be so organized and directedas to be far more truly humanistic and liberal than all that the bestmodern school can provide. Rudimentary organs of the soul, nowsuppressed, perverted, or delayed, to crop out in menacing formslater, would be developed in their season so that we should be immuneto them in maturer years, on the principle of the Aristoteliancatharsis for which I have tried to suggest a far broader applicationthan the Stagirite could see in his day.

These inborn and more or less savage instincts can and should beallowed some scope. The deep and strong cravings in the individual forthose primitive experiences and occupations in which his ancestorsbecame skilful through the pressure of necessity should not beignored, but can and should be, at least partially, satisfied in avicarious way, by tales from literature, history, and tradition whichpresent the crude and primitive virtues of the heroes of the world'schildhood. In this way, aided by his vivid visual imagination, thechild may enter upon his heritage from the past, live out each stageof life to its fullest and realize in himself all its manifoldtendencies. Echoes only of the vaster, richer life of the remote pastof the race they must remain, but just these are the murmurings of theonly muse that can save from the omnipresent dangers of precocity.Thus we not only rescue from the danger of loss, but utilize forfurther psychic growth the results of the higher heredity, which arethe most precious and potential things on earth. So, too, in oururbanized hothouse life, that tends to ripen everything before itstime, we must teach nature, although the very phrase is ominous. Butwe must not, in so doing, wean still more from, but perpetually inciteto visit, field, forest, hill, shore, the water, flowers, animals, thetrue homes of childhood in this wild, undomesticated stage from whichmodern conditions have kidnapped and transported him. Books andreading are distasteful, for the very soul and body cry out for a moreactive, objective life, and to know nature and man at first hand.These two staples, stories and nature, by these informal methods ofthe home and the environment, constitute fundamental education.

But now another remove from nature seems to be made necessary by themanifold knowledges and skills of our highly complex civilization. Weshould transplant the human sapling, I concede reluctantly, as earlyas eight, but not before, to the schoolhouse with its imperfectlighting, ventilation, temperature. We must shut out nature and openbooks. The child must sit on unhygienic benches and work the tinymuscles that wag the tongue and pen, and let all the others, whichconstitute nearly half its weight, decay. Even if it be prematurely,he must be subjected to special disciplines and be apprenticed to thehigher qualities of adulthood; for he is not only a product of nature,but a candidate for a highly developed humanity. To many, if not most,of the influences here there can be at first but little innerresponse. Insight, understanding, interest, sentiment, are for themost part only nascent; and most that pertains to the true kingdom ofmature manhood is embryonic. The wisest requirements seem to the childmore or less alien, arbitrary, heteronomous, artificial, falsetto.There is much passivity, often active resistance and evasion, andperhaps spasms of obstinacy, to it all. But the senses are keen andalert, reactions immediate and vigorous; and the memory is quick, sureand lasting; and ideas of space, time, and physical causation, and ofmany a moral and social licit and non-licit, are rapidly unfolding.Never again will there be such susceptibility to drill and discipline,such plasticity to habituation, or such ready adjustment to newconditions. It is the age of external and mechanical training.Reading, writing, drawing, manual training, musical technic, foreigntongues and their pronunciations, the manipulation of numbers and ofgeometrical elements, and many kinds of skill have now their goldenhour; and if it passes unimproved, all these can never be acquiredlater without a heavy handicap of disadvantage and loss. Thesenecessities may be hard for the health of body, sense, mind, as wellas for morals; and pedagogic art consists in breaking the child intothem betimes as intensely and as quickly as possible with minimalstrain and with the least amount of explanation or coquetting fornatural interest, and in calling medicine confectionery. This is notteaching in its true sense so much as it is drill, inculcation, andregimentation. The method should be mechanical, repetitive,authoritative, dogmatic. The automatic powers are now at their veryapex, and they can do and bear more than our degenerate pedagogy knowsor dreams of. Here we have something to learn from the schoolmastersof the past back to the middle ages, and even from the ancients. Thegreatest stress, with short periods and few hours, incessantinsistence, incitement, and little reliance upon interest, reason orwork done without the presence of the teacher, should be the guidingprinciples for pressure in these essentially formal and, to the child,contentless elements of knowledge. These should be sharplydistinguished from the indigenous, evoking, and more truly educationalfactors described in the last paragraph, which are meaty,content-full, and relatively formless as to time of day, method,spirit, and perhaps environment and personnel of teacher, and possiblysomewhat in season of the year, almost as sharply as work differs fromplay, or perhaps as the virility of man that loves to command aphalanx, be a martinet and drill-master, differs from femininity whichexcels in persuasion, sympathetic insight, story-telling, and in thetact that discerns and utilizes spontaneous interests in the young.

Adolescence is a new birth, for the higher and more completely humantraits are now born. The qualities of body and soul that now emergeare far newer. The child comes from and harks back to a remoter past;the adolescent is neo-atavistic, and in him the later acquisitions ofthe race slowly become prepotent. Development is less gradual and moresaltatory, suggestive of some ancient period of storm and stress whenold moorings were broken and a higher level attained. The annual rateof growth in height, weight, and strength is increased and oftendoubled, and even more. Important functions, previously non-existent,arise. Growth of parts and organs loses its former proportions, somepermanently and some for a season. Some of these are still growing inold age and others are soon arrested and atrophy. The old measures ofdimensions become obsolete, and old harmonies are broken. The range ofindividual differences and average errors in all physical measurementsand all psychic tests increases. Some linger long in the childishstage and advance late or slowly, while others push on with a suddenoutburst of impulsion to early maturity. Bones and muscles lead allother tissues, as if they vied with each other; and there is frequentflabbiness or tension as one or the other leads. Nature arms youth forconflict with all the resources at her command—speed, power ofshoulder, biceps, back, leg, jaw—strengthens and enlarges skull,thorax, hips, makes man aggressive and prepares woman's frame formaternity.

* * * * *

CHAPTER II

THE MUSCLES AND MOTOR POWERS IN GENERAL

Muscles as organs of the will, of character and even of thought—Themuscular virtues—Fundamental and accessory muscles and functions—Thedevelopment of the mind and of the upright position—Smallmuscles as organs of thought—School lays too much stress uponthese—Chorea—vast numbers of automatic movements in children—Greatvariety of spontaneous activities—Poise, control and spurtiness—Penand tongue wagging—Sedentary school life vs free out-of-dooractivities—Modern decay of muscles, especially in girls—Plasticityof motor habits at puberty.

The muscles are by weight about forty-three per cent. of the averageadult male human body. They expend a large fraction of all the kineticenergy of the adult body, which a recent estimate places as high asone-fifth. The cortical centers for the voluntary muscles extend overmost of the lateral psychic zones of the brain, so that their cultureis brain building. In a sense they are organs of digestion, for whichfunction they play a very important rôle. Muscles are in a mostintimate and peculiar sense the organs of the will. They have builtall the roads, cities, and machines in the world, written all thebooks, spoken all the words, and, in fact, done everything that manhas accomplished with matter. If they are undeveloped or grow relaxedand flabby, the dreadful chasm between good intentions and theirexecution is liable to appear and widen. Character might be in a sensedefined as a plexus of motor habits. To call conduct three-fourths oflife, with Matthew Arnold; to describe man as one-third intellect andtwo-thirds will, with Schopenhauer; to urge that man is what he doesor that he is the sum of his movements, with F.W. Robertson; thatcharacter is simply muscle habits, with Maudsley; that the age of artis now slowly superseding the age of science, and that the artist willdrive out with the professor, with the anonymous author of "Rembrandtals Erzicher";[1] that history is consciously willed movements, withBluntschli; or that we could form no conception of force or energy inthe world but for our own muscular effort; to hold that most thoughtinvolves change of muscle tension as more or less integral to it—allthis shows how we have modified the antique Ciceronian conceptionvivere est cogitari, [To live is to think] to vivere est velle,[To live is to will] and gives us a new sense of the importance ofmuscular development and regimen.[2]

Modern psychology thus sees in muscles organs of expression for allefferent processes. Beyond all their demonstrable functions, everychange of attention and of psychic states generally plays upon themunconsciously, modifying their tension in subtle ways so that they maybe called organs of thought and feeling as well as of will, in whichsome now see the true Kantian thing-in-itself the real substance ofthe world, in the anthropomorphism of force. Habits even determine thedeeper strata of belief; thought is repressed action; and deeds, notwords, are the language of complete men. The motor areas are closelyrelated and largely identical with the psychic, and muscle culturedevelops brain-centers as nothing else yet demonstrably does. Musclesare the vehicles of habituation, imitation, obedience, character, andeven of manners and customs. For the young, motor education iscardinal, and is now coming to due recognition; and, for all,education is incomplete without a motor side. Skill, endurance, andperseverance may almost be called muscular virtues; and fatigue,velleity, caprice, ennui, restlessness, lack of control and poise,muscular faults.

To understand the momentous changes of motor functions thatcharacterize adolescence we must consider other than the measurableaspects of the subject. Perhaps the best scale on which to measure allnormal growth of muscle structure and functions is found in theprogress from fundamental to accessory. The former designates themuscles and movements of the trunk and large joints, neck, back, hips,shoulders, knees, and elbows, sometimes called central, and which ingeneral man has in common with the higher and larger animals. Theiractivities are few, mostly simultaneous, alternating and rhythmic, asof the legs in walking, and predominate in hard-working men and womenwith little culture or intelligence, and often in idiots. The latteror accessory movements are those of the hand, tongue, face, andarticulatory organs, and these may be connected into a long andgreatly diversified series, as those used in writing, talking,piano-playing. They are represented by smaller and more numerousmuscles, whose functions develop later in life and represent a higherstandpoint of evolution. These smaller muscles for finer movementscome into function later and are chiefly associated with psychicactivity, which plays upon them by incessantly changing theirtensions, if not causing actual movement. It is these that are soliable to disorder in the many automatisms and choreic tics we see inschool children, especially if excited or fatigued. General paralysisusually begins in the higher levels by breaking these down, so thatthe first symptom of its insidious and never interrupted progress isinability to execute the more exact and delicate movements of tongueor hand, or both. Starting with the latest evolutionary level, it is adevolution that may work downward till very many of the fundamentalactivities are lost before death.

Nothing better illustrates this distinction than the differencebetween the fore foot of animals and the human hand. The first beginsas a fin or paddle or is armed with a hoof, and is used solely forlocomotion. Some carnivora with claws use the fore limb also forholding well as tearing, and others for digging. Arboreal life seemsto have almost created the simian hand and to have wrought arevolution in the form and use of the forearm and its accessoryorgans, the fingers. Apes and other tree-climbing creatures must notonly adjust their prehensile organ to a wide variety of distances andsizes of branches, but must use the hands more or less freely forpicking, transporting, and eating fruit; and this has probably been aprime factor in lifting man to the erect position, without which humanintelligence as we know it could have hardly been possible. "When weattempt to measure the gap between man and the lower animals in termsof the form of movement, the wonder is no less great than when we usethe term of mentality."[3] The degree of approximation to humanintelligence in anthropoid animals follows very closely the degree ofapproximation to human movements.

The gradual acquirement of the erect position by the human infantadmirably repeats this long phylogenetic evolution.[4] At first thelimbs are of almost no use in locomotion, but the fundamental trunkmuscles with those that move the large joints are more or lessspasmodically active. Then comes creeping, with use of the hipmuscles, while all below the knee is useless, as also are the fingers.Slowly the leg and foot are degraded to locomotion, slowly the greattoe becomes more limited in its action, the thumb increases inflexibility and strength of opposition, and the fingers grow moremobile and controllable. As the body slowly assumes the verticalattitude, the form of the chest changes till its greatest diameter istransverse instead of from front to back. The shoulder-blades are lessparallel than in quadrupeds, and spread out till they approximate thesame plane. This gives the arm freedom of movement laterally, so thatit can be rotated one hundred and eighty degrees in man as contrastedto one hundred degrees in apes, thus giving man the command of almostany point within a sphere of which the two arms are radii. The powerof grasping was partly developed from and partly added to the oldlocomotor function of the fore limbs; the jerky aimless automatisms,as well as the slow rhythmic flexion and extension of the fingers andhand, movements which are perhaps survivals of arboreal or of evenearlier aquatic life, are coördinated; and the bilateral andsimultaneous rhythmic movements of the heavier muscles aresupplemented by the more finely adjusted and specialized activitieswhich as the end of the growth period is approached are determinedless by heredity and more by environment. In a sense, a child or a manis the sum total of his movements or tendencies to move; and natureand instinct chiefly determine the basal, and education the accessoryparts of our activities.

The entire accessory system is thus of vital importance for thedevelopment of all of the arts of expression. These smaller musclesmight almost be called organs of thought. Their tension is modifiedwith the faintest change of soul, such as is seen in accent,inflection, facial expressions, handwriting, and many forms ofso-called mind-reading, which, in fact, is always muscle-reading. Theday-laborer of low intelligence, with a practical vocabulary of notover five hundred words, who can hardly move each of his fingerswithout moving others or all of them, who can not move his brows orcorrugate his forehead at will, and whose inflection is verymonotonous, illustrates a condition of arrest or atrophy of thislater, finer, accessory system of muscles. On the other hand, thechild, precocious in any or all of these later respects, is veryliable to be undeveloped in the larger and more fundamental parts andfunctions. The full unfoldment of each is, in fact, an inexorablecondition precedent for the normal development to full and abidingmaturity of the higher and more refined muscularity, just asconversely the awkwardness and clumsiness of adolescence mark atemporary loss of balance in the opposite direction. If this generalconception be correct, then nature does not finish the basis of herpyramid in the way Ross, Mercier, and others have assumed, but lays apart of the foundation and, after carrying it to an apex, normallygoes back and adds to the foundation to carry up the apex still higherand, if prevented from so doing, expends her energy in building theapex up at a sharper angle till instability results. School andkindergarten often lay a disproportionate strain on the tiny accessorymuscles, weighing altogether but a few ounces, that wag the tongue,move the pen, and do fine work requiring accuracy. But still at thisstage prolonged work requiring great accuracy is irksome and bringsdangers hom*ologous to those caused by too much fine work in thekindergarten before the first adjustment of large to small muscles,which lasts until adolescence, is established. Then disproportionbetween function and growth often causes symptoms of chorea. The chiefdanger is arrest of the development and control of the smallermuscles. Many occupations and forms of athletics, on the contrary,place the stress mainly upon groups of fundamental muscles to theneglect of finer motor possibilities. Some who excel in heavyathletics no doubt coarsen their motor reactions, become not onlyinexact and heavy but unresponsive to finer stimuli, as if the largemuscles were hypertrophied and the small ones arrested. On the otherhand, many young men, and probably more young women, expend too littleof their available active energy upon basal and massive muscle work,and cultivate too much, and above all too early, the delicateresponsive work. This is, perhaps, the best physiologicalcharacterization of precocity and issues in excessive nervous andmuscular irritability. The great influx of muscular vigor that unfoldsduring adolescent years and which was originally not only necessary tosuccessful propagation, but expressive of virility, seems to be a veryplastic quantity, so that motor regimen and exercise at this stage isprobably more important and all-conditioning for mentality, sexuality,and health than at any other period of life. Intensity, and for a timea spurty diathesis, is as instinctive and desirable as are the copiousminor automatisms which spontaneously give the alphabet out of whichcomplex and finer motor series are later spelled by the consciouswill. Mercier and others have pointed out that, as most skilled labor,so school work and modern activities in civilized life generally laypremature and disproportionate strains upon those kinds of movementrequiring exactness. Stress upon basal movements is not onlycompensating but is of higher therapeutic value against the disordersof the accessory system; it constitutes the best core or prophylacticfor fidgets and tense states, and directly develops poise, control,and psycho-physical equilibrium. Even when contractions reach choreicintensity the best treatment is to throw activities down the scalethat measures the difference between primary and secondary movementsand to make the former predominate.

The number of movements, the frequency with which they are repeated,their diversity, the number of combinations, and their total kineticquantum in young children, whether we consider movements of the bodyas a whole, fundamental movements of large limbs, or finer accessorymotions, is amazing. Nearly every external stimulus is answered by amotor response. Dresslar[5] observed a thirteen months' old baby forfour hours, and found, to follow Preyer's classification, impulsive orspontaneous, reflex, instinctive, imitative, inhibitive, expressive,and even deliberative movements, with marked satisfaction in rhythm,attempts to do almost anything which appealed to him, and almostinexhaustible efferent resources. A friend has tried to record everyword uttered by a four-year-old girl during a portion of a day, andfinds nothing less than verbigerations. A teacher noted the activitiesof a fourteen-year-old boy during the study time of a single schoolday[6], with similar results.

Lindley[7] studied 897 common motor automatisms in children, which hedivided into 92 classes: 45 in the region of the head, 20 in the feetand legs, 19 in the hands and fingers. Arranged in the order offrequency with which each was found, the list stood as follows:fingers, feet, lips, tongue, head, body, hands, mouth, eyes, jaws,legs, forehead, face, arms, ears. In the last five alone adolescentsexceeded children, the latter excelling the former most in those ofhead, mouth, legs, and tongue, in this order. The writer believes thatthere are many more automatisms than appeared in his returns.

School life, especially in the lower grades, is a rich field for thestudy of these activities. They are familiar, as licking things,clicking with the tongue, grinding the teeth, scratching, tapping,twirling a lock of hair or chewing it, biting the nails (Bérillon'sonychophagia), shrugging, corrugating, pulling buttons or twistinggarments, strings, etc., twirling pencils, thumbs, rotating, noddingand shaking the head, squinting and winking, swaying, pouting andgrimacing, scraping the floor, rubbing hands, stroking, patting,flicking the fingers, wagging, snapping the fingers, muffling,squinting, picking the face, interlacing the fingers, cracking thejoints, finger plays, biting and nibbling, trotting the leg, suckingthings, etc.

The average number of automatisms per 100 persons Smith found to be inchildren 176, in adolescents 110. Swaying is chiefly with children;playing and drumming with the fingers is more common amongadolescents; the movements of fingers and feet decline little withage, and those of eyes and forehead increase, which is significant forthe development of attention. Girls excel greatly in swaying, andalso, although less, in finger automatism; and boys lead in movementsof tongue, feet, and hands. Such movements increase, with too muchsitting, intensity of effort, such as to fix attention, and vary withthe nature of the activity willed, but involve few muscles directlyused in a given task. They increase up the kindergarten grades andfall off rapidly in the primary grades; are greater with tasksrequiring fine and exact movements than with those involving largemovements. Automatisms are often a sign of the difficulty of tasks.The restlessness that they often express is one of the commonest signsof fatigue. They are mostly in the accessory muscles, while those ofthe fundamental muscles (body, legs, and arms) disappear rapidly withage; those of eye, brow, and jaw show greatest increase with age, buttheir frequency in general declines with growing maturity, althoughthere is increased frequency of certain specialized contractions,which indicate the gradual settling of expression in the face.

Often such movements pass over by insensible gradation into the morbidautomatism of chorea, and in yet lower levels of decay we see them inthe aimless picking and plucking movements of the fingers of the sick.In idiots[8] arrest of higher powers often goes with hypertrophy ofthese movements, as seen in head-beaters (as if, just as nature impelsthose partially blind to rub the eyes for "light-hunger," so itprompts the feeble-minded to strike the head for cerebrations),rockers, rackers, shakers, biters, etc. Movements often pass to fixedattitudes and postures of limbs or body, disturbing the normal balancebetween flexors and extensors, the significance of which as nervesigns or exponents of habitual brain states and tensions Warner has soadmirably shown.

Abundance and vigor of automatic movements are desirable, and even aconsiderable degree of restlessness is a good sign in young children.Many of what are now often called nerve signs and even choreicsymptoms, the fidgetiness in school on cloudy days and often after avacation, the motor superfluities of awkwardness, embarrassment,extreme effort, excitement, fatigue, sleepiness, etc., are simply theforms in which we receive the full momentum of heredity and mark anatural richness of the raw material of intellect, feeling, andespecially of will. Hence they must be abundant. All parts should actin all possible ways at first and untrammeled by the activity of allother parts and functions. Some of these activities are more essentialfor growth in size than are later and more conscious movements. Hereas everywhere the rule holds that powers themselves must be unfoldedbefore the ability to check or even to use them can develop. Allmovements arising from spontaneous activity of nerve cells or centersmust be made in order even to avoid the atrophy of disease. Not onlyso, but this purer kind of innateness must often be helped out to someextent in some children by stimulating reflexes; a rich and widerepertory of sensation must be made familiar; more or less and veryguarded, watched and limited experiences of hunger, thirst, cold,heat, tastes, sounds, smells, colors, brightnesses, tactileirritations, and perhaps even occasional tickling and pain to play offthe vastly complex function of laughing, crying, etc., may in somecases be judicious. Conscious and unconscious imitation or repetitionof every sort of copy may also help to establish the immediate andlow-level connection between afferent and efferent processes thatbrings the organism into direct rapport and harmony with the wholeworld of sense. Perhaps the more rankly and independently they aredeveloped to full functional integrity, each in its season, if we onlyknew that season, the better. Premature control by higher centers, orcoördination into higher compounds of habits and ordered serialactivities, is repressive and wasteful, and the mature will of whichthey are components, or which must at least domesticate them, isstronger and more forcible if this serial stage is not undulyabridged.

But, secondly, many, if not most, of these activities when developed alittle, group after group, as they arise, must be controlled, checked,and organized into higher and often more serial compounds. Theinhibiting functions are at first hard. In trying to sit still thechild sets its teeth, holds the breath, clenches its fists and perhapsmakes every muscle tense with a great effort that very soon exhausts.This repressive function is probably not worked from special nervouscenters, nor can we speak with confidence of collisions with "sums ofarrest" in a sense analogous to that of Herbart, or of stimuli thatnormally cause catabolic molecular processes in the cell, beingmysteriously diverted to produce increased instability or anaboliclability in the sense of Wundt's Mechanik der Nerven. The conceptnow suggested by many facts is that inhibition is irradiation or longcircuiting to higher and more complex brain areas, so that the energy,whether spontaneous or reflex, is diverted to be used elsewhere. Thesecombinations are of a higher order, more remote from reflex action,and modified by some Jacksonian third level.[9] Action is now not fromindependent centers, but these are slowly associated, so thatexcitation may flow off from one point to any other and any reactionmay result from any stimulus.

The more unified the brain the less it suffers from localization, andthe lower is the level to which any one function can exhaust thewhole. The tendency of each group of cells to discharge or overflowinto those of lower tension than themselves increases ascorrespondence in time and space widens. The more one of a number ofactivities gains in power to draw on all the brain, or the morereadily the active parts are fed at cost of the resting parts, theless is rest to be found in change from one of these activities toanother, and the less do concentration and specialization prove to bedangerous. Before, the aim was to wake all parts to function; now itis to connect them. Intensity of this cross-section activity now tendsto unity, so that all parts of the brain energize together. In a brainwith this switchboard function well organized, each reaction has grownindependent of its own stimulus and may result from any stimulation,and each act, e.g., a finger movement of a peculiar nature, may tirethe whole brain. This helps us to understand why brain-workers sooften excel laborers not only in sudden dynamometric strength test,but in sustained and long-enduring effort. In a good brain or in agood machine, power may thus be developed over a large surface, andall of it applied to a small one, and hence the dangers ofspecialization are lessened in exact proportion as the elements of ourego are thus compacted together. It is in the variety and delicacy ofthese combinations and all that they imply, far more than in theelements of which they are composed, that man rises farthest above thehigher animals; and of these powers later adolescence is the goldenage. The aimless and archaic movements of infancy, whether massive andcomplex or in the form of isolated automatic tweaks or twinges, arethus, by slow processes of combined analysis and synthesis, involvingchanges as radical as any in all the world of growth, made over intohabits and conduct that fit the world of present environment.

But, thirdly, this long process carried out with all degrees ofcompleteness may be arrested at any unfinished stage. Some automatismsrefuse to be controlled by the will, and both they and it are oftenoverworked. Here we must distinguish constantly between (1) thosegrowing rankly in order to be later organized under the will, and (2)those that have become feral after this domestication of them has lostpower from disease or fatigue, and (3) those that have never beensubjugated because the central power that should have used them toweave the texture of willed action—the proper language of completemanhood—was itself arrested or degenerate. With regard to many ofthese movements these distinctions can be made with confidence, and insome children more certainly than in others. In childhood, beforetwelve, the efferent patterns should be developed into many more orless indelible habits, and their colors set fast. Motor specialtiesrequiring exactness and grace like piano-playing, drawing, writing,pronunciation of a foreign tongue, dancing, acting, singing, and ahost of virtuosities, must be well begun before the relative arrest ofaccessory growth at the dawn of the ephebic regeneration and beforeits great afflux of strength. The facts seem to show that children ofthis age, such as Hanco*ck[10] described, who could not stand with feetclose together and eyes closed without swaying much, could not walkbackward, sit still half a minute, dress alone, tie two ends of astring together, interlace slats, wind thread, spin a top, stand ontoes or heels, hop on each foot, drive a nail, roll a hoop, skate, hitfingers together rapidly in succession beginning at the little fingerand then reversing, etc., are the very ones in whom automatisms aremost marked or else they are those constitutionally inert, dull, oruneducable.

In children these motor residua may persist as characteristic featuresof inflection, accent, or manners; automatisms may become morbid instammering or stuttering, or they may be seen in gait, handwriting,tics or tweaks, etc. Instead of disappearing with age, as they should,they are seen in the blind as facial grimaces uncorrected by themirror or facial consciousness, in the deaf as inarticulate noises;and they may tend to grow monstrous with age as if they weredisintegrated fragments of our personality, split off and aborted, ormotor parasites leaving our psycho-physic ego poorer in energy andplasticity of adaptation, till the distraction and anarchy of theindividual nature becomes conspicuous and pathetic.

At puberty, however, when muscle habits are so plastic, when there isa new relation between quantity or volume of motor energy andqualitative differentiation, and between volitional control and reflexactivities, these kinetic remnants strongly tend to shoot togetherinto wrong aggregates if right ones are not formed. Good manners andcorrect motor form generally, as well as skill, are the most economicways of doing things; but this is the age of wasteful ways,awkwardness mannerisms, tensions that are a constant leakage of vitalenergy, perhaps semi-imperative acts, contortions, quaint movements,more elaborated than in childhood and often highly anesthetic anddisagreeable, motor coördinations that will need laboriousdecomposition later. The avoidable factor in their causation is, withsome modification, not unlike that of the simpler feral movements andfaulty attitudes, carriage, and postures in children; viz., some formof overpressure or misfit between environment and nature. As duringthe years from four to eight there is great danger that overemphasisof the activities of the accessory muscles will sow the seeds ofchorea, or aggravate predispositions to it, now again comes a greatlyincreased danger, hardly existing from eight to twelve, thatoverprecision, especially if fundamental activities are neglected,will bring nervous strain and stunting precocity. This is again theage of the basal, e.g., hill-climbing muscle, of leg and back andshoulder work, and of the yet more fundamental heart, lung, and chestmuscles. Now again, the study of a book, under the usual conditions ofsitting in a closed space and using pen, tongue, and eye combined, hasa tendency to overstimulate the accessory muscles. This is especiallyharmful for city children who are too prone to the distraction ofovermobility at an age especially exposed to maladjustment of motorincome and expenditure; and it constitutes not a liberal orpower-generating, but a highly and prematurely specialized, narrowing,and weakening education unless offset by safeguards better than anysystem of gymnastics, which is at best artificial and exaggerated.

As Bryan well says, "The efficiency of a machine depends so far as weknow upon the maximum force, rate, amplitude, and variety of directionof its movements and upon the exactness with which below these maximathe force, rate, amplitude, and direction of the movements can becontrolled." The motor efficiency of a man depends upon his ability inall these respects. Moreover, the education of the small muscles andfine adjustments of larger ones is as near mental training as physicalculture can get; for these are the thought-muscles and movements, andtheir perfected function is to reflect and express by slightmodifications of tension and tone every psychic change. Only the brainitself is more closely and immediately an organ of thought than arethese muscles and their activity, reflex, spontaneous, or imitative inorigin. Whether any of them are of value, as Lindley thinks, inarousing the brain to activity, or as Müller suggests, in drawing offsensations or venting efferent impulses that would otherwise distract,we need not here discuss. If so, this is, of course, a secondary andlate function—nature's way of making the best of things and utilizingremnants.

With these facts and their implications in mind we can next pass toconsider the conditions under which the adolescent muscles bestdevelop. Here we confront one of the greatest and most difficultproblems of our age. Changes in modern motor life have been so vastand sudden as to present some of the most comprehensive andall-conditioning dangers that threaten civilized races. Not only havethe forms of labor been radically changed within a generation or two,but the basal activities that shaped the body of primitive man havebeen suddenly swept away by the new methods of modern industry. Evenpopular sports, games, and recreations, so abundant in the early lifeof all progressive peoples, have been reduced and transformed; and theplay age, that once extended on to middle life and often old age, hasbeen restricted. Sedentary life in schools and offices, as we haveseen, is reducing the vigor and size of our lower limbs. Our industryis no longer under hygienic conditions; and instead of being out ofdoors, in the country, or of highly diversified kinds, it is nowspecialized, monotonous, carried on in closed spaces, bad air, andperhaps poor light, especially in cities. The diseases and arrest bredin the young by life in shops, offices, factories, and schoolsincrease. Work is rigidly bound to fixed hours, uniform standards,stints and piece-products; and instead of a finished article, eachindividual now achieves a part of a single process and knows little ofthose that precede or follow. Machinery has relieved the large basalmuscles and laid more stress upon fine and exact movements thatinvolve nerve strain. The coarser forms of work that involve hardlifting, carrying, digging, etc., are themselves specialized, andskilled labor requires more and more brain-work. It has been estimatedthat "the diminution of manual labor required to do a given quantityof work in 1884 as compared with 1870 is no less than 70 percent."[11] Personal interest in and the old native sense ofresponsibility for results, ownership and use of the finishedproducts, which have been the inspiration and soul of work in all thepast, are in more and more fields gone. Those who realize how small aproportion of the young male population train or even engage inamateur sports with zest and regularity, how very few and picked menstrive for records, and how immediate and amazing are the results ofjudicious training, can best understand how far below hispossibilities as a motor being the average modern man goes throughlife, and how far short in this respect he falls from fulfillingnature's design for him.

For unnumbered generations primitive man in the nomad age wandered,made perhaps annual migrations, and bore heavy burdens, while we riderelatively unencumbered. He tilled the reluctant soil, digging withrude implements where we use machines of many man-power. In the stone,iron, and bronze age, he shaped stone and metals, and wrought withinfinite pains and effort, products that we buy without even knowledgeof the processes by which they are made. As hunter he followed game,which, when found, he chased, fought, and overcame in a struggleperhaps desperate, while we shoot it at a distance with little risk oreffort. In warfare he fought hand to hand and eye to eye, while wekill "with as much black powder as can be put in a woman's thimble."He caught and domesticated scores of species of wild animals andtaught them to serve him; fished with patience and skill thatcompensated his crude tools, weapons, implements, and tackle; dancedto exhaustion in the service of his gods or in memory of his forebearsimitating every animal, rehearsing all his own activities in mimicform to the point of exhaustion, while we move through a few figuresin closed spaces. He dressed hides, wove baskets which we can notreproduce, and fabrics which we only poorly imitate by machinery, madepottery which set our fashions, played games that invigorated body andsoul. His courtship was with feats of prowess and skill, and meantphysical effort and endurance.

Adolescent girls, especially in the middle classes, in upper grammarand high school grades, during the golden age for nascent musculardevelopment, suffer perhaps most of all in this respect. Grave as arethe evils of child labor, I believe far more pubescents in thiscountry now suffer from too little than from too much physicalexercise, while most who suffer from work do so because it is toouniform, one-sided, accessory, or performed under unwholesomeconditions, and not because it is excessive in amount. Modern industryhas thus largely ceased to be a means of physical development andneeds to be offset by compensating modes of activity. Manylabor-saving devices increase neural strain, so that one of theproblems of our time is how to preserve and restore nerve energy.Under present industrial systems this must grow worse and not betterin the future. Healthy natural industries will be less and less opento the young. This is the new situation that now confronts thoseconcerned for motor education, if they would only make good what islost.

Some of the results of these conditions are seen in averagemeasurements of dimensions, proportions, strength, skill, and control.Despite the excellence of the few, the testimony of those mostfamiliar with the bodies of children and adults, and their physicalpowers, gives evidence of the ravages of modern modes of life that,without a wide-spread motor revival, can bode only degeneration forour nation and our race. The number of common things that can not bedone at all; the large proportion of our youth who must be exemptedfrom any kinds of activity or a great amount of any; the thin limbs,collapsed shoulders or chests, the bilateral asymmetry, weak hearts,lungs, eyes, puny and bad muddy or pallid complexions, tired ways,automatism, dyspeptic stomachs, the effects of youthful error or ofimpoverished heredity, delicate and tender nurture, often, alas, onlytoo necessary, show the lamentable and cumulative effects of longneglect of the motor abilities, the most educable of all man's powers,and perhaps the most important for his well-being. If the unfaithfulstewards of these puny and shameful bodies had again, as in Sparta, tostrip and stand before stern judges and render them account, and besmitten with a conviction of their weakness, guilty deformity, andarrest of growth; if they were brought to realize how they are fallenbeings, as weak as stern theologians once deemed them depraved, andhow great their need of physical salvation, we might hope again for aphysical renaissance. Such a rebirth the world has seen but twice orperhaps thrice, and each was followed by the two or three of thebrightest culture periods of history, and formed an epoch in theadvancement of the kingdom of man. A vast body of evidence could becollected from the writings of anthropologists showing how superiorunspoiled savages are to civilized man in correct or estheticproportions of body, in many forms of endurance of fatigue, hardship,and power to bear exposure, in the development and preservation ofteeth and hair, in keenness of senses, absence of deformities, as wellas immunity to many of our diseases. Their women are stronger and bearhardship and exposure, monthly periods and childbirth, better.Civilization is so hard on the body that some have called it adisease, despite the arts that keep puny bodies alive to a greateraverage age, and our greater protection from contagious and germdiseases.

The progressive realization of these tendencies has prompted most ofthe best recent and great changes motor-ward in education and also inpersonal regimen. Health- and strength-giving agencies have put toschool the large motor areas of the brain, so long neglected, and havevastly enlarged their scope. Thousands of youth are now inspired withnew enthusiasm for physical development; and new institutions of manykinds and grades have arisen, with a voluminous literature, unnumberedspecialists, specialties, new apparatus, tests, movements, methods,and theories; and the press, the public, and the church are awakenedto a fresh interest in the body and its powers. All this ismagnificent, but sadly inadequate to cope with the new needs anddangers, which are vastly greater.

[Footnote 1: Dieterich. Göttingen, 1886.]

[Footnote 2: See Chap. xii.]

[Footnote 3: F. Burk in From Fundamental to Accessory. Pedagogical
Seminary, Oct., 1898, vol. 6, pp. 5-64.]

[Footnote 4: Creeping and Walking, by A.W. Trettien. American Journalof Psychology, October, 1900, vol. 12, pp. 1-57.]

[Footnote 5: A Morning Observation of a Baby. Pedagogical Seminary,
December 1901, vol. 8, pp. 469-481.]

[Footnote 6: Kate Carman. Notes on School Activity. Pedagogical
Seminary, March, 1902, vol. 9, pp. 106-117.]

[Footnote 7: A Preliminary Study of Some of the Motor Phenomena ofMental Effort. American Journal of Psychology, July, 1896, vol. 7, pp.491-517.]

[Footnote 8: G.E. Johnson. Psychology and Pegagogy of Feeble-Minded
Children. Pedagogical Seminary, October, 1895, vol. 3, pp. 246-301.]

[Footnote 9: Dr. Hughlings Jackson, the eminent English pathologist,was the first to make practical application of the evolutionary theoryof the nervous system to the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsies andmental diseases. The practical success of this application was sogreat that the Hughlings-Jackson "three-level theory" is now theestablished basis of English diagnosis. He conceived the nervousmechanism as composed of three systems, arranged in the form of ahierarchy, the higher including the lower, and yet each having acertain degree of independence. The first level represents the type ofsimplest reflex and involuntary movement and is localized in the graymatter of the spinal cord, medulla, and pons. The second, or middlelevel, comprises those structures which receive sensory impulses fromthe cells of the lowest level instead of directly from the peripheryor the non-nervous tissues. The motor cells of this middle level alsodischarge into the motor mechanisms of the lowest level. Jacksonlocated these middle level structures in the cortex of the centralconvolutions, the basal ganglia and the centers of the special sensesin the cortex. The highest level bears the same relation to the middlelevel that it bears to the lowest i.e., no continuous connectionbetween the highest and the lowest is assumed; the structures of themiddle level mediate between them as a system of relays. According tothis hierarchical arrangement of the nervous system, the lowest levelwhich is the simplest and oldest "contains the mechanism for thesimple fundamental movements in reflexes and involuntary reactions.The second level regroups these simple movements by combinations andassociations of cortical structure in wider, more complex mechanisms,producing a higher class of movements. The highest level unifies thewhole nervous system and, according to Jackson, is the anatomicalbasis of mind."

For a fuller account of this theory see Burk: From Fundamental to
Accessory in the Nervous System and of Movements. Pedagogical
Seminary, October, 1898, vol. 6, pp. 17-23.]

[Footnote 10: A Preliminary Study of Some of the Motor Phenomena ofMental Effort. American Journal of Psychology, July, 1896, vol. 7, pp.491-517.]

[Footnote 11: Encyclopedia of Social Reform, Funk and Wagnalls, 1896,p. 1095]

* * * * *

CHAPTER III

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION

Trade classes and schools, their importance in the internationalmarket—Our dangers and the superiority of German workmen—The effectsof a tariff—Description of schools between the kindergarten and theindustrial school—Equal salaries for teachers in France—Dangers frommachinery—The advantages of life on the old New England farm—Itsresemblance to the education we now give negroes and Indians—Itsadvantage for all-sided muscular development.

We must glance at a few of the best and most typical methods ofmuscular development, following the order: industrial education,manual training, gymnastics, and play, sports, and games.

Industrial education is now imperative for every nation that wouldexcel in agriculture, manufacture, and trade, not only because of thegrowing intensity of competition, but because of the decline of theapprentice system and the growing intricacy of processes, requiringonly the skill needed for livelihood. Thousands of our youth of latehave been diverted from secondary schools to the monotechnic or tradeclasses now established for horology, glass-work, brick-laying,carpentry, forging, dressmaking, cooking, typesetting, bookbinding,brewing, seamanship, work in leather, rubber, horticulture, gardening,photography, basketry, stock-raising, typewriting, stenography andbookkeeping, elementary commercial training for practical preparationfor clerkships, etc. In this work not only is Boston, our mostadvanced city, as President Pritchett[1] has shown in detail, farbehind Berlin, but German workmen and shopmen a slowly taking the bestplaces even in England; and but for a high tariff, which protects ourinferiority, the competitive pressure would be still greater. InGermany, especially, this training is far more diversified than here,always being colored if not determined by the prevalent industry ofthe region and more specialised and helped out by evening and evenSunday classes in the school buildings, and by the still strongapprentice system. Froebelian influence in manual training reachesthrough the eight school years and is in some respects better thanours in lower grades, but is very rarely coeducational, girls' work ofsewing, knitting, crocheting, weaving, etc., not being consideredmanual training. There are now over 1,500 schools and workshops inGermany where manual training is taught; twenty-five of these areindependent schools. The work really began in 1875 with v. Kass, andis promoted by the great Society for Boys' Handwork. Much stress islaid on paper and pasteboard work in lower grades, under the influenceof Kurufa of Darmstadt. Many objects for illustrating science aremade, and one course embraces the Seyner water-wheel.[2]

In France it is made more effective by the equal salaries of teacherseverywhere, thus securing better instruction in the country.Adolescence is the golden period for acquiring the skill that comes bypractice, so essential in the struggle for survival. In general thiskind of motor education is least of all free, but subservient to thetool, machine, process, finished product, or end in view; and to thesehealth and development are subordinated, so that they tend to be evermore narrow and special. The standard here is maximal efficiency ofthe capacities that earn. It may favor bad habitual attitudes,muscular development of but one part, excessive large or smallmuscles, involve too much time or effort, unhealthful conditions,etc., but it has the great advantage of utility, which is themainspring of all industry. In a very few departments and places thistraining has felt the influence of the arts and crafts movement andhas been faintly touched with the inspiration of beauty. While suchcourses give those who follow them marked advantage over those who donot, they are chiefly utilitarian and do little to mature or unfoldthe physical powers, and may involve arrest or degeneration.

Where not one but several or many professes are taught, the case isfar better. Of all work-schools, a good farm is probably the best formotor development. This is due to its great variety of occupations,healthful conditions, and the incalculable phyletic reënforcement fromimmemorial times. I have computed some three-score industries[3] asthe census now classifies them; that were more or less generally knownand practiced sixty years ago in a little township, which not only inthis but in other respects has many features of an ideal educationalenvironment for adolescent boys, combining as it does not onlyphysical and industrial, but civil and religious elements in wiseproportions and with pedagogic objectivity, and representing the idealof such a state of intelligent citizen voters as was contemplated bythe framers of our Constitution.

Contrast this life with that of a "hand" in a modern shoe factory, whodoes all day but one of the eighty-one stages or processes from atanned hide to a finished shoe, or of a man in a shirt shop who is oneof thirty-nine, each of whom does as piece-work a single steprequiring great exactness, speed, and skill, and who never knows how awhole shirt is made, and we shall see that the present beginning of arevival of interest in muscular development comes none too early. Soliberal is muscular education of this kind that its work in somewhatprimitive form has been restored and copied many features by manyeducational institutions for adolescents, of the Abbotsholme type andgrade, and several others, whose purpose is to train for primitiveconditions of colonial life. Thousands of school gardens have alsobeen lately developed for lower grades, which have given a new impetusto the study of nature. Farm training at its best instills love ofcountry, ruralizes taste, borrows some of its ideals from Goethe'spedagogic province, and perhaps even from Gilman's pie-shapedcommunities, with villages at the center irradiating to farms in alldirections. In England, where by the law of primogeniture holdings arelarge and in few hands, this training has never flourished, as it hasgreatly in France, where nearly every adult male may own land and alarge proportion will come to do so. So of processes. As a student inGermany I took a few lessons each of a bookbinder, a glassblower, ashoemaker, a plumber, and a blacksmith, and here I have learned in acrude way the technique of the gold-beater and old-fashionedbroom-maker, etc., none of which come amiss in the laboratory; and Iam proud that I can still mow and keep my scythe sharp, chop, plow,milk, churn, make cheese and soap, braid a palm-leaf hat complete,knit, spin and even "put in a piece" in an old-fashioned hand loom,and weave frocking. But thus pride bows low before the pupils of ourbest institutions for negroes, Indians, and juvenile delinquents,whose training is often in more than a score of industries and whoto-day in my judgment receive the best training in the land, if judgedby the annual growth in mind, morals, health, physique, ability, andknowledge, all taken together. Instead of seeking soft, ready-madeplaces near home, such education impels to the frontier, to strike outnew careers, to start at the bottom and rise by merit, beginning solow that every change must be a rise. Wherever youth thus trained arethrown, they land like a cat on all-fours and are armed cap-à-piefor the struggle of life. Agriculture, manufacture, and commerce arethe bases of national prosperity; and on them all professions,institutions, and even culture, are more and more dependent, while theold ideals of mere study and brain-work are fast becoming obsolete. Wereally retain only the knowledge we apply. We should get up interestin new processes like that of a naturalist in new species. Those wholeave school at any age or stage should be best fitted to take uptheir life work instead of leaving unfitted for it, aimless anddiscouraged. Instead of dropping out limp and disheartened, we shouldtrain "struggle-for-lifeurs," in Daudet's phrase, and that betimes, sothat the young come back to it not too late for securing the bestbenefits, after having wasted the years best fitted for it inprofitless studies or in the hard school of failure. By such methodsmany of our flabby, undeveloped, anemic, easy-living city youth wouldbe regenerated in body and spirit. Some of the now oldest, richest,and most famous schools of the world were at first established bycharity for poor boys who worked their way, and such institutions havean undreamed-of future. No others so well fit for a life ofrespectable and successful muscle work, and perhaps this should becentral for all at this stage. This diversity of training develops themuscular activities rendered necessary by man's early development,which were so largely concerned with food, shelter, clothing, makingand selling commodities necessary for life, comfort and safety. Thenatural state of man is not war, hot peace; and perhaps Dawson[4] isright in thinking that three-fourths of man's physical activities inthe past have gone into such vocations. Industry has determined thenature and trend of muscular development; and youth, who have pets,till the soil, build, manufacture, use tools, and master elementaryprocesses and skills, are most truly repeating the history of therace. This, too, lays the best foundation for intellectual careers.The study of pure science, as well as its higher technology, followsrather than precedes this. In the largest sense this is the order ofnature, from fundamental and generalized to finer accessory andspecialized organs and functions; and such a sequence best weeds outand subordinates automatisms. The age of stress in most of these kindsof training is that of most rapid increment of muscular power, as wehave seen in the middle and later teens rather than childhood, as somerecent methods have mistakenly assumed; and this prepolytechnic work,wherever and in whatever degree it is possible, is a better adjunct ofsecondary courses than manual training, the sad fact being that,according to the best estimates, only a fraction of one per cent ofthose who need this training in this country are now receiving it.

[Footnote 1: The Place of Industrial and Technical Training in Public
Education. Technology Review, January, 1902, vol. 4, pp. 10-37.]

[Footnote 2: See an article by Dr. H.E. Kock, Education, December,1902, vol. 23, pp. 193-203.]

[Footnote 3: See my Boy Life in a Massachusetts Country Town Forty
Years Ago. Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1906, vol. 13, pp. 192-207.]

[Footnote 4: The Muscular Activities Rendered Necessary by Man's EarlyEnvironment, American Physical Education Review, June, 1902, vol. 7,pp. 80-85.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER IV

MANUAL TRAINING AND SLOYD

History of the movement—Its philosophy—The value of hand training inthe development of the brain and its significance in the making ofman—A grammar of our many industries hard—The best we do can reachbut few—Very great defects in our manual training methods which donot base on science and make nothing salable—The Leipzigsystem—Sloyd is hypermethodic—These crude peasant industries cannever satisfy educational needs—The gospel of work, William Morrisand the arts and crafts movement—Its spirit desirable—The magiceffects of a brief period of intense work—The natural development ofthe drawing instinct in the child.

Manual training has many origins; but in its now most widely acceptedform it came to us more than a generation ago from Moscow, and has itsbest representation here in our new and often magnificentmanual-training high schools and in many courses in other publicschools. This work meets the growing demand of the country for a morepractical education, a demand which often greatly exceeds theaccommodations. The philosophy, if such it may be called, thatunderlies the movement, is simple, forcible, and sound, and not unlikePestalozzi's "keine Kentnisse ohne Fertigkeiten," [No knowledgewithout skill] in that it lessens the interval between thinking anddoing; helps to give control, dexterity, and skill an industrial trendto taste; interests many not successful in ordinary school; tends tothe better appreciation of good, honest work; imparts new zest forsome studies; adds somewhat to the average length of the schoolperiod; gives a sense of capacity and effectiveness, and is a usefulpreparation for a number of vocations. These claims are all wellfounded, and this work is a valuable addition to the pedagogicagencies of any country or state. As man excels the higher anthropoidsperhaps almost as much in hand power as in mind, and since the manualareas of the brain are wide near the psychic zones, and the corticalcenters are thus directly developed, the hand is a potent instrumentin opening the intellect as well as in training sense and will. It isno reproach to these schools that, full as they are, they provide forbut an insignificant fraction of the nearly sixteen millions or twentyper cent of the young people of the country between fifteen andtwenty-four.

When we turn to the needs of these pupils, the errors and limitationsof the method are painful to contemplate. The work is essentiallymanual and offers little for the legs, where most of the musculartissues of the body lie, those which respond most to training and arenow most in danger of degeneration at this age; the back and trunkalso are little trained. Consideration of proportion and bilateralasymmetry are practically ignored. Almost in proportion as theseschools have multiplied, the rage for uniformity, together withmotives of economy and administrative efficiency on account ofovercrowding, have made them rigid and inflexible, on the principlethat as the line lengthens the stake must be strengthened. This is adouble misfortune; for the courses were not sufficiently considered atfirst and the plastic stage of adaptation was too short, while themethods of industry have undergone vast changes since they were givenshape. There are now between three and four hundred occupations in thecensus, more than half of these involving manual work, so that neverperhaps was there so great a pedagogic problem as to make thesenatural developments into conscious art, to extract what may be calledbasal types. This requires an effort not without analogy toAristotle's attempt to extract from the topics of the marketplace theunderlying categories eternally conditioning all thought, or toconstruct a grammar of speech. Hardly an attempt worthy the name, noteven the very inadequate one of a committee, has been made in thisfield to study the conditions and to meet them. Like Froebel's giftsand occupations, deemed by their author the very roots of humanoccupations in infant form, the processes selected are underived andfind their justification rather in their logical sequence andcoherence than in being true norms of work. If these latter beattainable at all, it is not likely that they will fit so snugly in abrief curriculum, so that its simplicity is suspicious. The wards ofthe keys that lock the secrets of nature and human life are moreintricate and mazy. As H.T. Bailey well puts it in substance, a masterin any art-craft must have a fourfold equipment: 1. Ability to graspan idea and embody it. 2. Power to utilize all nerve, and a widerepertory of methods, devices, recipes, discoveries, machines, etc. 3.Knowledge of the history of the craft. 4. Skill in technicalprocesses. American schools emphasize chiefly only the last.

The actual result is thus a course rich in details representing woodand iron chiefly, and mostly ignoring other materials; the part of thecourse treating of the former, wooden in its teachings and distinctlytending to make joiners, carpenters, and cabinet-makers; that of thelatter, iron in its rigidity and an excellent school for smiths,mechanics, and machinists. These courses are not liberal because theyhardly touch science, which is rapidly becoming the real basis ofevery industry. Almost nothing that can be called scientific knowledgeis required or even much favored, save some geometrical and mechanicaldrawing and its implicates. These schools instinctively fear andrepudiate plain and direct utility, or suspect its educational valueor repute in the community because of this strong bias toward a fewtrades. This tendency also they even fear, less often becauseunfortunately trade-unions in this country sometimes jealously suspectit and might vote down supplies, than because the teachers in theseschools were generally trained in older scholastic and even classicmethods and matter. Industry is everywhere and always for the sake ofthe product, and to cut loose from this as if it were a contaminationis a fatal mistake. To focus on process only, with no reference to theobject made, is here an almost tragic case of the sacrifice of contentto form, which in all history has been the chief stigma ofdegeneration in education. Man is a tool-using animal; but tools arealways only a means to an end, the latter prompting even theirinvention. Hence a course in tool manipulation only, with persistentrefusal to consider the product lest features of trade-schools beintroduced, has made most of our manual-training high schools ghastly,hollow, artificial institutions. Instead of making in the lower gradescertain toys which are masterpieces of mechanical simplification, astops and kites, and introducing such processes as glass-making andphotography, and in higher grades making simple scientific apparatusmore generic than machines, to open the great principles of thematerial universe, all is sacrificed to supernormalized method.

As in all hypermethodic schemes, the thought side is feeble. There isno control of the work of these schools by the higher technicalinstitutions such as the college exercises over the high school, sothat few of them do work that fits for advanced training or is thoughtbest by technical faculties. In most of its current narrow forms,manual training will prove to be historically, as it is educationally,extemporized and tentative, and will soon be superseded by broadermethods and be forgotten and obsolete, or cited only as a low point ofdeparture from which future progress will loom up.

Indeed in more progressive centers, many new departures are now in theexperimental stage. Goetze at Leipzig, as a result of long andoriginal studies and trials, has developed courses in which pasteboardwork and modeling are made of equal rank with wood and iron, and hehas connected them even with the kindergarten below. In general thewhole industrial life of our day is being slowly explored in the questof new educational elements; and rubber, lead, glass, textiles,metallurgical operations, agriculture, every tool and many machines,etc., are sure to contribute their choicest pedagogical factors to thefinal result. In every detail the prime consideration should be thenature and needs of the youthful body and will at each age, theirhygiene and fullest development; and next, the closest connection withscience at every point should do the same for the intellect. Eachoperation and each tool—the saw, knife, plane, screw, hammer, chisel,draw-shave, sandpaper, lathe—will be studied with reference to itsorthopedic value, bilateral asymmetry, the muscles it develops, andthe attitudes and motor habits it favors; and uniformity, which inFrance often requires classes to saw, strike, plane up, down, right,left, all together, upon count and command, will give place toindividuality.

Sloyd has certain special features and claims. The word means skilful,deft. The movement was organised in Sweden a quarter of a century agoas an effort to prevent the extinction by machinery of peasant homeindustry during the long winter night. Home sloyd was installed in aninstitution of its own for training teachers at Nääs. It works in woodonly, with little machinery, and is best developed for children offrom eleven to fifteen. It no longer aims to make artisans; but itsmanipulations are meant to be developmental, to teach both sexes notonly to be useful but self-active and self-respecting, and to revereexactness as a form of truthfulness. It assumes that all andespecially the motor-minded can really understand only what they make,and that one can work like a peasant and think like a philosopher. Itaims to produce wholes rather than parts like the Russian system, andto be so essentially educational that, as a leading exponent says, itsbest effects would be conserved if the hands were cut off. This changeof its original utilitarianism from the lower to the liberal motordevelopment of the middle and upper classes and from the land where itoriginated to another, has not eliminated the dominant marks of itsorigin in its models, the Penates of the sloyd household, the uniquefeatures of which persist like a national school of art, despitetransplantation and transformation.[1]

Sloyd at its best tries to correlate several series, viz., exercises,tools, drawing, and models. Each must be progressive, so that everynew step in each series involves a new and next developmental step inall the others, and all together, it is claimed, fit the order anddegree of development of each power appealed to in the child. Yetthere has been hardly an attempt to justify either the physiologicalor the psychological reason of a single step in any of these series,and the coördination of the series even with each other, to saynothing of their adaptation to the stages of the child's development.This, if as pat and complete as is urged, would indeed constitute onthe whole a paragon of all the harmony, beauty, totality in variety,etc., which make it so magnificent in the admirer's eyes. But the "45tools, 72 exercises, 31 models, 15 of which are joints," all learnedby teachers in one school year of daily work and by pupils in fouryears, are overmethodic; and such correlation is impossible in so manyseries at once. Every dual order, even of work and unfoldment ofpowers, is hard enough, since the fall lost us Eden; and woodwork,could it be upon that of the tree of knowledge itself, incompatiblewith enjoying its fruit. Although a philosopher may see the wholeuniverse in its smallest part, all his theory can not reproduceeducational wholes from fragments of it. The real merits of sloyd havecaused its enthusiastic leaders to magnify its scope and claims farbeyond their modest bounds; and although its field covers the greattransition from childhood to youth, one searches in vain both itsliterature and practise for the slightest recognition of the newmotives and methods that puberty suggests. Especially in its partiallyacclimatized forms to American conditions, it is all adult and almostscholastic; and as the most elaborate machinery may sometimes be runby a poor power-wheel, if the stream be swift and copious enough, sothe mighty rent that sets toward motor education would give it somedegree of success were it worse and less economic of pedagogicmomentum than it is. It holds singularly aloof from other methods ofefferent training and resists coördination with them, and itsprovisions for other than hand development are slight. It will be oneof the last to accept its true but modest place as contributingcertain few but precious elements in the greater synthesis thatimpends. Indian industries, basketry, pottery, bead, leather, bows andarrows, bark, etc., which our civilization is making lost arts byforcing the white man's industries upon red men at reservation schoolsand elsewhere, need only a small part of the systemization thatSwedish peasant work has received to develop even greater educationalvalues; and the same is true of the indigenous household work of theold New England farm, the real worth and possibilities of which areonly now, and perhaps too late, beginning to be seen by a feweducators.

This brings us to the arts and crafts movement, originating withCarlyle's gospel of work and Ruskin's medievalism, developed byWilliam Morris and his disciples at the Red House, checked awhile bythe ridicule of the comic opera "Patience," and lately revived in someof its features by Cobden-Sanderson, and of late to some extent invarious centers in this country. Its ideal was to restore the day ofthe seven ancient guilds and of Hans Sachs, the poet cobbler, whenconscience and beauty inspired work, and the hand did what machinesonly imitate and vulgarize. In the past, which this school of motorculture harks back to, work, for which our degenerate age lacks evenrespect, was indeed praise. Refined men and women have rememberedthese early days, when their race was in its prime, as a lost paradisewhich they would regain by designing and even weaving tapestries andmuslins; experimenting in vats with dyes to rival Tyrian purple;printing and binding by hand books that surpass the best of theAldine, and Elzevirs; carving in old oak; hammering brass; forginglocks, irons, and candlesticks; becoming artists in burned wood andleather; seeking old effects of simplicity and solidity in furnitureand decoration, as well as architecture, stained glass, and to someextent in dress and manners; and all this toil and moil was admajorem gloriam hominis [To the greater glory of man] in a newsocialistic state, where the artist, and even the artisan, should takehis rightful place above the man who merely knows. The day of the mereprofessor, who deals in knowledge, is gone; and the day of the doer,who creates, has come. The brain and the hand, too long divorced andeach weak and mean without the other; use and beauty, each alonevulgar; letters and labor, each soulless without the other, arehenceforth to be one and inseparable; and this union will lift man toa higher level. The workman in his apron and paper hat, inspired bythe new socialism and the old spirit of chivalry as revived by Scott,revering Wagner's revival of the old Deutschenthum that was toconquer Christenthum, or Tennyson's Arthurian cycle—this was itsideal; even as the Jews rekindled their loyalty to the ancienttraditions of their race and made their Bible under Ezra; as we beginto revere the day of the farmer-citizen, who made our institutions, oras some of us would revive his vanishing industrial life for the redman.

Although this movement was by older men and women and had in itsomething of the longing regret of senescence for days that are nomore, it shows us the glory which invests racial adolescence when itis recalled in maturity, the time when the soul can best appreciatethe value of its creations and its possibilities, and really livesagain in its glamour and finds in it its greatest inspiration. Henceit has its lessons for us here. A touch, but not too much of it,should be felt in all manual education, which is just as capable ofidealism as literary education. This gives soul, interest, content,beauty, taste. If not a polyphrastic philosophy seeking to dignify theoccupation of the workshop by a pretentious Volapük of reasons andabstract theories, we have here the pregnant suggestion of apsychological quarry of motives and spirit opened and ready to beworked. Thus the best forces from the past should be turned on toshape and reinforce the best tendencies of the present. The writingsof the above gospelers of work not only could and should, but will beused to inspire manual-training high schools, sloyd and even some ofthe less scholastic industrial courses; but each is incomplete withoutthe other. These books and those that breathe their spirit should bethe mental workshop of all who do tool, lathe, and forge work; whodesign and draw patterns, carve or mold; or of those who study how toshape matter for human uses, and whose aim is to obtain diplomas orcertificates of fitness to teach all such things. The muse of art andeven of music will have some voice in the great synthesis which is togather up the scattered, hence ineffective, elements of secondarymotor training, in forms which shall represent all the needs ofadolescents in the order and proportion that nature and growth stagesindicate, drawing, with this end supreme, upon all the resources thathistory and reform offer to our selection. All this can never makework become play. Indeed it will and should make work harder and moreunlike play and of another genus, because the former is thus given itsown proper soul and leads its own distinct, but richer, and moreabounding life.

I must not close this section without brief mention of two importantstudies that have supplied each a new and important determinationconcerning laws of work peculiar to adolescence.

The main telegraphic line requires a speed of over seventy letters perminute of all whom they will employ. As a sending rate this is notvery difficult and is often attained after two months' practise. Thisstandard for a receiving rate is harder and later, and inquiry atschools where it is taught shows that about seventy-five per cent ofthose who begin the study fail to reach this speed and so are notemployed. Bryan and Harter[2] explained the rate of improvement inboth sending and receiving, with results represented for one typicalsubject in the curve on the following page.

From the first, sending improves most rapidly and crosses thedead-line a few months before the receiving rate, which may fallshort. Curves 1 and 2 represent the same student. I have added line 3to illustrate the three-fourths who fail. Receiving is far lesspleasant than sending, and years of daily practise at ordinary rateswill not bring a man to his maximum rate; he remains on the lowplateau with no progress beyond a certain point. If forced by stressof work, danger of being dropped, or by will power to make a prolongedand intense effort, he breaks through his hidebound rate andpermanently attains a faster pace. This is true at each step, andevery advance seems to cost even more intensive effort than the formerone. At length, for those who go on, the rate of receiving, which is amore complex process, exceeds that of sending; and the curves of theabove figure would cross if prolonged. The expert receives so muchfaster than he sends that abbreviated codes are used, and he may takeeighty to eighty-five words a minute on a typewriter in correct form.

[Illustration: Letters per Minute x Weeks of Practice.]

The motor curve seems to asymptotically approach a perhapsphysiological limit, which the receiving curve does not suggest. Thisseems a special case of a general though not yet explained law. Inlearning a foreign language, speaking is first and easiest, andhearing takes a late but often sudden start to independence. Perhapsthis holds of every ability. To Bryan this suggests as a hierarchy ofhabits, the plateau of little or no improvement, meaning that lowerorder habits are approaching their maximum but are not yet automaticenough to leave the attention free to attack higher order habits. Thesecond ascent from drudgery to freedom, which comes throughautomatism, is often as sudden as the first ascent. One stroke ofattention comes to do what once took many. To attain such effectivespeed is not dependent on reaction time. This shooting together ofunits distinguishes the master from the man, the genius from the hack.In many, if not all, skills where expertness is sought, there is along discouraging level, and then for the best a sudden ascent, as ifhere, too, as we have reason to think in the growth of both the bodyas a whole and in that of its parts, nature does make leaps andattains her ends by alternate rests and rushes. Youth lives along on alow level of interest and accomplishment and then starts onward, istransformed, converted; the hard becomes easy; the old life sinks to alower stratum; and a new and higher order, perhaps a higher brainlevel and functions, is evolved. The practical implication here of thenecessity of hard concentrative effort as a condition of advancementis re-enforced by a quotation from Senator Stanford on the effect ofearly and rather intensive work at not too long periods in trainingcolts for racing. Let-ups are especially dangerous. He says, "It isthe supreme effort that develops." This, I may add, suggests what isdeveloped elsewhere, that truly spontaneous attention is conditionedby spontaneous muscle tension, which is a function of growth, and thatmuscles are thus organs of the mind; and also that even voluntaryattention is motivated by the same nisus of development even in itsmost adult form, and that the products of science, invention,discovery, as well as the association plexus of all that wasoriginally determined in the form of consciousness, are made byrhythmic alternation of attack, as it moves from point to pointcreating diversions and recurrence.

The other study, although quite independent, is part a specialapplication and illustration of the same principle.

At the age of four or five, when they can do little more thanscribble, children's chief interest in pictures is as finishedproducts; but in the second period, which Lange calls that of artisticillusion, the child sees in his own work not merely what itrepresents, but an image of fancy back of it. This, then, is thegolden period for the development of power to create artistically. Thechild loves to draw everything with the pleasure chiefly in the act,and he cares little for the finished picture. He draws out of his ownhead, and not from copy before his eye. Anything and everything isattempted in bold lines in this golden age of drawing. If he followedthe teacher, looked carefully and drew what he saw, he would beabashed at his production. Indians, conflagrations, games, brownies,trains, pageants, battles—everything is graphically portrayed; butonly the little artist himself sees the full meaning of his lines.Criticism or drawing strictly after nature breaks this charm, since itgives place to mechanical reproduction in which the child has littleinterest. Thus awakens him from his dream to a realization that he cannot draw, and from ten to fifteen his power of perceiving thingssteadily increases and he makes almost no progress in drawing.Adolescence arouses the creative faculty and the desire and ability todraw are checked and decline after thirteen or fourteen. The curve isthe plateau which Barnes has described. The child has measured his ownproductions upon the object they reproduced and found them wanting, isdiscouraged and dislikes drawing. From twelve on, Barnes found drawingmore and more distasteful; and this, too, Lukens found to be theopinion of our art teachers. The pupils may draw very properly andimprove in technique, but the interest is gone. This is the conditionin which most men remain all their lives. Their power to appreciatesteadily increases. Only a few gifted adolescents about this age begina to develop a new zest in production, rivaling that of the periodfrom five to ten, when their satisfaction is again chiefly increation. These are the artists whose active powers dominate.

Lukens[3] finds in his studies of drawing, that in what he calls hisfourth period of artistic development, there are those "who duringadolescence experience a rebirth of creative power." Zest in creationthen often becomes a stronger incentive to work than any pleasure orprofit to be derived from the finished product, so that in this thepropitious conditions of the first golden age of childhood arerepeated and the deepest satisfaction is again found in the workitself. At about fourteen or fifteen, which is the transition period,nascent faculties sometimes develop very rapidly. Lukens[4] draws theinteresting curve shown on the following page.

[Illustration: Motor, creative or productive power. Sensory orreceptive interest in the finished product.]

The reciprocity between the power to produce and that to appreciate,roughly represented in the above curve, likely is true also in thedomain of music, and may be, perhaps, a general law of development.Certain it is that the adolescent power to apperceive and appreciatenever so far outstrips his power to produce or reproduce as aboutmidway in the teens. Now impressions sink deepest. The greatestartists are usually those who paint later, when the expressive powersare developed, what they have felt most deeply and known best at thisage, and not those who in the late twenties, or still later, have goneto new environments and sought to depict them. All young people drawbest those objects they love most, and their proficiency should besome test of the contents of their minds. They must put their ownconsciousness into a picture. At the dawn of this stage ofappreciation the esthetic tastes should be stimulated by exposure to,and instructed in feeling for, the subject-matter of masterpieces; andinstruction in technique, detail, criticism, and learneddiscrimination of schools of painting should be given intermittently.Art should not now be for art's sake, but for the sake of feeling andcharacter, life, and conduct; it should be adjunct to morals, history,and literature; and in all, edification should be the goal; andpersonal interest, and not that of the teacher, should be the guide.Insistence on production should be eased, and the receptiveimagination, now so hungry, should be fed and reinforced by story andall other accessories. By such a curriculum, potential creativeness,if it exists, will surely be evoked in its own good time. It will, atfirst, attempt no commonplace drawing-master themes, but will essaythe highest that the imagination can bode forth. It may be crude andlame in execution, but it will be lofty, perhaps grand; and if it isoriginal in consciousness, it will be in effect. Most creativepainters before twenty have grappled with the greatest scenes inliterature or turning points in history, representations of theloftiest truths, embodiments of the most inspiring ideals. None whodeserve the name of artist copy anything now, and least of all withobjective fidelity to nature; and the teacher that represses orcriticizes this first point of genius, or who can not pardon the gravefaults of technique inevitable at this age when ambition ought to betoo great for power, is not an educator but a repressor, a pedagogicPhilistine committing, like so many of his calling in other fields,the unpardonable sin against budding promise, always at this age soeasily blighted. Just as the child of six or seven should beencouraged in his strong instinct to draw the most complex scenes ofhis daily life, so now the inner life should find graphic utterance inall its intricacy up to the full limit of unrepressed courage. For thegreat majority, on the other hand, who only appreciate and will nevercreate, the mind, if it have its rights, will be stored with the bestimages and sentiments of art; for at this time they are bestremembered and sink deepest into heart and life. Now, although thehand may refuse, the fancy paints the world in brightest hues andfairest forms; and such an opportunity for infecting the soul withvaccine of ideality, hope, optimism, and courage in adversity, willnever come again. I believe that in few departments are currenteducational theories and practises so hard on youth of superior gifts,just at the age when all become geniuses for a season, very brief formost, prolonged for some, and permanent for the best. We do not knowhow to teach to, see, hear, and feel when the sense centers are mostindelibly impressible, and to give relative rest to the hand duringthe years when its power of accuracy is abated and when all that isgood is idealized furthest, and confidence in ability to produce is atit* lowest ebb.

Finally, our divorce between industrial and manual training isabnormal, and higher technical education is the chief sufferer.Professor Thurston, of Cornell, who has lately returned from a tour ofinspection abroad, reported that to equal Germany we now need: "1.Twenty technical universities, having in their schools of engineering50 instructors and 500 students each. 2. Two thousand technical highschools or manual-training schools, each having not less than 200students and 10 instructors." If we have elementary trade-schools,this would mean technical high schools enough to accommodate 700,000students, served by 20,000 teachers. With the strong economicarguments in this direction we are not here concerned; but that thereare tendencies to unfit youth for life by educational method andmatter shown in strong relief from this standpoint, we shall point outin a later chapter.

[Footnote 1: This I have elsewhere tried to show in detail. Criticismsof High School Physics and Manual Training and Mechanic Arts in HighSchools. Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1902, vol. 9, pp. 193-204.]

[Footnote 2: Studies in the Physiology and Psychology of theTelegraphic Language. Psychological Review, January, 1897, vol. 4, pp.27-53, and July, 1899, vol. 6, pp. 344-375.]

[Footnote 3: A Study of Children's Drawings in the Early Years.
Pedagogical Seminary, October, 1896, vol. 4, pp. 79-101. See also
Drawing in the Early Years, Proceedings of the National Educational
Association, 1899, pp. 946-953. Das Kind als Künstler, von C. Götze.
Hamburg, 1898. The Genetic vs. the Logical Order in Drawing, by F.
Burk. Pedagogical Seminary, September, 1902, vol. 9, pp. 296-323.]

[Footnote 4: Die Entwickelungsstufen beim Zeichnen. Die Kinderfehler,
September, 1897, vol. 2, pp. 166-179.]

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CHAPTER V

GYMNASTICS

The story of Jahn and the Turners—The enthusiasm which this movementgenerated in Germany—The ideal of bringing out latent powers—Theconcept of more perfect voluntary control—Swedish gymnastics—Doingeverything possible for the body as a machine—Liberal physicalculture—Ling's orthogenic scheme of economic postures and movementsand correcting defects—The ideal of symmetry and prescribingexercises to bring the body to a standard—Lamentable lack ofcorrelation between these four systems—Illustrations of the greatgood that a systematic training can effect—Athletic records—Greekphysical training.

Under the term gymnastics, literally naked exercises, we here includethose denuded of all utilities or ulterior ends save those of physicalculture. This is essentially modern and was unknown in antiquity,where training was for games, for war, etc. Several ideals underliethis movement, which although closely related are distinct and as yetby no means entirely harmonized. These may be described as follows:

A. One aim of Jahn, more developed by Spiess, and their successors,was to do everything physically possible for the body as a mechanism.Many postures and attitudes are assumed and many movements made thatare never called for in life. Some of these are so novel that a greatvariety of new apparatus had to be devised to bring them out; and Jahninvented many new names, some of them without etymologies, todesignate the repertory of his discoveries and inventions thatextended the range of motor life. Common movements, industries, andeven games, train only a limited number of muscles, activities, andcoördinations, and leave more or less unused groups and combinations,so that many latent possibilities slumber, and powers slowly lapsethrough disuse. Not only must these be rescued, but the new nascentpossibilities of modern progressive man must be addressed anddeveloped. Even the common things that the average untrained youth cannot do are legion, and each of these should be a new incentive to thetrainer as he realizes how very far below their motor possibilitiesmeet men live. The man of the future may, and even must, do thingsimpossible in the past and acquire new motor variations not given byheredity. Our somatic frame and its powers must therefore be carefullystudied, inventoried, and assessed afresh, and a kind and amount ofexercise required that is exactly proportioned, not perhaps to thesize but to the capability of each voluntary muscle. Thus only can wehave a truly humanistic physical development, analogous to thetraining of all the powers of the mind in a broad, truly liberal, andnon-professional or non-vocational educational curriculum. The bodywill thus have its rightful share in the pedagogic traditions andinspirations of the renaissance. Thus only can we have a true scale ofstandardised culture values for efferent processes; and from this wecan measure the degrees of departure, both in the direction of excessand defect, of each form of work, motor habit; and even play. Manymodern Epigoni in the wake of this great ideal, where its momentum wasearly spent, feeling that new activities might be discovered withvirtues hitherto undreamed of, have almost made fetiches of specialdisciplines, both developmental and corrective, that are pictured andlanded in scores of manuals. Others have had expectations no lessexcessive in the opposite direction and have argued that the greatestpossible variety of movements best developed the greatest total ofmotor energy. Jahn especially thus made gymnastics a special art andinspired great enthusiasm of humanity, and the songs of his pupilswere of a better race of man and a greater and united fatherland. Itwas this feature that made his work unique in the world, and hisdisciples are fond of reminding us of the fact that it was just aboutone generation of men after the acme of influence of his system that,in 1870, Germany showed herself the greatest military power sinceancient Rome, and took the acknowledged leadership of the world bothin education and science.

These theorizations even in their extreme forms have been not onlyhighly suggestive but have brought great and new enthusiasms andideals into the educational world that admirably fit adolescence. Themotive of bringing out latent, decaying, or even new powers, skills,knacks, and feats, is full of inspiration. Patriotism is aroused, forthus the country can be better served; thus the German Fatherland wasto be restored and unified after the dark days that followed thehumiliation of Jena. Now the ideals of religion are invoked that thesoul may have a better and regenerated somatic organism with which toserve Jesus and the Church. Exercise is made a form of praise to Godand of service to man, and these motives are reënforced by those ofthe new hygiene which strives for a new wholeness-holiness, and wouldpurify the body as the temple of the Holy Ghost. Thus in Young Men'sChristian Association training schools and gymnasiums the gospel ofChristianity is preached anew and seeks to bring salvation to man'sphysical frame, which the still lingering effects of asceticism havecaused to be too long neglected in its progressive degeneration. Asthe Greek games were in honor of the gods, so now the body is trainedto better glorify God; and regimen, chastity, and temperance are givena new momentum. The physical salvation thus wrought will be, whenadequately written, one of the most splendid chapters in the modernhistory of Christianity. Military ideals have been revived in cult andsong to hearten the warfare against evil within and without. Strengthis prayed for as well as worked for, and consecrated to the highestuses. Last but not least, power thus developed over a large surfacemay be applied to athletic contests in the field, and victories hereare valuable as fore-gleams of how sweet the glory of achievements inhigher moral and spiritual tasks will taste later.

The dangers and sources of error in this ideal of all-sided trainingare, alas, only too obvious, although they only qualify its paramountgood. First, it is impossible thus to measure the quanta of trainingneeded so as rightly to assign to each its modicum and best modalityof training. Indeed no method of doing this has ever been attempted,but the assessments have been arbitrary and conjectural, probablyright in some and wrong in other respects, with no adequate criterionor test for either save only empirical experience. Secondly, heredity,which lays its heavy ictus upon some neglected forms of activity andfails of all support for others, has been ignored. As we shall seelater, one of the best norms here is phyletic emphasis, and what lacksthis must at best be feeble; and if new powers are unfolding, theirgrowth must be very slow and they must be nurtured as tender buds forgenerations. Thirdly, too little regard is had for the vastdifferences in individuals, most of whom need much personalprescription.

B. In practise the above ideal is never isolated from others. Perhapsthe most closely associated with it is that of increased volitionalcontrol. Man is largely a creature of habit, and many of hisactivities are more or less automatic reflexes from the stimuli of hisenvironment. Every new power of controlling these by the will freesman from slavery and widens the field of freedom. To acquire the powerof doing all with consciousness and volition mentalizes the body,gives control over to higher brain levels, and develops them byrescuing activities from the dominance of lower centers. Thus mensagitat molem. [Footnote: Mind rules the body.] This end is favored bythe Swedish commando exercises, which require great alertness ofattention to translate instantly a verbal order into an act and also,although in somewhat less degree, by quick imitation of a leader. Thestimulus of music and rhythm are excluded because thought to interferewith this end. A somewhat sophisticated form of this goal is sought byseveral Delsartian schemes of relaxation, decomposition, andrecomposition of movements. To do all things with consciousness and toencroach on the field of instinct involves new and more vivid senseimpressions, the range of which is increased directly as that ofmotion, the more closely it approaches the focus of attention. By thusanalyzing settled and established coördinations, their elements areset free and may be organized into new combinations, so that theformer is the first stage toward becoming a virtuoso with new specialskills. This is the road to inner secrets or intellectual rules ofprofessional and expert successes, such as older athletes often relyupon when their strength begins to wane. Every untrained automatismmust be domesticated, and every striated muscle capable of directmuscular control must be dominated by volition. Thus tensions andincipient contractures that drain off energy can be relaxed by fiat.Sandow's "muscle dance," the differentiation of movements of theright and left hand—one, e.g., writing a French madrigal while theother is drawing a picture of a country dance, or each playingtunes of disparate rhythm and character simultaneously on thepiano—controlling heart rate, moving the ears, crying, laughing,blushing, moving the bowels, etc., at will, feats of inhibition ofreflexes, stunts of all kinds, proficiency with many tools, deftnessin sports—these altogether would mark the extremes in this direction.

This, too, has its inspiration for youth. To be a universal adept likeHippias suggests Diderot and the encyclopedists in the intellectualrealm. To do all with consciousness is a means to both remedial andexpert ends. Motor life often needs to be made over to a greater orless extent; and that possibilities of vastly greater accomplishmentsexist than are at present realized, is undoubted, even in manners andmorals, which are both at root only motor habits. Indeed consciousnessitself is largely and perhaps wholly corrective in its very essenceand origin. Thus life is adjusted to new environments; and if thePlatonic postulate be correct, that untaught virtues that come bynature and instinct are no virtues, but must be made products ofreflection and reason, the sphere and need of this principle is greatindeed. But this implies a distrust of physical human nature asdeep-seated and radical as that of Calvinism for the unregenerateheart, against which modern common sense, so often the best muse ofboth psychophysics and pedagogy, protests. Individual prescription ishere as imperative as it is difficult. Wonders that now seem to bemost incredible, both of hurt and help, can undoubtedly be wrought,but analysis should always be for the sake of synthesis and never bebeyond its need and assured completion. No thoughtful student fullyinformed of the facts and tentatives in this field can doubt that herelies one of the most promising fields of future development, full offar-reaching and rich results for those, as yet far too few, expertsin physical training, who have philosophic minds, command the facts ofmodern psychology, and whom the world awaits now as never before.

C. Another yet closely correlated ideal is that of economic posturesand movements. The system of Ling is less orthopedic than orthogenic,although he sought primarily to correct bad attitudes and pervertedgrowth. Starting from the respiratory and proceeding to the muscularsystem, he and his immediate pupils were content to refer to theill-shapen bodies of most men about them. One of their important aimswas to relax the flexor and tone up the extensor muscles and to openthe human form into postures as opposite as possible to those of theembryo, which it tends so persistently to approximate in sitting, andin fatigue and collapse attitudes generally. The head must balance onthe cervical vertebra and not call upon the muscles of the neck tokeep it from rolling off; the weight of the shoulders must be thrownback off the thorax; the spine be erect to allow the abdomen freeaction; the joints of the thigh extended; the hand and arm supinated,etc. Bones must relieve muscles and nerves. Thus an erect,self-respecting carriage must be given, and the unfortunateassociation, so difficult to overcome, between effort and an involutedposture must be broken up. This means economy and a great saving ofvital energy. Extensor action goes with expansive, flexor withdepressive states of mind; hence courage, buoyancy, hope, are favoredand handicaps removed. All that is done with great effort causes wideirradiation of tensions to the other half of the body and alsosympathetic activities in those not involved; the law of maximal easeand minimal expenditure of energy must be always striven for, and theinterests of the viscera never lost sight of. This involves educatingweak and neglected muscles, and like the next ideal, often shades overby almost imperceptible gradation into the passive movements by theZander machines. Realizing that certain activities are sufficiently ortoo much emphasized in ordinary life, stress is laid upon those whichare complemental to them, so that there is no pretense of takingcharge of the totality of motor processes, the intention beingprincipally to supplement deficiencies, to insure men against beingwarped, distorted, or deformed by their work in life, to compensatespecialties and perform more exactly what recreation to some extentaims at.

This wholesome but less inspiring endeavor, which combats one of thegreatest evils that under modern civilization threatens man's physicalweal, is in some respects as easy and practical as it is useful. Thegreat majority of city bred men, as well as all students, are prone todeleterious effects from too much sitting; and indeed there isanatomical evidence in the structure of the tissues, and especiallythe blood-vessels of the groins, that, at his best, man is not yetentirely adjusted to the upright position. So a method thatstraightens knees, hips, spine, and shoulders, or combats theschool-desk attitude, is a most salutary contribution to a great andgrowing need. In the very act of stretching, and perhaps yawning, forwhich much is to be said, nature itself suggests such correctives andpreventives. To save men from being victims of their occupations isoften to add a better and larger half to their motor development. Thedanger of the system, which now best represents this ideal, isinflexibility and overscholastic treatment. It needs a great range ofindividual variations if it would do more than increase circulation,respiration, and health, or the normal functions of internal organsand fundamental physiological activities. To clothe the frame withhonest muscles that are faithful servants of the will adds not onlystrength, more active habits and efficiency, but health; and in itsmaterial installation this system is financially economic. Personalfaults and shortcomings are constantly pointed out where this work isbest represented, and it has a distinct advantage in inciting anacquaintance with physiology and inviting the larger fields of medicalknowledge.

D. The fourth gymnastic aim is symmetry and correct proportions.Anthropometry and average girths and dimensions, strength, etc., ofthe parts of the body are first charted in percentile grades; and eachindividual is referred to the apparatus and exercises best fitted tocorrect weaknesses and subnormalities. The norms here followed are notthe canons of Greek art, but those established by the measurement ofthe largest numbers properly grouped by age, weight, height, etc.Young men are found to differ very widely. Some can lift 1,000 pounds,and some not 100; some can lift their weight between twenty and fortytimes, and some not once; some are most deficient in legs, others inshoulders, arms, backs, chests. By photography, tape, and scales, eachis interested in his own bodily condition and incited to overcome hisgreatest defects; and those best endowed by nature to attain idealdimensions and make new records are encouraged along these lines. Thusthis ideal is also largely though not exclusively remedial.

This system can arouse youth to the greatest pitch of zest in watchingtheir own rapidly multiplying curves of growth in dimensions andcapacities, in plotting curves that record their own increment ingirths, lifts, and other tests, and in observing the effects of sleep,food, correct and incorrect living upon a system so exquisitelyresponsive to all these influences as are the muscles. To learn toknow and grade excellence and defect, to be known for the list ofthings one can do and to have a record, or to realize what we lack ofpower to break best records, even to know that we are strengtheningsome point where heredity has left us with some shortage and perhapsdanger, the realization of all this may bring the first real and deepfeeling for growth that may become a passion later in things of thesoul. Growth always has its selfish aspects, and to be constantlypassing our own examination in this respect is a new and perhapssometimes too self-conscious endeavor of our young college barbarians;but it is on the whole a healthful regulative, and this form of thestruggle toward perfection and escape from the handicap of birth willlater move upward to the intellectual and moral plane. To kindle asense of physical beauty of form in every part, such as a sculptorhas, may be to start youth on the lowest round of the Platonic ladderthat leads up to the vision of ideal beauty of soul, if his ideal benot excess of brawn, or mere brute strength, but the true proportionrepresented by the classic or mean temperance balanced like justicebetween all extremes. Hard, patient, regular work, with the rightdosage for this self-cultural end, has thus at the same time a uniquemoral effect.

The dangers of this system are also obvious. Nature's intent can notbe too far thwarted; and as in mental training the question is alwayspertinent, so here we may ask whether it be not best in all cases tosome extent, and in some cases almost exclusively, to develop in thedirection in which we most excel, to emphasize physical individualityand even idiosyncrasy, rather than to strive for monotonousuniformity. Weaknesses and parts that lag behind are the most easilyoverworked to the point of reaction and perhaps permanent injury.Again, work for curative purposes lacks the exuberance of free sports:it is not inspiring to make up areas; and therapeutic exercisesimposed like a sentence for the shortcomings of our forebears bring awhiff of the atmosphere of the hospital, if not of the prison, intothe gymnasium.

These four ideals, while so closely interrelated, are as yet far fromharmonized. Swedish, Turner, Sargent, and American systems are each,most unfortunately, still too blind to the others' merits and tooconscious of the others' shortcomings. To some extent they areprevented from getting together by narrow devotion to a single cult,aided sometimes by a pecuniary interest in the sale of their ownapparatus and books or in the training of teachers according to oneset of rubrics. The real elephant is neither a fan, a rope, a tree nora log, as the blind men in the fable contended, each thinking the parthe had touched to be the whole. This inability of leaders to combinecauses uncertainty and lack of confidence in, and of enthusiasticsupport for, any system on the part of the public. Even the radicallydifferent needs of the sexes have failed of recognition from the samepartisanship. All together represent only a fraction of the nature andneeds of youth. The world now demands what this country has never had,a man who, knowing the human body, gymnastic history, and the variousgreat athletic traditions of the past, shall study anew the wholemotor field, as a few great leaders early in the last century tried todo; who shall gather and correlate the literature and experiences ofthe past and present with a deep sense of responsibility to thefuture; who shall examine martial training with all the inspirations,warnings, and new demands; and who shall know how to revive theinspiration of the past animated by the same spirit as the Turners,who were almost inflamed by referring back to the hardy life of theearly Teutons and trying to reproduce its best features; who shallcatch the spirit of, and make due connections with, popular sportspast and present, study both industry and education to compensatetheir debilitating effects, and be himself animated by a great ethicaland humanistic hope and faith in a better future. Such a man, if heever walks the earth, will be the idol of youth, will know theirphysical secrets, will come almost as a savior to the bodies of men,and will, like Jahn, feel his calling and work sacred, and hisinstitution a temple in which every physical act will be for the sakeof the soul. The world of adolescence, especially that part which sitsin closed spaces conning books, groans and travails all the moregrievously and yearningly, because unconsciously, waiting for aredeemer for its body. Till he appears, our culture must remain formost a little hollow, falsetto, and handicapped by school-breddiseases. The modern gymnasium performs its chief service duringadolescence and is one of the most beneficent agencies of which not afew, but every youth, should make large use. Its spirit should beinstinct with euphoria, where the joy of being alive reaches a pointof high, although not quite its highest, intensity. While the stimulusof rivalry and even of records is not excluded, and social feelingsmay be appealed to by unison exercises and by the club spirit, andwhile competitions, tournaments, and the artificial motives of prizesand exhibitions may be invoked, the culture is in fact largelyindividual. And yet in this country the annual Turnerfest brings4,000 or 5,000 men from all parts of the Union, who sometimes alldeploy and go through some of the standard exercises together underone leader. Instead of training a few athletes, the real problem nowpresented is how to raise the general level of vitality so thatchildren and youth may be fitted to stand the strain of moderncivilization, resist zymotic diseases, and overcome the deleteriousinfluences of city life. The almost immediate effects of systematictraining are surprising and would hardly be inferred from the annualincrements tabled earlier in this chapter. Sandow was a rather weaklyboy and ascribes his development chiefly to systematic training.

We have space but for two reports believed to be typical. Enebuskereports on the effects of seven months' training on young womenaveraging 22.3 years. The figures are based on the 50 percentilecolumn.

————————+————+—————————————————+———— | | Strength of | |Lung | | | |right |left |Total |capacity| legs |back |chest|forearm|forearm|Strength————————+————+———+——-+——-+———-+———-+————Before training | 2.65 | 93 |65.5 | 27 | 26 | 23 | 230After six months| 2.87 | 120 |81.5 | 32 | 28 | 25 | 293————————+————+———+——-+——-+———-+———-+————

By comparing records of what he deems standard normal growth with thatof 188 naval cadets from sixteen to twenty-one, who had special andsystematic training, just after the period of most rapid growth inheight, Beyer concluded that the effect of four years of this added alittle over an inch of stature, and that this gain as greatest at thebeginning. This increase was greatest for the youngest cadets. Hefound also a marked increase in weight, nearly the same for each yearfrom seventeen to twenty one. This he thought more easily influencedby exercise than height. A high vital index ratio of lung capacity toweight is a very important attribute of good training. Beyer[1] found,however, that the addition of lung area gained by exercise did notkeep up with the increase thus caused in muscular substance, and thatthe vital index always became smaller in those who had gained weightand strength by special physical training. How much gain in weight isdesirable beyond the point where the lung capacity increases at anequal rate is unknown. If such measurements were applied to thedifferent gymnastic systems, we might be able to compare theirefficiency, which would be a great desideratum in view of theunfortunate rivalry between them. Total strength, too, can be greatlyincreased. Beyer thinks that from sixteen to twenty-one it may exceedthe average or normal increment fivefold, and he adds, "I firmlybelieve that the now so wonderful performances of most of our strongmen are well within the reach of the majority of healthy men, if suchperformances were a serious enough part of their ambitionto make them do the exercises necessary to develop them." Power of theorgans to respond to good training by increased strength probablyreaches well into middle life.

It is not encouraging to learn that, according to a recent writer,[2]we now have seventy times as many physicians in proportion to thegeneral population as there are physical directors, even for theschool population alone considered. We have twice as many physiciansper population as Great Britain, four times a many as Germany, or 2physicians, 1.8 ministers, 1.4 lawyers per thousand of the generalpopulation; while even if all male teachers of physical trainingtaught only males of the military age, we should have but 0.05 of ateacher per thousand, or if the school population alone be considered,20 teachers per million pupils. Hence, it is inferred that the need ofwise and classified teachers in this field is at present greater thanin any other. But fortunately while spontaneous, unsystematic exercisein a well-equipped modern gymnasium may in rare cases do harm, so farfrom sharing the prejudice often felt for it by professional trainers,we believe that free access to it without control or direction isunquestionably a boon to youth. Even if its use be sporadic andoccasional, as it is likely to be with equal opportunity forout-of-door exercises and especially sports, practise is sometimeshygienic almost inversely to its amount, while even lameness frominitial excess has its lessons, and the sense of manifoldness ofinferiorities brought home by experiences gives a wholesomeself-knowledge and stimulus.

In this country more than elsewhere, especially in high school andcollege, gymnasium work has been brought into healthful connectionwith field sports and record competitions for both teams andindividuals who aspire to championship. This has given the former ahealthful stimulus although it is felt only by a picked few. Scores ofrecords have been established for running, walking, hurdling,throwing, putting, swimming, rowing, skating, etc., each for variousshorter and longer distances and under manifold conditions, and forboth amateurs and professionals, who are easily accessible. These, ingeneral, show a slow but steady advance in this country since 1876,when athletics were established here. In that year there was not asingle world's best record held by an American amateur, andhigh-school boys of to-day could in most, though not in all lines,have won the American championship twenty-five years ago. Of course,in a strict sense, intercollegiate contests do not show the realadvance in athletics, because it is not necessary for a man in orderto win a championship to do his best; but they do show generalimprovement.

We select for our purpose a few of those records longest kept. Notdependent on external conditions like boat-racing, or on improvedapparatus like bicycling, we have interesting data of a very differentorder for physical measurements. These down to present writing—July,1906—are as follows: For the 100-yard dash, every annual record from1876 to 1895 is 10 or 11 seconds, or between these, save in 1890,where Owen's record of 9-4/5 seconds still stands. In the 220-yard runthere is slight improvement since 1877, but here the record of 1896(Wefers, 21-1/5 seconds) has not been surpassed. In the quarter-milerun, the beet record was in 1900 (Long, 47 seconds). The half-milerecord, which still stands, was made in 1895 (Kilpatrick, 1 minute52-2/5 seconds); the mile run in 1895 (Conneff, 4 minutes 15-3/5seconds). The running broad jump shows a very steady improvement, withthe best record in 1900 (Prinstein, 24 feet 7-1/4 inches). The runninghigh jump shows improvement, but less, with the record of 1895 stillstanding (Sweeney, 6 feet 5-5/8 inches). The record for pole vaulting,corrected to November, 1905, is 12 feet 132/100 inches (Dole); forthrowing the 16-pound hammer head, 100 feet 5 inches (Queckberner);for putting the 16-pound shot, 49 feet 6 inches (Coe, 1905); thestanding high jump, 5 feet 5-1/2 inches (Ewry); for the running highjump, 6 feet 5-5/8 inches (Sweeney). We also find that if we extendour purview to include all kinds of records for physical achievement,that not a few of the amateur records for activities involvingstrength combined with rapid rhythm movement are held by young men oftwenty or even less.

In putting the 16-pound shot under uniform conditions the record hasimproved since the early years nearly 10 feet (Coe, 49 feet 6 inches,best at present writing, 1906). Pole vaulting shows a very markedadvance culminating in 1904 (Dole, 12 feet 132/100 inches). Mostmarked of all perhaps is the great advance in throwing the 16-poundhammer. Beginning between 70 and 80 feet in the early years, therecord is now 172 feet 11 inches (Flanagan, 1904). The two-milebicycle race also shows marked gain, partly, of course, due toimprovement in the wheel, the early records being nearly 7 minutes,and the best being 2 minutes 19 seconds (McLean, 1903). Some of theseare world records, and more exceed professional records.[3] These, ofcourse, no more indicate general improvement than the steady reductionof time in horse-racing suggests betterment in horses generally.

In Panhellenic games as well as at present, athleticism in itsmanifold forms was one of the most characteristic expressions ofadolescent nature and needs. Not a single time or distance record ofantiquity has been preserved, although Grasberger[4] and other writerswould have us believe that in those that are comparable, ancientyouthful champions greatly excelled ours, especially in leaping andrunning. While we are far from cultivating mere strength, our trainingis very one-sided from the Greek norm of unity or of the ideals thatdevelop the body only for the salve of the soul. While gymnastics inour sense, with apparatus, exercises, and measurements independentlyof games was unknown, the ideal and motive were as different from oursas was its method. Nothing, so far as is known, was done forcorrecting the ravages of work, or for overcoming hereditary defects;and until athletics degenerated there were Do exercises for the solepurpose of developing muscle.

On the whole, while modern gymnastics has done more for the trunk,shoulders, and arms than for the legs, it is now too selfish andego-centric, deficient on the side of psychic impulsion, and butlittle subordinated to ethical or intellectual development. Yet itdoes a great physical service to all who cultivate it, and is asafeguard of virtue and temperance. Its need is radical revision andcoordination of various cults and theories in the light of the latestpsycho-physiological science.

Gymnastics allies itself to biometric work. The present academic zealfor physical development is in great need of closer affiliation withanthropometry. This important and growing department will berepresented in the ideal gymnasium of the future—First, by courses,if not by a chair, devoted to the apparatus of measurements of humanproportions and symmetry, with a kinesological cabinet where young menare instructed in the elements of auscultation, the use of calipers,the sphygmograph, spirometer, plethysmograph, kinesometer to plotgraphic curves, compute average errors, and tables of percentilegrades and in statistical methods, etc. Second, anatomy, especially ofmuscles, bones, heart, and skin, will be taught, and also theirphysiology, with stress upon myology, the effects of exercise on theflow of blood and lymph, not excluding the development of the uprightposition, and all that it involves and implies. Third, hygiene will beprominent and comprehensive enough to cover all that pertains tobody-keeping, regimen, sleep, connecting with school and domestic andpublic hygiene—all on the basis of modern as distinct from thearchaic physiology of Ling, who, it is sufficient to remember, died in1839, before this science was recreated, and the persistence of whoseconcepts are an anomalous survival to-day. Mechanico-therapeutics, thepurpose and service of each chief kind of apparatus and exercise, thevalue of work on stall bars with chest weights, of chinning, use ofthe quarter-staff, somersaults, rings, clubs, dumb-bells, work withstraight and flexed knees on machinery, etc., will be taught. Fourth,the history of gymnastics from the time of its highest development inGreece to the present is full of interest and has a very high and notyet developed culture value for youth. This department, both in itspractical and theoretical side, should have its full share of prizesand scholarships to stimulate the seventy to seventy-five per cent ofstudents who are now unaffected by the influence of athletics. Bythese methods the motivation of gymnastics, which now in large measuregoes to waste in enthusiasm, could be utilised to aid the greatlyneeded intellectualization of those exercises which in their natureare more akin to work than play. Indeed, Gutsmuths's first definitionof athletics was "work under the garb of youthful pleasure." So todevelop these courses that they could chiefly, if not entirely,satisfy the requirements for the A.B. degree, would coordinate thework of the now isolated curriculum of the training-schools with thatof the college and thus broaden the sphere of the latter; but besidesits culture value, which I hold very high, such a step would preparefor the new, important, and, as we have seen, very inadequately mannedprofession of physical trainers. This has, moreover, great but yetlatent and even unsuspected capacities for the morals of our academicyouth. Grote states that among the ancient Greeks one-half of alleducation as devoted to the body, and Galton urges that they as muchexcelled us as we do the African negro. They held that if physicalperfection was cultivated, moral and mental excellence would follow;and that, without this, national culture rests on an insecure basis.In our day there are many new reasons to believe that the best nationsof the future will be those which give most intelligent care to thebody.

[Footnote 1: See H.G. Beyer. The Influence of Exercise on Growth.American Physical Education Review, September-December, 1896, vol. I,pp. 76-87.]

[Footnote 2: J.H. McCurdy, Physical Training as a Profession.
Association Seminar, March, 1902, vol. 10, pp. 11-24.]

[Footnote 3: These records are taken from the World Almanac, 1906, and
Olympic Games of 1906 at Athens. Edited by J.E. Sullivan, Commissioner
from the United States to the Olympic Games. Spalding's Athletic
Library, New York, July, 1906.]

[Footnote 4: O.H. Jaeger, Die Gymnastik der Hellenen. Heitz,
Stuttgart 1881. L. Grasberger's great standard work, Erziehung und
Untericht im klassischen Alterthum. Würzburg, 1864-81, 3 vols.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER VI

PLAY, SPORTS, AND GAMES

The view of Groos partial and a better explanation of play proposed asrehearsing ancestral activities—The glory of Greek physical training,its ideals and results—The first spontaneous movements of infancy askeys to the past—Necessity of developing basal powers before thosethat are later and peculiar to the individual—Plays that interest dueto their antiquity—Play with dolls—Play distinguished by age—Playpreferences of children and their reasons—The profoundsignificance of rhythm—The value of dancing and also itssignificance, history, and the desirability of re-introducingit—Fighting—Boxing—Wrestling—Bushido—Foot-ball—Militaryideals—Showing off—Cold baths—Hill climbing—The playgroundmovement—The psychology of play—Its relation to work.

Play, sports, and games constitute a more varied, far older, and morepopular field. Here a very different spirit of joy and gladness rules.Artifacts often enter but can not survive unless based upon prettypurely hereditary momentum. Thus our first problem is to seek both themotor tendencies and the psychic motives bequeathed to us from thepast. The view of Groos that play is practise for future adultactivities is very partial, superficial, and perverse. It ignores thepast where lie the keys to all play activities. True play neverpractises what is phyletically new; and this, industrial life oftencalls for. It exercises many atavistic and rudimentary functions, anumber of which will abort before maturity, but which live themselvesout in play like the tadpole's tail, that must be both developed andused as a stimulus to the growth of legs which will otherwise nevermature. In place of this mistaken and misleading view, I regard playas the motor habits and spirit of the past of the race, persisting inthe present, as rudimentary functions sometimes of and always akin torudimentary organs. The best index and guide to the stated activitiesof adults in past ages is found in the instinctive, untaught, andnon-imitative plays of children which are the most spontaneous andexact expressions of their motor needs. The young grow up into thesame forms of motor activity, as did generations that have longpreceded them, only to a limited extent; and if the form of everyhuman occupation were to change to-day, play would be unaffected savein some of its superficial imitative forms. It would develop the motorcapacities, impulses, and fundamental forms of our past heritage, andthe transformation of these into later acquired adult forms isprogressively later. In play every mood and movement is instinct withheredity. Thus we rehearse the activities of our ancestors, back weknow not how far, and repeat their life work in summative andadumbrated ways. It is reminiscent albeit unconsciously, of our lineof descent; and each is the key to the other. The psycho-motiveimpulses that prompt it are the forms in which our forebears havetransmitted to us their habitual activities. Thus stage by stage wereënact their lives. Once in the phylon many of these activities wereelaborated in the life and death struggle for existence. Now theelements and combinations oldest in the muscle history of the race arererepresented earliest in the individual, and those later follow inorder. This is why the heart of youth goes out into play as intonothing else, as if in it man remembered a lost paradise. This is why,unlike gymnastics, play has as much soul as body, and also why it somakes for unity of body and soul that the proverb "Man is whole onlywhen he plays" suggests that the purest plays are those that enlistboth alike. To address the body predominantly strengthens unduly thefleshy elements, and to overemphasize the soul causes weakness andautomatisms. Thus understood, play is the ideal type of exercise forthe young, most favorable for growth, and most self-regulating in bothkind and amount. For its forms the pulse of adolescent enthusiasmbeats highest. It is unconstrained and free to follow any outer orinner impulse. The zest of it vents and satisfies the strong passionof youth for intense erethic and perhaps orgiastic states, gives anexaltation of self-feeling so craved that with no vicarious outlet itoften impels to drink, and best of all realizes the watchword of theTurners, frisch, frei, fröhlich, fromm [Fresh, free, jovial,pious.].

Ancient Greece, the history and literature of which owe theirperennial charm for all later ages to the fact that they represent theeternal adolescence of the world, best illustrates what thisenthusiasm means for youth. Jäger and Guildersleeve, and yet betterGrasberger, would have us believe that the Panhellenic and especiallythe Olympic games combined many of the best features of a modern prizeexhibition, a camp-meeting, fair, Derby day, a Wagner festival, ameeting of the British Association, a country cattle show,intercollegiate games, and medieval tournament; that they were the"acme of festive life" and drew all who loved gold and glory, and thatnight and death never seemed so black as by contrast with theirsplendor. The deeds of the young athletes were ascribed to theinspiration of the gods, whose abodes they lit up with glory; and indoing them honor these discordant states found a bond of unity. Thevictor was crowned with a simple spray of laurel; cities vied witheach other for the honor of having given him birth, their walls weretaken down for his entry and immediately rebuilt; sculptors, for whomthe five ancient games were schools of posture, competed in therepresentation of his form; poets gave him a pedigree reaching back tothe gods, and Pindar, who sang that only he is great who is great withhis hands and feet, raised his victory to symbolize the eternalprevalence of good over evil. The best body implied the best mind; andeven Plato, to whom tradition gives not only one of the fairest souls,but a body remarkable for both strength and beauty, and for whomweakness was perilously near to wickedness, and ugliness to sin,argues that education must be so conducted that the body can be safelyentrusted to the care of the soul and suggests, what later became aslogan of a more degenerate gladiatorial athleticism, that to be welland strong is to be a philosopher—valare est philosophari. TheGreeks could hardly conceive bodily apart from psychic education, andphysical was for the sake of mental training. A sane, whole mind couldhardly reside in an unsound body upon the integrity of which it wasdependent. Knowledge for its own sake, from this standpoint, is adangerous superstition, for what frees the mind is disastrous if itdoes not give self-control; better ignorance than knowledge that doesnot develop a motor side. Body culture is ultimately only for the sakeof the mind and soul, for body is only its other ego. Not only is allmuscle culture at the same time brain-building, but a book-worm withsoft hands, tender feet, and tough rump from much sitting, or ananemic girl prodigy, "in the morning hectic, in the evening electric,"is a monster. Play at its best is only a school of ethics. It givesnot only strength but courage and confidence, tends to simplify lifeand habits, gives energy, decision, and promptness to the will, bringsconsolation and peace of mind in evil days, is a resource in troubleand brings out individuality.

How the ideals of physical preformed those of moral and mentaltraining in the land and day of Socrates is seen in the identificationof knowledge and virtue, "Kennen und Können." [To know and to havethe power to do] Only an extreme and one-sided intellectualismseparates them and assumes that it is easy to know and hard to do.From the ethical standpoint, philosophy, and indeed all knowledge, isthe art of being and doing good, conduct is the only real subject ofknowledge, and there is no science but morals. He is the best man,says Xenophon, who is always studying how to improve, and he is thehappiest who feels that he is improving. Life is a skill, an art likea handicraft, and true knowledge a form of will. Good moral andphysical development are more than analogous; and where intelligenceis separated from action the former becomes mystic, abstract, anddesiccated, and the latter formal routine. Thus mere conscience andpsychological integrity and righteousness are allied and mutuallyinspiring.

Not only play, which is the purest expression of motor heredity, butwork and all exercise owe most of whatever pleasure they bring to thepast. The first influence of all right exercise for those in health isfeeling of well-being and exhilaration. This is one chief source ofthe strange enthusiasm felt for many special forms of activity, andthe feeling is so strong that it animates many forms of it that arehygienically unfit. To act vigorously from a full store of energygives a reflex of pleasure that is sometimes a passion and may fairlyintoxicate. Animals must move or cease growing and die. While to beweak is to be miserable, to feel strong is a joy and glory. It gives asense of superiority, dignity, endurance, courage, confidence,enterprise, power, personal validity, virility, and virtue in theetymological sense of that noble word. To be active, agile, strong, isespecially the glory of young men. Our nature and history have sodisposed our frame that thus all physiological and psychic processesare stimulated, products of decomposition are washed out byoxygenation and elimination, the best reaction of all the ganglionicand sympathetic activities is accused, and vegetative processes arenormalized. Activity may exalt the spirit almost to the point ofecstasy, and the physical pleasure of it diffuse, irradiate, andmitigate the sexual stress just at the age when its prematurelocalization is most deleterious. Just enough at the proper time andrate contributes to permanent elasticity of mood and disposition,gives moral self-control, rouses a love of freedom with all that thatgreat word means, and favors all higher human aspirations.

In all these modes of developing our efferent powers, we conceive thatthe race comes very close to the individual youth, and that ancestralmomenta animate motor neurons and muscles and preside over most of thecombinations. Some of the elements speak with a still small voiceraucous with age. The first spontaneous movements of infancy arehieroglyphs, to most of which we have as yet no good key. Manyelements are so impacted and felted together that we can not analyzethem. Many are extinct and many perhaps made but once and only hintthings we can not apprehend. Later the rehearsals are fuller, andtheir significance more intelligible, and in boyhood and youth thecorrespondences are plain to all who have eyes to see. Pleasure isalways exactly proportional to the directness and force of the currentof heredity, and in play we feel most fully and intensely ancestraljoys. The pain of toil died with our forebears; its vestiges in ourplay give pure delight. Its variety prompts to diversity that enlargesour life. Primitive men and animals played, and that too has left itstraces in us. Some urge that work was evolved or degenerated fromplay; but the play field broadens with succeeding generations youth isprolonged, for play is always and everywhere the best synonym ofyouth. All are young at play and only in play, and the best possiblecharacterization of old age is the absence of the soul and body ofplay. Only senile and overspecialized tissues of brain, heart, andmuscles know it not.

Gulick[1] has urged that what makes certain exercises more interestingthan others is to be found in the phylon. The power to throw withaccuracy and speed was once pivotal for survival, and non-throwerswere eliminated. Those who could throw unusually well best overcameenemies, killed game, and sheltered family. The nervous and muscularsystems are organized with certain definite tendencies and have backof them a racial setting. So running and dodging with speed andendurance, and hitting with a club, were also basal to hunting andfighting. Now that the need of these is leas urgent for utilitarianpurposes, they are still necessary for perfecting the organism. Thismakes, for instance, baseball racially familiar, because it representsactivities that were once and for a long time necessary for survival.We inherit tendencies of muscular coördination that have been of greatracial utility. The best athletic sports and games a composed of theseracially old elements, so that phylogenetic muscular history is ofgreat importance. Why is it, this writer asks, that a city man soloves to sit all day and fish! It is because this interest dates backto time immemorial. We are the sons of fishermen, and early life wasby the water's side, and this is our food supply. This explains whycertain exercises are more interesting than others. It is because theytouch and revive the deep basic emotions of the race. Thus we see thatplay is not doing things to be useful later, but it is rehearsingracial history. Plays and games change only in their external form,but the underlying neuro-muscular activities, and also the psychiccontent of them, are the same. Just as psychic states must be livedout up through the grades, so the physical activities most be playedoff, each in its own time.

The best exercise for the young should thus be more directed todevelop the basal powers old to the race than those peculiar to theindividual, and it should enforce those psycho-neural and muscularforms which race habit has banded down rather than insist upon thosearbitrarily designed to develop our ideas of symmetry regardless ofheredity. The best guide to the former is interest, zest, andspontaneity. Hereditary moment, really determine, too, the order inwhich nerve centers come into function. The oldest, racial parts comefirst, and those which are higher and represent volition come in muchlater.[2] As Hughlings Jackson has well shown, speech uses most of thesame organs as does eating, but those concerned with the former arecontrolled from a higher level of nerve-cells. By right mastication,deglutition, etc., we are thus developing speech organs. Thus not onlythe kind but the time of forms and degrees of exercise is bestprescribed by heredity. All growth is more or less rhythmic. There areseasons of rapid increment followed by rest and then perhaps succeededby a period of augmentation, and this may occur several times.Roberts's fifth parliamentary report shows that systematic gymnastics,which, if applied at the right age, produce such immediate and oftensurprising development of lung capacity, utterly fail with boys oftwelve, because this nascent period has not yet come. Donaldson showedthat if the eyelid of a young kitten be forced open prematurely atbirth and stimulated with light, medullation was premature andimperfect; so, too, if proper exercise is deferred too long, we knowthat little result is achieved. The sequence in which the maturationof levels, nerve areas, and bundles of fibers develop may be, asFlechsig thinks, causal; or, according to Cajal, energy, originallyemployed in growth by cell division, later passes to fiber extensionand the development of latent cells; or as in young children, thenascent period of finger movements may stimulate that of the thumbwhich comes later, and the independent movement of the two eyes, theirsubsequent coördination, and so on to perhaps a third and yet higherlevel. Thus exercise ought to develop nature's first intention andfulfil the law of nascent periods, or else not only no good but greatharm may be done. Hence every determination of these periods is ofgreat practical as well as scientific importance. The following arethe chief attempts yet made to fix them, which show the significanceof adolescence.

The doll curve reaches its point of highest intensity between eightand nine,[3] and it is nearly ended at fifteen, although it maypersist. Children can give no better reason why they stop playing withdolls than because other things are liked better, or they are too old,ashamed, love real babies, etc. The Roman girl, when ripe formarriage, hung up her childhood doll as a votive offering to Venus.Mrs. Carlyle, who was compelled to stop, made sumptuous dresses and afour-post bed, and made her doll die upon a funeral pyre like Dido,after speaking her last farewell and stabbing herself with a penknifeby way of Tyrian sword. At thirteen or fourteen it is more distinctlyrealized that dolls are not real, because they have no inner life orfeeling, yet many continue to play with them with great pleasure, insecret, till well on in the teens or twenties. Occasionally singlewomen or married women with no children, and in rare cases even thosewho have children, play dolls all their lives. Gales's[4] studentconcluded that the girls who played with dolls up to or into pubescentyears were usually those who had the fewest number, that they playedwith them in the most realistic manner, kept them because actuallymost fond of them, and were likely to be more scientific, steady, andless sentimental than those who dropped them early. But the instinctthat "dollifies" new or most unfit things is gone, as also the subtlepoints of contact between doll play and idolatry. Before puberty dollsare more likely to be adults; after puberty they are almost alwayschildren or babies. There is no longer a struggle between doubt andreality in the doll cosmos, no more abandon to the doll illusion; butwhere it lingers it is a more atavistic rudiment, and just as at theheight of the fever dolls are only in small part representatives offuture children, the saying that the first child is the last doll isprobably false. Nor are doll and child comparable to first and seconddentition, and it is doubtful if children who play with dolls aschildren with too great abandonment are those who make the bestmothers later, or if it has any value as a preliminary practise ofmotherhood. The number of motor activities that are both inspired andunified by this form of play and that can always be given wholesomedirection is almost incredible, and has been too long neglected bothby psychologists and teachers. Few purer types of the rehearsal by theindividual of the history of the race can probably be found eventhough we can not yet analyze the many elements involved and assign toeach its phyletic correlate.

In an interesting paper Dr. Gulick[5] divides play into three childishperiods, separated by the ages three and seven, and attempts tocharacterize the plays of early adolescence from twelve to seventeen andof later adolescence from seventeen to twenty-three. Of the first twoperiods he says, children before seven rarely play games spontaneously,but often do so under the stimulus of older persons. From seven totwelve, games are almost exclusively individualistic and competitive,but in early adolescence "two elements predominate—first, the plays arepredominantly team games, in which the individual is more or lesssacrificed for the whole, in which there is obedience to a captain, inwhich there is coöperation among a number for a given end, in which playhas a program and an end. The second characteristic of the period iswith reference to its plays, and there seems to be all of savageout-of-door life—hunting, fishing, stealing, swimming, rowing, sailing,fighting, hero-worship, adventure, love of animals, etc. Thischaracteristic obtains more with boys than with girls." "The plays ofadolescence are socialistic, demanding the heathen virtues of courage,endurance, self-control, bravery, loyalty, enthusiasm."

Croswell[6] found that among 2,000 children familiar with 700 kinds ofamusem*nts, those involving physical exercises predominated over allothers, and that "at every age after the eighth year they wererepresented as almost two to one and in the sixteenth year rose amongboys as four to one." The age of the greatest number of differentamusem*nts is from ten to eleven, nearly fifteen being mentioned, butfor the next eight or nine years there is a steady decline of number,and progressive specialisation occurs. The games of chase, which aresuggestive on the recapitulation theory, rise from eleven per cent inboys of six to nineteen per cent at nine, but soon after decline, andat sixteen have fallen to less than four per cent. Toys and originalmake-believe games decline still earlier, while ball rises steadilyand rapidly to eighteen, and card and table games rise very steadilyfrom ten to fifteen in girls, but the increment is much less in boys."A third or more of all the amusem*nts of boys just entering theirteens are games of contest—games in which the end is in one way oranother to gain an advantage one's fellows, in which the interest is nthe struggle between peers." "As children approach the teens, atendency arises that is well expressed by one of the girls who nolonger makes playthings but things that are useful." Parents andsociety must, therefore, provide the most favorable conditions for thekind of amusem*nt fitting at each age. As the child grows older,society plays a larger rôle in all the child's amusem*nts, and fromthe thirteenth year "amusem*nts take on a decidedly coöperative andcompetitive character, and efforts are ore and more confined to theaccomplishments of some definite aim. The course for this period willconcentrate the effort upon fewer lines," and more time will bedevoted to each. The desire for mastery is now at its height. Theinstinct is to maintain one's self independently and ask no odds. Atfourteen, especially, the impulse is, in manual training, to makesomething and perhaps to coöperate.

McGhee[7] collected the play preferences of 15,718 children, and founda very steady decline in running plays among girls from nine toeighteen, but a far more rapid rise in plays of chance from eleven tofifteen, and a very rapid rise from sixteen to eighteen. From elevenonward with the most marked fall before fourteen, there was a distinctdecline in imitative games for girls and a slower one for boys. Gamesinvolving rivalry increased rapidly among boys from eleven to sixteenand still more rapidly among girls, their percentage of preferenceeven exceeding that of boys at eighteen, when it reached nearlyseventy per cent. With adolescence, specialization upon a few playswas markedly increased in the teens among boys, whereas with girls ingeneral there were a large number of plays which were popular withnone preëminent. Even at this age the principle of organization ingames so strong with boys is very slight with girls. Puberty showedthe greatest increase of interest among pubescent girls for croquet,and among boys for swimming, although baseball and football, the mostfavored for boys, rose rapidly. Although the author does not state it,it would seem from his data that plays peculiar to the differentseasons were most marked among boys, in part, at least, because theiractivities are more out of doors.

Ferrero and others have shown that the more intense activities ofprimitive people tend to be rhythmic and with strongly automaticfeatures. No form of activity is more universal than the dance, whichis not only intense but may express chiefly in terms of fundamentalmovements, stripped of their accessory finish and detail, everyimportant act, vocation, sentiment, or event in the life of man inlanguage so universal and symbolic that music and poetry themselvesseem to have arisen out of it. Before it became specialized much laborwas cast in rhythmic form and often accompanied by time-marking andeven tone to secure the stimulus of concert on both economic andsocial principles. In the dark background of history there is now muchevidence that at some point, play, art, and work were not divorced.They all may have sprung from rhythmic movement which is sodeep-seated in biology because it secures most joy of life with leastexpense. By it Eros of old ordered chaos, and by its judicious use thehuman soul is cadenced to great efforts toward high ideals. The manywork-songs to secure concerted action in lifting, pulling, stepping,the use of flail, lever, saw, ax, hammer, hoe, loom, etc., show thatareas and thesis represent flexion and extension, that accentoriginated in the acme of muscular stress, as well as how rhythm easeswork and also makes it social. Most of the old work-canticles arelost, and machines have made work more serial, while rhythms areobscured or imposed from without so as to limit the freedom they usedto express. Now all basal, central, or strength movements tend to beoscillatory, automatically repetitive, or rhythmic like savage music,as if the waves of the primeval sea whence we came still beat in them,just as all fine peripheral and late movements tend to be serial,special, vastly complex, end diversified. It is thus natural thatduring the period of greatest strength increment in musculardevelopment, the rhythmic function of nearly all fundamental movementsshould be strongly accentuated. At the dawn of this age boys lovemarching; and, as our returns show, there is a very remarkable rise inthe passion for beating time, jigging, double shuffling, rhythmicclapping, etc. The more prominent the factor of repetition the moreautomatic and the less strenuous is the hard and new effort ofconstant psychic adjustment and attention. College yells, cheers,rowing, marching, processions, bicycling, running, tug-of-war,calisthenics and class gymnastics with counting, and especially withmusic, horseback riding, etc., are rhythmic; tennis, baseball andfootball, basketball, golf, polo, etc., are less rhythmic, but areconcerted and intense. These latter emphasise the conflict factor,best brought out in fencing, boxing, and wrestling, and lay morestress on the psychic elements of attention and skill. The effect ofmusical accompaniment, which the Swedish system wrongly rejects, is tomake the exercises more fundamental and automatic, and toproportionately diminish the conscious effort and relieve theneuro-muscular mechanism involved in fine movements.

Adolescence is the golden period of nascency for rhythm. Before thischange many children have a very imperfect sense of it, and even thosewho march, sing, play, or read poetry with correct and overemphasisedtime marking, experience a great broadening of the horizon ofconsciousness, and a marked, and, for mental power and scope,all-conditioning increase in the carrying power of attention and thesentence-sense. The soul now feels the beauty of cadences, goodascension, and the symmetry of well-developed periods—and all, as Iam convinced, because this is the springtime of the strength movementswhich are predominantly rhythmic. Not only does music start in timemarking, the drum being the oldest instrument, but quantity long tookprecedence of sense and form of content, both melody and words cominglater. Even rhythmic tapping or beating of the foot (whence the poeticfeet of prosody and meter thus later imposed monotonous prose to makepoetry) exhilarates, makes glad the soul and inspires it to attack,gives compulsion and a sense of unity. The psychology of rhythm showsits basal value in cadencing the soul. We can not conceive what war,love, and religion would be without it. The old adage that "the parentof prose is poetry, the parent of poetry is music, the parent of musicis rhythm, and the parent of rhythm is God" seems borne out not onlyin history, but by the nature of thought and attention that does notmove in a continuum, but flies and perches alternately, or onstepping-stones and as if influenced by the tempo of the leg swingingas a compound pendulum.

Dancing is one of the best expressions of pure play and of the motorneeds of youth. Perhaps it is the most liberal of all forms of motoreducation. Schopenhauer thought it the apex of physiologicalirritability and that it made animal life most vividly conscious ofits existence and most exultant in exhibiting it. In very ancienttimes China ritualised it in the spring and made it a large part ofthe education of boys after the age of thirteen. Neale thinks it wasoriginally circular or orbicular worship, which he deems oldest. InJapan, in the priestly Salic College of ancient Rome, in Egypt, in theGreek Apollo cult, it was a form of worship. St. Basil advised it; St.Gregory introduced it into religious services. The early Christianbishops, called præsuls, led the sacred dance around the altar; andonly in 692, and again in 1617, was it forbidden in church. Neale andothers have shown how the choral processionals with all the addedcharm of vestment and intonation have had far more to do inChristianizing many low tribes, who could not understand the languageof the church, than has preaching. Savages are nearly all greatdancers, imitating every animal they know, dancing out their ownlegends, with ritual sometimes so exacting that error means death. Thecharacter of people is often learned from their dances, and Molièresays the destiny of nations depends on them. The gayest dancers areoften among the most downtrodden and unhappy people. Some mysteriescan be revealed only in them, as holy passion-plays. If we considerthe history of secular dances, we find that some of them, when firstinvented or in vogue, evoked the greatest enthusiasm. One writer saysthat the polka so delighted France and England that statesmen forgotpolitics. The spirit of the old Polish aristocracy still lives in thepolonaise. The gipsy dances have inspired a new school of music. TheGreek drama grew out of the evolution of the tragic chorus. Nationaldances like the hornpipe and reel of Scotland, the Reihen, ofGermany, the rondes of France, the Spanish tarantella andchaconne, the strathspey from the Spey Valley, the Irish jig, etc.,express racial traits. Instead of the former vast repertory, thestately pavone, the graceful and dignified saraband, the wildsalterrelle, the bourrée with song and strong rhythm, the light andskippy bolero, the courtly bayedere, the dramatic plugge, gavotte, andother peasant dances in costume, the fast and furious fandango, weaponand military dances; in place of the pristine power to express love,mourning, justice, penalty, fear, anger, consolation, divine service,symbolic and philosophical conceptions, and every industry orcharacteristic act of life in pantomime and gesture, we have in thedance of the modern ballroom only a degenerate relict, with at bestbut a very insignificant culture value, and too often stained with badassociations. This is most unfortunate for youth, and for their sake awork of rescue and revival is greatly needed; for it is perhaps, notexcepting even music, the completest language of the emotions and canbe made one of the best schools of sentiment and even will,inculcating good states of mind and exorcising bad ones as few otheragencies have power to do. Right dancing can cadence the very soul,give nervous poise and control, bring harmony between basal and finermuscles, and also between feeling and intellect, body and mind. It canserve both as an awakener and a test of intelligence, predispose theheart against vice, and turn the springs of character toward virtue.That its present decadent forms, for those too devitalized to dancearight, can be demoralizing, we know in this day too well, althougheven questionable dances may sometimes work off vicious propensitiesin ways more harmless than those in which they would otherwise findvent. Its utilization for and influence on the insane would be anotherinteresting chapter.

Very interesting scientifically and suggestive practically is anothercorrespondence which I believe to be new, between the mode ofspontaneous activity in youth and that of labor in the early historyof the race. One of the most marked distinctions between savage andcivilized races is in the longer rhythm of work and relaxation. Theformer are idle and lazy for days, weeks, and perhaps months, and thenput forth intense and prolonged effort in dance, hunt, warfare,migration, or construction, sometimes dispensing with sleep andmanifesting remarkable endurance. As civilization and specializationadvance, hours become regular. The cultured man is less desultory inall his habits, from eating and sleeping to performing social andreligious duties, although he may put forth no more aggregate energyin a year than the savage. Women are schooled to regular work longbefore men, and the difficulty of imposing civilization upon low racesis compared by Bücher[8] to that of training a eat to work whenharnessed to a dog-cart. It is not dread of fatigue but of themonotony of method makes them hate labor. The effort of savages ismore intense and their periods of rest more prolonged and inert.Darwin thinks all vital function bred to go in periods, as vertebratesare descended from tidal ascidian.[9] There is indeed much thatsuggests some other irregular rhythm more or less independent of dayand night, and perhaps sexual in its nature, but not lunar, and formales. This mode of life not only preceded the industrial andcommercial period of which regularity is a prime condition, but itlasted indefinitely longer than the latter has yet existed; duringthis early time great exertion, sometimes to the point of utterexhaustion and collapse, alternated with seasons of almost vegetativeexistence. We see abundant traces of this psychosis in the musclehabits of adolescents, and, I think, in student and particularly incollege life, which can enforce regularity only to a limited extent.This is not reversion, but partly expression of the nature and perhapsthe needs of this stage of immaturity, and partly the same instinct ofrevolt against uniformity imposed from without, which rob life ofvariety and extinguish the spirit of adventure and untrammeledfreedom, and make the savage hard to break to the harness ofcivilization. The hunger for fatigue, too, can become a veritablepassion and is quite distinct from either the impulse for activity forits own sake or the desire of achievement. To shout and put forth theutmost possible strength in crude ways is erethic intoxication at astage when every tissue can become erectile and seems, like the cryingof infants, to have a legitimate function in causing tension andflushing, enlarging the caliber of blood vessels, and forcing theblood perhaps even to the point of extravasation to irrigate newlygrowing fibers, cells, and organs which atrophy if not thus fed. Whenmaturity is complete this need abates. If this be correct, thephenomenon of second breath, so characteristic of adolescence, and onefactor in the inebriate's propensity, is ontogenetic expression of arhythm trait of a long racial period. Youth needs overexertion tocompensate for underexertion, to undersleep in order to offsetoversleep at times. This seems to be nature's provision to expand inall directions its possibilities of the body and soul in this plasticperiod when, without this occasional excess, powers would atrophy orsuffer arrest for want of use, or larger possibilities world not berealized without this regimen peculiar to nascent periods. This istreated more fully elsewhere.

Perhaps next to dancing in phyletic motivation come personalconflicts, such as wrestling, fighting, boxing, dueling, and in somesense, hunting. The animal world is full of struggle for survival, andprimitive warfare is a wager of battle, of personal combat of foescontesting eye to eye and hand to hand, where victory of one is thedefeat and perhaps death of the other, and where life is often stakedagainst life. In its more brutal forms we see one of the mostdegrading of all the aspects of human nature. Burk[10] has shown howthe most bestial of these instincts survive and crop out irresistiblyin boyhood, where fights are often engaged in with desperate abandon.Noses are bitten, ears torn, sensitive places kicked, hair pulled,arms twisted, the head stamped on and pounded on stones, fingerstwisted, and hoodlums sometimes deliberately try to strangle, gougeout an eye, pull off an ear, pull out the tongue, break teeth, nose,or bones, or dislocate jaws or other joints, wring the neck, bite offa lip, and torture in utterly nameless ways. In unrestrained anger,man becomes a demon in love with the blood of his victim. The face isdistorted, and there are yells, oaths, animal snorts and grunts,cries, and then exultant laughter at pain, and each is bruised, dirty,disheveled and panting with exhaustion. For coarser natures, thespectacle of such conflicts has an intense attraction, while somemorbid souls are scarred by a distinct phobia for everythingsuggestive of even lower degrees of opposition. These instincts, moreor less developed in boyhood, are repressed in normal cases beforestrength and skill are sufficiently developed to inflict seriousbodily injury, while without the reductives that orthogenetic growthbrings they become criminal. Repulsive as are these grosser and animalmanifestations of anger, its impulsion can not and should not beeliminated, but its expression transformed and directed toward evilsthat need all its antagonism. To be angry aright is a good part ofmoral education, and non-resistance under all provocations is unmanly,craven, and cowardly.[11] An able-bodied young man, who can not fightphysically, can hardly have a high and true sense of honor, and isgenerally a milksop, a lady-boy, or sneak. He lacks virility, hismasculinity does not ring true, his honesty can not be sound to thecore. Hence, instead of eradicating this instinct, one of the greatproblems of physical and moral pedagogy is rightly to temper anddirect it.

Sparta sedulously cultivated it in boys; and in the great Englishschools, where for generations it has been more or less tacitlyrecognized, it is regulated by custom, and their literature andtraditions abound in illustrations of its man-making and oftentransforming influence in ways well appreciated by Hughes and Arnold.It makes against degeneration, the essential feature of which isweakening of will and loss of honor. Real virtue requires enemies, andwomen and effeminate and old men want placid, comfortable peace, whilea real man rejoices in noble strife which sanctifies all great causes,casts out fear, and is the chief school of courage. Bad as isoverpugnacity, a scrapping boy is better than one who funks a fight,and I have no patience with the sentimentality that would here "pourout the child with the bath," but would have every healthy boy taughtboxing at adolescence if not before. The prize-ring is degrading andbrutal, but in lieu of better illustrations of the spirit of personalcontest I would interest a certain class of boys in it and try todevise modes of pedagogic utilization of the immense store of interestit generates. Like dancing it should be rescued from its evilassociations, and its educational force put to do moral work, eventhough it be by way of individual prescriptions for specific defectsof character. At its best, it is indeed a manly art, a superb schoolfor quickness of eye and hand, decision, force of will, andself-control. The moment this is lost stinging punishment follows.Hence it is the surest of all cures for excessive irascibility and hasbeen found to have a most beneficent effect upon a peevish or unmanlydisposition. It has no mean theoretic side, of rules, kinds of blowand counters, arts of drawing out and tiring an opponent, hinderingbut not injuring him, defensive and offensive tactics, etc., and itaddresses chiefly the fundamental muscles in both training andconflict. I do not underestimate the many and great difficulties ofproper purgation, but I know from both personal practise andobservation that they are not unconquerable.

This form of personal conflict is better than dueling even in itscomparatively harmless German student form, although this has beenwarmly defended by Jacob Grimm, Bismarck, and Treitschke, whilePaulsen, Professor of Philosophy and Pedagogy, and Schrempf, ofTheology, have pronounced it but a slight evil, and several Americanshave thought it better than hazing, which it makes impossible. Thedark side of dueling is seen in the hypertrophied sense of honor whichunder the code of the corps becomes an intricate and fantastic thing,prompting, according to Ziegler,[12] a club of sixteen students tofight over two hundred duels in four weeks in Jena early in thiscentury. It is prone to degenerate to an artificial etiquettedemanding satisfaction for slight and unintended offenses. Althoughthis professor who had his own face scarred on the mensur, pleadedfor a student court of honor, with power to brand acts as infamous andeven to expel students, on the ground that honor had grown moreinward, the traditions in favor of dueling were too strong. The duelhad a religious romantic origin as revealing God's judgment, and meansthat the victim of an insult is ready to stake body, or even life, andthis is still its ideal side. Anachronism as it now is anddegenerating readily to sport or spectacle, overpunishing what isoften mere awkwardness or ignorance, it still impresses a certainsense of responsibility for conduct and gives some physical training,slight and specialized though it be. The code is conventional, drawndirectly from old French military life, and is not true to the linethat separates real honor from dishonor, deliberate insult that woundsnormal self-respect from injury fancied by oversensitiveness orfeigned by arrogance; so that in its present form it is not the bestsafeguard of the sacred shrine of personality against invasion of ifsrights. If, as is claimed, it is some diversion from or fortificationagainst corrosive sensuality, it has generally allied itself withexcessive beer-drinking. Fencing, while an art susceptible of highdevelopment and valuable for both pose and poise, and requiring greatquickness of eye, arm, and wrist, is unilateral and robbed of the vestof inflicting real pain on an antagonist.

Bushido,[13] which means military-knightly ways, designates theJapanese conception of honor in behavior and in fighting. The youth isinspired by the ideal of Tom Brown "to leave behind him the name of afellow who never bullied a little boy or turned his back on a bigone." It expresses the race ideal of justice, patriotism, and the dutyof living aright and dying nobly. It means also sympathy, pity, andlove, for only the bravest can be the tenderest, and those most inlove are most daring, and it includes politeness and the art ofpoetry. Honor is a sense of personal dignity and worth, so the bushiis truthful without an oath. At the tender age of five the samuraiis given a real sword, and this gives self-respect and responsibility.At fifteen, two sharp and artistic ones, long and short, are givenhim, which must be his companions for life. They were made by a smithwhose shop is a sanctuary and who begins his work with prayer. Theyhave the finest hilts and scabbards, and are besung as invested with acharm or spell, and symbolic of loyalty and self-control, for theymust never be drawn lightly. He is taught fencing, archery,horsemanship, tactics, the spear, ethics and literature, anatomy, foroffence and defense; he must be indifferent to money, hold his lifecheap beside honor, and die if it is gone. This chivalry is called thesoul of Japan, and if it fades life is vulgarised. It is a code ofethics and physical training.

Football is a magnificent game if played on honor. An English tennischampion was lately playing a rubber game with the American champion.They were even and near the end when the American made a bad flukewhich would have lost this country its championship. The Englishplayer, scorning to win on an accident, intentionally made a similarmistake that the best man might win. The chief evil of modern Americanfootball which now threatens its suppression in some colleges is thelust to win at any price, and results in tricks and secret practise.These sneaky methods impair the sentiment of honor which is the bestand most potent of all the moral safeguards of youth, so that a youngman can not be a true gentleman on the gridiron. This ethicaldegeneration is far worse than all the braises, sprains, broken bonesand even deaths it causes.

Wrestling is a form of personal encounter which in antiquity reached ahigh development, and which, although now more known and practised asathletics of the body than of the soul, has certain specialdisciplinary capacities in its various forms. It represents the mostprimitive type of the struggle of unarmed and unprotected man withman. Purged of its barbarities, and in its Greco-Roman form andproperly subject to rules, it cultivates more kinds of movements thanany other form—for limbs, trunk, neck, hand, foot, and all in theupright and in every prone position. It, too, has its manual offeints, holds, tricks, and specialties, and calls out wariness,quickness, strength, and shiftiness. Victory need involve no crueltyor even pain to the vanquished. The very closeness of body to body,emphasizing flexor rather than extensor arm muscles, imparts to it apeculiar tone, gives it a vast variety of possible activities,developing many alternatives at every stage, and tempts to manyundiscovered forms of permanent mayhem. Its struggle is usually longerand less interrupted by pauses than pugilism, and its situations andconclusions often develop slowly, so that all in all, its characteramong contests is unique. As a school of posture for art, itsvarieties are extremely manifold and by no means developed, for itcontains every kind of emphasis of every part and calls out everymuscle group and attitude of the human body; hence its training ismost generic and least specialized, and victories have been won byvery many kinds of excellence.

Perhaps nothing is more opposed to the idea of a gentleman than thesæva animi tempestas [Fierce tempest of the soul] of anger. A testy,quarrelsome, mucky humor is antisocial, and an outburst of rage isrepulsive. Even non-resistance, turning the other cheek, has itsvictories and may be a method of moral combat. A strong temper wellcontrolled and kept in leash makes a kinetic character; but in view ofbullying, unfair play, cruel injustice to the weak and defenseless, ofoutrageous wrong that the law can not reach, patience and forbearancemay cease to be virtues, and summary redress may have a distinctadvantage to the ethical nature of man and to social order, and thestrenuous soul must fight or grow stagnant or flabby. If toorepressed, righteous indignation may turn to sourness and sulks, andthe disposition be spoiled. Hence the relief and exhilaration of anoutbreak that often clears the psychic atmosphere like a thunderstorm,and gives the "peace that passeth understanding" so often dilated onby our correspondents. Rather than the abject fear of making enemieswhatever the provocation, I would praise those whose best title ofhonor is the kind of enemies they make. Better even an occasional nosedented by a fist, a broken bone, a rapier-scarred face, or evensometimes the sacrifice of the life of one of our best academic youththan stagnation, general cynicism and censoriousness, bodily andpsychic cowardice, and moral corruption, if this indeed be, as itsometimes is, its real alternative.

So closely are love and war connected that not only is individualpugnacity greatly increased at the period of sexual maturity, whenanimals acquire or develop horns, fangs, claws, spurs, and weapons ofoffense and defense, but a new spirit of organization arises whichmakes teams possible or more permanent. Football, baseball, cricket,etc., and even boating can become schools of mental and moraltraining. First, the rules of the game are often intricate, and tomaster and observe them effectively is no mean training for the mindcontrolling the body. These are steadily being revised and improved,and the reasons for each detail of construction and conduct of thegame require experience and insight into human nature. Then thesubordination of each member to the whole and to a leader cultivatesthe social and coöperative instincts, while the honor of the school,college, or city, which each team represents, is confided to each andall. Group loyalty in Anglo-Saxon games, which shows such a markedincrement in coördination and self-subordination at the dawn ofpuberty as to constitute a distinct change in the character of sportsat this age, can be so utilized as to develop a spirit of service anddevotion not only to town, country, and race, but to God and thechurch. Self must be merged and a sportsmanlike spirit cultivated thatprefers defeat to tricks and secret practise, and a clean game to theapplause of rooters and fans, intent only on victory, however won. Thelong, hard fight against professionalism that brings in husky muckers,who by every rule of true courtesy and chivalry belong outsideacademic circles, scrapping and underhand advantages, is a sad commenton the character and spirit of these games, and eliminates the best oftheir educational advantages. The necessity of intervention, which hasimposed such great burdens on faculties and brought so much frictionwith the frenzy of scholastic sentiment in the hot stage of seasonalenthusiasms, when fanned to a white heat by the excessive interest offriends and patrons and the injurious exploitation of the press, bearssad testimony to the strength and persistence of warlike instinctsfrom our heredity. But even thus the good far predominates. Theelective system has destroyed the class games, and our institutionshave no units like the English colleges to be pitted against eachother, and so colleges grow, an ever smaller percentage of studentsobtain the benefit of practise on the teams, while electioneeringmethods often place second-best men in place of the best. But bothstudents and teachers are slowly learning wisdom in the dear school ofexperience. On the whole, there is less license in "breaking training"and in celebrating victories, and even at their worst, good probablypredominates, while the progress of recent years bids us hope.

Finally, military ideals and methods of psycho-physical education arehelpful regulations of the appetite for combat, and on the whole morewholesome and robust than those which are merely esthetic. Marching instep gives proper and uniform movement of legs, arms, and carriage ofbody; the manual of arms, with evolution and involution of figures inthe ranks, gives each a corporate feeling of membership, and involvescare of personal appearance and accouterments, while the uniformlevels social distinction in dress. For the French and Italian andespecially the German and Russian adolescent of the lower classes, thetwo or three years of compulsory military service is often compared toan academic course, and the army is called, not without somejustification, the poor man's university. It gives severe drill,strict discipline, good and regular hours, plain but wholesome fareand out-of-door exercise, exposure, travel, habits of neatness, manyuseful knacks and devices, tournaments and mimic or play battles;these, apart from its other functions, make this system a greatpromoter of national health and intelligence. Naval schools formidshipmen, who serve before the mast, schools on board ship thatvisit a wide curriculum of ports each year, cavalry schools, whereeach boy is given a horse to care for, study and train, artillerycourses and even an army drill-master in an academy, or uniform, and afew exterior features of soldierly life, all give a distinct characterto the spirit of any institution. The very fancy of being in any sensea soldier opens up a new range of interests too seldom utilized; andtactics, army life and service, military history, battles, patriotism,the flag, and duties to country, should always erect a new standard ofhonor. Youth should embrace every opportunity that offers in thisline, and instruction should greatly increase the intellectualopportunities created by every interest in warfare. It would be easyto create pregnant courses on how soldiers down the course of historyhave lived, thought, felt, fought, and died, how great battles werewon and what causes triumphed in them, and to generalize many of thebest things taught in detail in the best schools of war in differentgrades and lands.

A subtle but potent intersexual influence is among the strongestfactors of all adolescent sport. Male birds and beasts show off theircharms of beauty and accomplishment in many a liturgy of love anticsin the presence of the female. This instinct seems somehow continuouswith the growth of ornaments in the mating season. Song, tumbling,balking, mock fights, etc., are forms of animal courtship. The boy whoturns cartwheels past the home of the girl of his fancy, is brilliant,brave, witty, erect, strong in her presence, and elsewhere dull andcommonplace enough, illustrates the same principle. The true cake-walkas seen in the South is perhaps the purest expression of this impulseto courtship antics seen in man, but its irradiations are many andpervasive. The presence of the fair sex gives tonicity to youth'smuscles and tension to his arteries to a degree of which he is rarelyconscious. Defeat in all contests is more humiliating and victory moreglorious thereby. Each sex is constantly passing the examination ofthe other, and each judges the other by standards different from itsown. Alas for the young people who are not different with the othersex from what they are with their own!—and some are transformed intodifferent beings. Achievement proclaims ability to support, defend,bring credit and even fame to the object of future choice, and no goodpoint is lost. Physical force and skill, and above all, victory andglory, make a hero and invest him with a romantic glamour, which, eventhough concealed by conventionality or etiquette, is profoundly feltand makes the winner more or less irresistible. The applause of menand of mates is sweet and even intoxicating, but that of ladies isravishing. By universal acclaim the fair belong to the brave, strong,and victorious. This stimulus is wholesome and refining. As is shownlater, a bashful youth often selects a maiden onlooker and issometimes quite unconsciously dominated in his every movement by asense of her presence, stranger and apparently unnoticed though shebe, although in the intellectual work of coeducation girls are mostinfluenced thus. In athletics this motive makes for refinement andgood form. The ideal knight, however fierce and terrible, must not bebrutal, but show capacity for fine feeling, tenderness, magnanimity,and forbearance. Evolutionists tell us that woman has domesticated andeducated savage man and taught him all his virtues by exercising herroyal prerogative of selecting in her mate just those qualities thatpleased her for transmission to future generations and eliminatingothers distasteful to her. If so, she is still engaged in this work asmuch as ever, and in his dull, slow way man feels that her presenceenforces her standards, abhorrent though it would be to him tocompromise in one iota his masculinity. Most plays and games in whichboth sexes participate have some of the advantages with some of thedisadvantages of coeducation. Where both are partners rather thanantagonists, there is less eviration. A gallant man would do his bestto help, but his worst not to beat a lady. Thus, in general, thelatter performs her best in her true rule of sympathetic spectatorrather than as fellow player, and is now an important factor in thephysical education of adolescents.

How pervasive this femininity is, which is slowly transforming ourschools, is strikingly seen in the church. Gulick holds that thereason why only some seven per cent of the young men of the countryare in the churches, while most members and workers are women, is thatthe qualities demanded are the feminine ones of love, rest, prayer,trust, desire for fortitude to endure, a sense of atonement—traitsnot involving ideals that most stir young men. The church has not yetlearned to appeal to the more virile qualities. Fielding Hall[14] askswhy Christ and Buddha alone of great religious teachers were rejectedby their own race and accepted elsewhere. He answers that these mildbeliefs of peace, nonresistance, and submission, rejected by virilewarrior races, Jews and ancient Hindus, were adopted where women werefree and led in these matters. Confucianism, Mohammedanism, etc., arevirile, and so indigenous, and in such forms of faith and worshipwomen have small place. This again suggests how the sex that rules theheart controls men.

Too much can hardly be said in favor of cold baths and swimming atthis age. Marro[15] quotes Father Kneipp, and almost rivals hishydrotherapeutic enthusiasm. Cold bathing sends the blood inwardpartly by the cold which contracts the capillaries of the skin andtissue immediately underlying it, and partly by the pressure of thewater over all the dermal surface, quickens the activity of kidneys,lungs, and digestive apparatus, and the reactive glow is the bestpossible tonic for dermal circulation. It is the best of allgymnastics for the nonstriated or involuntary muscles and for theheart and blood vessels. This and the removal of the products ofexcretion preserve all the important dermal functions which are soeasily and so often impaired in modern life, lessen the liability toskin diseases, promote freshness of complexion; and the moral effectsof plunging into cold and supporting the body in deep water is notinconsiderable in strengthening a spirit of hardihood and reducingovertenderness to sensory discomforts. The exercise of swimming isunique in that nearly all the movements and combinations are such asare rarely used otherwise, and are perhaps in a sense ancestral andliberal rather than directly preparatory for future avocations. Itsstimulus for heart and lungs is, by general consent of all writersupon the subject, most wholesome and beneficial. Nothing so directlyor quickly reduces to the lowest point the plethora of the sex organs.The very absence of clothes and running on the beach is exhilaratingand gives a sense of freedom. Where practicable it is well to dispensewith bathing suits, even the scantiest. The warm bath tub isenfeebling and degenerative, despite the cold spray later, while thefree swim in cold water is most invigorating.

Happily, city officials, teachers, and sanitarians are now slowlyrealizing the great improvement in health and temper that comes frombathing and are establishing beach and surf, spray, floating andplunge summer baths and swimming pools; often providing instructioneven in swimming in clothes, undressing in the water, treading water,and rescue work, free as well as fee days, bathing suits, and, inLondon, places for nude bathing after dark; establishing time anddistance standards with certificates and even prizes; annexingtoboggan slides, swings, etc., realizing that in both the preferenceof youth and in healthful and moral effects, probably nothing outranksthis form of exercise. Such is its strange fascination that, accordingto one comprehensive census, the passion to get to the water outranksall other causes of truancy, and plays an important part in themotivation of runaways. In the immense public establishment near SanFrancisco, provided by private munificence, there are accommodationsfor all kinds of bathing in hot and cold and in various degrees offresh and salt water, in closed spaces and in the open sea, for smallchildren and adults, with many appliances and instructors, all in onegreat covered arena with seats in an amphitheater for two thousandspectators, and many adjuncts and accessories. So elsewhere thepresence of visitors is now often invited and provided for. Sometimeswash-houses and public laundries are annexed. Open hours and longerevenings and seasons are being prolonged.

Prominent among the favorite games of early puberty and the years justbefore are those that involve passive motion and falling, likeswinging in its many forms, including the May-pole and single ropevarieties. Mr. Lee reports that children wait late in the evening andin cold weather for a turn at a park swing. Psychologically allied tothese are wheeling and skating. Places for the latter are now oftenprovided by the fire department, which in many cities floods hundredsof empty lots. Ponds are cleared of snow and horse-plowed, perhaps bythe park commission, which often provides lights and perhaps ices thewalks and streets for coasting, erects shelters, and devises spaceeconomy for as many diamonds, bleachers, etc., as possible. Games ofhitting, striking, and throwing balls and other objects, hockey,tennis, all the courts of which are usually crowded, golf and croquet,and sometimes fives, cricket, bowling, quoits, curling, etc., havegreat "thumogenic" or emotional power.

Leg exercise has perhaps a higher value than that of any other part.Man is by definition an upright being, but only after a longapprenticeship.[16] Thus the hand was freed from the necessity oflocomotion and made the servant of the mind. Locomotion overcomes thetendency to sedentary habits in modern schools and life, and helps themind to helpful action, so that a peripatetic philosophy is morenormal than that of the easy chair and the study lamp. Hill-climbingis unexcelled as a stimulus at once of heart, lungs, and blood. IfHippocrates is right, inspiration is possible only on a mountain-top.Walking, running, dancing, skating, coasting are also alterative andregulative of sex, and there is a deep and close though not yet fullyexplained reciprocity between the two. Arm work is relatively tooprominent a feature in gymnasia. Those who lead excessively sedentarylives are prone to be turbulent and extreme in both passion andopinion, as witness the oft-adduced revolutionary disposition ofcobblers.

The play problem is now fairly open and is vast in its relation tomany other things. Roof playgrounds, recreation piers, schoolyards andeven school-buildings, open before and after school hours; excursionsand outings of many kinds and with many purposes, which seem todistinctly augment growth; occupation during the long vacation when,beginning with spring, most juvenile crime is committed; theatricals,which according to some police testimony lessen the number of juveniledelinquents; boys' clubs with more or less self-government of theGeorge Junior Republic and other types, treated in another chapter;nature-study; the distinctly different needs and propensities of bothgood and evil in different nationalities; the advantages of playgroundfences and exclusion, their disciplinary worth, and their value asresting places; the liability that "the boy without a playground willbecome the father without a job"; the relation of play and its slowtransition to manual and industrial education at the savage age when aboy abhors all regular occupation; the necessity of exciting interest,not by what is done for boys, but by what they do; the adjustment ofplay to sex; the determination of the proper average age of maximalzest in and good from sandbox, ring-toss, bean-bag, shuffle-board, pegtop, charity, funeral play, prisoner's base, hill-dill; the value andright use of apparatus, and of rabbits, pigeons, bees, and a smallmenagerie in the playground; tan-bark, clay, the proper alternation ofexcessive freedom, that often turns boys stale through the summer,with regulated activities; the disciplined "work of play" andsedentary games; the value of the washboard rubbing and of the handand knee exercise of scrubbing, which a late writer would restore forall girls with clever and Greek-named play apparatus; as well asdigging, shoveling, tamping, pick-chopping, and hod-carrying exercisesin the form of games for boys; the relations of women's clubs,parents' clubs, citizens' leagues and unions, etc., to all thiswork—such are the practical problems.

The playground movement encounters its chief obstacles in the mostcrowded and slum districts, where its greatest value and success wasexpected for boys in the early teens, who without supervision areprone to commit abuses upon property and upon younger children,[17]and are so disorderly as to make the place a nuisance, and who resentthe "fathering" of the police, without, at least, the minimum controlof a system of permits and exclusions. If hoodlums play at all, theybecome infatuated with baseball and football, especially punting; theydo not take kindly to the soft large ball of the Hall House or theCivic League, and prefer at first scrub games with individualself-exhibition to organized teams. Lee sees the "arboreal instinctsof our progenitors" in the very strong propensity of boys from ten tofourteen to climb in any form; to use traveling rings, generallyoccupied constantly to their fullest extent; to jump from steps andcatch a swinging trapeze; to go up a ladder and slide down poles; touse horizontal and parallel bars. The city boy has plenty of daring atthis age, but does not know what he can do and needs more supervisionthan the country youth. The young tough is commonly present, andthough admired and copied by younger boys, it is, perhaps, as oftenfor his heroic as for his bad traits.

Dr. Sargent and others have well pointed out that athletics afford awealth of new and profitable topics for discussion and enthusiasmwhich helps against the triviality and mental vacuity into which theintercourse of students is prone to lapse. It prompts to discussion ofdiet and regimen. It gives a new standard of honor. For a member of ateam to break training would bring reprobation and ostracism, for heis set apart to win fame for his class or college. It supplies asplendid motive against all errors and vices that weaken or corruptthe body. It is a wholesome vent for the reckless courage that wouldotherwise go to disorder or riotous excess. It supplies new andadvantageous topics for compositions and for terse, vigorous, andidiomatic theme-writing, is a great aid to discipline, teaches respectfor deeds rather than words or promises, lays instructors under thenecessity of being more interesting, that their work be not jejune ordull by contrast; again the business side of managing great contestshas been an admirable school for training young men to conduct greatand difficult financial operations, sometimes involving $100,000 ormore, and has thus prepared some for successful careers. It furnishesnow the closest of all links between high school and college, reducesthe number of those physically unfit for college, and should giveeducation generally a more real and vigorous ideal. Its obviousdangers are distraction from study and overestimation of the value ofvictory, especially in the artificial glamours which the press and thepopular furor give to great games; unsportsmanlike secret tricks andmethods, over-emphasis of combative and too stalwart impulses, and adisposition to carry things by storm, by rush-line tactics; frictionwith faculties, and censure or neglect of instructors who takeunpopular sides on hot questions; action toward license after games,spasmodic excitement culminating in excessive strain for body andmind, with alternations of reaction; "beefiness"; overdevelopment ofthe physical side of life, and, in some cases, premature features ofsenility in later life, undergrowth of the accessory motor parts andpowers, and erethic diathesis that makes steady and continued mentaltoil seem monotonous, dull, and boresome.

The propensity to codify sports, to standardize the weight and size oftheir implements, and to reduce them to what Spencer callsregimentation, is a outcrop of uniformitarianism that works againstthat individuation which is one of the chief advantages of free play.This, to be sure, has developed old-fashioned rounders to modernbaseball, and this is well, but it is seen in the elaborate Draconianlaws, diplomacy, judicial and legislative procedures, concerning"eligibility, transfer, and even sale of players." In some gamesinternational conformity is gravely discussed. Even where there is notyranny and oppression, good form is steadily hampering nature and thefree play of personality. Togs and targets, balls and bats, racketsand oars are graded or numbered, weighed, and measured, and everyemergency is legislated on and judged by an autocratic martinet,jealous of every prerogative and conscious of his dignity. All thisseparates games from the majority and makes for specialism andprofessionalism. Not only this, but men are coming to be sized up forhereditary fitness in each point and for each sport. Runners,sprinters, and jumpers,[18] we are told, on the basis of many carefulmeasurements, must be tall, with slender bodies, narrow but deepchests, longer legs than the average for their height, the lower legbeing especially long, with small calf, ankle, and feet, small arms,narrow hips, with great power of thoracic inflation, and thighs ofsmall girth. Every player must be studied by trainers for ever finerindividual adjustments. His dosage of work must be kept well withinthe limits of his vitality, and be carefully adjusted to hisrecuperative power. His personal nascent periods must be noted, andinitial embarrassment carefully weeded out.

The field of play is as wide as life and its varieties far outnumberthose of industries and occupations in the census. Plays and gamesdiffer in seasons, sex, and age. McGhee[19] has shown on the basis ofsome 8,000 children, that running plays are pretty constant for boysfrom six to seventeen, but that girls are always far behind boys andrun steadily less from eight to eighteen. In games of choice, boysshowed a slight rise at sixteen and seventeen, and girls a rapidincrease at eleven and a still more rapid one after sixteen. In gamesof imitation girls excel and show a marked, as boys do a slight,pubescent fall. In those games involving rivalry boys at first greatlyexcel girls, but are overtaken by the latter in the eighteenth year,both showing marked pubescent increment. Girls have the largest numberof plays and specialise on a few less than boys, and most of theseplays are of the unorganized kinds. Johnson[20] selected from a farlarger number 440 plays and games and arranged the best of them in acourse by school grades, from the first to the eighth, inclusive, andalso according to their educational value as teaching observation,reading and spelling, language, arithmetic, geography, history, andbiography, physical training, and specifically as training legs, hand,arm, back, waist, abdominal muscles, chest, etc. Most of our bestgames are very old and, Johnson thinks, have deteriorated. Butchildren are imitative and not inventive in their games, and easilylearn new ones. Since the Berlin Play Congress in 1894 the sentimenthas grown that these are of national importance and are preferable togymnastics both for soul and body. Hence we have play-schools,teachers, yards, and courses, both for their own value and also toturn on the play impulse to aid in the drudgery of school work.Several have thought that a well-rounded, liberal education could begiven by plays and games alone on the principle that there is noprofit where there is no pleasure or true euphoria.

Play is motor poetry. Too early distinction between play and workshould not be taught. Education perhaps should really begin withdirecting childish sports aright. Froebel thought it the purest andmost spiritual activity of childhood, the germinal leaves of all laterlife. Schooling that lacks recreation favors dulness, for play makesthe mind alert and its joy helps all anabolic activities. SaysBrinton, "the measure of value of work is the amount of play there isin it, and the measure of value of play is the amount of work there isin it." Johnson adds that "it is doubtful if a great man everaccomplished his life work without having reached a play interest init." Sully[21] deplores the increase of "agolasts" or "non-laughers"in our times in merry old England[22] every one played games; andlaughter, their natural accompaniment, abounded. Queen Elizabeth'smaids of honor played tag with hilarity, but the spirit of play withfull abandon seems taking its departure from our overworked, serious,and tons, age. To requote Stevenson with variation, as laborari, [Tolabor] so ludere, et joculari orare sunt. [To play and to jest areto pray] Laughter itself, as Kühne long ago showed, is one of the mostprecious forms of exercise, relieving the arteries of theirtension.[23]

The antithesis between play and work is generally wrongly conceived,for the difference is essentially in the degree of strength of thepsycho-physic motivations. The young often do their hardest work inplay. With interest, the most repellent tasks become pure sport, as inthe case Johnson reports of a man who wanted a pile of stone throwninto a ditch and, by kindling a fire in the ditch and pretending thestones were buckets of water, the heavy and long-shirked job was doneby tired boys with shouting and enthusiasm. Play, from one aspect ofit, is superfluous energy over and above what is necessary to digest,breathe, keep the heart and organic processes going; and most childrenwho can not play, if they have opportunity, can neither study nor workwithout overdrawing their resources of vitality. Bible psychologyconceives the fall of man as the necessity of doing things withoutzest, and this is not only ever repeated but now greatly emphasizedwhen youth leaves the sheltered paradise of play to grind in the millsof modern industrial civilization. The curse is overcome only by thosewho come to love their tasks and redeem their toil again to play.Play, hardly less than work, can be to utter exhaustion; and becauseit draws upon older stores and strata of psycho-physic impulsion itsexhaustion may even more completely drain our kinetic resources, if itis too abandoned or prolonged. Play can do just as hard and painfultasks as work, for what we love is done with whole and undividedpersonality. Work, as too often conceived, is all body and no soul,and makes for duality and not totality. Its constraint is external,mechanical, or it works by fear and not love. Not effort but zestlessendeavor is the tragedy of life. Interest and play are one andinseparable as body and soul. Duty itself is not adequately conceivedand felt if it is not pleasure, and is generally too feeble and fitfulin the young to awaken much energy or duration of action. Play is fromwithin from congenital hereditary impulsion. It is the best of allmethods of organizing instincts. Its cathartic or purgative functionregulates irritability, which may otherwise be drained or vented inwrong directions, exactly as Breuer[24] shows psychic traumata may, ifovertense, result in "hysterical convulsions." It is also the bestform of self-expression; and its advantage is variability, followingthe impulsion of the idle, perhaps hyperemic, and overnourishedcenters most ready to act. It involves play illusion and is the greatagent of unity and totalization of body and soul, while its socialfunction develops solidarity and unison of action between individuals.The dances, feasts, and games of primitive people, wherein theyrehearse hunting and war and act and dance out their legends, bringindividuals and tribes together.[25] Work is menial, cheerless,grinding, regular, and requires more precision and accuracy and,because attended with less ease and pleasure and economy of movement,is more liable to produce erratic habits. Antagonistic as the formsoften are, it may be that, as Carr says, we may sometimes so suffusework with the play spirit, and vice versa, that the presentdistinction between work and play will vanish, the transition will beless tragic and the activities of youth will be slowly systematisedinto a whole that better fits his nature and needs; or, if not this,we may at least find the true proportion and system between drudgeryand recreation.

The worst product of striving to do things with defective psychicimpulsion is fatigue in its common forms, which slows down the pace,multiplies errors and inaccuracies, and develops slovenly habits,ennui, flitting will specters, velleities and caprices, andneurasthenic symptoms generally. It brings restlessness, and atendency to many little heterogeneous, smattering efforts that weakenthe will and leave the mind like a piece of well-used blotting paper,covered with traces and nothing legible. All beginnings are easy, andonly as we leave the early stages of proficiency behind and press onin either physical or mental culture and encounter difficulties, doindividual differences and the tendency of weak will, to change andturn to something else increase. Perhaps the greatest disparitybetween men is the power to make a long concentrative, perseveringeffort, for In der Beschränkung zeigt sich der Meister [The mastershows himself in limitation]. Now no kind or line of culture iscomplete till it issues in motor habits, and makes a well-knit soultexture that admits concentration series in many directions and thatcan bring all its resources to bear at any point. The brainunorganized by training has, to recur to Richter's well-worn aphorism,saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal, or all the ingredients of gunpowder,but never makes a grain of it because they never get together. Thuswilled action is the language of complete men and the goal ofeducation. When things are mechanized by right habituation, there isstill further gain; for not only is the mind freed for further andhigher work, but this deepest stratum of motor association is a plexusthat determines not only conduct and character, but even beliefs. Theperson who deliberates is lost, if the intellect that doubts andweighs alternatives is less completely organised than habits. All willculture is intensive and should safeguard us against the chanceinfluence of life and the insidious danger of great ideas in small andfeeble minds. Now fatigue, personal and perhaps racial, is just whatarrests in the incomplete and mere memory or noetic stage. It makesweak bodies that command, and not strong ones that obey. It divorcesknowing and doing, Kennen and Können, a separation which theGreeks could not conceive because for them knowledge ended in skill orwas exemplified in precepts and proverbs that were so clear cut thatthe pain of violating them was poignant. Ideas must be long workedover till life speaks as with the rifle and not with the shotgun, andstill less with the water hose. The purest thought, if true, is onlyaction repressed to be ripened to more practical form. Not only domuscles come before mind, will before intelligence, and sound ideasrest on a motor basis, but all really useless knowledge tends to beeliminated as error or superstition. The roots of play lie close tothose of creative imagination and idealism.

The opposite extreme is the factitious and superficial motivation offear, prizes, examinations, artificial and immediate rewards andpenalties, which can only tattoo the mind and body with conventionalpatterns pricked in, but which lead an unreal life in the soul becausethey have no depth of soil in nature or heredity. However precious andcoherent in themselves, all subject-matters thus organized are merelugs, crimps, and frills. All such culture is spurious, unreal, andparasitic. It may make a scholastic or sophistic mind, but a worm isat the root and, with a dim sense of the vanity of all knowledge thatdoes not become a rule of life, some form of pessimism is sure tosupervene in every serious soul. With age a civilization accumulatessuch impedimenta, traditional flotsam and jetsam, and race fatigueproceeds with equal step with its increasing volume. Immediateutilities are better, but yet not so much better than acquisitionsthat have no other than a school or examination value. If, as Ruskinsays, all true work is praise, all true play is love and prayer.Instil into a boy's soul learning which he sees and feels not to havethe highest worth and which can not become a part of his active lifeand increase it, and his freshness, spontaneity, and the fountains ofplay slowly run dry in him, and his youth fades to early desiccation.The instincts, feelings, intuitions, the work of which is always play,are superseded by method, grind, and education by instruction which isonly an effort to repair the defects of heredity, for which, at itsbest, it is vulgar, pinchbeck substitute. The best play is truegenius, which always comes thus into the world, and has this way ofdoing its work, and all the contents of the memory pouches is luggageto be carried rather than the vital strength that carries burdens.Grosswell says that children are young because they play, and notvice versa; and he might have added, men grow old because they stopplaying, and not conversely, for play is, at bottom, growth, and atthe top of the intellectual scale it is the eternal type of researchfrom sheer love of truth. Home, school, church, state, civilization,are measured in one supreme scale of values, viz., whether and how,for they aid in bringing youth to its fullest maturity. Even vice,crime, and decline are often only arrest or backsliding or reversion.National and racial decline beginning in eliminating one by one thelast and highest styles of development of body and mind, mentalstimulus of excessive dosage lowers general nutrition. A psychologistthat turns his back on mere subtleties and goes to work in a life ofservice has here a great opportunity, and should not forget, as HoraceMann said, "that for all that grows, one former is worth one hundredreformers."

[Footnote 1: Interest in Relation to Muscular Exercise. American
Physical Education Review, June, 1902, vol. 7, pp. 57-65.]

[Footnote 2: The Influence of Exercise upon Growth by Frederic Burk.American Physical Education Review, December, 1899, vol. 4, pp.340-349.]

[Footnote 3: A Study of Dolls, by G. Stanley Hall and A.C. Ellis.
Pedagogical Seminary, December, 1896, vol. 4, pp. 129-175.]

[Footnote 4: Studies in Imagination, by Lilian H. Chalmers.
Pedagogical Seminary, April, 1900, vol. 7, pp. 111-123.]

[Footnote 5: Some Psychical Aspects of Physical Exercise. Popular
Science Monthly, October, 1898, vol. 53, pp. 703-805.]

[Footnote 6: Amusem*nts of Worcester School Children. Pedagogical
Seminary, September, 1899, vol. 6, pp. 314-371.]

[Footnote 7: A Study in the Play Life of Some South Carolina Children.
Pedagogical Seminary, December, 1900, vol. 7, pp. 439-478.]

[Footnote 8: Arbeit und Rythmus. Trubner, Leipzig, 1896.]

[Footnote 9: Descent of Man. D. Appleton and Co., 1872, vol. 1, chap.vi, p. 204 et seq]

[Footnote 10: Teasing and Bullying. Pedagogical Seminary, April, 1897,vol. 4, pp. 336-371.]

[Footnote 11: See my Study of Anger. American Journal of Psychology,
July, 1899, vol. 10, pp. 516-591.]

[Footnote 12: Der deutsche Student am Ende des 19 Jahrhunderts, 6thed., Göschen, Leipzig, 1896. See also H. P. Shelden: History andPedagogy of American Student Societies, New York, 1901, p. 31 etseq.]

[Footnote 13: Bushido: The Soul of Japan. An exposition of Japanesethought, by Inazo Nitobé. New York, 1905, pp. 203 et seq.]

[Footnote 14: The Hearts of Men. Macmillan, 1901, chap. xxii.]

[Footnote 15: La Puberté. Schleicher Frères, éditeurs, Paris, 1902.]

[Footnote 16: See A.W. Trettien. Creeping and Walking. American
Journal of Psychology, October, 1900, vol. 12, pp. 1-57.]

[Footnote 17: Constructive and Preventive Philanthropy, by Joseph Lee.
Macmillan, New York, 1902, chaps. x and xi.]

[Footnote 18: C.O. Bernies. Physical Characteristics of the Runner andJumper. American Physical Education Review, September, 1900, vol. 5,pp. 235-245.]

[Footnote 19: A Study in the Play Life of some South Carolina
Children. Pedagogical Seminary, December, 1900, vol. 7, pp. 459-478.]

[Footnote 20: Education by Plays and Games. Pedagogical Seminary,
October, 1894, vol. 3, pp. 97-133.]

[Footnote 21: An Essay on Laughter. Longmans, Green and Co., London,1902, p. 427 et seq.]

[Footnote 22: See Brand's Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, 3
Vols., London, 1883.]

[Footnote 23: Psychology of Tickling, Laughing, and the Comic, by G.
Stanley Hall and Arthur Allin. American Journal of Psychology,
October, 1897, vol. 9, pp. 1-41.]

[Footnote 24: I. Breuer and S. Freud. Studien über Hysterie. F.
Deuticke, Wien, 1895. See especially p. 177 et seq.]

[Footnote 25: See a valuable discussion by H. A. Carr. The Survival
Values of Play, Investigations of the Department of Psychology and
Education of the University of Colorado, Arthur Allin, Ph.D., Editor,
November, 1902, vol. 1, pp. 3-47]

* * * * *

CHAPTER VII

FAULTS, LIES, AND CRIMES

Classifications of children's faults—Peculiar children—Real faultsas distinguished from interference with the teacher's ease—Truancy,its nature and effects—The genesis of crime—The lie, its classes andrelations to imagination—Predatory activities—Gangs—Causes ofcrime—The effects of stories of crime—Temibility—Juvenile crimeand its treatment.

Siegert[1] groups children of problematical nature into the followingsixteen classes: the sad, the extremely good or bad, star-gazers,scatter-brains, apathetic, misanthropic, doubters and investigators,reverent, critical, executive, stupid and clownish, naive, funny,anamnesic, disposed to learn, and blasé; patience, foresight, andself-control, he thinks, are chiefly needed.

A unique and interesting study was undertaken by Közle[2] bycollecting and studying thirty German writers on pedagogical subjectssince Pestalozzi, and cataloguing all the words they use describingthe faults of children. In all, this gave 914 faults, far more innumber than their virtues. These were classified as native and ofexternal origin, acute and chronic, egoistic and altruistic, greed,perverted honor, self-will, falsity, laziness, frivolity, distraction,precocity, timidity, envy and malevolence, ingratitude,quarrelsomeness, cruelty, superstition; and the latter fifteen weresettled on as resultant groups, and the authors who describe them bestare quoted.

Bohannon[3] on the basis of questionnaire returns classifiedpeculiar children as heavy, tall, short, small, strong, weak, deft,agile, clumsy, beautiful, ugly, deformed, birthmarked, keen andprecocious, defective in sense, mind, and speech, nervous, clean,dainty, dirty, orderly, obedient, disobedient, disorderly, teasing,buoyant, buffoon, cruel, selfish, generous, sympathetic, inquisitive,lying, ill-tempered, silent, dignified, frank, loquacious, courageous,timid, whining, spoiled, gluttonous and only child.

Marro[4] tabulated the conduct of 3,012 boys in gymnasial and lycealclasses in Italy from eleven to eighteen years of age (see table givenabove). Conduct was marked as good, bad, and indifferent, according tothe teacher's estimate, and was good at eighteen in 74 per cent of thecases; at eleven in 70 per cent; at seventeen in 69 per cent; and atfourteen in only 58 per cent. In positively bad conduct, the age offifteen led, thirteen and fourteen were but little better, while itimproved at sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen. In general, conduct wasgood at eleven; declined at twelve and thirteen; said, to its worst atfourteen; and then improved in yearly increments that did not differmuch, and at seventeen was nearly as good as at eleven, and ateighteen four points better.

[Illustration: Percentage x Age]

He computed also the following percentage table of the causes ofpunishments in certain Italian schools for girls and boys nearpubescent ages:

Boys Girls
Quarrels and blows 53.90 17.4
Laziness, negligence 1.80 21.3
Untidiness 10.70 24.7
Improper language .41 14.6
Indecent acts and words 1.00 .24
Refusal to work .82 1.26
Various offenses against discipline 19.00 19.9
Truancy 9.60 .0
Plots to run away 1.70 .0
Running away .72 .0

Mr. Sears[5] reports in percentages statistics of the punishmentsreceived by a thousand children for the following offenses: Disorder,17-1/3; disobedience, 16; carelessness, 13-1/3; running away, 12-2/3;quarreling, 10; tardiness, 6-2/3; rudeness, 6; fighting, 5-1/3; lying,4; stealing, 1; miscellaneous, 7-1/3. He names a long list ofpunishable offenses, such as malice, swearing, obscenity, bullying,lying, cheating, untidiness, insolence, insult, conspiracy,disobedience, obstinacy, rudeness, noisiness, ridicule; injury tobooks, building, or other property; and analyzes at length the kindsof punishment, modes of making it fit the offense and the nature ofthe child, the discipline of consequences, lapse of time between theoffense and its punishment, the principle of slight but sure tasks aspenalties, etc.

Triplett[6] attempted a census of faults and defeats named by theteacher. Here inattention by far led all others. Defects of sense andspeech, carelessness, indifference, lack of honor and ofself-restraint, laziness, dreamy listlessness, nervousness, mentalincapacity, lack of consideration for others, vanity, affectation,disobedience, untruthfulness, grumbling, etc., follow. Inattention toa degree that makes some children at the mercy of their environmentand all its changes, and their mental life one perpetual distraction,is a fault which teachers, of course, naturally observe. Children'sviews of their own faults and those of other children lay a verydifferent emphasis. Here fighting, bullying, and teasing lead allothers; then come stealing, bad manners, lying, disobedience, truancy,cruelty to animals, untidiness, selfishness, etc. Parents' view ofthis subject Triplett found still different. Here wilfulness andobstinacy led all others with teasing, quarreling, dislike ofapplication and effort, and many others following. The vast number offaults mentioned contrasts very strikingly with the seven deadly sins.

In a suggestive statistical study on the relations of the conduct ofchildren to the weather, Dexter[7] found that excessive humidity wasmost productive of misdemeanors; that when the temperature was between90 and 100 the probability of bad conduct was increased 300 per cent,when between 80 and 90 it was increased 104 per cent. Abnormalbarometric pressure, whether great or small, was found to increasemisconduct 50 per cent; abnormal movements of the wind increased itfrom 20 to 66 per cent; while the time of year and precipitationseemed to have almost no effect. While the effect of weather has beengenerally recognized by superintendents and teachers and directors ofprisons and asylums, and even by banks, which in London do not permitclerks to do the more important bookkeeping during very foggy days,the statistical estimates of its effect in general need larger numbersfor more valuable determinations. Temperature is known to have a verydistinct effect upon crime, especially suicide and truancy. Workmen doless in bad weather, blood pressure is modified, etc.[8]

In his study of truancy, Kline[9] starts with the assumption that themaximum metabolism is always consciously or unconsciously sought, andthat migrations are generally away from the extremes of hot and coldtoward an optimum temperature. The curve of truancies and runawaysincreases in a marked ratio at puberty, which probably represents theage of natural majority among primitive people. Dislike of school, thepassion for out-of-door life, and more universal interests in man andnature now arise, so that runaways may be interpreted as aninstinctive rebellion against limitations of freedom and unnaturalmethods of education as well as against poor homes. Hunger is one ofits most potent, although often unconscious causes. The habitualenvironment now begins to seem dull and there is a great increase inimpatience at restraint. Sometimes there is a mania for simply goingaway and enjoying the liberty of nomadic life. Just as good people inforeign parts sometimes allow themselves unwonted liberties, sovagrancy increases crime. The passion to get to and play at or in thewater is often strangely dominant. It seems so fine out of doors,especially in the spring, and the woods and fields make it so hard tovoluntarily incarcerate oneself in the schoolroom, that pubescent boysand even girls often feel like animals in captivity. They longintensely for the utter abandon of a wilder life, and verycharacteristic is the frequent discarding of foot and head dress andeven garments in the blind instinct to realise again the conditions ofprimitive man. The manifestations of this impulse, if read aright, aregrave arraignments of the lack of adaptability of the child'senvironment to his disposition and nature, and with home restraintsonce broken, the liabilities to every crime, especially theft, areenormously increased. The truant, although a cording to Kline'smeasurements slightly smaller than the average child, is moreenergetic and is generally capable of the greatest activity andusefulness in more out-of-door vocations. Truancy is augmented, too,just in proportion as legitimate and interesting physical exercise isdenied.

The vagrant, itinerant, vagabond, gadabout, hobo, and tramp, that Riishas made so interesting, is an arrested, degenerate, or pervertedbeing who abhors work; feels that the world owes him a living; andgenerally has his first real nomad experience in the teens or earlier.It is a chronic illusion of youth that gives "elsewhere" a specialcharm. In the immediate present things are mean, dulled by wont, andperhaps even nauseating because of familiarity. There must be a changeof scene to see the world; man is not sessile but locomotor; and themoment his life becomes migratory all the restraints andresponsibilities of settled life vanish. It is possible to steal andpass on undiscovered and unsuspected, and to steal again. The vagabondescapes the control of public sentiment, which normally is an externalconscience, and having none of his own within him thus lapses to aferal state. The constraint of city, home, and school is especiallyirksome, and if to this repulsion is added the attraction of a love ofnature and of perpetual change, we have the diathesis of the roadsmanalready developed. Adolescence is the normal time of emancipation fromthe parental roof, when youth seeks to set up a home of its own, butthe apprentice to life must wander far and long enough to find thebest habitat in which to set up for himself. This is the spring seasonof emigration; and it should be an indispensable part of every lifecurriculum, just before settlement, to travel far and wide, ifresources and inclination permit. But this stage should end in wiselychosen settlement where the young life can be independently developed,and that with more complacency and satisfaction because the place hasbeen wisely chosen on the basis of a wide comparison. The chronicvagrant has simply failed to develop the reductives of this normalstage.

Crime is cryptogamous and flourishes in concealment, so that not onlydoes falsehood facilitate it, but certain types of lies often causeand are caused by it. The beginning of wisdom in treatment is todiscriminate between good and bad lies. My own study[10] of the liesof 300 normal children, by a method carefully devised in order toavoid all indelicacy to the childish consciousness, suggested thefollowing distinct species of lies. It is often a well-marked epochwhen the young child first learns that it can imagine and state thingsthat have no objective counterpart in its life, and there is often aweird intoxication when some absurd and monstrous statement is made,while the first sensation of a deliberate break with truth causes areal excitement which is often the birth pang of the imagination. Morecommonly this is seen in childish play, which owes a part of its charmto self-deception. Children make believe they are animals, doctors,ogres, play school, that they are dead, mimic all they see and hear.Idealising temperaments sometimes prompt children of three or foursuddenly to assert that they saw a pig with five ears, apples on acherry tree, and other Munchausen wonders, which really means merelythat they have had a new mental combination independently ofexperience. Sometimes their fancy is almost visualisation and developsinto a kind of mythopeic faculty which spins clever yarns and suggestsin a sense, quite as pregnant as Froschmer asserts of all mentalactivity and of the universe itself, that all their life isimagination. Its control and not its elimination in a Gradgrind age ofcrass facts is what should be sought in the interests of the highesttruthfulness and of the evolution of thought as something abovereality, which prepares the way for imaginative literature. The lifeof Hartley Coleridge,[11] by his brother, is one of manyillustrations. He fancied cataract of what he named "jug-force" wouldburst out in a certain field and flow between populous banks, where anideal government, long wars, and even a reform in spelling, wouldprevail, illustrated in a journal devoted to the affairs of thisrealm—all these developed in his imagination, where they existed withgreat reality for years. The vividness of this fancy resembles thepseudo-hallucinations of Kandinsky. Two sisters used to say, "Let usplay we are sisters," as if this made the relation more real.Cagliostro found adolescent boys particularly apt for training for hisexhibition of phrenological impostures, illustrating his thirty-fivefaculties. "He lied when he confessed he had lied," said a youngSancho Panza, who had believed the wild tales of another boy who lateradmitted their falsity. Sir James Mackintosh, near puberty, afterreading Roman history, used to fancy himself the Emperor ofConstantinople, and carried on the administration of the realm forhours at a time. His fancies never quite became convictions, butadolescence is the golden age of this kind of dreamery and reveriewhich supplements reality and totalizes our faculties, and often givesa special charm to dramatic activities and in morbid cases tosimulation and dissimulation. It is a state from which some of thebad, but far more of the good qualities of life and mind arise. Theseare the noble lies of poetry, art, and idealism, but their pedagogicregime must be wise.

Again with children as with savages, truth depends largely uponpersonal likes and dislikes. Truth is for friends, and lies are feltto be quite right for enemies. The young often see no wrong in liestheir friends wish told, but may collapse and confess when asked ifthey would have told their mother thus. Boys best keep up complottedlies and are surer to own up if caught than girls. It is harder tocheat in school with a teacher who is liked. Friendships are cementedby confidences and secrets, and when they wane, promises not to tellweaken in their validity. Lies to the priest, and above all to God,are the worst. All this makes special attention to friendships,leaders, and favorites important, and suggests the high value ofscience for general veracity.

The worst lies, perhaps, are those of selfishness. They ease childrenover many hard places in life, and are convenient covers for weaknessand vice. These lies are, on the whole, judging from our census, mostprevalent. They are also most corrupting and hard to correct. All badhabits particularly predispose to the lie of concealment; for thosewho do wrong are almost certain to have recourse to falsehood, and thesense of meanness thus slowly bred, which may be met by appeals tohonor, for so much of which school life is responsible, is oftenmitigated by the fact that falsehoods are frequently resorted to inmoments of danger and excitement, are easily forgotten when it isover, and rarely rankle. These, even more than the pseudomaniac casesmentioned later, grow rankly in those with criminal predispositions.

The lie heroic is often justified as a means of noble ends. Youth hasan instinct which is wholesome for viewing moral situations as wholes.Callow casualists are fond of declaring that it would be a duty tostate that their mother was out when she was in, if it would save herlife, although they perhaps would not lie to save their own. A doctor,many suggested, might tell an overanxious patient or friend that therewas hope, saving his conscience perhaps by reflecting that there washope, although they had it while he had none. The end at first in suchcases may be very noble and the fib or quibble very petty, but worselies for meaner objects may follow. Youth often describes suchsituations with exhilaration as if there were a feeling of easem*ntfrom the monotonous and tedious obligation of rigorous literalveracity, and here mentors are liable to become nervous and err. Theyouth who really gets interested in the conflict of duties mayreverently be referred to the inner lie of his own conscience, theneed of keeping which as a private tribunal is now apparent.

Many adolescents become craven literalists and distinctly morbid andpseudophobiac, regarding every deviation from scrupulously literaltruth as alike heinous; and many systematized palliatives andcasuistic word-splittings, methods of whispering or silentlyinterpolating the words "not," "perhaps," or "I think," sometimes saidover hundreds of times to neutralize the guilt of intended orunintended falsehoods, appear in our records as a sad product of badmethods.

Next to the selfish lie for protection—of special psychologicalinterest for adolescent crime—is what we may call pseudomania, seenespecially in pathological girls in their teens, who are honeycombedwith selfishness and affectation and have a passion for always actinga part, attracting attention, etc. The recent literature of telepathyand hypnotism furnishes many striking examples of this diathesis ofimpostors of both sexes. It is a strange psychological paradox thatsome can so deliberately prefer to call black white and find distinctinebriation in flying diametrically in the face of truth and fact. Thegreat impostors, whose entire lives have been a fabric of lies, arecases in point. They find a distinct pleasure not only in the sense ofpower which their ability to make trouble gives, but in the sense ofmaking truth a lie, and of decreeing things into and out of existence.

Sheldon's interesting statistics show that among the institutionalactivities of American children,[12] predatory organizations culminatefrom eleven to fifteen, and are chiefly among boys. These includebands of robbers, clubs for hunting and fishing, play armies,organized fighting bands between separate districts, associations forbuilding forts, etc. This form of association is the typical one forboys of twelve. After this age their interests are graduallytransferred to less loosely organized athletic clubs. Sheldon'sstatistics are as follows:

Age 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 TotalNo. ofpredatory 4 5 3 0 7 1 1 3 1 0 25 = Girlssocieties 4 2 17 31 18 22 (11) 7 1 0 111 = Boys

Innocent though these predatory habits may be in small boys, if theyare not naturally and normally reduced at the beginning of the teensand their energy worked off into athletic societies, they becomedangerous. "The robber knight, the pirate chief, and the marauderbecome the real models." The stealing clubs gather edibles and evenuseless things, the loss of which causes mischief, into some den,cellar, or camp in the woods, where the plunder of their raids iscollected. An organized gang of boy pilferers for the purpose ofentering stores had a cache, where the stolen goods were broughttogether. Some of these bands have specialized on electric bells andconnections, or golf sticks and balls. Jacob Riis says that on theEast Side of New York, every corner has its gang with a program ofdefiance of law and order, where the young tough who is a coward alonebecomes dangerous when he hunts with the pack. He is ambitious to get"pinched" or arrested and to pose as a hero. His vanity may obliteratecommon fear and custom as his mind becomes inflamed with flashliterature and "penny dreadfuls." Sometimes whole neighborhoods areterrorized so that no one dares to testify against the atrocities theycommit. Riis even goes so far as to say that "a bare enumeration ofthe names of the best-known gangs would occupy the pages of thisbook."[13] The names are sufficiently suggestive—hell's kitchen gang,stable gang, dead men, floaters, rock, pay, hock gang, the soup-housegang, plug uglies, back-alley men, dead beats, cop beaters, androasters, hell benders, chain gang, sheeny skinners, street cleaners,tough kids, sluggers, wild Indians, cave and cellar men, moonlighthowlers, junk club, crook gang, being some I have heard of. Some ofthe members of these gangs never knew a home, were found perhaps asbabies wrapped in newspapers, survivors of the seventy-two deadinfants Riis says were picked up on the streets in New York in 1889,or of baby farming. They grow up street arabs, slum waifs, thedriftwood of society, its flotsam and jetsam, or plankton, fightingfor a warn corner in their resorts or living in crowdedtenement-houses that rent for more than a house on Fifth Avenue.Arrant cowards singly, they dare and do anything together. A gangstole a team in East New York and drove down the avenue, shopping tothrow in supplies, one member sitting in the back of the wagon andshooting at all who interfered. One gang specialized on stealing babycarriages, depositing their inmates on the sidewalk. Another blew up agrocery store because its owner refused a gift they demanded. Anothertried to saw off the head of a Jewish pedler. One member killedanother for calling him "no gent." Six murderous assaults were made atone time by these gangs within a single week. One who is caught anddoes his "bit" or "stretch" is a hero, and when a leader is hanged, ashas sometimes happened, he is almost envied for his notoriety. Afrequent ideal is to pound a policeman with his own club. The gangfederates all nationalities. Property is depreciated and may be ruinedif it is frequented by these gangs or becomes their lair or"hang-out." A citizen residing on the Hudson procured a howitzer andpointed it at a boat gang, forbidding them to land on his riverfrontage. They have their calls, whistles, signs, rally suddenly fromno one knows where, and vanish in the alleys, basem*nts, roofs, andcorridors they know so well. Their inordinate vanity is well calledthe slum counterpart of self-esteem, and Riis calls the gang a clubrun wild. They have their own ideality and a gaudy pinchbeck honor. Ayoung tough, when arrested, wrenched away the policeman's club, dashedinto the street, rescued a baby from a runaway, and came back and gavehimself up. They batten on the yellowest literature. Those of foreigndescent, who come to speak our language better than their parents,early learn to despise them. Gangs emulate each other in hardihood,and this is one cause of epidemics in crime. They passionately loveboundless independence, are sometimes very susceptible to goodinfluence if applied with great wisdom and discretion, but easily fallaway. What is the true moral antitoxin for this class, or at leastwhat is the safety-valve and how and when to pull it, we are now justbeginning to learn, but it is a new specialty in the great work ofsalvage from the wreckage of city life. In London, where these groupsare better organised and yet more numerous, war is often waged betweenthem, weapons are used and murder is not so very infrequent. Normallythis instinct passes harmlessly over into associations for physicaltraining, which furnishes a safe outlet for these instincts, until thereductives of maturer years have perfected their work.

The causation of crime, which the cure seeks to remove, is a problemcomparable with the origin of sin and evil. First, of course, comesheredity, bad antenatal conditions, bad homes, unhealthful infancy andchildhood, overcrowded slums with their promiscuity and squalor, whichare always near the border of lawlessness, and perhaps are the chiefcause of crime. A large per cent of juvenile offenders, variouslyestimated, but probably one-tenth of all, are vagrants or withouthomes, and divorce of parents and illegitimacy seem to be nearly equalas causative agencies. If whatever is physiologically wrong is morallywrong, and whatever is physiologically right is morally right, we havean important ethical suggestion from somatic conditions. There is nodoubt that conscious intelligence during a certain early stage of itsdevelopment tends to deteriorate the strength and infallibility ofinstinctive processes, so that education is always beset with thedanger of interfering with ancestral and congenital tendencies. Itsprime object ought to be moralization, but it can not be denied thatin conquering ignorance we do not thereby conquer poverty or vice.After the free schools in London were opened there was an increase ofjuvenile offenders. New kinds of crime, such as forgery, grandlarceny, intricate swindling schemes, were doubled, while sneakthieves, drunkards, and pick-pockets decreased, and the proportion ofeducated criminals was greatly augmented.[14] To collect masses ofchildren and ram them with the same unassimilated facts is noteducation in this sense, and we ought to confess that youthful crimeis an expression of educational failure. Illiterate criminals are morelikely to be detected, and also to be condemned, than are educatedcriminals. Every anthropologist knows that the deepest poverty andignorance among primitive people are in nowise incompatible withhonesty, integrity, and virtue. Indeed there is much reason to suspectthat the extremes of wealth and poverty are more productive of crimethan ignorance, or even intemperance. Educators have no doubt vastlyoverestimated the moral efficiency of the three R's and forgotten thatcharacter in infancy is all instinct; that in childhood it is slowlymade over into habits; while at adolescence more than at any otherperiod of life, it can be cultivated through ideals. The dawn ofpuberty, although perhaps marked by a certain moral hebetude, is soonfollowed by a stormy period of great agitation, when the very worstand best impulses in the human soul struggle against each other forits possession, and when there is peculiar proneness to be either verygood or very bad. As the agitation slowly subsides, it is found thatthere has been a renaissance of either the best or the worst elementsof the soul, if not indeed of both.

Although pedagogues make vast claims for the moralizing effect ofschooling, I cannot find a single criminologist who is satisfied withthe modern school, while most bring the severest indictments againstit for the blind and ignorant assumption that the three R's or anymerely intellectual training can moralize. By nature, children aremore or less morally blind, and statistics show that between thirteenand sixteen incorrigibility is between two and three times as great asat any other age. It is almost impossible for adults to realize theirresponsibility and even moral neurasthenia incidental to this stageof development. If we reflect what a girl would do if dressed like aboy and leading his life and exposed to the same moral contagion, orwhat a boy would do if corseted and compelled to live like a girl,perhaps we can realize that whatever rôle heredity plays, the youthwho go wrong are, in the vast majority of cases, victims ofcirc*mstances or of immaturity, and deserving of both pity and hope.It was this sentiment that impelled Zarnadelli to reconstruct thecriminal law of Italy, in this respect, and it was this sympathy thatmade Rollet a self-constituted advocate, pleading each morning for thetwenty or thirty boys and eight or ten girls arrested every day inParis.

Those smitten with the institution craze or with any extremecorrectionalist views will never solve the problem of criminal youths.First of all, they must be carefully and objectively studied, livedwith, and understood as in this country Gulick, Johnson, Forbush andYoder are doing in different ways, but each with success. Criminaloidyouth is more sharply individualized than the common good child, whois less differentiated. Virtue is more uniform and monotonous thansin. There is one right but there are many wrong ways, hence they needto be individually studied by every paidological method, physical andpsychic. Keepers, attendants, and even sponsors who have to do withthese children should be educators with souls full of fatherhood andmotherhood, and they should understand that the darkest criminalpropensities are frequently offset by the very best qualities; thatjuvenile murderers are often very tender-hearted to parents, sisters,children, or pets;[15] they should understand that in the criminalconstitution there are precisely the same ingredients, althoughperhaps differently compounded, accentuated, mutually controlled,etc., by the environment, as in themselves, so that to know all would,in the great majority of cases, be to pardon all; that the homesentiments need emphasis; that a little less stress of misery toovercome the effects of economic malaise and, above all, a friend,mentor, adviser are needed.

I incline to think that many children would be better and not worsefor reading, provided it can be done in tender years, stories likethose of Captain Kidd, Jack Sheppard, Dick Turpin, and other gorytales, and perhaps later tales like Eugene Aram, and the ophidianmedicated novel, Elsie Venner, etc., on the principle of theAristotelian catharsis to arouse betimes the higher faculties whichdevelop later, and whose function it is to deplete the bad centers andsuppress or inhibit their activity. Again, I believe that judiciousand incisive scolding is a moral tonic, which is often greatly needed,and if rightly administered would be extremely effective, because itshows the instinctive reaction of the sane conscience against evildeeds and tendencies. Special pedagogic attention should be given tothe sentiment of justice, which is almost the beginning of personalmorals in boys; and plays should be chosen and encouraged that holdthe beam even, regardless of personal wish and interest. Further yetbenevolence and its underlying impulse to do more than justice to ourassociates; to do good in the world; to give pleasure to those about,and not pain, can be directly cultivated. Truth-telling presents a farharder problem, as we have seen. It is no pedagogical triumph to clipthe wings of fancy, but effort should be directed almost solelyagainst the cowardly lies, which cover evil; and the heroism oftelling the truth and taking the consequences is another of theelements of the moral sense, so complex, so late in development, andso often permanently crippled. The money sense, by all the many meansnow used for its development in school, is the surest safeguardagainst the most common juvenile crime of theft, and much can betaught by precept, example, and moral regimen of the sacredness ofproperty rights. The regularity of school work and its industry is avaluable moralizing agent, but entirely inadequate and insufficient byitself. Educators must face the fact that the ultimate verdictconcerning the utility of the school will be determined, as Talleckwell says, by its moral efficiency in saving children from personalvice and crime.

Wherever any source of pollution of school communities occurs, it mustbe at once and effectively detected, and some artificial elements mustbe introduced into the environment. In other words, there must be asystem of moral orthopedics. Garofalo's[16] new term and principle of"temibility" is perhaps of great service. He would thus designate thequantum of evil feared that is sufficient to restrain criminalimpulsion. We can not measure guilt or culpability, which may be ofall degrees from nothing to infinity perhaps, but we can to someextent scale the effectiveness of restraint, if criminal impulse isnot absolutely irresistible. Pain then must be so organised as tofollow and measure the offense by as nearly a natural method aspossible, while on the other hand the rewards for good conduct mustalso be more or less accentuated. Thus the problem of criminology foryouth can not be based on the principles now recognised for adults.They can not be protective of society only, but must have markedreformatory elements. Solitude[17] which tends to make weak, agitated,and fearful, at this very gregarious age should be enforced with verygreat discretion. There must be no personal and unmotivated clemencyor pardon in such scheme, for, according to the old saw, "Mercy butmurders, pardoning those who kill"; nor on the other hand should therebe the excessive disregard of personal adjustments, and theuniformitarian, who perhaps celebrated his highest triumph in the oldsentence, "Kill all offenders and suspects, for God will know hisown," should have no part nor lot here. The philosopher Hartmann has asuggestive article advocating that penal colonies made up oftransported criminals should be experimented upon by statesmen inorder to put various theories of self-government to a practical test.However this may be, the penologist of youth must face some suchproblem in the organization of the house of detention, boys' club,farm, reformatory, etc. We must pass beyond the clumsy apparatus of aterm sentence., or the devices of a jury, clumsier yet, for thispurpose; we must admit the principle of regret, fear, penance,material restoration of damage, and understand the sense in which, forboth society and for the individual, it makes no practical differencewhether experts think there is some taint of insanity, provided onlythat irresponsibility is not hopelessly complete.

In few aspects of this theme do conceptions of and practises in regardto adolescence need more radical reconstruction. A mere accident ofcirc*mstance often condemns to criminal careers youths capable of thehighest service to society, and for a mere brief season oftemperamental outbreak or obstreperousness exposes them to all theinfamy to which ignorant and cruel public opinion condemns all thosewho have once been detected on the wrong side of the invisible andarbitrary line of rectitude. The heart of criminal psychology is here;and not only that, but I would conclude with a most earnest personalprotest against the current methods of teaching and studying ethics inour academic institutions as a speculative, historical, and abstractthing. Here in the concrete and saliently objective facts of crime itshould have its beginning, and have more blood and body in it bygetting again close to the hot battle line between vice and virtue,and then only, when balanced and sanified by a rich ballast of facts,can it with advantage slowly work its way over to the larger andhigher philosophy of conduct, which, when developed from this basis,will be a radically different thing from the shadowy phantom,schematic speculations of many contemporary moralists, taught in ourschools and colleges.

[Footnote 1: Problematische Kindesnaturen. Eine Studie für Schule und
Haus. Voigtländer, Leipzig, 1889.]

[Footnote 2: Die pädagogische Pathologie in der Erziehungskunde des 19
Jahrhunderts. Bertelsman, Gütersloh, 1893, p. 494.]

[Footnote 3: Peculiar and Exceptional Children. Pedagogical Seminary,
October, 1896, vol. 4, pp. 3-60.]

[Footnote 4: La Puberté. Schleicher Frères, Paris, 1902, p. 72.]

[Footnote 5: Home and School Punishments. Pedagogical Seminary, March,1899, vol. 6, pp. 159-187.]

[Footnote 6: A Study of the Faults of Children. Pedagogical Seminary,
June, 1903, vol. 10, p. 200 et seq.]

[Footnote 7: The Child and the Weather, by Edwin G. Dexter.
Pedagogical Seminary, April, 1898, vol. 5, pp. 512-522.]

[Footnote 8: Psychic Effects of the Weather, by J.S. Lemon. American
Journal of Psychology, January, 1894, vol. 6, pp. 277-279.]

[Footnote 9: Truancy as Related to the Migrating Instinct, by L.W.
Kline. Pedagogical Seminary, January, 1898, vol. 5, pp. 381-420.]

[Footnote 10: Children's Lies. American Journal of Psychology,
January, 1890, vol. 3, pp. 59-70.]

[Footnote 11: Poems. With memoir by his brother, 2 vols., London,1851.]

[Footnote 12: American Journal of Psychology, July, 1898, vol. 9, pp.425-448.]

[Footnote 13: How the Other Half Lives. Scribner's Sons, New York,1890, p. 229.]

[Footnote 14: The Curse in Education, by Rebecca Harding Davis. North
American Review, May, 1899, vol. 168, pp. 609-614.]

[Footnote 15: Holtzendorff: Psychologie des Mordes. C. Pfeiffer,
Berlin, 1875]

[Footnote 16: La Criminologie. Paris, Alcan, 1890, p. 332]

[Footnote 17: See its psychology and dangers well pointed out by M.H.
Small: Psychical Relations of Society and Solitude. Pedagogical
Seminary, April, 1900, vol. 7, pp. 13-69]

* * * * *

CHAPTER VIII

BIOGRAPHIES OF YOUTH

Knightly ideals and honor—Thirty adolescents fromShakespeare—Goethe—C.D. Warner—Aldrich—The fugitive nature ofadolescent experience—Extravagance of autobiographies—Stories thatattach to great names—Some typical crazes—Illustrations from GeorgeEliot, Edison, Chatterton, Hawthorne, Whittier, Spencer, Huxley,Lyell, Byron, Heine, Napoleon, Darwin, Martineau, Agassiz, MadameRoland, Louisa Alcott, F.H. Burnett, Helen Keller, Marie Bashkirtseff,Mary MacLane, Ada Negri, De Quincey, Stuart Mill, Jefferies, andscores of others.

The knightly ideals and those of secular life generally during themiddle ages and later were in striking contrast to the ascetic idealsof the early Christian Church; in some respects they were like thoseof the Greeks. Honor was the leading ideal, and muscular developmentand that of the body were held in high respect; so that the spirit ofthe age fostered conceptions not unlike those of the Japanese Bushido.Where elements of Christianity were combined with this we have thespirit of the pure chivalry of King Arthur and the Knights of theRound Table, which affords perhaps the very best ideals for youth tobe found in history, as we shall see more fully later.

In a very interesting paper, entitled "Shakespeare and Adolescence,"Dr. M.F. Libby[1] very roughly reckons "seventy-four interestingadolescents among the comedies, forty-six among the tragedies, andnineteen among the histories." He selects "thirty characters who,either on account of direct references to their age, or because oftheir love-stories, or because they show the emotional andintellectual plasticity of youth, may be regarded as typicaladolescents." His list is as follows: Romeo, Juliet, Hamlet, Ophelia,Imogen, Perdita, Arviragus, Guiderius, Palamon, Arcite, Emilia,Ferdinand, Miranda, Isabella, Mariana, Orlando, Rosalind, Biron,Portia, Jessica, Phebe, Katharine, Helena, Viola, Troilus, Cressida,Cassio, Marina, Prince Hal, and Richard of Gloucester. The proof ofthe youth of these characters, as set forth, is of various kinds, andLibby holds that besides these, the sonnets and poems perhaps show ayet greater, more profound and concentrated knowledge of adolescence.He thinks "Venus and Adonis" a successful attempt to treat sex in acandid, naive way, if it be read as it was meant, as a catharsis ofpassion, in which is latent a whole philosophy of art. To some extenthe also finds the story of the Passionate Pilgrim "replete with thedeepest knowledge of the passions of early adolescence" The seriesculminates in Sonnet 116, which makes love the sole beacon ofhumanity. It might be said that it is connected by a straight linewith the best teachings of Plato, and that here humanity picked up theclue, lost, save with some Italian poets, in the great interval.

In looking over current autobiographies of well-known modern men whodeal with their boyhood, one finds curious extremes. On the one handare those of which Doctor's is a type, where details are dwelt upon atgreat length with careful and suggestive philosophic reflections. Thedevelopment of his own tastes, capacities, and his entire adultconsciousness was assumed to be due to the incidents of childhood andyouth, and especially the latter stage was to him full of the mostserious problems essential to his self-knowledge; and in the story ofhis life he has exploited all available resources of this geneticperiod of storm and stress more fully perhaps than any other writer.At the other extreme, we have writers like Charles Dudley Warner,[2] aself-made man, whose early life was passed on the farm, and who holdshis own boyhood there in greater contempt than perhaps any otherreputable writer of such reminiscences. All the incidents are treatednot only with seriousness, but with a forced drollery and catchysuperficiality which reflect unfavorably at almost every point uponthe members of his household, who are caricatured; all the preciousassociations of early life on a New England farm are not only madeabsurd, but from beginning to end his book has not a scintilla ofinstruction or suggestion for those that are interested in child life.Aldrich[3] is better, and we have interesting glimpses of the pethorse and monkeys, of his fighting the boy bully, running way, andfalling in love with an older girl whose engagement later blighted hislife. Howells,[4] White,[5] Mitter,[6] Grahame,[7] Heidi,[8] and Mrs.Barnett,[9] might perhaps represent increasing grades of merit in thisfield in this respect.

Yoder,[10] in his interesting study of the boyhood of great men, hascalled attention to the deplorable carelessness of their biographersconcerning the facts and influences of their youth. He advocates thegreat pedagogic influence of biography, and would restore the highappreciation of it felt by the Bolandists, which Comte's positivistcalendar, that renamed all the days of the year from three hundred andsixty-five such accounts in 1849, also sought to revive. Yoderselected fifty great modern biographies, autobiographies preferred,for his study. He found a number of lives whose equipment and momentumhave been strikingly due to some devoted aunt, and that give manyglimpses of the first polarization of genius in the direction in whichfame is later achieved. He holds that, while the great men excelled inmemory, imagination is perhaps still more a youthful condition ofeminence; magnifies the stimulus of poverty, the fact that elder sonsbecome prominent nearly twice as often as younger ones; and raises thequestion whether too exuberant physical development does not dullgenius and talent.

One striking and cardinal fact never to be forgotten considering itseach and every phenomenon and stage is that the experiences ofadolescence are extremely transitory and very easily forgotten, sothat they are often totally lost to the adult consciousness.Lancaster[11] observes that we are constantly told by adults pastthirty that they never had this and that experience, and that thosewho have had them are abnormal; that they are far more rare thanstudents of childhood assert, etc. He says, "Not a single young personwith whom I have had free and open conversation has been free fromserious thoughts of suicide," but these are forgotten later. A typicalcase of many I could gather is that of a lady, not yet in middle life,precise and carefully trained, who, on hearing a lecture on thetypical phases of adolescence, declared that she must have beenabnormal, for she knew nothing of any of these experiences. Hermother, however, produced her diary, and there she read for the firsttime since it was written, beginning in the January of her thirteenthyear, a long series of resolutions which revealed a course of conductthat brought the color to her face, that she should have found itnecessary to pledge not to swear, lie, etc., and which showedconclusively that she had passed through about all the phasesdescribed. These phenomena are sometimes very intense and may comelate in life, but it is impossible to remember feelings and emotionswith definiteness, and these now make up a large part of life. Hencewe are prone to look with some incredulity upon the immediate recordsof the tragic emotions and experiences typical and normal at thistime, because development has scored away their traces from theconscious soul.

There is a wall around the town of Boyville, says White,[12] insubstance, which is impenetrable when its gates have once shut uponyouth. An adult may peer over the wall and try to ape the gamesinside, but finds it all a mockery and himself banished among thepurblind grown-ups. The town of Boyville was old when Nineveh was ahamlet; it is ruled by ancient laws; has its own rulers and idols; andonly the dim, unreal noises of the adult world about it have changed.

In exploring such sources we soon see how few writers have given truepictures of the chief traits of this developmental period, which canrarely be ascertained with accuracy. The adult finds it hard to recallthe emotional and instinctive life of the teens which is banishedwithout a trace, save as scattered hints may be gathered from diaries,chance experiences, or the recollections of others. But the bestobservers see but very little of what goes on in the youthful soul,the development of which is very largely subterranean. Only when thefeelings erupt in some surprising way is the process manifest. Thebest of these sources are autobiographies, and of these only few arefull of the details of this stage. Just as in the mythic prehistoricstage of many nations there is a body of legendary matter, which oftenreappears in somewhat different form, so there is a floatingplankton-like mass of tradition and storiology that seems to attach toeminence wherever it emerges and is repeated over and over again,concerning the youth of men who later achieve distinction, whichbiographers often incorporate and attach to the time, place, andperson of their heroes.

As Burnham[13] well intimates, many of the literary characterizationsof adolescence are so marked by extravagance, and sometimes even bythe struggle for literary effects, that they are not always the bestdocuments, although often based on personal experience.Confessionalism is generally overdrawn, distorted, and especially thepains of this age are represented as too keen. Of George Eliot's typesof adolescent character, this may best be seen in Maggie Tulliver,with her enthusiastic self-renunciation, with "her volcanic upheavingsof imprisoned passions," with her "wide, hopeless yearning for thatsomething, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth,"and in Gwendolen, who, from the moment she caught Deronda's eye, was"totally swayed in feeling and action by the presence of a person ofthe other sex whom she had never seen before." There was "the resoluteaction from instinct and the setting at defiance of calculation andreason, the want of any definite desire to marry, while all herconduct tended to promote proposals." Exaggeration, although not theperversions of this age often found in adult characterizations, ismarked trait of the writings of adolescents, whose conduct meanwhilemay appear rational, so that this suggests that consciousness may atthis stage serve as a harmless vent for tendencies that wouldotherwise cause great trouble if turned to practical affairs. IfHarmodius and Aristogeiton, the adolescent tyrant slayers of Greece,had been theorists, they might have been harmless on the principlethat its analysis tends to dissipate emotion.

Lancaster[14] gathered and glanced over a thousand biographies, fromwhich he selected 200 for careful study, choosing them to showdifferent typical directions of activity. Of these, 120 showed adistinct craze for reading in adolescence; 109 became great lovers ofnature; 58 wrote poetry, 58 showed a great and sudden development ofenergy; 55 showed great eagerness for school; 53 devoted themselvesfor a season to art and music; 53 became very religious; 51 left homein the teens; 51 showed dominant instincts of leadership; 49 had greatlongings of many kinds; 46 developed scientific tastes; 41 grew veryanxious about the future; 34 developed increased keenness of sensationor at least power of observation; in 32 cases health was better; 31were passionately altruistic; 23 became idealists; 23 showed powers ofinvention; 17 were devoted to older friends; 15 would reform society;7 hated school. These, like many other statistics, have onlyindicative value, as they are based on numbers that are not largeenough and upon returns not always complete.

A few typical instances from Lancaster must here suffice. Savonarolawas solitary, pondering, meditating, felt profoundly the evils of theworld and need of reform, and at twenty-two spent a whole nightplanning his career. Shelley during these years was unsocial, muchalone, fantastic, wandered much by moonlight communing with stars andmoon, was attached to an older man. Beecher was intoxicated withnature, which he declared afterward to have been the inspiration ofhis life. George Eliot at thirteen had a passion for music and becamea clever pianist. At sixteen she was religious, founded societies forthe poor and for animals, and had fitting spells of misanthropy.Edison undertook to read the Detroit Free Library through, readfifteen solid feet as the books stand on the shelves, was stopped, andsays he has read comparatively little since. Tolstoi found the aspectof things suddenly changed. Nature put on a new appearance. He felt hemight commit the most dreadful crimes with no purpose save curiosityand the need of action. The future looked gloomy. He became furiouslyangry without cause; thought he was lost, hated by everybody, wasperhaps not the son of his father, etc. At seventeen he was solitary,musing about immortality, human destiny, feeling death at hand, givingup his studies, fancying himself a great man with new truths forhumanity. By and by he took up the old virtuous course of life withfresh power, new resolutions, with the feeling that he had lost muchtime. He had a deep religious experience at seventeen and wept for joyover his new life. He had a period before twenty when he tolddesperate lies, for which he could not account, then a passion formusic, and later for French novels. Rousseau at this age wasdiscontented, immensely in love, wept often without cause, etc. Keatshad a great change at fourteen, wrestling with frequent obscure andprofound stirrings of soul, with a sudden hunger for knowledge whichconsumed his days with fire, and "with passionate longing to drain thecup of experience at a draft." He was "at the morning hour when thewhole world turns to gold." "The boy had suddenly become a poet."Chatterton was too proud to eat a gift dinner, though nearly starved,and committed suicide at seventeen for lack of appreciation. JohnHunter was dull and hated study, but at twenty his mind awoke as didthat of Patrick Henry, who before was a lonely wanderer, sitting idlyfor hours under the trees. Alexander Murray awoke to life at fifteenand acquired several languages in less than two years. Gifford wasdistraught for lack of reading, went to sea at thirteen, became ashoemaker, studying algebra late at night, was savagely unsociable,sunk into torpor from which he was roused to do splenetic andvexatious tricks, which alienated his friends. Rittenhouse at fourteenwas a plowboy, covering the fences with figures, musing on infinitetime and space. Benjamin Thompson was roused to a frenzy for sciencesat fifteen; at seventeen walked nine miles daily to attend lectures atCambridge; and at nineteen married a widow of thirty-three. Franklinhad a passion for the sea; at thirteen read poetry all night; wroteverses and sold them on the streets of Boston; doubted everything atfifteen; left home for good at seventeen; started the first publiclibrary in Philadelphia before he was twenty-one. Robert Fulton waspoor, dreamy, mercurial, devoted to nature, art, and literature. Hebecame a painter of talent, then a poet, and left home at seventeen.Bryant was sickly till fourteen and became permanently wellthereafter; was precociously devoted to nature, religion, prayed forpoetic genius and wrote Thanatopsis before he was eighteen. Jeffersondoted on animals and nature at fourteen, and at seventeen studiedfifteen hours a day. Garfield, though living in Ohio, longed for thesea, and ever after this period the sight of a ship gave him a strangethrill. Hawthorne was devoted to the sea and wanted to sail on and onforever and never touch shore again. He would roam through the Mainewoods alone; was haunted by the fear that he would die beforetwenty-five. Peter Cooper left home at seventeen; was passionatelyaltruistic; and at eighteen vowed he would build a place like his NewYork Institute. Whittier at fourteen found a copy of Burns, whichexcited him and changed the current of his life. Holmes had a passionfor flowers, broke into poetry at fifteen, and had very romanticattachments to certain trees. J. T. Trowbridge learned German, French,and Latin alone before twenty-one; composed poetry at the plow andwrote it out in the evening. Henry followed a rabbit under the PublicLibrary at Albany, found a hole in the floor that admitted him to theshelves, and, unknown to any one, read all the fiction the librarycontained, then turned to physics, astronomy, and chemistry, anddeveloped a passion for the sciences. He was stage-struck, and becamea good amateur actor. H. H. Boyesen was thrilled by nature and by thethought that he was a Norseman. He had several hundred pigeons,rabbits, and other pets; loved to be in the woods at night; on leavinghome for school was found with his arms around the neck of a calf towhich he was saying good-by. Maxwell, at sixteen, had almost a horrorof destroying a leaf, flower, or fly. Jahn found growing in his heart,at this age, an inextinguishable feeling for right and wrong—whichlater he thought the cause of all his inner weal and outer woe. WhenNansen was in his teens he spent weeks at a time alone in the forest,full of longings, courage, altruism, wanted to get away from every oneand live like Crusoe. T. B. Reed, at twelve and thirteen, had apassion for reading; ran away at seventeen; painted, acted, and wrotepoetry. Cartwright, at sixteen, heard voices from the sky saying,"Look above, thy sins are forgiven thee." Herbert Spencer became anengineer at seventeen, after one idle year. He never went to school,but was a private pupil of his uncle. Sir James Mackintosh grew fondof history at eleven; fancied he was the Emperor of Constantinople;loved solitude at thirteen; wrote poetry at fourteen; and fell in loveat seventeen. Thomas Buxton loved dogs, horses, and literature, andcombined these while riding on an old horse. At sixteen be fell inlove with an older literary woman, which aroused every latent power todo or die, and thereafter he took all the school prizes. Scott beganto like poetry at thirteen. Pascal wrote treatises on conic sectionsat sixteen and invented his arithmetical machine at nineteen. Nelsonwent to sea at twelve; commanded a boat in peril at fifteen, which atthe same age he left to fight a polar bear. Banks, the botanist, wasidle and listless till fourteen, could not travel the road marked outfor him; when coming home from bathing, he was struck by the beauty ofthe flowers and at once began his career. Montcalm and Wolfe bothdistinguished themselves as leaders in battle at sixteen. Lafayettecame to America at nineteen, thrilled by our bold strike for liberty.Gustavus Adolphus declared his own majority at seventeen and was soonfamous. Ida Lewis rescued four men in a boat at sixteen. Joan of Arcbegan at thirteen to have the visions which were the later guide ofher life.

Mr. Swift has collected interesting biographical material[15] to showthat school work is analytic, while life is synthetic, and how thenarrowness of the school enclosure prompts many youth in the waywardage to jump fences and seek new and more alluring pastures. Accordingto school standards, many were dull and indolent, but their nature wastoo large or their ideals too high to be satisfied with it. Wagner atthe Nikolaischule at Leipzig was relegated to the third form, havingalready attained to the second at Dresden, which so embittered himthat he lost all taste for philology and, in his own words, "becamelazy and slovenly." Priestley never improved by any systematic courseof study. W.H. Gibson was very slow and was rebuked for wasting histime in sketching. James Russell Lowell was reprimanded, at firstprivately and then publicly, in his sophom*ore year "for generalnegligence in themes, forensics, and recitations," and finallysuspended in 1838 "on account of continued neglect of his collegeduties." In early life Goldsmith's teacher thought him the dullest boyshe had ever taught. His tutor called him ignorant and stupid. Irvingsays that a lad "whose passions are not strong enough in youth tomislead him from that path of science which his tutors, and not hisinclinations, have chalked out, by four or five years' perseverance,will probably obtain every advantage and honor his college can bestow.I would compare the man whose youth has been thus passed in thetranquility of dispassionate prudence, to liquors that never ferment,and, consequently, continue always muddy." Huxley detested writingtill past twenty. His schooling was very brief, and he declared thatthose set over him "cared about as much for his intellectual and moralwelfare as if they were baby farmers." Humphry Davy was faithful butshowed no talent in school, having "the reputation of being an idleboy, with a gift for making verses, but with no aptitude for studiesof a graver sort." Later in life he considered it fortunate that hewas left so much to himself. Byron was so poor a scholar that he onlystood at the head of the class when, as was the custom, it wasinverted, and the bantering master repeatedly said to him, "Now,George, man, let me see how soon you'll be at the foot." Schiller'snegligence and lack of alertness called for repeated reproof, and hisfinal school thesis was unsatisfactory. Hegel was a poor scholar, andat the university it was stated "that he was of middling industry andknowledge but especially deficient in philosophy." John Hunter nearlybecame a cabinetmaker. Lyell had excessive aversion to work. GeorgeCombe wondered why he was so inferior to other boys in arithmetic.Heine agreed with the monks that Greek was the invention of the devil."God knows what misery I suffered with it." He hated French meters,and his teacher vowed he had no soul for poetry. He idled away histime at Bonn, and was "horribly bored" by the "odious, stiff,cut-and-dried tone" of the leathery professors. Humboldt was feeble asa child and "had less facility in his studies than most children.""Until I reached the age of sixteen," he says, "I showed littleinclination for scientific pursuits." He was essentially self-taught,and acquired most of his knowledge rather late in life. At nineteen hehad never heard of botany. Sheridan was called inferior to many of hisschoolfellows. He was remarkable for nothing but idleness and winningmanners, and was "not only slovenly in construing, but unusuallydefective in his Greek grammar." Swift was refused his degree becauseof "dulness and insufficiency," but given it later as a special favor.Wordsworth was disappointing. General Grant was never abovemediocrity, and was dropped as corporal in the junior class and servedthe last year as a private. W. H. Seward was called "too stupid tolearn." Napoleon graduated forty-second in his class. "Who," asksSwift, "were the forty-one above him?" Darwin was singularly incapableof mastering any language. "When he left school," he says, "I wasconsidered by all my masters and by my father as a very ordinary boy,rather below the common standard in intellect. To my deepmortification, my father once said to me, 'You care for nothing butshooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace toyourself and to all your family.'" Harriet Martineau was thought verydull. Though a horn musician, she could do absolutely nothing in thepresence of her irritable master. She wrote a cramped, untidy scrawluntil past twenty. A visit to some very brilliant cousins at the ageof sixteen had much to do in arousing her backward nature. At this ageJ. Pierpont Morgan wrote poetry and was devoted to mathematics. BookerT. Washington, at about thirteen or fourteen (he does not know thedate of his birth), felt the new meaning of life and started off onfoot to Hampton, five hundred miles away, not knowing even thedirection, sleeping under a sidewalk his first night in Richmond.Vittorino da Feltre,[16] according to Dr. Burnham, had a low, tardydevelopment, lingering on a sluggish dead level from ten to fourteen,which to his later unfoldment was as the barren, improving yearssometimes called the middle ages, compared with the remainder whichfollowed when a new world-consciousness intensified his personality.

Lancaster's summaries show that of 100 actors, the average age oftheir first great success was exactly 18 years. Those he chose hadtaken to the stage of their own accord, for actors are more born thanmade. Nearly half of them were Irish, the unemotional American stockhaving furnished far less. Few make their first success on the stageafter 22, but from 16 to 20 is the time to expect talent in this line,although there is a second rise in his curve before and still moreafter 25, representing those whose success is more due to intellect.Taking the average age of 100 novelists when their first story metwith public approval, the curve reaches its highest point between 30and 35. Averaging 53 poets, the age at which most first poems werepublished falls between 15 and 20. The average age at which firstpublication showed talent he places at 18, which is in strikingcontrast with the average age of inventors at time of the firstpatent, which is 33 years.

A still more striking contrast is that between 100 musicians and 100professional men. Music is by far the most precocious and instinctiveof all talents. The average age when marked talent was first shown isa little less than 10 years, 95 per cent showed rare talent before 16,while the professional men graduated at an average age of 24 years and11 months, and 10 years must be added to mark the point of recognizedsuccess. Of 53 artists, 90 per cent showed talent before 20, theaverage age being 17.2 years. Of 100 pioneers who made their mark inthe Far West, leaving home to seek fortunes near the frontier, thegreatest number departed before they were 18. Of 118 scientists,Lancaster estimates that their life interest first began to glow onthe average a little before they were 19. In general, those whosesuccess is based on emotional traits antedate by some years thosewhose renown is more purely in intellectual spheres, and taking alltogether, the curves of the first class culminate between 18 and 20.

While men devoted to physical science, and their biographers, give usperhaps the least breezy accounts of this seething age, it may be,because they mature late, nearly all show its ferments and itscircumnutations, as a few almost random illustrations clearly show:

Tycho Brahe, born in 1596 of illustrious Danish stock, was adopted byan uncle, and entered the University of Copenhagen at thirteen, wheremultiplication, division, philosophy, and metaphysics were taught.When he was fourteen, an eclipse of the sun occurred, which aroused somuch interest that he decided to devote himself to the study of theheavenly bodies. He was able to construct a series of interestinginstruments on a progressive scale of size, and finally to erect thegreat Observatory of Uraniberg on the Island of Hven. Strange to say,his scientific conclusions had for him profound astrologicalsignificance. An important new star he declared was "at first likeVenus and Jupiter and its effects will therefore first be pleasant;but as it then became like Mars, there will next come a period ofwars, seditions, captivity, and death of princes, and destruction ofcities, together with dryness and fiery meteors in the air,pestilence, and venomous snakes. Lastly, the star became like Saturn,and thus will finally come a time of want, death, imprisonment, andall kinds of sad things!" He says that "a special use of astronomy isthat it enables us to draw conclusions from the movements in thecelestial regions as to human fate." He labored on his island twentyyears. He was always versifying, and inscribed a poem over theentrance of his underground observatory expressing the astonishment ofUrania at finding in the interior of the earth a cavern devoted to thestudy of the heavens.

Galileo[17] was born in 1564 of a Florentine noble, who was poor. As ayouth he became an excellent lutist, then thought of devoting himselfto painting, but when he was seventeen studied medicine, and at theUniversity of Pisa fell in love with mathematics.

Isaac Newton,[18] born in 1642, very frail and sickly, solitary, had avery low piece in the class lists of his school; wrote poetry, and atsixteen tried farming. In one of his university examinations in Euclidbe did so poorly as to incur special censure. His first incentive todiligent study came from being severely kicked by a high class boy. Hethen resolved to pass him in studies, and soon rose to the head of theschool. He made many ingenious toys and windmills; a carriage, thewheels of which were driven by the hands of the occupants, and a clockwhich moved by water; curtains, kites, lanterns, etc.; and before hewas fourteen fell in love with Miss Storey, several yeas older thanhimself. He entered Trinity College at Cambridge at eighteen.

William Herschel, born in 1738, at the outbreak of the Seven Years'War, when he was eighteen, was a performer in the regimental band, andafter a battle passed a night in a ditch and escaped in disguise, toEngland, where he eked out a precarious livelihood by teaching music.He supported himself until middle age as an organist. In much of hislater work he was greatly aided by his sister Caroline. When hediscovered a sixth planet he became famous, and devoted himselfexclusively to astronomy, training his only son to follow in hisfootsteps, and dying in 1822.

Agassiz[19] at twelve had developed a mania for collecting. Hememorized Latin names, of which he accumulated "great volumes ofMSS.", and "modestly expressed the hope that in time he might be ableto give the name of every known animal." At fourteen he revolted atmercantile life, for which he was designed, and issued a manifestoplanning to spend four years at a Cermem university, then in Paris,when he could begin to write. Rooks were scarce, and a little later hecopied, with the aid of his brother, several large volumes, and hadfifty live birds in his room at one time.

At twelve Huxley[20] became an omnivorous reader, and two or threeyears later devoured Hamilton's Logic and became deeply interested inmetaphysics. At fourteen he saw and participated in his firstpost-mortem examination, was left in a strange state of apathy by it,and dates his life-long dyspepsia to this experience. His training wasirregular; he taught himself German with a book in one hand while hemade hay with the other; speculated about the basis of matter, soul,and their relations, on radicalism and conservatism; and reproachedhimself that he did not work and get on enough. At seventeen heattempted a comprehensive classification of human knowledge, andhaving finished his survey, resolved to master the topics one afteranother, striking them out from his table with ink as soon us theywere done. "May the list soon get black, although at present I shallhardly be able, I am afraid, to spot the paper." Beneath the topskimmings of these years he afterward conceived seething depthsworking beneath the froth, but could give hardly any account of it. Heundertook the practise of pharmacy, etc.

Women with literary gifts perhaps surpass men in their power toreproduce and describe the great but so often evanescent ebullitionsof this age; perhaps because their later lives, on account of theirmore generic nature, depart less from this totalizing period, orbecause, although it is psychologically shorter than in men, thenecessities of earning a livelihood less frequently arrest its fulldevelopment, and again because they are more emotional, and feelingconstitutes the chief psychic ingredient of this stage of life, orthey dwell more on subjective states.

Manon Philipon (Madame Roland) was born in 1754. Her father was anengraver in comfortable circ*mstances. Her earliest enthusiasm was forthe Bible and Lives of the Saints, and she had almost a mania forreading books of any kind. In the corner of her father's workshop shewould read Plutarch for hours, dream of the past glories of antiquity,and exclaim, weeping, "Why was I not born a Greek?" She desired toemulate the brave men of old.

Books and flowers aroused her to dreams of enthusiasm, romanticsentiment, and lofty aspiration. Finding that the French societyafforded no opportunity for heroic living, in her visionary fervor shefell back upon a life of religious mysticism, and Xavier, Loyola, St.Elizabeth, and St. Theresa became her new idols. She longed to followeven to the stake those devout men and women who had borne obloquy,poverty, hunger, thirst, wretchedness, and the agony of a martyr'sdeath for the sake of Jesus. Her capacities for self-sacrifice becameperhaps her leading trait, always longing after a grand life likeGeorge Eliot's Dorothea Brooke. She was allowed at the age of elevento enter a convent, where, shunning her companions, she courtedsolitude apart, under the trees, reading and thinking. Artificial asthe atmosphere was here, it no doubt inspired her life with permanenttenderness of feeling and loftiness of purpose, and gave a mysticquality to her imagination. Later she experienced to the fullrevulsion of thought and experience which comes when doubt reacts uponyouthful credulity. It was the age of the encyclopedia, and now shecame to doubt her creed and even God and the soul, but clung to theGospels as the best possible code of morals, and later realized thatwhile her intellect had wandered her heart had remained constant. Atseventeen she was, if not the moat beautiful, perhaps the noblestwoman in all France, and here the curtain moat drop upon her girlhood.All her traits were, of course, set off by the great life she livedand the yet greater death she died.

Gifted people seem to conserve their youth and to be all the morechildren, and perhaps especially all the more intensely adolescents,because of their gifts, and it is certainly one of the marks of geniusthat the plasticity and spontaneity of adolescence persists intomaturity. Sometimes even its passions, reveries, and hoydenish freakscontinue. In her "Histoire de Ma Vie," it is plain that George Sandinherited at this age an unusual dower of gifts. She composed many andinterminable stories, carried on day after day, so that her confidantstried to tease her by asking if the prince had got out of the forestyet, etc. She personated an echo and conversed with it. Her day-dreamsand plays were so intense that she often came back from the world ofimagination to reality with a shock. She spun a weird zoologicalromance out of a rustic legend of la grande bête.

When her aunt sent her to a convent, she passed a year of rebellionand revolt, and was the leader of les diables, or those who refusedto be devout, and engaged in all wild pranks. At fifteen she becameprofoundly interested in the lives of the saints, although ridiculingmiracles. She entered one evening the convent church for service,without permission, which was an act of disobedience. The mystery andholy charm of it penetrated her; she forgot everything outward and wasleft alone, and some mysterious change stole over her. She "breathedan atmosphere of ineffable sweetness" more with the mind than thesenses; had a sudden indescribable perturbation; her eyes swam; shewas enveloped in a white glimmer, and heard a voice murmur the wordswritten under a convent picture of St. Augustine, Tolle, lege, andturned around thinking Mother Alicia spoke, but she was alone. Sheknew it was an hallucination, but saw that faith had laid hold of her,as she wished, by the heart, and she sobbed and prayed to the unknownGod till a nun heard her groaning. At first her ardor impelled her notonly to brave the jeers of her madcap club of harum-scarums andtomboys, but she planned to become a nun, until this feverish longingfor a recluse life passed, but left her changed.[21]

When she passed from the simple and Catholic faith of her grisettemother to the atmosphere of her cynical grandmother at Nohant, who wasa disciple of Voltaire, she found herself in great straits between theprofound sentiments inspired by the first communion and the concurrentcontempt for this faith, instilled by her grandmother for all thosemummeries through which, however, for conventional reasons she wasobliged to pass. Her heart was deeply stirred, and yet her headholding all religion to be fiction or metaphor, it occurred to her toinvent a story which might be a religion or a religion which might bea story into any degree of belief in which she could lapse at will.The name and the form of her new deity was revealed to her in a dream.He was Corambé, pure as Jesus, beautiful as Gabriel, as graceful asthe nymphs and Orpheus, less austere than the Christian God, and asmuch woman as man, because she could best understand this sex from herlove for her mother. He appeared in many aspects of physical and moralbeauty; was eloquent, master of all arts, and above all of the magicof musical improvisation; loved as a friend and sister, and at thesame time revered as a god; not awful and remote from impeccability,but with the fault of excess of indulgence. She estimated that shecomposed about a thousand sacred books or songs developing phases ofhis mundane existence. In each of these he became incarnate man ontouching the earth, always in a new group of people who were good, yetsuffering martyrdoms from the wicked known only by the effects oftheir malice. In this "gentle hallucination" she could lose herself inthe midst of friends, and turn to her hero deity for comfort. Theremust be not only sacred books, but a temple and ritual, and in agarden thicket, which no eye could penetrate, in a moss-carpetedchamber she built an altar against a tree-trunk, ornamented with awreath hung over it. Instead of sacrificing, which seemed barbaric,she proceeded to restore life and liberty to butterflies, lizards,green frogs, and birds, which she put in a box, laid on the altar, and"after having invoked the good genius of liberty and protection,"opened it. In these mimic rites and delicious reveries she found thegerms of a religion that fitted her heart. From the instant, however,that a boy playmate discovered and entered this sanctuary, "Corambéceased to dwell in it. The dryads and the cherubim deserted it," andit seemed unreal. The temple was destroyed with great care, and thegarlands and shells were buried under the tree.[22]

Louisa Alcott's romantic period opened at fifteen, when she began towrite poetry, keep a heart journal, and wander by moonlight, andwished to be the Bettine of Emerson, in whose library she foraged;wrote him letters which were never sent; sat in a tall tree atmidnight; left wild flowers on the doorstep of her master; sangMignon's song under his window; and was refined by her choice of anidol. Her diary was all about herself.

If she looked in the glass at her long hair and well-shaped head, shetried to keep down her vanity; her quick tongue, moodiness, poverty,impossible longings, made every day a battle until she hardly wishedto live, only something must be done, and waiting is so hard. Sheimagined her mind a room in confusion which must be put in order; theuseless thought swept out; foolish fancies dusted away; newlyfurnished with good resolutions. But she was not a good housekeeper;cobwebs got in, and it was hard to rule. She was smitten with a maniafor the stage, and spent most of her leisure in writing and actingplays of melodramatic style ad high-strung sentiment, improbableincidents, with no touch of common life or sense of humor, full ofconcealments and surprises, bright dialogues, and lofty sentiments.She had much dramatic power and loved to transform herself into Hamletand declaim in mock heroic style. From sixteen to twenty-three was herapprenticeship to life. She taught, wrote for the papers, didhousework for pay as a servant, and found sewing a pleasant resourcebecause it was tranquillizing, left her free, and set her thoughtsgoing.

Mrs. Burnett,[23] like most women who record their childhood andadolescent memories, is far more subjective and interesting than mostmen. In early adolescence she was never alone when with flowers, butloved to "speak to them, to bend down and say caressing things, tostoop and kiss them, to praise them for their pretty ways of lookingup at her as into the eyes of a friend and beloved. There were certainlittle blue violets which always seemed to lift their small faceschildishly, as if they were saying, 'Kiss me; don't go by like that.'"She would sit on the porch, elbows on knees and chin on hands, staringupward, sometimes lying on the grass. Heaven was so high and yet shewas a part of it and was something even among the stars. It was aweird, updrawn, overwhelming feeling as she stared so fixedly andintently that the earth seemed gone, left far behind. Every hour andmoment was a wonderful and beautiful thing. She felt on speaking termswith the rabbits. Something was happening in the leaves which wavedand rustled as she passed. Just to walk, sit, lie around out of doors,to loiter, gaze, watch with a heart fresh as a young dryad, followingbirds, playing hide-and-seek with the brook-these were her halcyonhours.

With the instability of genius, Beth[24] did everything suddenly. Whentwelve or thirteen, she had grown too big to be carried, pulled orpushed; she suddenly stood still one day, when her mother, commandedher to dress. She had been ruled before by physical force, but herwill and that of her mother were now in collision, and the latterrealised she could make her do nothing unless by persuasion or moralinfluence. Being constantly reproved, scolded, and even beaten by hermother, Beth one day impulsively jumped into the sea, and was rescuedwith difficulty. She had spells of being miserable with no cause. Shewas well and happy, but would burst into tears suddenly, which seemedoften to surprise her. Being very sensitive herself, she was morbidlycareful of the feelings of others and incessantly committed grave sinsof insincerity without compunction in her effort to spare them. Tothose who confided in her abilities, praised her, and thought shecould do things, her nature expanded, but her mother checked hermental growth over and over, instead of helping her by saying, "Don'ttry, you can't do it," etc.

Just before the dawn of adolescence she had passed through a longperiod of abject superstition, largely through the influence of aservant. All the old woman's signs were very dominant in her life. Sheeven invented methods of divination, as, "if the boards do not creakwhen I walk across the room I shall get through my lessons withouttrouble." She always preferred to see two rooks together to one andbecame expert in the black arts. She used to hear strange noises atnight for a time, which seemed signs and portents of disaster at sea,fell into the ways of her neighbors, and had more faith inincantations than in doctors' doses. She not only heard voices andvery ingeniously described them, but claimed to know what was going tohappen and compared her forebodings with the maid. She "got religion"very intensely under the influence of her aunt, grew thin, lost herappetite and sleep, had heartache to think of her friends burning inhell, and tried to save them.

Beth never thought at all of her personal appearance until sheoverheard a gentleman call her rather nice-looking, when her faceflushed and she had a new feeling of surprise and pleasure, and tookvery clever ways of cross-examining her friends to find if she washandsome. All of a sudden the care of her person became of greatimportance, and every hint she had heard of was acted on. She airedher bed, brushed her hair glossy, pinched her waist and feet, washedin buttermilk, used a parasol, tortured her natural appetite in everyway, put on gloves to do dirty work, etc.

The house always irked her. Once stealing out of the school by night,she was free, stretched herself, drew a long breath, bounded and wavedher arms in an ecstasy of liberty, danced around the magnolia, buriedher face in the big flowers one after another and bathed it in the dewof the petals, visited every forbidden place, was particularlyattracted to the water, enjoyed scratching and making her feet bleedand eating a lot of green fruit. This liberty was most precious andall through a hot summer she kept herself healthy by exercise in themoonlight. This revived her appetite, and she ended these nightexcursions by a forage in the kitchen. Beth had times when shehungered for solitude and for nature. Sometimes she would shut herselfin her room, but more often would rove the fields and woods inecstasy. Coming home from school, where she had long been, she had togreet the trees and fields almost before she did her parents. She hada great habit of stealing out often by the most dangerous routes overroofs, etc., at night in the moonlight, running and jumping, wavingher arms, throwing herself on the ground, rolling over, walling onall-fours, turning somersaults, hugging trees, playing hide-and-seekwith the shadow fairy-folk, now playing and feeling fear and runningaway. She invoked trees, stars, etc.

Beth's first love affair was with a bright, fair-haired, fat-facedboy, who sat near her pew Sundays. They looked at each other onceduring service, and she felt a glad glow in her chest spread over her,dwelt on his image, smiled, and even the next day felt a new desire toplease. She watched for him to pass from school. When he appeared,"had a most delightful thrill shoot through her." The first impulse tofly was conquered; she never thought a boy beautiful before. Theyoften met after dark, wrote; finally she grew tired of him because shecould not make him feel deeply, sent him off, called him an idiot, andthen soliloquized on the "most dreadful grief of her life." The latterstages of their acquaintance she occasionally used to beat him, buthis attraction steadily waned. Once later, as she was suffering from adull, irresolute feeling due to want of a companion and an object, shemet a boy of seventeen, whose face, like her own, brightened as theyapproached. It was the first appearance of nature's mandate to mate.This friendly glance suffused her whole being with the "glory andvision of love." Religion and young men were her need. They had stoleninterviews by night and many an innocent embrace and kiss, and almostdied once by being caught. They planned in detail what they would doafter they were married, but all was taken for granted without formalvows. Only when criticized did they ever dream of caution andconcealment, and then they made elaborate parades of ignoring eachother in public and fired their imaginations with thoughts ofdisguises, masks, etc. This passion was nipped in the bud by the boy'sremoval from his school.

In preparing for her first communion, an anonymous writer[25] becamesober and studious, proposing to model her life on that of each freshsaint and to spend a week in retreat examining her conscience withvengeance. She wanted to revive the custom of public confession andwrote letters of penitence and submission, which she tore up later,finding her mind not "all of a piece." She lay prostrate on herprie-dieu weeping from ecstasy, lying on the rim of heaven held byangels, wanting to die, now bathed in bliss or aching intolerably withspiritual joy, but she was only twelve and her old nature oftenreasserted itself. Religion at that time became an intense emotionnourished on incense, music, tapers, and a feeling of being tangible.It was rapturous and sensuous. While under its spell, she seemed tofloat and touch the wings of angels. Here solemn Gregorian chants aresung, so that when one comes back to earth there is a sense of hunger,deception, and self-loathing. Now she came to understand how so manysentimental and virtuous souls sought oblivion in the narcotic ofreligious excitement. Here, at the age of twelve, youth began andchildhood ended with her book.

Pathetic is the account of Helen Keller's effort to understand themeaning of the word "love" in its season.[26]

Is it the sweetness of flowers? she asked. No, said her teacher. Is itthe warm sun? Not exactly. It can not be touched, "'but you feel thesweetness that it pours into everything. Without love, you would notbe happy or want to play.' The beautiful truth burst upon my mind. Ifelt that there were invisible lines stretched between my spirit andthe spirit of others." This period seems to have came gradually andnaturally to this wonderful child, whose life has been perhaps thepurest ever lived and one of the sweetest. None has ever loved everyaspect of nature accessible to her more passionately, or felt morekeenly the charm of nature or of beautiful sentiments. The unhappyFrost King episode has been almost the only cloud upon her life, whichunfortunately came at about the dawn of this period, that is perhapsbetter marked by the great expansion of mind which she experienced atthe World's Fair in Chicago in 1893, when she was thirteen. About thistime, too, her great ambition of going to college and enjoying all theadvantages that other girls did, which, considering her handicap, wasone of the greatest human resolutions, was strengthened and deepened.The fresh, spontaneous, and exquisite reactions of this pellucid mind,which felt that each individual could comprehend all the experiencesand emotions of the race and that chafed at every pedagogical andtechnical obstacle between her soul and nature, and the greatmonuments of literature, show that she has conserved to a remarkabledegree, which the world will wish may be permanent, the best impulsesof this golden age.

Marie Bashkirtseff,[27] who may be taken as one of the best types ofexaggerated adolescent confessionalists, was rich and of noble birth,and began in 1873, at the age of twelve, to write a journal thatshould be absolutely true and frank, with no pretense, affectation, orconcealment. The journal continues until her death, October, 1884, atthe age of twenty-three. It may be described as in some sense afeminine counterpart of Rousseau's confessions, but is in somerespects a more precious psychological document than any other for theelucidation of the adolescent ferment in an unusually vigorous andgifted soul. Twice I have read it from cover to cover and with growinginterest.

At twelve she is passionately in love with a duke, whom she sometimessaw pass, but who had no knowledge of her existence, and builds manyair castles about his throwing himself at her feet and of their lifetogether. She prays passionately to see him again, would dazzle him onthe stage, would lead a perfect life, develop her voice, and would bean ideal wife. She agonizes before the glass on whether or not she ispretty, and resolves to ask some young man, but prefers to think wellof herself even if it is an illusion; constantly modulates over intopassionate prayer to God to grant all her wishes; is oppressed withdespair; gay and melancholy by turn; believes in God because sheprayed Him for a set of croquet and to help her to learn English, bothof which He granted. At church some prayers and services seem directlyaimed at her; Paris now seems a frightful desert, and she has nomotive to avoid carelessness in her appearance. She has freaky andvery changeable ideas of arranging the things in her room. When shehears of the duke's marriage she almost throws herself over a bridge,prays God for pardon of her sins, and thinks all is ended; finds ithorrible to dissemble her feelings in public; goes through the tortureof altering her prayer about the duke. She is disgusted with commonpeople, harrowed by jealousy, envy, deceit and every hideous feeling,yet feels herself frozen in the depth, and moving only on the surface.When her voice improves she welcomes it with tears and feels anall-powerful queen. The man she loves should never speak to another.Her journal she resolves to make the most instructive book that everwas or ever will be written. She esteems herself so great a treasurethat no one is worthy of her; pities those who think they can pleaseher; thinks herself a real divinity; prays to the moon to show her indreams her future husband, and quarrels with her photographs.

In some moods she feels herself beautiful, knows she shall succeed,everything smiles upon her and she is absolutely happy and yet in thenext paragraph the fever of life at high pressure palls upon her andthings seem asleep and unreal. Her attempts to express her feelingsdrive her to desperation because words are inadequate. She loves toweep, gives up to despair to think of death, and finds everythingtranscendently exquisite. She comes to despise men and wonder whetherthe good are always stupid and the intelligent always false andsaturated with baseness, but on the whole believes that some time orother she is destined to meet one true good and great man. Now she isinflated with pride of her ancestry, her gifts, and would subordinateeverybody and everything; she would never speak a commonplace word,and then again feels that her life has been a failure and she isdestined to be always waiting. She falls on her knees sobbing, prayingto God with outstretched hands as if He were in her room; almost vowsto make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem one-tenth of the way on foot; todevote her money to good works; lacks the pleasures proper to her age;wonders if she can ever love again. On throwing a bouquet from awindow into a crowd in the Corso a young man choked so beautifully aworkman who caught it that by that one act of strangling and snatchingthe bouquet she fell in love. The young man calls and they see eachother often. Now she is clad from head to foot in an armor of coldpoliteness, now vanity and now passion seem uppermost in theirmeetings. She wonders if a certain amount of sin, like air, isnecessary to a man to sustain life. Finally they vow mutual love andPietro leaves, and she begins to fear that she has cherished illusionsor been insulted; is torments at things unsaid or of her spelling inFrench. She coughs and for three days has a new idea that she is goingto die; prays and prostrates herself sixty times, one for each bead inher rosary, touching the floor with her forehead every time; wondersif God takes intentions into account; resolves to read the NewTestament, but can not find one and reads Dumas instead. Innovel-reading she imagines herself the heroine of every scene; seesher lover and they plan their mode of life together and at last kisseach other, but later she feels humiliated, chilled, doubts if it isreal love; studies the color of her lips to see if they have changed;fears that she has compromised herself; has eye symptoms that make herfear blindness. Once on reading the Testament she smiled and claspedher hands, gazed upward, was no longer herself but in ecstasy; shemakes many programs for life; is haunted by the phrase "We live butonce"; wants to live a dozen lives in one, but feels that she does notlive one-fourth of a life; has several spells of solitaryillumination. At other times she wishes to be the center of a salonand imagines herself to be so. She soars on poets' wings, but oftenhas hell in her heart; slowly love is vowed henceforth to be a wordwithout meaning to her. Although she suffers from ennui, sherealizes that women live only from sixteen to forty and cannot bearthe thought of losing a moment of her life; criticizes her mother;scorns marriage and child-bearing, which any washerwoman can attain,but pants for glory; now hates, now longs to see new faces; thinks ofdisguising herself as a poor girl and going out to seek her fortunes;thinks her mad vanity is her devil; that her ambitions are justifiedby no results; hates moderation in anything, would have intense andconstant excitement or absolute repose; at fifteen abandons her ideaof the duke but wants an idol, and finally decides to live for fame;studies her shoulders, hips, bust, to gauge her success in life; triestarget-shooting, hits every time and feels it to be fateful; at timesdespises her mother because she is so easily influenced by her; meetsanother man whose affection for her she thinks might be as reverent asreligion and who never profaned the purity of his life by a thought,but finally drops him because the possible disappointment would beunbearable; finds that the more unhappy any one is for love of us thehappier we are; wonders why she has weeping spells; wonders what lovethat people talk so much about really is, and whether she is ever toknow. One night, at the age of seventeen, she has a fit of despairwhich vents itself in moans until arising, she seizes the dining-roomclock, rushes out and throws it into the sea, when she becomes happy."Poor clock!"

At another time she fears she has used the word love lightly andresolves to no longer invoke God's help, yet in the next line praysHim to let her die as everything is against her, her thoughts areincoherent, she hates herself and everything is contemptible; but shewishes to die peacefully while some one is singing a beautiful air ofVerdi. Again she thinks of shaving her head to save the trouble ofarranging her hair; is crazed to think that every moment brings hernearer death; to waste a moment of life is infamous, yet she can trustno one; all the freshness of life is gone; few things affect her now;she wonders how in the past she could have acted so foolishly andreasoned so wisely; is proud that no advice in the world could everkeep her from doing anything she wished. She thinks the journal of herformer years exaggerated and resolves to be moderate; wants to makeothers feel as she feels; finds that the only cure for disenchantmentwith life is devotion to work; fears her face is wearing an anxiouslook instead of the confident expression which was its chief charm."Impossible" is a hideous, maddening word; to think of dying like adog as most people do and leaving nothing behind is a granite wallagainst which she every instant dashes her head. If she loved a man,every expression of admiration for anything, or anybody else in herpresence would be a profanation. Now she thinks the man she loves mustnever know what it is to be in want of money and must purchaseeverything he wishes; must weep to see a woman want for anything, andfind the door of no palace or club barred to him. Art becomes a greatshining light in her life of few pleasures and many griefs, yet shedares hope for nothing.

At eighteen all her caprices are exhausted; she vows and prays in thename of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for her wishes. She would liketo be a millionaire, get back her voice, obtain the prix de Romeunder the guise of a man and marry Napoleon IV. On winning a medal forher pictures she does nothing but laugh, cry, and dream of greatness,but the next day is scolded and grows discouraged. She has an immensesense of growth and transformation, so that not a trace of her oldnature remains; feels that she has far too much of some things, andfar too little of others in her nature; sees defects in her mother'scharacter, whose pertinacity is like a disease; realizes that one ofher chief passions is to inspire rather than to feel love; that hertemper is profoundly affected by her dress; deplores that her familyexpect her to achieve greatness rather than give her the stimulus ofexpecting nothing; declares that she thanks a million thoughts forevery word that she writes; is disgusted with and sometimes absolutelyhates herself. At one time she coquets with Kant, and wonders if he isright that all things exist only in the imagination; has a passion forsuch "abracadabrante follies" that seem so learned and logical, but isgrieved to feel them to be false; longs to penetrate the intellectualworld, to see, learn, and know everything; admires Balzac because hedescribes so frankly all that he has felt; loves Fleury, who has shownher a wider horizon; still has spells of admiring her dazzlingcomplexion and deploring that she can not go out alone; feels that sheis losing her grip on art and also on God, who no longer hears herprayers, and resolves to kill herself if she is not famous at thirty.

At nineteen, and even before, she has spells of feeling inefficientcries, calls on God, feels exhausted; is almost stunned when she hearsthat the young French prince about whom she has spun romances waskilled by the Kaffirs; feels herself growing serious and sensible;despises death; realizes that God is not what she thought, but isperhaps Nature and Life or is perhaps Chance; she thinks out possiblepictures she might paint; develops a Platonic friendship for herprofessor; might marry an old man with twenty-seven millions, butspurns the thought; finds herself growing deaf gradually, and atnineteen finds three grey hairs; has awful remorse for days, when shecannot work and so loses herself in novels and cigarettes; makes manygood resolutions and then commits some folly as if in a dream; hasspells of reviewing the past. When the doctor finds a serious lungtrouble and commands iodine, cod-liver oil, hot milk, and flannel, sheat first scorns death and refuses all, and is delighted at the terrorof her friends, but gradually does all that is necessary; feelsherself too precocious and doomed; deplores especially thatconsumption will cost her her good looks; has fits of intense angeralternating with tears; concludes that death is annihilation; realizesthe horrible thought that she has a skeleton within her that some timeor other will come out; reads the New Testament again and returns tobelief in miracle, and prayer to Jesus and the Virgin; distributes onethousand francs to the poor; records the dreamy delusions that flowthrough her brain at night and the strange sensations by day. Her eyesymptoms cause her to fear blindness again; she grows superstitious,believing in signs and fortune-tellers; is strongly impelled toembrace and make up with her mother; at times defies God and death;sees a Spanish bull-fight and gets from it a general impression ofhuman cowardice, but has a strange intoxication with blood and wouldlike to thrust a lance into the neck of every one she meets; coquets agreat deal with the thought of marriage; takes up her art and paints afew very successful pictures; tries to grapple with the terriblequestion, "What is my unbiased opinion concerning myself?" pantschiefly for fame. When the other lung is found diseased the diarybecomes sometimes more serious, sometimes more fevered; she is almostracked to find some end in life; shall she marry, or paint? and atlast finds much consolation in the visits of Bastien-Lepage, who comesto see her often while he is dying of some gastric trouble. She keepsup occasional and often daily entries in her journal until eleven daysbefore her death, occurring in October, 1884, at the age oftwenty-three, and precipitated by a cold incurred while making anopen-air sketch.

The confessional outpourings of Mary MacLane[28] constitute a uniqueand valuable adolescent document, despite the fact that it seemsthroughout affected and written for effect; however, it wellillustrates a real type, although perhaps hardly possible save in thiscountry, and was inspired very likely by the preceding.

She announces at the outset that she is odd, a genius, an extremeegotist; has no conscience; despises her father, "Jim MacLane ofselfish memory"; loves scrubbing the floor because it gives herstrength and grace of body, although her daily life is an "emptydamned weariness." She is a female Napoleon passionately desiringfame; is both a philosopher and a coward; her heart is wooden;although but nineteen, she feels forty; desires happiness even morethan fame, for an hour of which she would give up at once fame, money,power, virtue, honor, truth, and genius to the devil, whose coming sheawaits. She discusses her portrait, which constitutes thefrontispiece; is glad of her good strong body, and still awaits in awild, frenzied impatience the coming of the devil to take hersacrifice, and to whom she would dedicate her life. She loves but onein all the world, an older "anemone" lady, once her teacher. She rannot distinguish between right and wrong; love is the only thing realwhich will some day bring joy, but it is agony to wait. "Oh, dame!damn! damn! damn! every living thing in the world!—the universe bedamned!" herself included. She is "marvelously deep," but thanks thegood devil who has made her without conscience and virtue so that shemay take her happiness when it comes. Her soul seeks but blindly, fornothing answers. How her happiness will seethe, quiver, writhe, shine,dance, rush, surge, rage, blare, and wreak with love and light when itcomes!

The devil she thinks fascinating and strong, with a will of steel,conventional clothes, whom she periodically falls in love with andwould marry, and would love to be tortured by him. She holds imaginaryconversations with him. If happiness does not come soon she willcommit suicide, and she finds rapture in the thought of death. InButte, Montana, where she lives, she wanders among the box rustlers,the beer jerkers, biscuit shooters, and plunges out into the sand andbarrenness, but finds everything dumb. The six toothbrushes in thebathroom make her wild and profane. She flirts with death at the topof a dark, deep pit, and thinks out the stages of decomposition if sheyielded herself to Death, who would dearly love to have her. Sheconfesses herself a thief on several occasions, but comforts herselfbecause the stolen money was given to the poor. Sometimes her "verygood legs" carry her out into the country, where she has imaginarylove confabs with the devil, but the world is so empty, dreary, andcold, and it is all so hard to bear when one is a woman and nineteen.She has a litany from which she prays in recurrent phrases "Kinddevil, deliver me"—as, e.g., from musk, boys with curls, femininemen, wobbly hips, red note-paper, codfish-balls, lisle-threadstockings, the books of A.C. Gunter and Albert Ross, wax flowers, softold bachelors and widowers, nice young men, tin spoons, false teeth,thin shoes, etc. She does not seem real to herself everything is ablank. Though she doubts everything else, she will keep the one atomof faith in love and the truth that is love and life in her heart.When something shrieks within her, she feels that all her anguish isfor nothing and that she is a fool. She is exasperated that peoplecall her peculiar, but confesses that she loves admiration; she canfascinate and charm company if she tries; imagines an admiration forMessalina. She most desires to cultivate badness when there is lead inthe sky. "I would live about seven years of judicious badness, andthen death if you will." "I long to cultivate the of badness in me."She describes the fascination of making and eating fudge; devotes achapter to describing how to eat an olive; discusses her figure. "Inthe front of my shirt-waist there are nine cambric handkerchiefscunningly distributed." She discusses her foot, her beautiful hair,her hips; describes each of the seventeen little engraved portraits ofNapoleon that she keeps, with each of which she falls in love; vowsshe would give up even her marvelous genius far one dear, bright dayfree from loneliness. When her skirts need sewing, she simply pinsthem; this lasts longer, and had she mended them with needle andthread she would have been sensible, which she hates. As she walksover the sand one day she vows that she would like a man to come so bethat he was strong and a perfect villain and she would pray him tolead her to what the world calls her ruin. Nothing is of consequenceto her except to be rid of unrest and pain. She would be positivelyand not merely negatively wicked. To poison her soul would rouse hermental power. "Oh, to know just once what it is to be loved!" "I knowthat I am a genius more than any genius that has lived," yet she oftenthinks herself a small vile creature for whom no one cares. The worldis ineffably dull, heaven has always fooled her, and she is starvingfor love.

Ada Negri illustrates the other extreme of genuineness and isdesperately in earnest.[29] She began to teach school in a squalid,dismal Italian village, and at eighteen to write the poetry that hasmade her famous. She lived in a dim room back of a stable, up twoflights, where the windows were not glass but paper, and where sheseems to have been, like her mother, a mill head before she was ateacher. She had never seen a theater, but had read of Duse withenthusiasm; had never seen the sea, mountain, or even a hill, lake, orlarge city, but she had read of them. After she began to write,friends gave her two dream days in the city. Then she returned, put onher wooden shoes, and began to teach her eighty children to spell. Thepoetry she writes is from the heart of her own experience.

She craved "the kiss of genius and of light;" but the awful figure ofmisfortune with its dagger stood by her bed at night. She writes:

"I have no name—my home a hovel damp;
I grew up from the mire;
Wretched and outcast folk my family,
And yet within me burns a flame of fire."

There is always a praying angel and an evil dwarf on either side. Theblack abyss attracts her yet she is softened by a child's caress. Shelaughs at the blackest calamities that threaten her, but weeps overthin, wan children without bread. Her whole life goes into song. Theboy criminal on the street fascinates her and she would kiss him. Shewrites of jealousy as a ghost of vengeance. If death comes, she fears"that the haggard doctor will dissect my naked corpse," and picturesherself dying on the operating-table like a stray dog and herwell-made body "disgraced by the lustful kiss of the too eager blade"as, "with sinister smile untiring, they tear my bowels out and stillgloat over my sold corpse, go on to bare my bones, and veins at will,wrench out my heart," probe vainly for the secrets of hunger and themystery of pain, until from her "dead breast gurgles a gasp ofmalediction." Much of her verse is imprecation. "A crimson rain ofcrying blood dripping from riddled chests" of those slain for libertyfalls, on her heart; the sultry factories where "monsters, of steel,huge engines, snort all day," and where the pungent air poisons theblood of the pale weaver girls; the fate of the mason who felt from ahigh roof and struck the stone flagging, whose funeral she attends,all inspire her to sing occasionally the songs of enfranchised labor.Misery as a drear, toothless ghost visits her, as when gloomy pinionshad overspread her dying mother's bed, to wrench with sharp nails allthe hope from her breast with which she had defied it. A wretched oldman on the street inspires her to sing of what she imagines is hishappy though humble prime. There is the song of the pickaxe brandishedin revolution when mobs cry "Peace, labor bread," and in mines ofindustry beneath the earth. She loves the "defeated" in whose house nofire glows, who live in caves and dens, and writes of the mutilationof a woman in the factory machinery. At eighteen years "a loom, twohandsome eyes that know no tears, a cotton dress, a love, belong tome." She is inspired by a master of the forge beating a red-hot bar,with his bare neck swelled. He is her demon, her God, and her pride inhim is ecstasy. She describes jealousy of two rival women, so intensethat they fight and bite, and the pure joy of a guileless,intoxicating, life-begetting first kiss. She longs for infinitestretches of hot, golden sand, over which she would gallop wildly onher steed; anticipates an old age of cap and spectacles; revels in thehurricane, and would rise in and fly and whirl with it adrift far outin the immensity of space. She tells us, "Of genius and light I'm ablithe, millionaire," and elsewhere she longs for the everlasting iceof lofty mountains, the immortal silence of the Alps; sings of her"sad twenty years," "how all, all goes when love is gone and spent."She imagines herself springing into the water which closes over her,while her naked soul, ghostly pale, whirls past through the lonelydale. She imprecates the licentious world of crafty burghers,coquettes, gamblers, well-fed millionaires, cursed geese and serpentsthat make the cowardly vile world, and whom she would smite in theface with her indignant verse. "Thou crawlest and I soar." She chantsthe champions of the spade, hammer, pick, though they are ground andbowed with toil, disfigured within, with furrowed brows. She pants forwar with outrage and with wrong; questions the abyss for its secret;hears moans and flying shudders; and sees phantoms springing fromputrid tombs. The full moon is an old malicious spy, peepingstealthily with evil eye. She is a bird caught in a cursed cage, andprays some one to unlock the door and give her space and light, andlet her soar away in ecstasy and glory. Nothing less than infinitespace will satisfy her. Even the tempest, the demon, or a malevolentspirit might bear her away on unbridled wings. In one poem sheapostrophizes Marie Bashkirtseff as warring with vast genius againstunknown powers, but who now is in her coffin among worms, her skullgrinning and showing its teeth. She would be possessed by her andthrilled as by an electric current. A dwarf beggar wrings her heartwith pity, but she will not be overwhelmed. Though a daring peasant,she will be free and sing out her pæan to the sun, though amid theinfernal glow of furnaces, forges, and the ringing noise of hammersand wheels.

Literary men who record their experiences during this stage seem todiffer from women in several important respects. First, they write withless abandon. I can recall no male MacLanes. A Bashkirtseff would beless impossible, and a Negri with social reform in her heart is stillless so. But men are more prone to characterize their publicmetamorphoses later in life, when they are a little paled, and perhapsfeel less need of confessionalism for that reason. It would, however, betoo hazardous to elaborate this distinction too far. Secondly and moreclearly, men tend to vent their ephebic calentures more in the field ofaction. They would break the old moorings of home and strike out newcareers, or vent their souls in efforts and dreams of reconstructing thepolitical, industrial, or social world. Their impracticabilities aremore often in the field of practical life and remoter from their ownimmediate surroundings. This is especially true in our practicalcountry, which so far lacks subjective characterizations of this age ofeminent literary merit, peculiarly intense as it is here. Thirdly, theyerupt in a greater variety of ways, and the many kinds of genius andtalent that now often take possession of their lives like fate are morevaried and individual. This affords many extreme contrasts, as, e.g.,between Trollope's pity for, and Goethe's apotheosis of his youth;Mill's loss of feeling, and Jefferies's unanalytic, passionate outburstsof sentiment; the esthetic ritualism of Symonds, and the progressivereligious emancipation of Fielding Hall; the moral and religioussupersensitiveness of Oliphant, who was a reincarnation of medievalmonkhood, and the riotous storminess of Müller and Ebers; theabnormalities and precocity of De Quincey, and the steady, healthfulgrowth of Patterson; the simultaneity of a fleshly and spiritual love inKeller and Goethe, and the duality of Pater, with his great andtyrannical intensification of sensation for nature and the sequentmysticity and symbolism. In some it is fulminating but episodic, inothers gradual and lifelong like the advent of eternal spring. Fourth,in their subjective states women outgrow less in their consciousness,and men depart farther from their youth, in more manifold ways. Lastly,in its religious aspects, the male struggles more with dogma, and hisenfranchisem*nt from it is more intellectually belabored. Yet, despiteall these differences, the analogies between the sexes are probably yetmore numerous, more all-pervasive. All these biographic facts revealnothing not found in questionnaire returns from more ordinary youth,so that for our purposes they are only the latter, writ large becausesuperior minds only utter what all more inwardly feel. The arrangementby nationality which follows gives no yet adequate basis for inferenceunless it be the above American peculiarity.

In his autobiography from 1785-1803, De Quincey[30] remembered feelingthat life was finished and blighted for him at the age of six, up towhich time the influence of his sister three years older had broodedover him.

His first remembrance, however, is of a dream of terrific grandeurbefore he was two, which seemed to indicate that his dream tendencieswere constitutional and not due to morphine, but the chill was uponthe first glimpse that this was a world of evil. He had been broughtup in great seclusion from all knowledge of poverty and oppression ina silent garden with three sisters, but the rumor that a femaleservant had treated one of them rudely just before her death plungedhim into early pessimism. He felt that little Jane would come backcertainly in the spring with the roses, and he was glad that his uttermisery with the blank anarchy confusion which her death brought couldnot be completely remembered. He stole into the chamber where hercorpse lay, and as he stood, a solemn wind, the saddest he ever heard,that might have swept the fields of mortality for a thousandcenturies, blew, and that same hollow Memnonian wind he often hadheard since, and it brought back the open summer window and thecorpse. A vault above opened into the sky, and he slept and dreamedthere, standing by her, he knew not how long; a worm that could notdie was at his heart, for this was the holy love between children thatcould not perish. The funeral was full of darkness and despair forhim, and after it he sought solitude, gazed into the heavens to seehis sister till he was tired, and realized that he was alone. Thus,before the end of his sixth year, with a mind already adolescent,although with a retarded body, the minor tone of life became dominantand his awakening to it was hard.

As a penniless schoolboy wandering the streets of London at night, hewas on familiar and friendly terms of innocent relationship with anumber of outcast women. In his misery they were to him simply sistersin calamity, but he found in them humanity, disinterested generosity,courage, and fidelity. One night, after he had walked the streets forweeks with one of these friendless girls who had not completed hersixteenth year, as they sat on the steps of a house, he grew very ill,and had she not rushed to buy from her slender purse cordials andtenderly ministered to and revived him, he would have died. Many yearslater he used to wander past this house, and he recalled with realtenderness this youthful friendship; he longed again to meet the"noble-minded Ann ——" with whom he had so often conversed familiarly"more Socratico," whose betrayer he had vainly sought to punish, andyearned to hear from her in order to convey to her some authenticmessage of gratitude, peace, and forgiveness.

His much older brother came home in his thirty-ninth year to die. Hehad been unmanageable in youth and his genius for mischief was aninspiration, yet he was hostile to everything pusillanimous, haughty,aspiring, ready to fasten a quarrel on his shadow for running before,at first inclined to reduce his boy brother to a fa*g, but finallybefore his death became a great influence in his life. Prominent werethe fights between De Quincey and another older brother on the onehand, and the factory crowd of boys on the other, a fight incessantlyrenewed at the close of factory hours, with victory now on one and nowon the other side; fought with stones and sticks, where thrice he wastaken prisoner, where once one of the factory women kissed him, to thegreat delight of his heart. He finally invented a kingdom like HartleyColeridge, called Gom Broon. He thought first that it had no location,but finally because his brother's imaginary realm was north and hewanted wide water between them, his was in the far south. It was onlytwo hundred and seventy miles in circuit, and he was stunned to betold by his brother one day that his own domain swept south for eightydegrees, so that the distance he had relied on vanished. Here,however, he continued to rule for well or ill, raising taxes, keepingan imaginary standing army, fishing herring and selling the product ofhis fishery for manure, and experiencing how "uneasy lies the headthat wears a crown." He worried over his obligations to Gom Broon, andthe shadow froze into reality, and although his brother's kingdomTigrosylvania was larger, his was distinguished for eminent men and ahistory not to be ashamed of. A friend had read Lord Monboddo's viewthat men had sprung from apes, and suggested that the inhabitants ofGom Broon had tails, so that the brother told him that his subjectshad not emerged from apedom and he must invent arts to eliminate thetails. They must be made to sit down for six hours a day as abeginning. Abdicate he would not, though all his subjects had threetails apiece. They had suffered together. Vain was his brother'ssuggestion that they have a Roman toga to conceal their ignominiousappendages. He was greatly interested in two scrofulous idiots, whofinally died, and feared that his subjects were akin to them.

John Stuart Mill's Autobiography presents one of the most remarkablemodifications of the later phases of adolescent experience. No boyever had more diligent and earnest training than his father gave himor responded better. He can not remember when he began to learn Greek,but was told that it was at the age of three. The list of classicalauthors alone that he read in the original, to say nothing of history,political, scientific, logical, and other works before he was twelve,is perhaps unprecedented in all history. He associated with his fatherand all his many friends on their own level, but modestly ascribeseverything to his environment, insists that in natural gifts he isother below than above par, and declares that everything he did couldbe done by every boy of average capacity and healthy physicalconstitution. His father made the Greek virtue of temperance ormoderation cardinal, and thought human life "a poor thing at bestafter the freshness of youth and unsatisfied curiosity had gone by."He scorned "the intense" and had only contempt for strong emotion.

In his teens Mill was an able debater and writer for the quarterlies,and devoted to the propagation of the theories of Bentham, Ricardo,and associationism. From the age of fifteen he had an object in life,viz., to reform the world. This gave him happiness, deep, permanent,and assured for the future, and the idea of struggling to promoteutilitarianism seemed an inspiring program for life. But in the autumnof 1826, when he was twenty years of age, he felt into "a dull stateof nerves," where he could no longer enjoy and what had producedpleasure seemed insipid; "the state, I should think, in which convertsto Methodism usually are when smitten by their first 'conviction ofsin.' In this frame of mind it occurred to me to put the questiondirectly to myself; 'Suppose that all your objects in life wererealized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which youare looking forward to could be completely effected at this veryinstant; would this be a great joy and happiness to you?' And anirrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, 'No.' At this myheart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life wasconstructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in thecontinual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and howcould there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to havenothing left to live for. At first I hoped that the cloud would passaway of itself, but it did not. A night's sleep, the sovereign remedyfor the smaller vexations of life, had no effect on it. I awoke to arenewed consciousness of the woful fact. I carried it with me into allcompanies, into all occupations. Hardly anything had power to cause meeven a few minutes' oblivion of it. For some months the cloud seemedto grow thicker and thicker. The lines in Coleridge's 'Dejection'—Iwas not then acquainted with them—exactly described my case:

"'A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet or relief
In word, or sigh, or tear.'

"In vain I sought relief from my favorite books, those memorials ofpast nobleness and greatness from which I had always hitherto drawnstrength and animation. I read them now without feeling, or with theaccustomed feeling minus all its charm; and I became persuaded that mylove of mankind, and of excellence for its own sake, had worn itselfout. I sought no comfort by speaking to others of what I felt. If Ihad loved any one sufficiently to make confiding my griefs anecessity, I should not have been in the condition I was. I felt, too,that mine was not an interesting or in anyway respectable distress.There was nothing in it to attract sympathy. Advice, if I had knownwhere to seek it, would have been most precious. The words of Macbethto the physician often occurred to my thoughts. But there was no oneon whom I could build the faintest hope of such assistance. My father,to whom it would have been natural to me to have recourse in anypractical difficulties, was the last person to whom, in such a case asthis, I looked for help. Everything convinced me that he had noknowledge of any such mental state as I was suffering from, and thateven if he could be made to understand it, he was not the physicianwho could heal it. My education, which was wholly his work, had beenconducted without any regard to the possibility of its ending in thisresult, and I saw no use in giving him the pain of thinking that hisplans had failed, when the failure was probably irremediable, and, atall event, beyond the power of his remedies. Of other friends, I hadat that time none to whom I had any hope of making my conditionintelligible. It was, however, abundantly intelligible to myself, andthe more I dwelt upon it the more hopeless it appeared."

He now saw what had hitherto seemed incredible, that the habit ofanalysis tends to wear away the feelings. He felt "stranded at thecommencement of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship and a rudder, butno sail; without any real desire for the ends which I had been socarefully fitted out to work for: no delight in virtue, or the generalgood, but also just as little in anything else. The fountains ofvanity and ambition seemed to have dried up within me as completely asthose of benevolence." His vanity had been gratified at too early anage, and, like all premature pleasures, they had caused indifference,until he despaired of creating any fresh association of pleasure withany objects of human dire. Meanwhile, dejected and melancholy as hewas through the winter, he went on mechanically with his tasks;thought he found in Coleridge the first description of what he wasfeeling; feared the idiosyncrasies of his education had made him abeing unique and apart. "I asked myself if I could or if I was boundto go on living, when life must be passed in this manner. I generallyanswered to myself that I did not think I could possibly bear itbeyond a year." But within about half that time, in reading a patheticpage of how a mere boy felt that he could save his family and take theplace of all they had lost, a vivid conception of the scene came overhim and he was moved to tears. From that moment, his burden grewlighter. He saw that his heart was not dead and that he still had somestuff left of which character and happiness are made; and althoughthere were several later lapses, some of which lasted many months, hewas never again as miserable as he had been.

These experience left him changed in two respects. He had a new theoryof life, having much in common with the anti-consciousness theory ofCarlyle. He still held happiness the end of life, but thought it mustbe aimed at indirectly and taken incidentally. The other change wasthat for the first time he gave its proper place to internal cultureof the individual, especially the training of the feelings whichbecame now cardinal. He relished and felt the power of poetry and art;was profoundly moved by music; fell in love with Wordsworth and withnature, and his later depressions were best relieved by the power ofrural beauty, which wrought its charm not because of itself but by thestates and feelings it aroused. His ode on the intimations ofimmortality showed that he also had felt that the first freshness ofyouthful joy was not lasting, and had sought and found compensation.He had thus come to a very different standpoint from that of hisfather, who had up to this time formed his mind and life, anddeveloped on this basis his unique individuality.

Jefferies, when eighteen, began his "Story of My Heart,"[31] which hesaid was an absolutely true confession of the stages of emotion in asoul from which all traces of tradition and learning were erased, andwhich stood face to face with nature and the unknown.

His heart long seemed dusty and parched for want of feeling, and hefrequented a hill, where the pores of his soul opened to a new air."Lying down on the grass, I spoke in my soul to the earth, the sun,the air and the distant sea…. I desired to have its strength, itsmystery and glory. I addressed the sun, desiring the sole equivalentof his light and brilliance, his endurance, and unwearied race. Iturned to the blue heaven over, gazing into its depth, inhaling itsexquisite color and sweetness. The rich blue of the unobtainableflower of the sky drew my soul toward it, and there it rested, forpure color is the rest of the heart. By all these I prayed. I felt anemotion of the soul beyond all definition; prayer is a puny thing toit." He prayed by the thyme; by the earth; the flowers which hetouched; the dust which he let fall through his fingers; was filledwith "a rapture, an ecstasy, an inflatus. With this inflatus Iprayed…. I hid my face in the grass; I was wholly prostrated; I lostmyself in the wrestle…. I see now that what I labored for was soullife, more soul learning." After gazing upward he would turn his faceinto the grass, shutting out everything with hands each side, till hefelt down into the earth and was absorbed in it, whispering deep downto its center. Every natural impression, trees, insects, air, clouds,he used for prayer, "that my soul might be more than the cosmos oflife." His "Lyra" prayer was to live a more exalted and intense soullife; enjoy more bodily pleasure and live long and find power toexecute his designs. He often tried, but failed for years to write atleast a meager account of these experiences. He felt himself immortaljust as he felt beauty. He was in eternity already; the supernaturalis only the natural misnamed. As he lay face down on the grass,seizing it with both hands, he longed for death, to be burned on apyre of pine wood on a high hill, to have his ashes scattered wide andbroadcast, to be thrown into the space he longed for while living, buthe feared that such a luxury of resolution into the elements would betoo costly. Thus his naked mind, close against naked mother Nature,wrested from her the conviction of soul, immortality, deity, underconditions as primitive as those of the cave man, and his mostrepeated prayer was "Give me the deepest soul life."

In other moods he felt the world outré-human, and his mind could by notwist be fitted to the cosmos. Ugly, designless creatures caused himto cease to look for deity in nature, where all happens by chance. Heat length concluded there is something higher than soul and abovedeity, and better than God, for which he searched and labored. Hefound favorite thinking places, to which he made pilgrimages, where he"felt out into the depths of the ether." His frame could not bear thelabor his heart demanded. Work of body was his meat and drink. "Neverhave I had enough of it. I wearied long before I was satisfied, andweariness did not bring a cessation of desire, the thirst was stillthere. I rode; I used the ax; I split tree-trunks with wedges; my armstired, but my spirit remained fresh and chafed against the physicalweariness." Had he been indefinitely stronger, he would have longedfor more strength. He was often out of doors all day and often halfthe night; wanted more sunshine; wished the day was sixty hours long;took pleasure in braving the cold so that it should be not life'sdestroyer but its renewer. Yet he abhorred asceticism. He wrestledwith the problem of the origin of his soul and destiny, but could findno solution; revolted at the assertion that all is designed for thebest; "a man of intellect and humanity could cause everything tohappen in an infinitely superior manner." He discovered that no oneever died of old age, but only of disease; that we do not even knowwhat old age would be like; found that his soul is infinite, but liesin abeyance; that we are murdered by our ancestors and must roll backthe tide of death; that a hundredth part of man's labor would sufficefor his support; that idleness is no evil; that in the futurenine-tenths of the time will be leisure, and to that end he will workwith all his heart. "I was not more than eighteen when an inner andesoteric meaning began to come to me from all the visible universe,and indefinable aspirations filled me."

Interesting as is this document, it is impossible to avoid thesuspicion that the seventeen years which intervened between thebeginning of these experiences and their final record, coupled withthe perhaps unconscious tendency toward literary effect, detract moreor less from their value as documents of adolescent nature.

Mr. H. Fielding Hall, author of "The Soul of a People," has sincewritten a book[32] in which, beginning with many definitions ofChristianity, weighing the opinion of those who think all our advanceis made because of, against those who think it in spite ofChristianity, he proceeds to give the story of a boy, probablyhimself, who till twelve was almost entirely reared by women and withchildren younger than himself.

He was sickly, and believed not in the Old but in the New Testament;in the Sermon on the Mount, which he supposed all accepted and livedby; that war and wealth were bad and learning apt to be a snare; thatthe ideal life was that of a poor curate, working hard and unhappy. Attwelve, he went to a boarding-school, passed from a woman's world intoa man's, out of the New Testament into the Old, out of dreams intoreality. War was a glorious opportunity, and all followed the Britishvictories, which were announced publicly. Big boys were going toSandhurst or Woolwich; there were parties; and the school code neverturned the other cheek. Wars were God's storms, stirring stagnantnatures to new life; wealth was worshiped; certain lies were an honor;knowledge was an extremely desirable thing—all this was at first newand delightful, but extremely wicked. Sunday was the only other OldTestament rule, but was then forgotten. Slowly a repugnance ofreligion in all its forms arose. He felt his teachers hypocrites; heraised no alarm, "for he was hardly conscious that his anchor haddragged or that he had lost hold" of it forever. At eighteen, he readDarwin and found that if he were right, Genesis was wrong; man hadrisen, not fallen; if a part was wrong, the whole was. If God made theworld, the devil seemed to rule it; prayer can not influence him; theseven days of creation were periods, Heaven knows how long. Why didall profess and no one believe religion? Why is God so stern and yetso partial, and how about the Trinity? Then explanations were given.Heaven grew repulsive, as a place for the poor, the maimed, thestupid, the childish, and those unfit for earth generally.

Faiths came from the East. "The North has originated only Thor, Odin,Balder, Valkyres." The gloom and cold drive man into himself; do notopen him. In the East one can live in quiet solitude, with no effort,close to nature. The representatives of all faiths wear ostentatiouslytheir badges, pray in public, and no one sneers at all religions.Oriental faiths have no organization; there is no head of Hinduism,Buddhism, or hardly of Mohammedanism. There are no missions, butreligion grows rankly from a rich soil, so the boy wrote threedemands: a reasonable theory of the universe, a workable and workingcode of conduct, and a promise of something desirable hereafter. So heread books and tried to make a system.

On a hill, in a thunder-storm in the East, he realized how Thor wasborn. Man fears thunder; it seems the voice of a greater man. Denyeyes, legs, and body of the Deity, and nothing is left. God as anabstract spirit is unthinkable, but Buddhism offers us no God, onlylaw. Necessity, blind force, law, or a free personal will—that is thealternative. Freedom limits omnipotence; the two can never mix. "TheGerman Emperor's God, clanking round the heavenly mansions wearing aGerman Pickelhaube and swearing German oaths," is not satisfactory.Man's God is what he admires most in himself; he can be propitiated,hence atonement; you can not break a law, but you can study it.Inquiry, not submission, is the attitude. Perhaps both destiny andfreedom are true, but truth is for the sake of light.

Thor had no moral code; the Greeks were unmoral. Jehovah at firstasked only fear, reverence, and worship. This gives no guide to life.Most codes are directed against a foe and against pain. Truth, mercy,courtesy—these were slowly added to reverence; then sanitary rules,hence castes. Two codes, those of Christ and Buddha, tower above allothers. They are the same in praising not wealth, greatness, or power,but purity, renunciation of the world, as if one fitted one's self forone by being unfitted for the other world.

Is heaven a bribe? Its ideals are those of children, of girl angels,white wings, floating dresses, no sheep, but lambs. "Surely there isnothing in all the world so babyish." One can hardly imagine a manwith a deep voice, with the storm of life beating his soul, amid thosebaby faces. If happiness in any act or attitude is perfect, it willlast forever. Where is due the weariness or satiety? But if happinessbe perfect, this is impossible; so life would be monotony akin toannihilation. But life is change, and change is misery. There iseffort here; but there will be none in the great peace that passesunderstanding; no defeat, therefore no victory; no friends, because noenemies; no joyous meetings, because no farewells. It is the shadowsand the dark mysteries that sound the depths of our hearts. No manthat ever lived, if told that he could be young again or go to anyheaven, would choose the latter. Men die for many things, but all fearthe beyond. Thus no religion gives us an intelligible First Cause, acode or a heaven that we want. The most religious man is the peasantlistening to the angelus, putting out a little ghi for his God; thewoman crying in the pagoda. Thus we can only turn to the hearts of menfor the truth of religion.

Biographies and autobiographies furnish many photographic glimpses ofthe struggles and experiences of early adolescent years.

Anthony Trollope's autobiography[33] is pitiful. He was poor anddisliked by most of his masters and treated with ignominy by hisfellow pupils. He describes himself as always in disgrace. At fifteenhe walked three miles each way twice a day to and from school. As asizar he seemed a wretched farmer's boy, reeking from the dunghill,sitting next the sons of big peers. All were against him, and he wasallowed to join no games, and learned, he tells us, absolutely nothingbut a little Greek and Latin. Once only, goaded to desperation, herallied and whipped a bully. The boy was never able to overcome theisolation of his school position, and while he coveted popularity withan eagerness which was almost mean, and longed exceedingly to excel incricket or with the racquet, was allowed to know nothing of them. Heremembers at nineteen never to have had a lesson in writing,arithmetic, French, or German. He knew his masters by their ferulesand they him. He believes that he has "been flogged oftener than anyhuman being alive. It was just possible to obtain five scourgings inone day at Winchester, and I have often boasted that I have obtainedthem all." Prizes were distributed prodigally, but he never got one.For twelve years of tuition, he says, "I do not remember that I everknew a lesson."

At this age he describes himself as "an idle, desolate, hanger on …without an idea of a career or a profession or a trade," but he wastolerably happy because he could fancy himself in love with prettygirls and had been removed from the real misery of school, but had nota single aspiration regarding his future. Three of his household weredying of consumption, and his mother was day nurse, night nurse, anddivided her time between pill-boxes and the ink-bottle, for when shewas seventy-six she had written one hundred and forty volumes, thefirst of which was not written till she was fifty.

Gradually the boy became alive to the blighted ambition of hisfather's life and the strain his mother was enduring, nursing thedying household and writing novels to provide a decent roof for themto die under. Anthony got a position at the post-office without anexamination. He knew no French nor science; was a bad speller andworse writer and could not have sustained an examination on anysubject. Still he could not bear idleness, and was always going aboutwith some castle in the air finely built in his mind, carrying on forweeks and years the same continuous story; binding himself down tocertain laws, proprieties, and unities; always his own hero, excludingeverything violently improbable. To this practise, which he callsdangerous and which began six or seven years before he went to thepost-office, he ascribes his power to maintain an interest in afictitious story and to live in a entirely outside imaginative life.During these seven years he acquired a character of irregularity andgrew reckless.

Mark Pattison[34] shows us how his real life began in the middleteens, when his energy was "directed to one end, to improve myself";"to form my own mind; to sound things thoroughly; to be free from thebondage of unreason and the traditional prejudices which, when I firstbegan to think, constituted the whole of my mental fabric." He enteredupon life with a "hide-bound and contracted intellect," and depicts"something of the steps by which I emerged from that frozencondition." He believes that to "remember the dreams and confusions ofchildhood and never to lose the recollection of the curiosity andsimplicity of that age, is one of the great gifts of the poeticcharacter," although this, he tells us, was extraordinarily true ofGeorge Sand, but not of himself. From the age of twelve on, aFellowship at Oriel was the ideal of his life, and although he becamea commoner there at seventeen, his chief marvel is that he was soimmature and unimpressionable.

William Hale White[35] learned little at school, save Latin and goodpenmanship, but his very life was divided into halves—Sundays andweek days—and he reflects at some length upon the immense dangers ofthe early teens; the physiological and yet subtler psychic penaltiesof error; callousness to fine pleasures; hardening of the conscience;and deplores the misery which a little instruction might have savedhim. At fourteen he underwent conversion, understood in his sect to bea transforming miracle, releasing higher and imprisoning lower powers.He compares it to the saving of a mind from vice by falling in lovewith a woman who is adored, or the reclamation of a young woman fromidleness and vanity by motherhood. But as a boy he was convinced ofmany things which were mere phrases, and attended prayer-meetings forthe clanship of being marked off from the world and of walking homewith certain girls. He learned to say in prayer that there was nothinggood in him, that he was rotten and filthy and his soul a mass ofputrefying sores; but no one took him at his word and expelled himfrom society, but thought the better of him. Soon he began to studytheology, but found no help in suppressing tempestuous lust, inunderstanding the Bible, or getting his doubts answered, and all thelectures seemed irrelevant chattering. An infidel was a monster whomhe had rarely ever seen. At nineteen he began to preach, but his heartwas untouched till he read Wordsworth's lyrical ballads, and thisrecreated a living God for him, melted his heart to tears, and madehim long for companionship; its effect was instantly seen in hispreaching, and soon made him slightly suspected as heretical.[36]

John Addington Symonds, in his autobiography, describes his"insect-like" devotion to creed in the green infancy of ritualism. Inhis early teens at boarding-school he and his mates, with halfsincerity, followed a classmate to compline, donned surplices, tossedcensers, arranged altars in their studies, bought bits of paintedglass for their windows and illuminated crucifixes with gold dust andvermilion. When he was confirmed, this was somewhat of an epoch.Preparation was like a plowshare, although it turned up nothingvaluable, and stimulated esthetic and emotional ardor. In a dim way hefelt God near, but he did not learn to fling the arms of the soul infaith around the cross of Christ. Later the revelation he found inPlato removed him farther from boyhood. He fell in love with grayGothic churches, painted glass, organ lofts, etc.

Walter Pater has described phases of ferment, perhaps largely his own,in the character of Florian Deleal; his rapture of the red hawthornblossoms, "absolutely the reddest of all things"; his times of"seemingly exclusive predominance of interest in beautiful physicalthings, a kind of tyranny of the senses"; and his later absorbingefforts to estimate the proportion of the sensuous and ideal,assigning most importance to sensible vehicles and occasions;associating all thoughts with touch and sight as a link betweenhimself and things, till he became more and more "unable to care foror think of soul but as in an actual body"; comforted in thecontemplation of death by the thought of flesh turning to violets andalmost oppressed by the pressure of the sensible world, his longingsfor beauty intensifying his fear of death. He loved to gaze on deadfaces in the Paris Morgue although the haunt of them made the sunshinesickly for days, and his long fancy that they had not really gone norwere quite motionless, but led a secret, half fugitive life, freer bynight, and perhaps dodging about in their old haunts with no greatgood-will toward the living, made him by turns pity and hate theghosts who came back in the wind, beating at the doors. His religiousnature gradually yielded to a mystical belief in Bible personages insome indefinite place as the reflexes and patterns of our nobler self,whose companionship made the world more satisfying. There was "aconstant substitution of the typical for the actual," and angels mightbe met anywhere. "A deep mysticity brooded over real things andpartings," marriages and many acts and accidents of life. "The verycolors of things became themselves weighty with meanings," or "full ofpenitence and peace." "For a time he walked through the world in asustained, not unpleasurable awe generated by the habitualrecognition, beside every circ*mstance and event of life, of itscelestial correspondent."

In D. C. Boulger's Life of General Charles Gordon[37] he records how,like Nelson Clive, his hero was prone to boys' escapades and outbreaksthat often made him the terror of his superiors. He was no bookworm,but famous as the possessor of high spirits, very often involved inaffairs that necessitated discipline, and seemed greatly out ofharmony with the popular idea of the ascetic of Mount Carmel. As aschoolboy he made wonderful squirts "that would wet you through in aminute." One Sunday twenty-seven panes of glass in a large storehousewere broken with screws shot through them by his cross-bow "forventilation." Ringing bells and pushing young boys in, butting anunpopular officer severely in the stomach with his head and taking thepunishment, hitting a bully with a clothes-brush and being put backsix months in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich; these are theearly outcrops of one side of his dual character. Although moresoldier than saint, he had a very cheery, genial side. He was alwaysready to take even the severest punishment for all his scrapes due toexcessive high spirits. When one of his superiors declared that hewould never make an officer, he felt his honor touched, and hisvigorous and expressive reply was to tear the epaulets from hisshoulders and throw them at his superior's feet. He had alreadydeveloped some of the rather moody love of seclusion that was markedlater, but religion did not strike him deeply enough to bring him intothe church until he was twenty-one, when he took his first sacrament.On one occasion he declined promotion within his reach because hewould have had to pass a friend to get it. He acted generally on hisimpulses, which were perhaps better than his judgments, took greatpleasure in corresponding on religious topics with his elder sister,and early formed the habit of excessive smoking which gravely affectedhis health later. His was the rare combination of inner repose andconfidence, interrupted by spells of gaiety.

Williamson, in his "Life of Holman Hunt,"[38] tells us that atthirteen he was removed from school as inapt in study. He began tospend his time in drawing in his copybooks. He was made clerk to anauctioneer, who fortunately encouraged his passion, and at sixteen waswith a calico printer. Here he amused himself by drawing flies on thewindow, which his employer tried to brush off. There was the greatesthome opposition to his studying art. After being rejected twice, hewas admitted at seventeen to the Academy school as a probationer, andthe next year, in 1845, as a student. Here he met Millais and Rossettiand was able to relieve the strain on his mind, which the worry of hisfather concerning his course caused him, and very soon his careerbegan.

At thirteen Fitzjames Stephen[39] roused himself to thrash a big boywho had long bullied him, and became a fighter. In his sixteenth year,he grew nearly five inches, but was so shy and timid at Eton that hesays, "I was like a sensible grown-up woman among a crowd of roughboys"; but in the reaction to the long abuse his mind was steeledagainst oppression, tyranny, and every kind of unfairness. He readPaine's "Age of Reason," and went "through the Bible as a man might gothrough a wood, cutting down trees. The priests can stick them inagain, but they will not make them grow."

Dickens has given us some interesting adolescents. Miss Dingwall in"Sketches by Boz," "very sentimental and romantic"; the tempery youngNickleby, who, at nineteen, thrashed Squeers; Barnaby Rudge, idioticand very muscular; Joe Willet, persistently treated as a boy till heran away to join the army and married Dolly Varden, perhaps the mostexuberant, good-humored, and beautiful girl in all the Dickensgallery; Martin Chuzzlewit, who also ran away, as did DavidCopperfield, perhaps the most true to adolescence because largelyreminiscent of the author's own life; Steerforth, a stranger fromhome, and his victim, Little Emily; and to some extent Sam Weller,Dick Swiveller, the Marchioness, young Podsnap, the Artful Dodger, andCharley Bates; while Oliver Twist, Little Nell, and Little Dorrit, Joeand Turveydrop in Bleak House, and Paul Dombey, young as they were,show the beginning of the pubescent change. Most of his characters,however, are so overdrawn and caricatured as to be hardly true tolife.[40]

In the "Romance of John Inglesant,"[41] by J. H. Shorthouse, we havea remarkable picture of an unusually gifted youth, who played animportant rôle in the days of Cromwell and King Charles, and who waslong poised in soul between the Church of Rome and the English party.He was very susceptible to the fascination of superstition, romance,and day-dreaming, and at eleven absorbed his master's Rosicruciantheories of spiritual existence where spirits held converse with eachother and with mankind. A mystic Platonism, which taught that Pindar'sstory of the Argo was only a recipe for the philosopher's stone,fascinated him at fourteen. The philosophy of obedience and of thesubjection of reason to authority was early taught him, and he soughtto live from within, hearing only the divine law, as the worshipers ofCybele heard only the flutes. His twin brother Eustace was an activeworldling, and soon he followed him to court as page to the Queen, butdelighted more and more in wandering apart and building air castles.For a time he was entirely swayed, and his life directed, by a JesuitFather, who taught him the crucifix and the rosary. At sixteen thedoctrine of divine illumination fascinated him. He struggled to findthe path of true devotion; abandoned himself to extremely ritualisticforms of worship; dabbled a little in alchemy and astrology to helpdevelop the divine nature within him and to attain the beatificvision. Soon he was introduced to the "Protestant nunnery," as it wascalled, where the venerable Mr. Ferran, a friend of George Herbert's,was greatly taken by Inglesant's accomplishments and grace of manner.Various forms of extremely High Church yet Protestant worship werecelebrated here each day with great devotion, until he becamedisgusted with Puritanism and craved to participate in the office ofmass. At this point, however, he met Mr. Hobbes, whose rude butforcible condemnation of papacy restrained him from casting his lotwith it. At seventeen, he saw one night a real apparition of the justexecuted Strafford. The last act of his youth, which we can note here,was soon after he was twenty, when he fell in love with the charmingand saintly Mary Collet. The rough Puritan Thorne had made herproposals at which she revolted, but she and Inglesant confessed loveto each other; she saw, however, that they had a way of life markedout for themselves by an inner impulse and light. This calling theymust follow and abandon love, and now John plunged into the war on theside of the King.

W. J. Stillman[42] has written with unusual interest and candor thestory of his own early life.

As a boy he was frenzied at the first sight of the sea; caught thewhip and lashed the horses in an unconscious delirium, and alwaysremembered this as one of the most vivid experiences of his life. Hehad a period of nature worship. His first trout was a delirium, and hedanced about wildly and furiously. He relates his very vividimpressions of the religious orthodoxy in which he was reared,especially revival sermons; his occasional falsehoods to escape severepunishment; his baptism at ten or eleven in a river in midwinter; thesomberness of his intellectual life, which was long very apathetic;his phenomenal stupidity for years; his sudden insurrections in whichhe thrashed bullies at school; his fear that he should be sent home indisgrace for bad scholarship; and how at last, after seven years ofdulness, at the age of fourteen, "the mental fog broke away suddenly,and before the term ended I could construe the Latin in less time thanit took to recite it, and the demonstrations of Euclid were as plainand clear as a fairy story. My memory came back so distinctly that Icould recite long poems after a single reading, and no member of theclass passed a more brilliant examination at the end of the term thanI; and, at the end of the second term, I could recite the whole ofLegendre's geometry, plane and spherical, from beginning to endwithout a question, and the class examination was recorded as the mostremarkable which the academy had witnessed for many years. I havenever been able to conceive an explanation of this curious phenomenon,which I record only as of possible interest to some one interested inpsychology."

A. Bronson Alcott[43] was the son of a Connecticut farmer. He began adiary at twelve; aspired vainly to enter Yale, and after muchrestlessness at the age of nineteen left home with two trunks forVirginia to peddle on foot, hoping to teach school. Here he had avarying and often very hard experience for years.

Hornes Bushnell's[44] parents represented the Episcopal and liberalCongregational Church. His early life was spent on a farm and inattending a country academy. He became profoundly interested inreligion in the early teens and developed extreme interest in nature.At seventeen, while tending a carding machine, he wrote a paper onCalvinism. At nineteen he united with the church, and entered Yalewhen he was twenty-one, in 1823. Later he tried to teach school, butleft it, declaring he would rather lay stone wall; worked on ajournal, but withdrew, finding it a terrible life; studied law for ayear, became a tutor at Yale, experienced a reconversion and enteredthe ministry.

A well-known American, who wishes his name withheld, writes me of hisyouth as follows:

"First came the love of emotion and lurid romance reading. My mind wasfull of adventure, dreams of underground passages, and imprisonedbeauties whom I rescued. I wrote a story in red ink, which I neverread, but a girl friend did, and called it magnificent. The girlfever, too, made me idealize first one five years older than I, lateranother three years older, and still later one of my own age. I wouldhave eaten dirt for each of them for a year or two; was extremelygallant and the hero of many romances for two, but all the time sobashful that I scarcely dared speak to one of them, and no schoolmateever suspected it all. Music also became a craze at fourteen. Before,I had hated lessons, now I was thrilled and would be a musician,despite my parents' protests. I practised the piano furiously; wrotemusic and copied stacks of it; made a list of several hundred piecesand tunes, including everything musical I knew; would imagine acrowded hall, where I played and swayed with fine airs. The vastassembly applauded and would not let me go, but all the time it was asimple piece and I was a very ordinary player. At fifty years, this isstill a relic. I now in hours of fatigue pound the piano and dreamilyimagine dazed and enchanted audiences. Then came oratory, and I glowedand thrilled in declaiming Webster's "Reply to Hayne," "Thanatopsis,"Byron's "Darkness," Patrick Henry, and best of all "The Maniac," whichI spouted in a fervid way wearing a flaming red necktie. I remember afervid scene with myself on a high solitary hill with a bald summittwo miles from home, where I once went because I had been blamed. Itried to sum myself up, inventory my good and bad points. It wasSunday, and I was keyed up to a frenzy of resolve, prayer,idealization of life; all grew all in a jumble. My resolve to go tocollege was clinched then and there, and that hill will always remainmy Pisgah and Moriah, Horeb and Sinai all in one. I paced back andforth in the wind and shouted, 'I will make people know and revere me;I will do something'; and called everything to witness my vow that Inever again would visit this spot till all was fulfilled." "Alas!" hesays, "I have never been there since. Once, to a summer party whowent, I made excuse for not keeping this rendezvous. It was toosacramental. Certainly it was a very deep and never-to-be-forgottenexperience there all alone, when something of great moment to mecertainly took place in my soul."

In the biography of Frederick Douglas[45] we are told that when he wasabout thirteen he began to feel deeply the moral yoke of slavery andto seek means of escaping it. He became interested in religion, wasconverted, and dreamed of and prayed for liberty. With great ingenuityhe extracted knowledge of the alphabet and reading from white boys ofhis acquaintance. At sixteen, under a brutal master he revolted andwas beaten until he was faint from loss of blood, and at seventeen hefought and whipped the brutal overseer Covey, who would have invokedthe law, which made death the punishment for such an offense, but forshame of having been worsted by a negro boy and from the reflectionthat there was no profit from a dead slave. Only at twenty did heescape into the new world of freedom.

Jacob Riis[46] "fell head over heels in love with sweet Elizabeth"when he was fifteen and she thirteen. His "courtship proceeded at atumultuous pace, which first made the town laugh, then put it out ofpatience and made some staid matrons express the desire to box my earssoundly." She played among the lumber where he worked, and he watchedher so intently that he scarred his shinbone with an adze he shouldhave been minding. He cut off his forefinger with an ax when she wasdancing on a beam near by, and once fell off a roof when craning hisneck to see her go round a corner. At another time he ordered herfather off the dance-floor, because he tried to take his daughter homea few minutes before the appointed hour of midnight. Young as he was,he was large and tried to run away to join the army, but finally wentto Copenhagen to serve his apprenticeship with a builder, and here hadan interview with Hans Christian Andersen.

Ellery Sedgwick tells as that at thirteen the mind of Thomas Paine ranon stories of the sea which his teacher had told him, and that heattempted to enlist on the privateer Terrible. He was restless athome for years, and shipped on a trading vessel at nineteen.

Indeed, modern literature in our tongue abounds in this element, from"Childe Harold" to the second and third long chapters in Mrs. Ward's"David Grieve," ending with his engagement to Lucy Purcell;Thackeray's Arthur Pendennis and his characteristic love of the farolder and scheming Fanny Fotheringay; David in James Lane Allen's"Reign of Law," who read Darwin, was expelled from the Bible Collegeand the church, and finally was engaged to Gabriella; and scores moremight be enumerated. There is even Sonny,[47] who, rude as he was andpoorly as he did in all his studies, at the same age when he began tokeep company, "tallered" his hair, tied a bow of ribbon to the buggywhip, and grew interested in manners, passing things, putting on hiscoat and taking off his hat at table, began to study his menagerie ofpet snakes, toads, lizards, wrote John Burroughs, helped him and gothelp in return, took to observing, and finally wrote a book about theforest and its occupants, all of which is very bien trouvé if nothistoric truth.

Two singular reflections always rearise in reading Goethe'sautobiographical writings: first, that both the age and the place,with its ceremonies, festivals, great pomp and stirring events inclose quarters in the little province where he lived, were especiallyadapted to educate children and absorb them in externals; and, second,that this wonderful boy had an extreme propensity for moralizing anddrawing lessons of practical service from all about him. This is noless manifest in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Travels, whichsupplements the autobiography. Both together present a very uniquetype of adolescence, the elaborate story of which defies epitome. Fromthe puppet craze well on into his precocious university life it washis passion to explore the widest ranges of experience and then toreflect, moralize, or poetize upon them. Perhaps no one ever studiedthe nascent stages of his own life and elaborated their every incidentwith such careful observation and analysis. His peculiar diathesisenabled him to conserve their freshness on to full maturity, when hegave them literary form. Most lack power to fully utilize their ownexperience even for practical self-knowledge and guidance, but withGoethe nothing was wasted from which self-culture could be extracted.

Goethe's first impression of female loveliness was of a girl namedGretchen, who served wine one evening, and whose face and formfollowed him for a long time. Their meetings always gave him a thrillof pleasure, and though his love was like many first loves, veryspiritual and awakened by goodness and beauty, it gave a newbrightness to the whole world, and to be near her seemed to him anindispensable condition of his being. Her fiancé was generally withher, and Goethe experienced a shock in finding that she had become amilliner's assistant for although, like all natural boys ofaristocratic families, he loved common people, this interest was notfavored by his parents. The night following the coronation day severalwere compelled to spend in chairs, and he and his Gretchen, withothers, slept, she with her head upon his shoulder, until all theothers had awakened in the morning. At last they parted at her door,and for the first and last time they kissed but never met again,although he often wept in thinking of her. He was terribly affrontedto fully realize that, although only two years older than himself, sheshould have regarded him as a child. He tried to strip her of allloving qualities and think her odious, but her image hovered over him.The sanity of instinct innate in youth prompted him to lay aside aschildish the foolish habit of weeping and railing, and hismortification that she regarded him somewhat as a nurse might,gradually helped to work his cure.

He was very fond of his own name, and, like young and uneducatedpeople, wrote or carved it anywhere; later placed near it that of anew love, Annette, and afterward on finding the tree he shed tears,melted toward her, and made an idyl. He was also seized with a passionof teasing her and dominating over her devotedness with wanton andtyrannical caprice, venting upon her the ill humor of hisdisappointments, and grew absurdly jealous and lost her after she hadborne with him with incredible patience and after terrible scenes withher by which he gained nothing. Frenzied by his loss, he began toabuse his physical nature and was only saved from illness by thehealing power of his poetic talent; the "Lover's Caprice" was writtenwith the impetus of a boiling passion. In the midst of many seriousevents, a reckless humor, which was due to the excess of life,developed which made him feel himself superior to the moment, and evento court danger. He played tricks, although rarely with premeditation.Later he mused much upon the transient nature of love and themutability of character; the extent to which the senses could beindulged within the bounds of morality; he sought to rid himself ofall that troubled him by writing song or epigram about it, which madehim seem frivolous and prompted one friend to seek to subdue him bymeans of church forms, which he had severed on coming to Leipzig. Bydegrees he felt an epoch approaching when all respect for authoritywas to vanish, and he became suspicious and even despairing withregard to the best individuals he had known before and grew chummywith a young tutor whose jokes and fooleries were incessant. Hisdisposition fluctuated between gaiety and melancholy, and Rousseauattracted him. Meanwhile his health declined until a long illness,which began with a hemorrhage, caused him to oscillate for daysbetween life and death; and convalescence, generally so delightful,was marred by a serious tumor. His father's disposition was stern, andhe could become passionate and bitter, and his mother's domesticitymade her turn to religion, so that on coming home he formed theacquaintance of a religious circle. Again Goethe was told by a hostilechild that he was not the true son of his father. This inoculated himwith a disease that long lurked in his system and prompted variousindirect investigations to get at the truth, during which he comparedall distinguished guests with his own physiognomy to detect his ownlikeness.

Up to the Leipzig period he had great joy in wandering unknown,unconscious of self; but he soon began to torment himself with analmost hypertrophied fancy that he was attracting much attention, thatothers' eyes were turned on his person to fix it in their memories,that he was scanned and found fault with; and hence he developed alove of the country, of the woods and solitary places, where he couldbe hedged in and separated from all the world. Here he began to throwoff his former habit of looking at things from the art standpoint andto take pleasure in natural objects for their own sake. His mother hadalmost grownup to consciousness in her two oldest children, and hisfirst disappointment in love turned his thought all the moreaffectionately toward her and his sister, a year younger. He was longconsumed with amazement over the newly awakening sense impulse thattook intellectual forms and the mental needs that clothed themselvesin sense images. He fell to building air castles of opposition lecturecourses and gave himself up to many dreams of ideal universityconditions. He first attended lectures diligently, but suffered muchharm from being too advanced; learned a great deal that he could notregulate, and was thereby made uncomfortable; grew interested in thefit of his clothes, of which hitherto he had been careless. He was indespair at the uncertainty of his own taste and judgment, and almostfeared he must make a complete change of mind, renouncing what he hadhitherto learned, and so one day in great contempt for his past burnedup his poetry, sketches, etc.

He had learned to value and love the Bible, and owed his moral cultureto it. Its events and symbols were deeply stamped upon him, so withoutbeing a pietist he was greatly moved at the scoffing spirit toward itwhich he met at the university. From youth he had stood on good termswith God, and at times he had felt that he had some things to forgiveGod for not having given better assistance to his infinite good-will.Under all this influence he turned to cabalism and became interestedin crystals and the microcosm and macrocosm, and fell into the habitof despair over what he had been and believed just before. Heconceived a kind of hermetical or neoplatonic godhead creating in moreand more eccentric circles, until the last, which rose incontradiction, was Lucifer to whom creation was committed. He first ofall imagined in detail an angelic host, and finally a whole theologywas wrought out in petto. He used a gilt ornamented music-stand as akind of altar with fumigating pastils for incense, where each morningGod was approached by offerings until one day a conflagration put asudden end to these celebrations.

Hans Anderson,[48] the son of a poor shoemaker, taught in a charityschool at the dawn of puberty; vividly animated Bible stories frompictures painted on the wall; was dreamy and absent-minded; toldcontinued stories to his mates; at confirmation vowed he would befamous and finally, at fourteen, left home for Copenhagen, where hewas violently stage-struck and worked his way from friendship with thebill-poster to the stage as page, shepherd, etc.; called on a famousdancer, who scorned him, and then, feeling that he had no one but Godto depend on, prayed earnestly and often. For nearly a year, until hisvoice broke, he was a fine singer. He wet with his tears the eyes of aportrait of a heartless man that he might feel for him. He played witha puppet theater and took a childish delight in decking the characterswith gay remnants that he begged from shops; wrote several plays whichno one would accept; stole into an empty theater one New Year's day topray aloud on the middle of the stage; shouted with joy; hugged andkissed a beech-tree till people thought him insane; abhorred thethought of apprenticeship to Latin as he did to that of a trade, whichwas a constant danger; and was one of the most dreamy and sentimental,and by spells religious and prayerful, of youth.

George Ebers[49] remembered as a boy of eleven the revolution of '48in Berlin, soon after which he was placed in Froebel's school atKeilhau. This great teacher with his noble associates, Middendorf,Barop, and Langekhal, lived with the boys; told the stirring storiesof their own lives as soldiers in the war of liberation; led theirpupils on long excursions in vacation, often lasting for months, andgave much liberty to the boys, who were allowed to haze not only theirnew mates, but new teachers. This transfer from the city to thecountry roused a veritable passion in the boy, who remained here tillhe was fifteen. Trees and cliffs were climbed, collections made, theSaale by moonlight and the lofty Steiger at sunset were explored.There were swimming and skating and games, and the maxim of theschool, "Friede, Freude, Freiheit,"[Peace, joy, freedom] was lived upto. The boys hung on their teachers for stories. The teachers tooktheir boys into their confidence for all their own literary aims,loves, and ideals. One had seen the corpse of Körner and another knewProhaska. "The Roman postulate that knowledge should be imparted toboys according to a thoroughly tested method approved by the maturehuman intellect and which seems most useful to it for later life" wasthe old system of sacrificing the interests of the child for those ofthe man. Here childhood was to live itself out completely andnaturally into an ever renewed paradise. The temperaments,dispositions, and characters of each of the sixty boys were carefullystudied and recorded. Some of these are still little masterpieces ofpsychological penetration, and this was made the basis of development.The extreme Teutonism cultivated by wrestling, shooting, and fencing,giving each a spot of land to sow, reap, and shovel, and all in anatmosphere of adult life, made an environment that fitted thetransition period as well as any that the history of educationaffords. Every tramp and battle were described in a book by each boy.When at fifteen Ebers was transferred to the Kottbus Gymnasium, hefelt like a colt led from green pastures to the stable, and the periodof effervescence made him almost possessed by a demon, so many sortsof follies did he commit. He wrote "a poem of the world," fell in lovewith an actress older than himself, became known as foolhardy for hiswild escapades, and only slowly sobered down.

In Gottfried Kelley's "Der grüne Heinrich,"[50] the author, whom R.M.Meyer calls "the most eminent literary German of the nineteenthcentury," reviews the memories of his early life. This autobiographyis a plain and very realistic story of a normal child, and notadulterated with fiction like Goethe's or with psychoses like Rousseauor Bashkirtseff. He seems a boy like all other boys, and his childhoodand youth were in no wise extraordinary. The first part of this work,which describes his youth up to the age of eighteen, is the mostimportant, and everything is given with remarkable fidelity andminuteness. It is a tale of little things. All the friendships andloves and impulses are there, and he is fundamentally selfish andutilitarian; God and nature were one, and only when his beloved Armydied did he wish to believe in immortality. He, too, as a child, foundtwo kinds of love in his heart—the idea and the sensual, veryindependent—the one for a young and innocent girl and the other for asuperb young woman years older than he, pure, although thepersonification of sense. He gives a rich harvest of minute andsagacious observations about his strange simultaneous loves; thepeculiar tastes of food; his day-dream period; and his ratherprolonged habit of lying, the latter because he had no other vent forinvention. He describes with great regret his leaving school at soearly an age; his volcanic passion of anger; his self-distrust; hisperiods of abandon; his passion to make a success of art though he didnot of life; his spells of self-despair and cynicism; his periods ofdesolation in his single life; his habit of story-telling; hiswrestling with the problem of theology and God; the conflict betweenhis philosophy and his love of the girls, etc.

From a private school in Leipzig, where he had shown all a boy's tactin finding what his masters thought the value of each subject theytaught; where he had joined in the vandalism of using a battering-ramto break a way to the hated science apparatus and to destroy it;feeling that the classical writers were overpraised; and where at theage of sixteen he had appeared several times in public as a reciter ofhis own poems, Max Müller returned to Leipzig and entered upon thefreedom of university life there at the age of seventeen. For yearshis chief enjoyment was music.[51] He played the piano well, heardeverything he could in concert or opera, was an oratorio tenor, andgrew more and more absorbed in music, so that he planned to devotehimself altogether to it and also to enter a musical school at Dessau,but nothing came of it. At the university he saw little of society,was once incarcerated for wearing a club ribbon, and confesses thatwith his boon companions he was guilty of practises which would nowbring culprits into collision with authorities. He fought three duels,participated in many pranks and freakish escapades, but neverthelessattended fifty-three different courses of lectures in three years.When Hegelism was the state philosophy, he tried hard to understandit, but dismissed it with the sentiments expressed by a French officerto his tailor, who refused to take the trousers he had ordered to bemade very tight because they did not fit so closely that he could notget into them. Darwin attracted him, yet the wildness of his followersrepelled. He says, "I confess I felt quite bewildered for a time andbegan to despair altogether of my reasoning powers." He wonders howyoung minds in German universities survive the storms and fogs throughwhich they pass. With bated breath he heard his elders talk ofphilosophy and tried to lay hold of a word here and there, but it allfloated before his mind like mist. Later he had an Hegelian period,but found in Herbart a corrective, and at last decided upon Sanskritand other ancient languages, because he felt that he must knowsomething that no other knew, and also that the Germans had then heardonly the after-chime and not the real striking of the bells of Indianphilosophy. From twenty his struggles and his queries grew moredefinite, and at last, at the age of twenty-two, he was fully launchedupon his career in Paris, and later went to Oxford.

At thirteen Wagner[52] translated about half the "Odyssey"voluntarily; at fourteen began the tragedy which was to combine thegrandeur of two of Shakespeare's dramas; at sixteen he tried "hisnew-fledged musical wings by soaring at once to the highest peaks oforchestral achievement without wasting any time on the humblefoot-hills." He sought to make a new departure, and, compared to thegrandeur of his own composition, "Beethoven's Ninth Symphony appearedlike a simple Pleyel Sonata." To facilitate the reading of hisastounding score, he wrote it in three kinds of ink—red for strings,green for the wood-wind, and black for the brass instruments. Hewrites that this overture was the climax of his absurdities, andalthough the audience before which an accommodating orchestra playedit were disgusted and the musicians were convulsed with laughter, itmade a deep impression upon the author's mind. Even aftermatriculating at the university he abandoned himself so long to thedissipations common to student life before the reaction came that hisrelatives feared that he was a good-for-nothing.

In his "Hannele," Hauptmann, the dramatist, describes in a kind ofdream poem what he supposed to pass through the mind of a dying girlof thirteen or fourteen, who does not wish to live and is so absorbedby the "Brownies of her brain" that she hardly knows whether she isalive on earth or dead in heaven, and who sees the Lord Jesus in theform of the schoolmaster whom she adores. In her closing vision thereis a symbolic representation of her own resurrection. To thepassionate discussions in Germany, England, and France, as to whetherthis character is true to adolescence, we can only answer with anemphatic affirmative; that her heaven abounds in local color and infairy tale items, that it is very material, and that she is troubledby fears of sin against the Holy Ghost, is answer enough in anill-used, starving child with a fevered brain, whose dead mothertaught her these things.

Saint-Pierre's "Paul and Virginia" is an attempt to describe buddingadolescence in a boy and girl born on a remote island and reared in astate of natural simplicity The descriptions are sentimental after thefashion of the age in France, and the pathos, which to us smacks ofaffectation and artificiality, nevertheless has a vein of truth in it.The story really begins when the two children were twelve; and thedescription of the dawn of love and melancholy in Virginia's heart,for some time concealed from Paul, of her disquiet and piety, of thefinal frank avowal of eternal love by each, set of by the patheticseparation, and of the undying love, and finally the tragic death andburial of each—all this owes its charm, for its many generations ofreaders, to its merits as an essentially true picture of the humanheart at this critical age. This work and Rousseau[53] havecontributed to give French literature its peculiar cast in itsdescription of this age.

"The first explosions of combustible constitution" in Rousseau's,precocious nature were troublesome, and he felt premature sensationsof erotic voluptuousness, but without any sin. He longed "to fall atthe feet of an imperious mistress, obey her mandates or implorepardon." He only wanted a lady, to become a knight errant. At ten hewas passionately devoted to a Mlle. Vulson, whom he publicly andtyrannically claimed as his own and would allow no other to approach.He had very different sensuous feelings toward Mlle. Goton, with whomhis relations were very passionate, though pure. Absolutely under thepower of both these mistresses, the effects they produced upon himwere in no wise related to each other. The former was a brother'saffection with the jealousy of a lover added, but the latter afurious, tigerish, Turkish rage. When told of the former's marriage,in his indignation and heroic fury he swore never more to see aperfidious girl. A slightly neurotic vein of prolonged ephebeitispervades much of his life.

Pierre Loti's "Story of a Child"[54] was written when the author wasforty-two, and contains hardly a fact, but it is one of the best ofinner autobiographies, and is nowhere richer than in the lastchapters, which bring the author down to the age of fourteen and ahalf. He vividly describes the new joy at waking, which he began tofeel at twelve or thirteen; the clear vision into the bottomless pitof death; the new, marvelous susceptibility to nature as comradeshipwith boys of his own age was lacking; the sudden desires from purebravado and perversity to do something unseemly, e. g., making a flyomelet and carrying it in a procession with song; the melting ofpewter plates and pouring them into water and salting a wild tract ofland with them; organizing a band of miners, whom he led as if withkeen scent to the right spot and rediscovered his nuggets, everythingbeing done mysteriously and as a tribal secret. Loti had a new feelingfor the haunting music of Chopin, which he had been taught to play buthad not been interested in; his mind was inflamed, by a home visit ofan elder brother, with the idea of going to the South Sea Islands, andthis became a long obsession which finally led him to enlist in thenavy, dropping, with a beating heart, the momentous letter into thepost-office after long misgivings and delays. He had a superficial anda hidden self, the latter somewhat whimsical and perhaps ridiculous,shared only with a few intimate friends for whom he would have lethimself be cut into bits. He believes his transition period lastedlonger than with the majority of men, and during it he was carriedfrom one extreme to another; had rather eccentric and absurd manners,and touched moat of the perilous rocks on the voyage of life. He hadan early love for an older girl whose name he wrote in cipher on hisbooks, although he felt it a little artificial, but believed it mighthave developed into a great and true hereditary friendship, continuingthat which their ancestors had felt for many generations. The birth oflove in his heart was in a dream after having read the forbidden poet,Alfred de Musset. He was fourteen, and in his dream it was a soft,odorous twilight. He walked amid flowers seeking a nameless some onewhom he ardently desired, and felt that something strange andwonderful, intoxicating as it advanced, was going to happen. Thetwilight grew deeper, and behind a rose-bush he saw a young girl witha languorous and mysterious smile, although her forehead and eyes werehidden. As it darkened rather suddenly, her eyes came out, and theywere very personal and seemed to belong to some one already muchbeloved, who had been found with "transports of infinite joy andtenderness." He woke with a start and sought to retain the phantom,which faded. He could not conceive that was a mere illusion, and as herealized that she had vanished he felt overwhelmed with hopelessness.It was the first stirring "of true love with all its great melancholyand deep mystery, with its overwhelming but sad enchantment—lovewhich like a perfume endows with a fragrance all it touches."

It is, I believe, high time that ephebic literature should berecognized as a class by itself, and have a place of its own in thehistory of letters and in criticism. Much of it should be individuallyprescribed for the reading of the young, for whom it has a singularzest and is a true stimulus and corrective. This stage of life now haswhat might almost be called a school of its own. Here the young appealto and listen to each other as they do not to adults, and in a way thelatter have failed to appreciate. Again, no biography, and especiallyno autobiography, should henceforth be complete if it does notdescribe this period of transformation so all-determining for futurelife to which it alone can often give the key. Rightly to draw thelessons of this age not only saves us from waste ineffable of thisrich but crude area of experience, but makes maturity saner and morecomplete. Lastly, many if not most young people should be encouragedto enough of the confessional private journalism to teach themself-knowledge, for the art of self-expression usually begins now ifever, when it has a wealth of subjective material and needs forms ofexpression peculiar to itself.

For additional references on the subject of this chapter, see:

Alcafarado, Marianna, Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun. Translated by
R. H., New York, 1887. Richardson, Abby Sage, Abelard and Héloise, and
Letters of Héloise, Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston. Smith, Theodote
L., Types of Adolescent Affection. Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1904,
vol. II, pp. 178-203.

[Footnote 1: Pedagogical Seminary, June 1901, vol. 8, pp. 163-205]

[Footnote 2: Being a Boy.]

[Footnote 3: Story of a Bad Boy.]

[Footnote 4: A Boy's Town.]

[Footnote 5: Court of Boyville.]

[Footnote 6: The Spoilt Child, by Peary Chandmitter. Translated by G.
D. Oswell. Thacker, Spink and Co., Calcutta, 1893.]

[Footnote 7: The Golden Age]

[Footnote 8: Frau Spyri.]

[Footnote 9: The One I Knew the Best of All.]

[Footnote 10: The Study of the Boyhood of Great Men. Pedagogical
Seminary, October, 1894, vol. 3, pp. 134-156.]

[Footnote 11: The Vanishing Character of Adolescent Experiences.
Northwestern Monthly, June, 1898, vol. 8, p. 644.]

[Footnote 12: The Count of Boyville, by William Allen White. New York,1899, p. 358.]

[Footnote 13: The Study of Adolescence. Pedagogical Seminary, June,1891, vol. 1, pp. 174-195.]

[Footnote 14: Lancaster: The Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence.
Pedagogical Seminary, July, 1897, vol. 5, p. 106.]

[Footnote 15: Standards of Efficiency in School and in Life.
Pedagogical Seminary, March, 1903, vol. 10, pp. 3-22.]

[Footnote 16: See also Vittorio da Feltre and other Humanist
Educators, by W. H. Woodward. Cambridge University Press, 1897.]

[Footnote 17: See The Private Life of Galileo; from his Correspondenceand that of his Eldest Daughter. Anon, Macmillan, London, 1870.]

[Footnote 18: See Sir David Brewster's Life of Newton. Harper, New
York, 1874.]

[Footnote 19: Louis Agassiz, His Life and Work, by C. F. Holder. G. P.
Putnam's Sons, New York, 1893.]

[Footnote 20: Life and Letters of Thomas H. Huxley, by his son Leonard
Huxley. D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1901.]

[Footnote 21: See also Sully: A Girl's Religion. Longman's Magazine,
May, 1890, pp. 89-99.]

[Footnote 22: Sheldon (Institutional Activities of American Children;American Journal of Psychology, July, 1898, vol. 9, p. 434) describesa faintly analogous case of a girl of eleven, who organised theworship of Pallas Athena on two flat rocks, in a deep ravine by astream where a young sycamore grew from an old stump, as did Pallasfrom the head of her father Zeus. There was a court consisting ofking, queen and subjects, and priests who officiated at sacrifices.The king and queen wore goldenrod upon their heads and waded instreams attended by their subjects; gathered flowers for Athena;caught crayfish which were duly smashed upon her altar. "Sometimesthere was a special celebration, when, in addition to the slaughteredcrayfish and beautiful flower decorations, and pickles stolen from thedinner-table, there would be an elaborate ceremony," which because ofits uncanny acts was intensely disliked by the people at hand.]

[Footnote 23: The One I Know The Best of All. A Memory of the Mind ofa Child. By Frances Hodgson Burnett. Scribner's Sons, New York, 1893]

[Footnote 24: The Beth Book, by Sarah Grand. D. Appleton and Co., New
York, 1897.]

[Footnote 25: Autobiography of a Child. Hannah Lynch, W. Blackwood and
Sons, London, 1899, p. 255.]

[Footnote 26: The Story of My Life. By Helen Keller. Doubleday, Pageand Co., New York, 1903, p. 39.]

[Footnote 27: Journal of a Young Artist. Cassell and Co., New York,1889, p. 434.]

[Footnote 28: The Story of Mary MacLane. By herself. Herbert S. Stoneand Co., Chicago, 1902, p. 322.]

[Footnote 29: Fate. Translated from the Italian by A.M. Von Blomberg.
Copeland and Day, Boston, 1898.]

[Footnote 30: Confessions of an Opium Eater. Part I. Introductory
Narrative. (Cambridge Classics) 1896.]

[Footnote 31: Longmans, Green and Co. London, 1891, 2nd ed.]

[Footnote 32: The Hearts of Men. Macmillan, London, 1891, p. 324.]

[Footnote 33: An Autobiography. Edited by H.M. Trollope. 2 vols.
London, 1883.]

[Footnote 34: See his Memoirs. London, 1885.]

[Footnote 35: See Autobiography of Mark Rutherford (pseudonym for W.H.
White), edited by Reuben Shapcott. 2 vols. London, 1881.]

[Footnote 36: The rest of the two volumes is devoted to his furtherlife as a dissenting minister, who later became something of aliterary man; relating how he was slowly driven to leave his littlechurch, how he outgrew and broke with the girl to whom he was engaged,whom he marvelously met and married when both were well on in years,and how strangely he was influenced by the free-thinker Mardon and hisremarkable daughter. All in all it is a rare study of emancipation.]

[Footnote 37: London, 1896, vol. 1.]

[Footnote 38: Macmillan, 1902.]

[Footnote 39: Life of Sir J.F. Stephen. By his brother, Leslie
Stephen, London, 1895.]

[Footnote 40: See the very impressive account of Dicken'scharacterization of childhood and youth, and of his great but hithertoinadequately recognized interest and influence as an educator. Dickensas an Educator. James L. Hughes. D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1901,p. 319.]

[Footnote 41: John Inglesant: A Romance. 6th ed. Macmillan, 1886.]

[Footnote 42: The Autobiography of a Journalist. 2 vols. Houghton,
Mifflin and Co., Boston, 1901.]

[Footnote 43: A. Bronson Alcott, His Life and Philosophy. By F. B.
Sanborn and W. T. Harris. Roberts Bros., Boston, 1893.]

[Footnote 44: Horace Bushnell, Preacher and Theologian. By Theodore F.
Munger. Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston, 1899.]

[Footnote 45: By C.W. Chesnutt. (Beacon Biographies.) Small, Maynardand Co., Boston, 1899.]

[Footnote 46: The Making of an American. Macmillan, 1901.]

[Footnote 47: Sonny. By Ruth McEnery Stuart. The Century Co., New
York, 1896.]

[Footnote 48: The Story of My Life. Works, vol. 8 new edition.
Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston, 1894.]

[Footnote 49: The Story of My Life. Translated by M. J. Safford. D.
Appleton and Co., New York 1893.]

[Footnote 50: Gesammelte Werke. Vierter Band. Wilhelm Hertz, Berlin,1897.]

[Footnote 51: My Autobiography, p. 106. Chas. Scribner's Sons, New
York, 1901.]

[Footnote 52: Wagner and His Works. By Henry T. Finck. Chas.
Scribner's Sons, New York, 1893.]

[Footnote 53: Les Confessions. Oeuvres Complètes, vols. 8 and 9.
Hachette et Cie., Paris, 1903.]

[Footnote 54: Translated from the French by C.F. Smith. C.C. Birchardand Co., Boston, 1901.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER IX

THE GROWTH OF SOCIAL IDEALS

Change from childish to adult friends—Influence of favoriteteachers—What children wish or plan to do or be—Property and themoney sense—Social judgments—The only child—First socialorganizations—Student life—Associations for youth, controlled byadults.

In a few aspects we are already able to trace the normal psychicoutgrowing of the home of childhood as its interests irradiate into anever enlarging environment. Almost the only duty of small children ishabitual and prompt obedience. Our very presence enforces one generallaw—that of keeping our good-will and avoiding our displeasure. Theyrespect all we smile at or even notice, and grow to it like the planttoward the light. Their early lies are often saying what they thinkwill please. At bottom, the most restless child admires and lovesthose who save him from too great fluctuations by coercion, providedthe means be rightly chosen and the ascendency extend over heart andmind. But the time comes when parents are often shocked at the lack ofrespect suddenly shown by the child. They have ceased to be thehighest ideals. The period of habituating morality and making ithabitual is ceasing; and the passion to realize freedom, to act onpersonal experience, and to keep a private conscience is in order. Toact occasionally with independence from the highest possible idealmotives develops the impulse and the joy of pure obligation, and thusbrings some new and original force into the world and makes habitualguidance by the highest and best, or by inner as opposed to outerconstraint, the practical rule of life. To bring the richest streamsof thought to bear in interpreting the ethical instincts, so that theyouth shall cease to live in a moral interregnum, is the real goal ofself-knowledge. This is true education of the will and prepares theway for love of overcoming obstacles of difficulty, perhaps even ofconflict. This impulse is often the secret of obstinacy.[1] And yet,"at no time in life will a human being respond So heartily if treatedby older and wiser people as if he were an equal or even a superior.The attempt to treat a child at adolescence as you would treat aninferior is instantly fatal to good discipline."[2] Parents stillthink of their offspring as mere children, and tighten the rein whenthey should loosen it. Many young people feel that they have the bestof homes and yet that they will go crazy if they must remain in them.If the training of earlier years has been good, guidance by commandmay now safely give way to that by ideals, which are sure to beheroic. The one unpardonable thing for the adolescent is dullness,stupidity, lack of life, interest, and enthusiasm in school orteachers, and, perhaps above all, too great stringency. Least of all,at this stage, can the curriculum school be an ossuary. The child mustnow be taken into the family councils and find the parents interestedin all that interests him. Where this is not done, we have theconditions for the interesting cases of so many youth, who now beginto suspect that father, mother, or both, are not their true parents.Not only is there interest in rapidly widening associations withcoevals, but a new lust to push on and up to maturity. One markedtrait now is to seek friends and companions older than themselves, ornext to this, to seek those younger. This is marked contrast withprevious years, when they seek associates of their own age. Possiblythe merciless teasing instinct, which culminates at about the sametime, may have some influence, but certain it is that now interest istranspolarized up and down the age scale. One reason is the new hungerfor information, not only concerning reproduction, but a vast varietyof other matters, so that there is often an attitude of silent beggingfor knowledge. In answer to Lancaster's[3] questions on this subject,some sought older associates because they could learn more from them,found them better or more steadfast friends, craved sympathy and foundmost of it from older and perhaps married people. Some were moreinterested in their parents' conversation with other adults than withthemselves, and were particularly entertained by the chance of hearingthings they had no business to. There is often a feeling that adultsdo not realize this new need of friendship with them and show want ofsympathy almost brutal.

Stableton,[4] who has made interesting notes on individual boysentering the adolescent period, emphasizes the importance of sympathy,appreciation, and respect in dealing with this age. They must now betalked to as equals, and in this way their habits of industry and eventheir dangerous love affairs run be controlled. He says, "There is nomore important question before the teaching fraternity today than howto deal justly and successfully with boys at this time of life. Thisis the age when they drop out of school" in far too large numbers, andhe thinks that the small percentage of male graduates from our highschools is due to "the inability of the average grammar grade orhigh-school teacher to deal rightly with boys in this critical periodof their school life." Most teachers "know all their bad points, butfail to discover their good ones." The fine disciplinarian, themechanical movement of whose school is so admirable and who does notrealize the new need of liberty or how loose-jointed, mentally andphysically, all are at this age, should be supplanted by one who canlook into the heart and by a glance make the boy feel that he or sheis his friend. "The weakest work in our schools is the handling ofboys entering the adolescent period of life, and there is no greaterblessing that can come to a boy at this age, when he does notunderstand himself, than a good strong teacher that understands him,has faith in him, and will day by day lead him till he can walkalone."

Small[5] found the teacher a focus of imitation whence manyinfluences, both physical and mental, irradiated to the pupils. Everyaccent, gesture, automatism, like and dislike is caught consciouslyand unconsciously. Every intellectual interest in the teacherpermeates the class—liars, if trusted, became honest; those treatedas ladies and gentlemen act so; those told by favorite teachers of thegood things they are capable of feel a strong impulsion to do them;some older children are almost transformed by being made companions toteachers, by having their good traits recognized, and by frankapologies by the teacher when in error.

An interesting and unsuspected illustration of the growth ofindependence with adolescence was found in 2,411 papers from thesecond to eighth grades on the characteristics of the best teacher asseen by children.[6] In the second and third grades, all, and in thefourth, ninety-five per cent specified help in studies. This falls offrapidly in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades to thirty-nine percent, while at the same time the quality of patience in the uppergrades rises from a mention by two to twenty-two per cent.

Sanford Bell[7] collated the answers of 543 males and 488 females asto who of all their past teachers did them most good, and wherein;whom they loved and disliked most, and why. His most striking resultis presented in which shows that fourteen in girls and sixteen in boysis the age in which most good was felt to have been done, and thatcurves culminating at twelve for both sexes but not falling rapidlyuntil fifteen or sixteen represent the period when the strongest andmost indelible dislikes were felt. What seems to be most appreciatedin teachers is the giving of purpose, arousing of ideals, kindling ofambition to be something or do something and so giving an object inlife, encouragement to overcome circ*mstances, and, in general,inspiring self-confidence and giving direction. Next came personalsympathy and interest, kindness, confidence, a little praise, beingunderstood; and next, special help in lessons, or timely and kindlyadvice, while stability and poise of character, purity, the absence ofhypocrisy, independence, personal beauty, athleticism and vigor areprominent. It is singular that those of each sex have been most helpedby their own sex and that this prominence is far greatest in men.Four-fifths of the men and nearly one-half of the women, however, gotmost help from men. Male teachers, especially near adolescence, seemmost helpful for both sexes.

The qualities that inspire most dislike are malevolence, sarcasm,unjust punishment, suspicion, severity, sternness, absence of laughingand smiling, indifference, threats and broken vows, excessive scoldingand "roasting," and fondness for inflicting blows. The teacher whodoes not smile is far more liable to excite animosity. Most boysdislike men most, and girls' dislikes are about divided. The storiesof school cruelties and indignities are painful. Often inveterategrudges are established by little causes, and it is singular howpermanent and indelible strong dislike, are for the majority ofchildren. In many cases, aversions engendered before ten have lastedwith little diminution till maturity, and there is a sad record ofchildren who have lost a term, a year, or dropped school altogetherbecause of ill treatment or partiality.

Nearly two thousand children were asked what they would do in aspecific case of conflict between teacher and parents. It was foundthat, while for young children parental authority was preferred, amarked decline began about eleven and was most rapid after fourteen ingirls and fifteen in boys, and that there was a nearly correspondingincrease in the number of pubescents who preferred the teacher'sauthority. The reasons for their choice were also analyzed, and it wasfound that whereas for the young, unconditioned authority wasgenerally satisfactory, with pubesecents, abstract authority came intomarked predominance, "until when the children have reached the age ofsixteen almost seventy-five per cent of their reasons belong to thisclass, and the children show themselves able to extend the idea ofauthority without violence to their sense of justice."

On a basis of 1,400 papers answering the question whom, of anyone everheard or read of, they would like to resemble, Barnes[8] found thatgirls' ideals were far more often found in the immediate circle oftheir acquaintance than boys, and that those within that circle weremore often in their own family, but that the tendency to go outsidetheir personal knowledge and choose historical and public characterswas greatly augmented at puberty, when also the heroes of philanthropyshowed marked gain in prominence. Boys rarely chose women as theirideals; but in America, half the girls at eight and two-thirds ateighteen chose male characters. The range of important women idealsamong the girls was surprisingly small. Barnes fears that if from thechoice of relative as ideals, the expansion to remote or world heroesis too fast, it may "lead to disintegration of character and recklessliving." "If, on the other hand, it is expanded too slowly we shallhave that arrested development which makes good ground in which togrow stupidity, brutality, and drunkenness—the first fruits of asluggish and self-contained mind." "No one can consider the regularitywith which local ideals die out and are replaced by world idealswithout feeling that he is in the presence of law-abiding forces," andthis emphasizes the fact that the teacher or parent does not work in aworld governed by caprice.

The compositions written by thousands of children in New York on whatthey wanted to do when they were grown up were collated by Dr.Thurber.[9] The replies were serious, and showed that poor childrenlooked forward willingly to severe labor and the increased earnestnessof adolescent years, and the better answers to the question why werenoteworthy. All anticipated giving up the elastic joyousness ofchildhood and felt the need of patience. Up to ten, there was anincrease in the number of those who had two or more desires. Thisnumber declined rapidly at eleven, rose as rapidly at twelve, andslowly fell later. Preferences for a teacher's life exceeded in girlsup to nine, fell rapidly at eleven, increased slightly the next year,and declined thereafter. The ideal of becoming a dressmaker andmilliner increased till ten, fell at eleven, rose rapidly to a maximumat thirteen, when it eclipsed teaching, and then fell permanentlyagain. The professions of clerk and stenographer showed a marked risefrom eleven and a half. The number of boys who chose the father'soccupation attained its maximum at nine and its minimum at twelve,with a slight rise to fourteen, when the survey ended. The ideal oftradesman culminated at eight, with a second rise at thirteen. Thereason "to earn money" reached its high maximum of fifty per cent attwelve, and fell very rapidly. The reason "because I like it"culminated at ten and fell steadily thereafter. The motive thatinfluenced the choice of a profession and which was altruistic towardparents or for their benefit culminated at twelve and a half, and thendeclined. The desire for character increased somewhat throughout, butrapidly after twelve, and the impulse to do good to the world, whichhad risen slowly from nine, mounted sharply after thirteen. Thus, "ateleven all the ideas and tendencies are increasing toward a maximum.At twelve we find the altruistic desires for the welfare of parents,the reason 'to earn money'; at thirteen the desire on the part of thegirls to be dressmakers, also to be clerks and stenographers. Atfourteen culminates the desire for a business career in bank or officeamong the boys, the consciousness of life's uncertainties whichappeared first at twelve, the desire for character, and the hope ofdoing the world good."

"What would you like to be in an imaginary new city?" was a questionanswered by 1,234 written papers.[10] One hundred and fourteendifferent occupations were given; that of teacher led with the girlsat every age except thirteen and fourteen, when dressmaker andmilliner took precedence. The motive of making money led among theboys at every age except fourteen and sixteen, when occupations chosenbecause they were liked led. The greatest number of those who chosethe parent's occupation was found at thirteen, but from that age itsteadily declined and independent choice came into prominence. Themaximum of girls who chose parental vocations was at fourteen. Motivesof philanthropy reached nearly their highest point in girls and boysat thirteen.

Jegi[11] obtained letters addressed to real or imaginary friends from3,000 German children in Milwaukee, asking what they desired to dowhen they grew up, and why, and tabulated returns from 200 boys and200 girls for each age from eight to fourteen inclusive. He also founda steadily decreasing influence of relatives to thirteen; in earlyadolescence, the personal motive of choosing an occupation because itwas liked increased, while from twelve in boys and thirteen in girlsthe consideration of finding easy vocations grew rapidly strong.

L. W. Cline[12] studied by the census method returns from 2,594children, who were asked what they wished to be and do. He found thatin naming both ideals and occupations girls were more conservativethan boys, but more likely to give a reason for their choice. In thisrespect country children resembled boys more than city children.Country boys were prone to inattention, were more independent and ableto care for themselves, suggesting that the home life of the countrychild is more effective in shaping ideals and character than that ofthe city child. Industrial occupations are preferred by the youngerchildren, the professional and technical pursuits increasing with age.Judgments of rights and justice with the young are more prone to issuefrom emotional rather than from intellectual processes. Countrychildren seem more altruistic than those in the city, and while girlsare more sympathetic than boys, they are also more easily prejudiced.Many of these returns bear unmistakable marks that in some homes andschools moralization has been excessive and has produced a sentimentaltype of morality and often a feverish desire to express ethical viewsinstead of trusting to suggestion. Children are very prone to have onecode of ideals for themselves and another for others. Boys, too, aremore original than girls, and country children more than citychildren.

Friedrich[13] asked German school children what person they chose astheir pattern. The result showed differences of age, sex, and creed.First of all came characters in history, which seemed to show thatthis study for children of the sixth and seventh grades wasessentially ethical or a training of mood and disposition(Gesinnungsunterricht), and this writer suggests reform in thisrespect. He seems to think that the chief purpose of history for thisage should be ethical. Next came the influence of the Bible, althoughit was plain that this was rather in spite of the catechism and themethod of memoriter work. Here, too, the immediate environment at thisage furnished few ideals (four and one-fifth per cent), for childrenseem to have keener eyes for the faults than for the virtues of thosenear them. Religion, therefore, should chiefly be directed to theemotions and not to the understanding. This census also suggested morecare that the reading of children should contain good examples intheir environment, and also that the matter of instruction should bemore fully adapted to the conditions of sex.

Friedrich found as his chief age result that children of the seventhor older class in the German schools laid distinctly greater stressupon characters distinguished by bravery and courage than did thechildren of the sixth grade, while the latter more frequently selectedcharacters illustrating piety and holiness. The author divided hischaracters into thirty-five classes, illustrating qualities, and foundthat national activity led, with piety a close second; that then camein order those illustrating firmness of faith, bravery, modesty, andchastity; then pity and sympathy, industry, goodness, patience, etc.

Taylor, Young, Hamilton, Chambers, and others, have also collectedinteresting data on what children and young people hope to be, do,whom they would like to be, or resemble, etc. Only a few atadolescence feel themselves so good or happy that they are content tobe themselves. Most show more or less discontent at their lot. Fromsix to eleven or twelve, the number who find their ideals among theiracquaintances falls off rapidly, and historical characters rise to amaximum at or before the earliest teens. From eleven or twelve on intothe middle teens contemporary ideals increase steadily. Londonchildren are more backward in this expansion of ideals than Americans,while girls choose more acquaintance ideals at all ages than do boys.The expansion, these authors also trace largely to the study ofhistory. The George Washington ideal, which leads all the rest by farand is greatly overworked, in contrast with the many heroes of equalrank found in England, pales soon, as imperfections are seen and thosenow making history loom up. This is the normal age to free frombondage to the immediate present, and this freedom is one measure ofeducation. Bible heroes are chosen as ideals by only a very smallpercentage, mostly girls, far more characters being from fiction andmythology; where Jesus is chosen, His human is preferred to His divineside. Again, it would seem that teachers would be ideals, especiallyas many girls intend to teach, but they are generally unpopular aschoices. In an ideal system they would be the first step in expansionfrom home ideals. Military heroes and inventors play leading rôles inthe choices of pubescent boys.

Girls at all school ages and increasingly up the grades prefer foreignideals, to be the wife of a man of title, as aristocracies offerspecial opportunities for woman to shine, and life near the source offashion is very attractive, at least up to sixteen. The saddest factin these studies is that nearly half our American pubescent girls, ornearly three times as many as in England, choose male ideals, or wouldbe men. Girls, too, have from six to fifteen times as many ideals asboys. In this significant fact we realize how modern woman has cutloose from all old moorings and is drifting with no destination and noanchor aboard. While her sex has multiplied in all lower and highschool grades, its ideals are still too masculine. Text-books teachlittle about women. When a woman's Bible, history, course of study,etc., is proposed, her sex fears it may reduce her to the oldservitude. While boys rarely, and then only when very young, choosefemale ideals, girls' preference for the life of the other sexsometimes reaches sixty and seventy per cent. The divorce between thelife preferred and that demanded by the interests of the race is oftenabsolute. Saddest and most unnatural of all is the fact that thisstate of things increases most rapidly during just those years whenideals of womanhood should be developed and become most dominant, tillit seems as if the female character was threatened withdisintegration. While statistics are not yet sufficient to be reliableon the subject, there is some indication that woman later slowlyreverts toward ideals not only from her own sex but also from thecircle of her own acquaintances.

The reasons for the choice of ideals are various and not yet welldetermined. Civic virtues certainly rise; material and utilitarianconsiderations do not seem to much, if at all, at adolescence, and insome data decline. Position, fame, honor, and general greatnessincrease rapidly, but moral qualities rise highest and also fastestjust before and near puberty and continue to increase later yet. Bythese choices both sexes, but girls far most, show increasingadmiration of ethical and social qualities. Artistic and intellectualtraits also rise quite steadily from ten or eleven onward, but with nosuch rapidity, and reach no such height as military ability andachievement for boys. Striking in these studies is the rapid increase,especially from eight to fourteen, of the sense of historic time forhistoric persons. These long since dead are no longer spoken of as nowliving. Most of these choices are direct expressions of realdifferences of taste and character.

Property, Kline and France[14] have defined as "anything that theindividual may acquire which sustains and prolongs life, favorssurvival, and gives an advantage over opposing forces." Many animalsand even insects store up food both for themselves and for theiryoung. Very early in life children evince signs of ownership.Letourneau[15] says that the notion of private property, which seemsto us so natural, dawned late and slowly, and that common ownershipwas the rule among primitive people. Value is sometimes measured byuse and sometimes by the work required to produce it. Before puberty,there is great eagerness to possess things that are of immediateservice; but after its dawn, the desire of possession takes anotherform, and money for its own sake, which is at first rather anabstraction, comes to be respected or regarded as an object of extremedesire, because it is seen to be the embodiment of all values.

The money sense, as it is now often called, is very complex and hasnot yet been satisfactorily analyzed by psychology. Ribot and otherstrace its origin to provision which they think animals that hoard foodfeel. Monroe[16] has tabulated returns from 977 boys and 1,090 girlsfrom six to sixteen in answer to the question as to what they would dowith a small monthly allowance. The following table shows the markedincrease at the dawn of adolescence of the number who would save it:

Age. Boys. Girls. | Age. Boys. Girls.
7….43 per cent 36 per cent | 12….82 per cent 64 per cent
8….45 " 34 " | 13….88 " 78 "
9….48 " 35 " | 14….85 " 80 "
10….58 " 50 " | 15….83 " 78 "
11….71 " 58 " | 16….85 " 82 "

This tendency to thrift is strongest in boys, and both sexes oftenshow the tendency to moralize, that is so strong in the early teens.Much of our school work in arithmetic is dominated by the money sense;and school savings-banks, at first for the poor, are now extending tochildren of all classes. This sense tends to prevent pauperism,prodigality, is an immense stimulus to the imagination and developspurpose to pursue a distant object for a long time. To see all thingsand values in terms of money has, of course, its pedagogic and ethicallimitations; but there is a stage when it is a great educationaladvance, and it, too, is full of phylogenetic suggestions.

Social judgement, cronies, solitude—The two following observationsafford a glimpse of the development of moral judgments. From 1,000boys and 1,000 girls of each age from six to sixteen who answered thequestion as to what should be done to a girl with a new box of paintswho beautified the parlor chairs with them with a wish to please hermother, the following conclusion was drawn.[17] Most of the youngerchildren would whip the girl, but from fourteen on the number declinesvery rapidly. Few of the young children suggest explaining why it waswrong; while at twelve, 181, and at sixteen, 751 would explain. Themotive of the younger children in punishment is revenge; with theolder ones that of preventing a repetition of the act comes in; andhigher and later comes the purpose of reform. With age comes also amarked distinction between the act and its motive and a sense of thegirl's ignorance. Only the older children would suggest extracting apromise not to offend again. Thus with puberty comes a change ofview-point from judging actions by results to judging by motives, andonly the older ones see that wrong can be done if there are no badconsequences. There is also with increased years a great developmentof the quality of mercy.

One hundred children of each sex and age between six and sixteen askedwhat they would do with a burglar, the question stating that thepenalty was five years in prison.[18] Of the younger children nearlynine-tenths ignored the law and fixed upon some other penalty, butfrom twelve years there is a steady advance in those who would inflictthe legal penalty, while at sixteen, seventy-four per cent would havethe criminal punished according to law. Thus "with the dawn ofadolescence at the age of twelve or shortly after comes therecognition of a larger life, a life to be lived in common withothers, and with this recognition the desire to sustain the socialcode made for the common welfare," and punishment is no longerregarded as an individual and arbitrary matter.

From another question answered by 1,914 children[19] it was found thatwith the development of the psychic faculties in youth, there was anincreasing appreciation of punishment as preventive; an increasingsense of the value of individuality and of the tendency to demandprotection of personal rights; a change from a sense of justice basedon feeling and on faith in authority to that based on reason andunderstanding. Children's attitude toward punishment for weak timesense, tested by 2,536 children from six to sixteen,[20] showed also amarked pubescent increase in the sense of the need of the remedialfunction of punishment as distinct from the view of it as vindictive,or getting even, common in earlier years. There is also a markedincrease in discriminating the kinds and degrees of offenses; intaking account of mitigating circ*mstances, the inconvenience causedothers, the involuntary nature of the offense and the purpose of theculprit. All this continues to increase up to sixteen, where thesestudies leave the child.

An interesting effect of the social instinct appears in AugustMayer's[21] elaborate study made up on fourteen boys in the fifth andsixth grade of a Würzburg school to determine whether they could workbetter together or alone. The tests were in dictation, mental andwritten arithmetic, memory, and Ebbinghaus's combination exercises andall were given with every practicable precaution to make the otherconditions uniform. The conclusions demonstrate the advantages ofcollective over individual instruction. Under the former condition,emulation is stronger and work more rapid and better in quality. Fromthis it is inferred that pupils should not be grouped according toability, for the dull are most stimulated by the presence of thebright, the bad by the good, etc. Thus work at home is prone todeteriorate, and experimental pedagogy shows that the social impulseis on the whole a stronger spur for boys of eleven or twelve than theabsence of distraction which solitude brings.

From the answers of 1,068 boys and 1,268 girls from seven to sixteenon the kind of chum they liked best,[22] it appears that with theteens children are more anxious for chums that can keep secrets anddress neatly, and there is an increased number who are liked forqualities that supplement rather than duplicate those of the chooser."There is an apparent struggle between the real actual self and theideal self; a pretty strong desire to have a chum that embodies thetraits youth most desire but which they are conscious of lacking." Thestrong like the weak; those full of fun the serious; the timid thebold; the small the large, etc. Only children[23] illustrate differingeffects of isolation, while "mashes" and "crushes" and ultra-crony-ismwith "selfishness for two" show the results of abnormal restriction ofthe irradiation of the social instinct which should now occur.[24]

M. H. Small,[25] after pointing out that communal animals are moreintelligent than those with solitary habits, and that even to name allthe irradiations of the social instinct would be write a history ofthe human race, studied nearly five hundred cases of eminent men whodeveloped proclivities to solitude. It is interesting to observe inhow many of these cases this was developed in adolescence when, withthe horror of mediocrity, comes introspection, apathy, irresolution,and subjectivism. The grounds of repulsion from society at this agemay be disappointed hunger for praise, wounded vanity, the reactionfrom over-assertion, or the nursing of some high ideals, as it isslowly realized that in society the individual cannot be absolute. Themotives to self-isolation may be because youth feels its lack ofphysical or moral force to compete with men, or they may be due to thefailure of others to concede to the exactions of inordinate egotismand are directly proportional to the impulse to magnify self, or tothe remoteness of common social interests from immediate personaldesire or need, and inversely as the number and range of interestsseen to be common and the clearness with which social relations arerealized. While maturity of character needs some solitude, too muchdwarfs it, and more or less of the same paralysis of associationfollows which is described in the nostalgia of arctic journeys,deserts, being lost in the jungle, solitary confinement, and in theinteresting stories of feral men.[26] In some of these cases the mindis saved from entire stultification by pets, imaginary companions,tasks, etc. Normally "the tendency to solitude at adolescenceindicates not fulness but want"; and a judicious balance between restand work, pursuit of favorite lines, genuine sympathy, and wisecompanionship will generally normalize the social relation.

First forms of spontaneous social organizations.— Gulick hasstudied the propensity of boys from thirteen on to consort in gangs,do "dawsies" and stumps, get into scrapes together, and fight andsuffer for one another. The manners and customs of the gang are tobuild shanties or "hunkies," hunt with sling shots, build fires beforehuts in the woods, cook their squirrels and other game, play Indian,build tree-platforms, where they smoke or troop about some leader, whomay have an old revolver. They find or excavate caves, or perhaps roofthem over; the barn is a blockhouse or a battleship. In the earlyteens boys begin to use frozen snowballs or put pebbles in them, orperhaps have stone-fights between gangs than which no contiguousAfrican tribes could be more hostile. They become toughs and tantalizepolicemen and peddlers; "lick" every enemy or even stranger foundalone on their grounds; often smash windows; begin to use sticks andbrass knuckles in their fights; pelt each other with green apples;carry shillalahs, or perhaps air-rifles. The more plucky arrangefights beforehand; rifle unoccupied houses; set ambushes for gangswith which they are at feud; perhaps have secrets and initiationswhere new boys are triced up by the legs and butted against trees androcks. When painted for their Indian fights, they may grow so excitedas to perhaps rush into the water or into the school-room yelling;mimic the violence of strikes; kindle dangerous bonfires; peltpolicemen, and shout vile nicknames.

The spontaneous tendency to develop social and political organizationsamong boys in pubescent years was well seen in a school near Baltimorein the midst of an eight-hundred-acre farm richly diversified withswamp and forest and abounding with birds, squirrels, rabbits, etc.Soon after the opening of this school[27] the boys gathered nuts inparties. When a tree was reached which others had shaken, an unwrittenlaw soon required those who wished to shake it further first to pileup all nuts under the tree, while those who failed to do so wereuniversally regarded as dishonest and every boy's hand was againstthem. To pile them involved much labor, so that the second partyusually sought fresh trees, and partial shaking practically gavepossession of all the fruits on a tree. They took birds' eggs freely,and whenever a bird was found in building, or a squirrel's hole wasdiscovered, the finder tacked his name on the tree and therebyconfirmed his ownership, as he did if he placed a box in which a nestwas built. The ticket must not blow off, and the right at first lastedonly one season. In the rabbit-land every trap that was set preëmptedground for a fixed number of yards about it. Some grasping boys soonmade many traps and set them all over a valuable district, so that thecommon land fell into a few hands. Traps were left out all winter andsimply set the next spring. All these rights finally came into theownership of two or three boys, who slowly acquired the right andbequeathed their claims to others for a consideration, when they leftschool. The monopolists often had a large surplus of rabbits whichthey bartered for "butters," the unit being the ounce of dailyallowance. These could be represented by tickets transferred, so thatdebts were paid with "butters" that had never been seen. An agrarianparty arose and demanded a redistribution of land from themonopolists, as Sir Henry Maine shows often happened in the oldvillage community. Legislation and judicial procedure were developedand quarrels settled by arbitration, ordeal, and wager, and punishmentby bumping often followed the decision of the boy folk-mote. Scales ofprices for commodities in "butters" or in pie-currency were evolved,so that we here have an almost entirely spontaneous but amazinglyrapid recapitulation of the social development of the race by theseboys.

From a study of 1,166 children's organizations described as a languagelesson in school composition, Mr. Sheldon[28] arrives at someinteresting results. American children tend strongly to institutionalactivities, only about thirty per cent of all not having belonged tosome such organization. Imitation plays a very important rôle, andgirls take far more kindly than boys to societies organized by adultsfor their benefit. They are also more governed by adult and altruisticmotives in forming their organizations, while boys are nearer toprimitive man. Before ten comes the period of free spontaneousimitation of every form of adult institution. The child reproducessympathetically miniature copies of the life around him. On a farm,his play is raking, threshing, building barns, or on the seashore hemakes ships and harbors. In general, he plays family, store, church,and chooses officers simply because adults do. The feeling of caste,almost absent in the young, culminates about ten and declinesthereafter. From ten to fourteen, however, associations assume a newcharacter; boys especially cease to imitate adult organizations andtend to form social units characteristic of lower stages of humanevolution—pirates, robbers, soldiers, lodges, and other savagereversionary combinations, where the strongest and boldest is theleader. They build huts, wear feathers and tomahawks as badges, carryknives and toy-pistols, make raids and sell the loot. Cowards alone,together they fear nothing. Their imagination is perhaps inflamed byflash literature and "penny-dreadfuls." Such associations often breakout in decadent country communities where, with fewer and feebleroffspring, lax notions of family discipline prevail and hoodlumism isthe direct result of the passing of the rod. These barbaric societieshave their place and give vigor; but if unreduced later, as in manyunsettled portions of this country, a semisavage state of societyresults. At twelve the predatory function is normally subordinated,and if it is not it becomes dangerous, because the members are nolonger satisfied with mere play, but are stronger and abler to doharm, and the spice of danger and its fascination may issue in crime.Athleticism is now the form into which these wilder instincts can bebest transmuted, and where they find harmless and even wholesome vent.Another change early in adolescence is the increased number of social,literary, and even philanthropic organizations and institutions formutual help—perhaps against vice, for having a good time, or forholding picnics and parties. Altruism now begins to make itself feltas a motive.

Student life and organizations. Student life is perhaps the best ofall fields, unworked though it is, for studying the natural history ofadolescence. Its modern record is over eight hundred years old and itis marked with the signatures of every age, yet has essential featuresthat do not vary. Cloister and garrison rules have never been enforcedeven in the hospice, bursa, inn, "house," "hall," or dormitory, andin loco parentis [In place of a parent] practises are impossible,especially with large numbers. The very word "school" means leisure,and in a world of toil and moil suggests paradise. Some have urgedthat élite youth, exempt from the struggle to live and left to thefreedom of their own inclinations, might serve as a biological andethnic compass to point out the goal of human destiny. But thespontaneous expressions of this best age and condition of life, withno other occupation than their own development, have shown reversionsas often as progress. The rupture of home ties stimulates every widervicarious expression of the social instinct. Each taste and trait canfind congenial companionship in others and thus be stimulated to moreintensity and self-consciousness. Very much that has been hithertorepressed in the adolescent soul is now reënforced by association andmay become excessive and even aggressive. While many of therace-correlates of childhood are lost, those of this stage are moreaccessible in savage and sub-savage life. Freedom is the native airand vital breath of student life. The sense of personal liberty isabsolutely indispensable for moral maturity; and just as truth can notbe found without the possibility of error, so the posse non peccare[Ability not to sin] precedes the non posse peccare, [Inability tosin] and professors must make abroad application of the rule abususnon tollit usum [Abuse does not do away with use]. The student musthave much freedom to be lazy, make his own minor morals, vent hisdisrespect for what he can see no use in, be among strangers to acthimself out and form a personality of his own, be baptized with therevolutionary and skeptical spirit, and go to extremes at the age whenexcesses teach wisdom with amazing rapidity, if he is to become a trueknight of the spirit and his own master. Ziegler[29] frankly toldGerman students that about one-tenth of them would be morally lost inthis process, but insisted that on the whole more good was done thanby restraint; for, he said, "youth is now in the stage of Schiller'sbell when it was molten metal."

Of all safeguards I believe a rightly cultivated sense of honor is themost effective at this age. Sadly as the written code of student honorin all lands needs revision, and partial, freaky, and utterlyperverted, tainted and cowardly as it often is, it really means whatKant expressed in the sublime precept, "Thou canst because thououghtest." Fichte said that Faulheit, Feigheit, and Falschheit[Laziness, cowardice, falsehood] were the three dishonorable thingsfor students. If they would study the history and enter into thespirit of their own fraternities, they would often have keener andbroader ideas of honor to which they are happily so sensitive. Ifprofessors made it always a point of honor to confess and never toconceal the limitation of their knowledge, would scorn all pretense ofit, place credit for originality frankly where it belongs, teach nocreeds they do not profoundly believe, or topics in which they are notinterested, and withhold nothing from those who want the truth, theycould from this vantage with more effect bring students to feel thatthe laziness that, while outwardly conforming, does no real innerwork; that getting a diploma, as a professor lately said, an averagestudent could do, on one hour's study a day; living beyond one'smeans, and thus imposing a hardship on parents greater than the talentof the son justifies; accepting stipends not needed, especially to thedeprivation of those more needy; using dishonest ways of securing rankin studies or positions on teams, or social standing, are, one andall, not only ungentlemanly but cowardly and mean, and the axe wouldbe laid at the root of the tree. Honor should impel students to gonowhere where they conceal their college, their fraternity, or eventheir name; to keep themselves immaculate from all contact with thatclass of women which, Ziegler states, brought twenty-five per cent ofthe students of the University of Berlin in a single year tophysicians; to remember that other's sisters are as cherished as theirown; to avoid those sins against confiding innocence which cry forvengeance, as did Valentine against Faust, and which strengthen thehate of social classes and make mothers and sisters seem tediousbecause low ideas of womanhood have been implanted, and which give ataste for mucky authors that reek with suggestiveness; and to avoidthe waste of nerve substance and nerve weakness in ways which Ibsenand Tolstoi have described. These things are the darkest blot on thehonor of youth.

Associations for youth, devised or guided by adults. Here we enter avery different realm. Forbush[30] undertakes an analysis of many suchclubs which he divides according to their purpose into nine chiefclasses: physical training, handicraft, literary, social, civic andpatriotic, science-study, hero-love, ethical, religious. These heclassifies as to age of the boys, his purview generally ending atseventeen; discusses and tabulates the most favorable number, theinstincts chiefly utilized, the kinds of education gained in each andits percentage of interest, and the qualities developed. He commendsRiis's mode of pulling the safety-valve of a rather dangerous boy-gangby becoming an adult honorary member, and interpreting the impulsionsof this age in the direction of adventure instead of in that ofmischief. He reminds us that nearly one-third of the inhabitants ofAmerica are adolescents, that 3,000,000 are boys between twelve andsixteen, "that the do-called heathen people are, whatever their age,all in the adolescent stage of life."

A few American societies of this class we may briefly characterize asfollows:

(a) Typical of a large class of local juvenile clubs is the "Captainsof Ten," originally for boys of from eight to fourteen, and with alater graduate squad of those over fifteen. The "Ten" are the fingers;and whittling, scrap-book making, mat-weaving, etc., are taught. Themotto is, "The hand of the diligent shall bear rule"; its watchword is"Loyalty"; and the prime objects are "to promote a spirit of loyaltyto Christ among the boys of the club," and to learn about and work forChrist's kingdom. The members wear a silver badge; have an annualphotograph; elect their leaders; vote their money to missions (onwhich topic they hold meetings); act Bible stories in costume; hearstories and see scientific experiments; enact a Chinese school; writearticles for the children's department of religious journals; developcomradeship, and "have a good time."

(b) The Agassiz Association, founded in 1875 "to encourage personalwork in natural science," now numbers some 25,000 members, withchapters distributed all over the country, and was said by the lateProfessor Hyatt to include "the largest number of persons ever boundtogether for the purpose of mutual help in the study of nature." Itfurnishes practical courses of study in the sciences; has localchapters in thousands of towns and cities in this and other countries;publishes a monthly organ, The Swiss Cross, to facilitatecorrespondence and exchange of specimens; has a small endowment, abadge, is incorporated, and is animated by a spirit akin to that ofUniversity Extension; and, although not exclusively for young people,is chiefly sustained by them.

(c) The Catholic Total Abstinence Union is a strong, well-organized,and widely extended society, mostly composed of young men. The pledgerequired of all members explains its object: "I promise with theDivine assistance and in honor of the Sacred Thirst and the Agony ofour Saviour, to abstain from all intoxicating drinks and to prevent asmuch as possible by advice and example the sin of intemperance inothers and to discountenance the drinking customs of society." Ageneral convention of the Union has been held annually since 1877.

(d) The Princely Knights of Character Castle is an organizationfounded in 1895 for boys from twelve to eighteen to "inculcate,disseminate, and practise the principles of heroism—endurance—love,purity, and patriotism." The central incorporated castle grantscharters to local castles, directs the ritual and secret work. Itsofficers are supreme prince, patriarch, scribes, treasurer, director,with captain of the guard, watchman, porter, keeper of the dungeon,musician, herald, and favorite son. The degrees of the secret work areshepherd lad, captive, viceroy, brother, son, prince, knight, androyal knight. There are jewels, regalia, paraphernalia, andinitiations. The pledge for the first degree is, "I hereby promise andpledge that I will abstain from the use of intoxicating liquor in anyform as a beverage; that I will not use profane or improper language;that I will discourage the use of tobacco in any form; that I willstrive to live pure in body and mind; that I will obey all rules andregulations of the order and not reveal any of the secrets in anyway." There are benefits, reliefs, passwords, a list of offenses andpenalties.

(e) Some 35,000 Bands of Mercy are now organized under the directionof the American Humane Education Society. The object of theorganization is to cultivate kindness to animals and sympathy with thepoor and oppressed. The prevention of cruelty in driving, cattletransportation, humane methods of killing, care for the sick andabandoned or overworked animals, are the themes of most of itsvoluminous literature. It has badges, hymnbooks, cards, andcertificates of membership, and a motto, "Kindness, Justice, and Mercyto All." Its pledge is, "I will try to be kind to all harmless livingcreatures, and try to protect them from cruel usage," and is intendedto include human as well as dumb creatures. The founder and secretary,with great and commendable energy, has instituted prize contests forspeaking on humane subjects in schools, and has printed and circulatedprize stories; since the incorporation of the society in 1868, he hasbeen indefatigable in collecting funds, speaking before schools andcolleges, and prints fifty to sixty thousand copies of the monthlyorgan. In addition to its mission of sentiment, and to make it moreeffective, this organization clearly needs to make more provision forthe intellectual element by well-selected or constructed courses, orat least references on the life, history, habits, and instincts ofanimals, and it also needs more recognition that modern charity is ascience as well as a virtue.

(f) The Coming Men of America, although organized only in 1894, nowclaims to be the greatest chartered secret society for boys and youngmen in the country. It began two years earlier in a lodge started by anineteen-year-old boy in Chicago in imitation of such ideas of Masons,Odd-Fellows, etc., as its founder could get from his older brother,and its meetings were first held in a basem*nt. On this basis olderheads aided in its development, so that it is a good example of theboy-imitative helped out by parents. The organization is nowrepresented in every State and Territory, and boys travel on itsbadge. There is an official organ, The Star, a badge, sign, and asecret sign language called "bestography." Its secret ritual work ishighly praised. Its membership is limited to white boys undertwenty-one.

(g) The first Harry Wadsworth Club was established in 1871 as aresult of E.E. Hale's Ten Times One, published the year before. Itsmotto is, "Look up, and not down; look forward, and not back; lookout, and not in; lend a hand," or "Faith, Hope, and Charity." Itsorgan is the Ten Times One Record; its badge is a silver Maltesecross. Each club may organize as it will, and choose its own name,provided it accepts the above motto. Its watchword is, "In His Name."It distributes charities, conducts a Noonday Rest, outings in thecountry, and devotes itself to doing good.[31]

[Footnote 1: Tarde: L'Opposition Universelle. Alcan, Paris, 1897, p.461.]

[Footnote 2: The Adolescent at Home and in School. By E. G. Lancaster.
Proceedings of the National Educational Association, 1899, p. 1039.]

[Footnote 3: The Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence. Pedagogical
Seminary, July, 1897, vol. 5, p. 87.]

[Footnote 4: Study of Boys Entering the Adolescent Period of Life.North Western Monthly, November, 1897, vol. 8, pp. 248-250, and aseries thereafter.]

[Footnote 5: The Suggestibility of Children. Pedagogical Seminary,
December, 1896, vol. 4, p. 211]

[Footnote 6: Characteristics of the Best Teacher as Recognized byChildren. By H.E. Kratz. Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1896, vol. 3, pp.413-418. See also The High School Teacher from the Pupil's Point ofView, by W.F. Book. Pedagogical Seminary, September, 1905, vol. 12,pp. 239-288.]

[Footnote 7: A Study of the Teacher's Influence. Pedagogical Seminary,
December, 1900, vol. 7, pp. 492-525.]

[Footnote 8: Children's Ideals. Pedagogical Seminary, April, 1900,vol. 7, pp. 3-12]

[Footnote 9: Transactions of the Illinois Society for Child Study,vol. 2, No. 2, 1896, pp. 41-46.]

[Footnote 10: Children's Ambitions. By H.M. Willard. Barnes's Studiesin Education, vol. 2, pp. 243-258. (Privately printed by Earl Barnes,4401 Sansom Street, Philadelphia.)]

[Footnote 11: Transactions of the Illinois Society for Child Study,
October, 1898, vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 131-144.]

[Footnote 12: A Study in Juvenile Ethics. Pedagogical Seminary, June,1903, vol. 10, pp. 239-266]

[Footnote 13: Die Ideale der Kinder. Zeitschrift für pädagogische
Psychologie, Pathologie und Hygiene, Jahrgang 3, Heft 1, pp. 38-64.]

[Footnote 14: The Psychology of Ownership, Pedagogical Seminary,
December, 1899, vol. 6, pp. 421-470.]

[Footnote 15: Property: Its Origin and Development. Chas. Scribner's
Sons, 1892.]

[Footnote 16: Money-Sense of Children. Will S. Monroe. Pedagogical
Seminary, March, 1899, vol. 6, pp. 152-156]

[Footnote 17: A Study of Children's Rights, as Seen by Themselves. ByM.E. Schallenberger. Pedagogical Seminary, October, 1894, vol. 3, pp.87-96.]

[Footnote 18: Children's Attitude toward Law. By E. M Darrah. Barnes'sStudies in Education, vol. 1, pp. 213-216. (Stanford University,1897.) G. E. Stechert and Co., New York.]

[Footnote 19: Class Punishment. By Caroline Frear. Barnes's Studies in
Education, vol. 1, pp. 332-337.]

[Footnote 20: Children's Attitude toward Punishment for Weak TimeSense. By D.S. Snedden. Barnes's Studies in Education, vol. 1, pp.344-351]

[Footnote 21: Ueber Einzel- und Gesamtleistung des Schulkindes. Archivfür die gesamte Psychologie, 1 Band, 2 and 3 Heft, 1903, pp. 276-416]

[Footnote 22: Development of the Social Consciousness of Children. ByWill S. Monroe. North-Western Monthly, September, 1898, vol. 9, pp.31-36.]

[Footnote 23: Bohannon: The Only Child in a Family. Pedagogical
Seminary, April, 1898, vol. 5, pp. 475-496.]

[Footnote 24: J. Delitsch: Über Schülerfreundschaften in einerVolksschulklasse, Die Kinderfehler. Fünfter Jahrgang, Mai, 1900, pp.150-163.]

[Footnote 25: On Some Psychical Relations of Society and Solitude.
Pedagogical Seminary, April 1900, vol. 7, pp. 13-69]

[Footnote 26: A. Rauber: hom*o Sapiens Ferus. J. Brehse, Leipzig,
1888. See also my Social Aspects of Education; Pedagogical Seminary,
March, 1902, vol. 9, pp. 81-91. Also Kropotkin: Mutual Aid a Factor of
Evolution. W. Heinemann, London, 1902.]

[Footnote 27: Rudimentary Society among Boys, by John H. Johnson,
McDonogh, Md. McDonogh School, 1983, reprinted from Johns Hopkins
University Studies Series 2 (Historical and Political Studies, vol. 2,
No. 11).]

[Footnote 28: The Institutional Activities of American Children.
American Journal of Psychology, July, 1898, vol. 9, pp. 425-448.]

[Footnote 29: Der deutsche Student am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts. 6th
Ed. Göschen, Leipzig, 1896.]

[Footnote 30: The Social Pedagogy of Boyhood. Pedagogical Seminary,October, 1900, vol. 7, pp. 307-346. See also his The Boy Problem, withan introduction by G. Stanley Hall, The Pilgrim Press, Boston, 1901,p. 194. Also Winifred Buck (Boys' Self-governing Clubs, Macmillan, NewYork, 1903), who thinks ten million dollars could be used in trainingclub advisers who should have the use of schools and grounds afterhours and evenings, conduct excursions, organize games, etc., butavoid all direct teaching and book work generally. This writer thinkssuch an institution would soon result in a marked increase of publicmorality and an augmented demand for technical instruction, and thatfor the advisers themselves the work would be the best training forhigh positions in politics and reform. Clubs of boys from eight tosixteen or eighteen must not admit age disparities of more than twoyears.]

[Footnote 31: See Young People's Societies, by L.W. Bacon. D. Appletonand Co., New York, 1900, p. 265. Also, F.G. Cressey: The Church andYoung Men. Fleming H. Revell Co., New York, 1903, p. 233.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER X

INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION AND SCHOOL WORK

The general change and plasticity at puberty—English teaching—Causesof its failure: (1) too much time to other languages, (2)subordination of literary content to form, (3) too early stress on eyeand hand instead of ear and mouth, (4) excessive use of concretewords—Children's interest in words—Their favorites—Slang—Storytelling—Age of reading crazes—What to read—The historicsense—Growth of memory span.

Just as about the only duty of young children is implicit obedience,so the chief mental training from about eight to twelve is arbitrarymemorization, drill, habituation, with only limited appeal to theunderstanding. After the critical transition age of six or seven, whenthe brain has achieved its adult size and weight, and teething hasreduced the chewing surface to its least extent, begins a unique stageof life marked by reduced growth and increased activity and power toresist both disease and fatigue, which suggests what was, in some justpost-simian age of our race, its period of maturity. Here belongdiscipline in writing, reading, spelling, verbal memory, manualtraining, practise of instrumental technic, proper names, drawing,drill in arithmetic, foreign languages by oral methods, the correctpronunciation of which is far harder if acquired later, etc. The handis never so near the brain. Most of the content of the mind hasentered it through the senses, and the eye-and ear-gates should beopen at their widest. Authority should now take precedence of reason.Children comprehend much and very rapidly if we can only refrain fromexplaining, but this slows down intuition, tends to make casuists andprigs and to enfeeble the ultimate vigor of reason. It is the age oflittle method and much matter. The good teacher is now a pedotrieb,or boy-driver. Boys of this age at now not very affectionate. Theytake pleasure in obliging and imitating those they like and perhaps indisobliging those they dislike. They have much selfishness and littlesentiment. As this period draws to a close and the teens begin, theaverage normal child will not be bookish but should read and writewell, know a few dozen well-chosen books, play several dozen games, bewell started in one or more ancient and modern languages—if thesemust be studied at all, should know something of several industriesand how to make many things he is interested in, belong to a few teamsand societies, know much about nature in his environment, be able tosing and draw, should have memorized much more than he now does, andbe acquainted, at least in story form, with the outlines of many ofthe best works in literature and the epochs and persons in history.[1]Morally he should have been through many if not most forms of whatparents and teachers commonly call "badness," and Professor Yoder evencalls "meanness". He should have fought, whipped and been whipped,used language offensive to the prude and to the prim precisian, beenin some scrapes, had something to do with bad, if more with good,associates, and been exposed to and already recovering from as manyforms of ethical mumps and measles as, by having in mild form now hecan be rendered immune to later when they become far more dangerous,because his moral and religious as well as his rational nature isnormally rudimentary. He is not depraved, but only in a savage orhalf-animal stage, although to a large-brained, large-hearted andtruly parental soul that does not call what causes it inconvenience byopprobrious names, an altogether lovable and even fascinating stage.The more we know of boyhood the more narrow and often selfish do adultideals of it appear. Something is amiss with the lad of ten who isvery good, studious, industrious, thoughtful, altruistic, quiet,polite, respectful, obedient, gentlemanly, orderly, always in goodtoilet, docile to reason, who turns away from stories that reek withgore, prefers adult companionship to that of his mates, refuses alllow associates, speaks standard English, or is as pious and deeply inlove with religious services as the typical maiden teacher or the àla mode parent wishes. Such a boy is either under-vitalized andanemic and precocious by nature, a repressed, overtrained,conventionalized manikin, a hypocrite, as some can become underpressure thus early in life, or else a genius of some kind with alittle of all these.

But with the teens all this begins to be changed and many of theseprecepts must be gradually reversed. There is an outburst of growththat needs a large part of the total kinetic energy of the body. Thereis a new interest in adults, a passion to be treated like one'selders, to make plans for the future, a new sensitiveness to adultpraise or blame. The large muscles have their innings and there is anew clumsiness of body and mind. The blood-vessels expand and blushingis increased, new sensations and feelings arise, the imaginationblossoms, love of nature is born, music is felt in a new, more inwardway, fatigue comes easier and sooner; and if heredity and environmentenable the individual to cross this bridge successfully there issometimes almost a break of continuity, and a new being emerges. Thedrill methods of the preceding period must be slowly relaxed and newappeals made to freedom and interest. We can no longer coerce a break,but must lead and inspire if we would avoid arrest. Individuality musthave a longer tether. Never is the power to appreciate so far ahead ofthe power to express, and never does understanding so outstrip abilityto explain. Overaccuracy is atrophy. Both mental and moral acquisitionsink at once too deep to be reproduced by examination without injuryboth to intellect and will. There is nothing in the environment towhich the adolescent nature does not keenly respond. With pedagogictact we can teach about everything we know that is really worthknowing; but if we amplify and morselize instead of giving greatwholes, if we let the hammer that strikes the bell rest too longagainst it and deaden the sound, and if we wait before each methodicstep till the pupil has reproduced all the last, we starve and retardthe soul, which is now all insight and receptivity. Plasticity is atit* maximum, utterance at its minimum. The inward traffic obstructsthe outer currents. Boys especially are often dumb-bound,monophrastic, inarticulate, and semi-aphasic save in their ownvigorous and inelegant way. Nature prompts to a modest reticence forwhich the deflowerers of all ephebic naiveté should have some respect.Deep interests arise which are almost as sacred as is the hour ofvisitation of the Holy Ghost to the religious teacher. The mind attimes grows in leaps and bounds in a way that seems to defy the greatenemy, fatigue; and yet when the teacher grows a little tiresome thepupil is tired in a moment. Thus we have the converse danger offorcing knowledge upon unwilling and unripe minds that have no lovefor it, which is in many ways psychologically akin to a nameless crimethat in some parts of the country meets summary vengeance.

(A) The heart of education as well as its phyletic root is thevernacular literature and language. These are the chief instruments ofthe social as well as of the ethnic and patriotic instinct. The primeplace of the former we saw in the last chapter, and we now pass to thelatter, the uniqueness of which should first be considered.

The Century, the largest complete dictionary of English, claims tohave 250,000 words, as against 55,000 in the old Webster's Unabridged.Worcester's Unabridged of 1860 has 105,000; Murray's, now in L, it issaid, will contain 240,000 principal and 140,000 compound words, or380,000 words in all. The dictionary of the French Academy has 33,000;that of the Royal Spanish Academy, 50,000; the Dutch dictionary of VanDale, 86,000; the Italian and Portuguese, each about 50,000 literary,or 150,000 encyclopedic words. Of course, words can really be countedhardly more than ideas or impressions, and compounds, dialects,obsolete terms, localisms, and especially technical terms, swell thenumber indefinitely. A competent philologist[2] says, if given largeliberty, he "will undertake to supply 1,000,000 English words for1,000,000 American dollars." Chamberlain[3] estimates that ourlanguage contains more than two score as many words as all those leftus from the Latin. Many savage languages contain only a very fewthousand, and some but a few hundred, words. Our tongue is essentiallySaxon in its vocabulary and its spirit and, from the time when it wasdespised and vulgar, has followed an expansion policy, swallowing withlittle modification terms not only from classical antiquity, but fromall modern languages—Indian, African, Chinese, Mongolian—accordingto its needs, its adopted children far outnumbering those of its ownblood. It absorbs at its will the slang of the street gamin, the cantof thieves and beggars; is actually creative in the baby talk ofmothers and nurses; drops, forgets, and actually invents new wordswith no pedigree like those of Lear, Carrol, and many others.[4]

In this vast field the mind of the child early begins to take flight.Here his soul finds its native breath and vital air. He may live as apeasant, using, as Max Müller says many do, but a few hundred wordsduring his lifetime; or he may need 8,000, like Milton, 15,000, likeShakespeare, 20,000 or 30,000, like Huxley, who commanded bothliterary and technical terms; while in understanding, which faroutstrips, use, a philologist may master perhaps 100,000 or 200,000words. The content of a tongue may contain only folk-lore and termsfor immediate practical life, or this content may be indefinitelyelaborated in a rich literature and science. The former is generallywell on in its development before speech itself becomes an abject ofstudy. Greek literature was fully grown when the Sophists, and finallyAristotle, developed the rudiments of grammar, the parts of speechbeing at first closely related with his ten metaphysical categories.Our modern tongue had the fortune, unknown to those of antiquity, whenit was crude and despised, to be patronized and regulated by Latingrammarians, and has had a long experience, both for good and evil,with their conserving and uniformitizing instincts. It has, too, along history of resistance to this control. Once spelling was a matterof fashion or even individual taste; and as the constraint grew, twopedagogues in the thirteenth century fought a duel for the rightspelling of the word, and that maintained by the survivor prevailed.Phonic and economic influences are now again making some headwayagainst orthographic orthodoxy here; so with definitions. In the daysof Johnson's dictionary, individuality still had wide range indetermining meanings. In pronunciation, too: we may now pronounce theword tomato in six ways, all sanctioned by dictionaries. Of ourtongue in particular it is true, as Tylor says in general, condensinga longer passage, "take language all in all, it is the product of arough-and-ready ingenuity and of the great rule of thumb. It is an oldbarbaric engine, which in its highest development is altered, patched,and tinkered into capability. It is originally and naturally a productof low culture, developed by ages of conscious and unconsciousimprovement to answer more or less perfectly the requirements ofmodern civilization."

It is plain, therefore, that no grammar, and least of all that derivedfrom the prim, meager Latin contingent of it, is adequate to legislatefor the free spirit of our magnificent tongue. Again, if this is everdone and English ever has a grammar that is to it what Latin grammaris to that language, it will only be when the psychology of speechrepresented, e.g., in Wundt's Psychologie der Sprache,[5] which is nowcompiling and organizing the best elements from all grammars, iscomplete. The reason why English speakers find such difficulty inlearning other languages is because ours has so far outgrown them bythrowing off not only inflections but many old rules of syntax, thatwe have had to go backward to an earlier and more obsolescent stage ofhuman development. In 1414, at the Council of Constance, when EmperorSigismund was rebuked for a wrong gender, he replied, "I am King ofthe Romans and above grammar." Thomas Jefferson later wrote, "Wherestrictures of grammar does not weaken expression it should be attendedto; but where by a small grammatical negligence the energy of an ideais condensed or a word stands for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigorin contempt." Browning, Whitman, and Kipling deliberately violategrammar and secure thereby unique effects neither asking nor needingexcuse.

By general consent both high school and college youth in this countryare in an advanced stage of degeneration in the command of this theworld's greatest organ of the intellect; and that, despite the factthat the study of English often continues from primary into collegegrades, that no topic counts for more, and that marked deficiency hereoften debars from all other courses. Every careful study of thesubject for nearly twenty years shows deterioration, and ProfessorShurman, of Nebraska, thinks it now worse than at any time for fortyyears. We are in the case of many Christians described by Dante, whostrove by prayers to get nearer to God when in fact with everypetition they were departing farther from him. Such a comprehensivefact must have many causes.

I. One of these is the excessive time given to other languages just atthe psychological period of greatest linguistic plasticity andcapacity for growth. School invention and tradition is so inveteratethat it is hard for us to understand that there is little educationalvalue—and perhaps it is deëducational—to learn to tell the time ofday or name a spade in several different tongues or to learn to saythe Lord's Prayer in many different languages, any one of which theLord only can understand. The polyglot people that one meets on greatinternational highways of travel are linguists only in the sense thatthe moke on the variety stage who plays a dozen instruments equallybadly is a musician. It is a psychological impossibility to passthrough the apprenticeship stage of learning foreign languages at theage when the vernacular is setting without crippling it. The extremesare the youth in ancient Greece studying his own language only and themodern high school boy and girl dabbling in three or perhaps fourlanguages. Latin, which in the eight years preceding 1898 increasedone hundred and seventy-four per cent. in American high schools, whilethe proportion entering college in the country and even inMassachusetts steadily declined, is the chief offender. In the day ofits pedagogical glory Latin was the universal tongue of the learned.Sturm's idea was to train boys so that if suddenly transported toancient Rome or Greece they would be at home there. Language, it wassaid, was the chief instrument of culture; Latin, the chief languageand therefore a better drill in the vernacular than the vernacularitself. Its rules were wholesome swathing bands for the modernlanguages when in their infancy. Boys must speak only Latin on theplayground. They thought, felt, and developed an intellectual life inand with that tongue.[6] But how changed all this is now. Statisticalstudies show that five hours a week for a year gives command of but afew hundred words, that two years does not double this number, andthat command of the language and its resources in the original isalmost never attained, but that it is abandoned not only by theincreasing percentage that do not go to college but also by theincreasing percentage who drop it forever at the college door. Itsenormous numerical increase due to high school requirements, theincreasing percentage of girl pupils more ready to follow theteacher's advice, in connection with the deteriorating quality of thegirls—inevitable with their increasing numbers, the sense that Latinmeans entering upon a higher education, the special reverence for itby Catholic children, the overcrowded market for Latin teachers whom arecent writer says can be procured by the score at less rates than inalmost any other subject, the modern methods of teaching it which workwell with less knowledge of it by the teacher than in the case ofother school topics, have been attended perhaps inevitably by steadypedagogic decline despite the vaunted new methods; until now the babyLatin in the average high school class is a kind of sanctified relic,a ghost of a ghost, suggesting Swift's Struldbrugs, doomed to physicalimmortality but shriveling and with increasing horror of all thingsnew. In 1892 the German emperor declared it a shame for a boy to excelin Latin composition, and in the high schools of Sweden and Norway ithas been practically abandoned. In the present stage of itseducational decadence the power of the dead hand is stronglyillustrated by the new installation of the old Roman pronunciationwith which our tongue has only remote analogies, which makes havocwith proper names which is unknown and unrecognized in the schools ofthe European continent, and which makes a pedantic affectation out ofmore vocalism. I do not know nor care whether the old Romanspronounced thus or not, but if historic fidelity in this sense haspedagogic justification, why still teach a text like the Viri Romae,which is not a classic but a modern pedagogue's composition?

I believe profoundly in the Latin both as a university specialty andfor all students who even approach mastery, but for the vast numberswho stop in the early stages of proficiency it is disastrous to thevernacular. Compare the evils of translation English, which not eventhe most competent and laborious teaching can wholly prevent and whichcareless mechanical instruction directly fosters, with the vigorousfresh productions of a boy or girl writing or speaking of something ofvital present interest. The psychology of translation shows that itgives the novice a consciousness of etymologies which rather impedesthan helps the free movement of the mind. Jowett said in substancethat it is almost impossible to render either of the great deadlanguages into English without compromise, and this tends to injurethe idiomatic mastery of one's own tongue, which can be got only bymuch hard experience in uttering our own thoughts before trying toshape the dead thoughts of others into our language. We confound thelittle knowledge of word-histories which Latin gives with the farhigher and subtler sentence-sense which makes the soul of one languageso different from that of another, and training in which ought not toend until one has become more or less of a stylist and knows how tohew out modes of expressing his own individuality in great language.There is a sense in which Macaulay was not an Englishman at all, but aCiceronian Latinist who foisted an alien style upon our tongue; andeven Addison is a foreigner compared to the virile Kipling. The natureand needs of the adolescent mind demand bread and meat, while Latinrudiments are husks. In his autobiography, Booker Washington says thatfor ten years after their emancipation, the two chief ambitions of theyoung negro of the South were to hold office and to study Latin, andhe adds that the chief endeavor of his life has been against thesetendencies. For the American boy and girl, high school too often meansLatin. This gives at first a pleasing sense of exaltation to a higherstage of life, but after from one to three years the great majoritywho enter the high school drop out limp and discouraged for manyreasons, largely, however, because they are not fed. Defectivenutrition of the mind also causes a restlessness, which enhances allthe influences which make boys and girls leave school.

II. The second cause of this degeneration is the subordination ofliterature and content to language study. Grammar arises in the oldage of language. As once applied to our relatively grammarless tongueit always was more or less of a school-made artifact and an alienyoke, and has become increasingly so as English has grown great andfree. Its ghost, in the many textbooks devoted to it, lacks just thequality of logic which made and besouled it. Philology, too, with allits magnificence, is not a product of the nascent stages of speech. Inthe college, which is its stronghold, it has so inspired professors ofEnglish that their ideal is to be critical rather than creative tillthey prefer the minute reading of a few masterpieces to a wide generalknowledge, and a typical university announces that "in every case theexaminers will treat mere knowledge of books as less important thanthe ability to write good English" that will parse and that isspelled, punctuated, capitalized, and paragraphed aright. Goodprofessors of English literature are hard to find, and upon themphilologists, who are plentiful, look with a certain condescension.Many academic chairs of English are filled by men whose acquaintanceof our literature is very narrow, who wish to be linguistic and notliterary, and this is true even in ancient tongues.

At a brilliant examination, a candidate for the doctor's degree whohad answered many questions concerning the forms of Lucretius, whenasked whether he was a dramatist, historian, poet, or philosopher, didnot know, and his professor deemed the question improper. I visitedthe eleventh recitation in Othello in a high school class of nineteenpupils, not one of whom knew how the story ended, so intent had theybeen kept on its verbiage. Hence, too, has come the twelve feet oftext-books on English on my shelves with many standard works, editedfor schools, with more notes than text. Fashion that works from abovedown the grades and college entrance requirements are in large measureresponsible for this, perhaps now the worst case of the prostitutionof content to form.

Long exposure to this method of linguistic manicuring tends to makestudents who try to write ultra-fastidiously, seeking an over-refinedelaboration of petty trifles, as if the less the content the greaterthe triumph of form alone could be. These petty but pretty nothingsare like German confectionery, that appeals to the eye but has littlefor taste and is worse than nothing for the digestion. It is likestraining work on an empty stomach. For youth this embroidery ofdetails is the precocious senescence that Nordau has so copiouslyillustrated as literary decadence. Language is vastly larger than allits content, and the way to teach it is to focus the mind upon story,history, oratory, drama, Bible, for their esthetic, mental, and aboveall, moral content, as shown in the last chapter. The more unconsciousprocesses that reflect imitatively the linguistic environment and thatstrike out intuitively oral and written vents for interests so intensethat they must be told and shared, are what teach us how to commandthe resources of our mother tongue. These prescriptions andcorrections and consciousness of the manifold ways of error are neverso peculiarly liable to hinder rather than to help as in earlyadolescence, when the soul has a new content and a new sense for it,and so abhors and is so incapable of precision and propriety ofdiction. To hold up the flights of exuberant youth by forever being onthe hunt for errors is, to borrow the language of the gridiron, lowtackle, and I would rather be convicted of many errors by such methodsthan use them. Of course this has its place, but it must always besubordinated to a larger view, as in one of the newly discoveredlogia ascribed to Jesus, who, when he found a man gathering stickson Sunday, said to him, "If you understand what you are doing, it iswell, but if not, thou shalt be damned." The great teacher who, whenasked how he obtained such rare results in expression, answered, "Bycarefully neglecting it and seeking utter absorption insubject-matter," was also a good practical psychologist. This is theinveterate tendency that in other ages has made pedagogic scribes,Talmudists, epigoni, and sophists, who have magnified the letter andlost the spirit. But there are yet other seats of difficulty.

III. It is hard and, in the history of the race, a late change, toreceive language through the eye which reads instead of through theear which hears. Not only is perception measurably quite distinctlyslower, but book language is related to oral speech somewhat as anherbarium is to a garden, or a museum of stuffed specimens to amenagerie. The invention of letters is a novelty in the history of therace that spoke for countless ages before it wrote. The winged word ofmouth is saturated with color, perhaps hot with feeling, musical withinflection, is the utterance of a living present personality, theconsummation of man's gregarious instincts. The book is dead and moreor less impersonal, best apprehended in solitude, its matter moreintellectualized; it deals in remoter second-hand knowledge so thatPlato reproached Aristotle as being a reader, one remove from thefirst spontaneous source of original impressions and ideas, and thedoughty medieval knights scorned reading as a mere clerk's trick, notwishing to muddle their wits with other people's ideas when their ownwere good enough for them. But although some of the great men inhistory could not read, and though some of the illiterate were oftenmorally and intellectually above some of the literate, the argumenthere is that the printed page must not be too suddenly or too earlythrust between the child and life. The plea is for moral and objectivework, more stories, narratives, and even vivid readings, as is nowdone statedly in more than a dozen of the public libraries of thecountry, not so often by teachers as by librarians, all to the endthat the ear, the chief receptacle of language, be maintained in itsdominance, that the fine sense of sound, rhythm, cadence,pronunciation, and speech-music generally be not atrophied, that theeye which normally ranges freely from far to near be not injured bythe confined treadmill and zigzag of the printed page.

Closely connected with this, and perhaps psychologically worse, is thesubstitution of the pen and the scribbling fingers for the mouth andtongue. Speech is directly to and from the soul. Writing, thedeliberation of which fits age better than youth, slows down itsimpetuosity many fold, and is in every way farther removed from vocalutterance than is the eye from the ear. Never have there been so manypounds of paper, so many pencils, and such excessive scribbling as inthe calamopapyrus [Pen-paper] pedagogy of to-day and in this country.Not only has the daily theme spread as infection, but the daily lessonis now extracted through the point of a pencil instead of from themouth. The tongue rests and the curve of writer's cramp takes a sharpturn upward, as if we were making scribes, reporters, andproof-readers. In some schools, teachers seem to be conductingcorrespondence classes with their own pupils. It all makes excellentbusy work, keeps the pupils quiet and orderly, and allows the schooloutput to be quantified, and some of it gives time for more care inthe choice of words. But is it a gain to substitute a letter for avisit, to try to give written precedence over spoken forms? Here againwe violate the great law that the child repeats the history of therace, and that, from the larger historic standpoint, writing as a modeof utterance is only the latest fashion.

Of course the pupils must write, and write well, just as they mustread, and read much; but that English suffers from insisting upon thisdouble long circuit too early and cultivates it to excess, devitalizesschool language and makes it a little unreal, like other affectationsof adult ways, so that on escaping from its thraldom the child andyouth slump back to the language of the street as never before. Thisis a false application of the principle of learning to do by doing.The young do not learn to write by writing, but by reading andhearing. To become a good writer one must read, feel, think,experience, until he has something to say that others want to hear.The golden age of French literature, as Gaston Deschamps andBrunetière have lately told us, was that of the salon, whenconversation dominated letters, set fashions, and made the charm ofFrench style. Its lowest ebb was when bookishness led and people beganto talk as they wrote.

IV. The fourth cause of degeneration of school English is the growingpreponderance of concrete words for designating things of sense andphysical acts, over the higher element of language that names anddeals with concepts, ideas, and non-material things. The object-lessoncame in as a reaction against the danger of merely verbal anddefinition knowledge and word memory. Now it has gone so far that notonly things but even languages, vernacular and foreign, are taught byappeals to the eye. More lately, elementary science has introducedanother area of pictures and things while industrial education hasstill further greatly enlarged the material sensori-motor element oftraining. Geography is taught with artifacts, globes, maps, sandboxes, drawing. Miss Margaret Smith[7] counted two hundred and eightyobjects that must be distributed and gathered for forty pupils in asingle art lesson. Instruction, moreover, is more and more busied uponparts and details rather than wholes, upon analysis rather thansynthesis. Thus in modern pedagogy there is an increased tyranny ofthings, a growing neglect or exclusion of all that is unseen.

The first result of this is that the modern school child is more andmore mentally helpless without objects of sense. Conversation isincreasingly concrete, if not of material things and persons presentin time and even place. Instead of dealing with thoughts and ideas,speech and writing is close to sense and the words used are names forimages and acts. But there is another higher part of language that isnot so abjectly tied down to perception, but that lives, moves, andhas its being in the field of concepts rather than percepts, which, touse Earle's distinction, is symbolic and not presentative, thatdescribes thinking that is not mere contiguity in space or sequence intime but that is best in the far higher and more mental associationsof likeness, that is more remote from activity, that, to use logicalterminology, is connotative and not merely denotative, that hasextension as well as intension, that requires abstraction andgeneralization. Without this latter element higher mental developmentis lacking because this means more than word-painting the materialworld.

Our school youth today suffer from just this defect. If their psychicoperations can be called thought it is of that elementary and halfanimal kind that consists imagery. Their talk with each other is ofthings of present and immediate interest. They lack even the elementsof imagination, which makes new combinations and is creative, becausethey are dominated by mental pictures of the sensory. Large views thattake them afield away from the persons and things and acts they knowdo not appeal to them. Attempts to think rigorously are too hard. Theteacher feels that all the content of mind must come in through thesenses, and that if these are well fed, inferences and generalizationswill come of themselves later. Many pupils have never in their livestalked five minutes before others on any subject whatever that canproperly be called intellectual. It irks them to occupy themselveswith purely mental processes, so enslaved are they by what is near andpersonal, and thus they are impoverished in the best elements oflanguage. It is as if what are sometimes called the associativefibers, both ends of which are in the brain, were dwarfed incomparison with the afferent and efferent fibers that mediate senseand motion.

That the soul of language as an instrument of thought consists in thisnon-presentative element, so often lacking, is conclusively shown inthe facts of speech diseases. In the slowly progressive aphasias, oflate so carefully studied, the words first lost are those of thingsand acts most familiar to the patient, while the words that persistlongest in the wreckage of the speech-centers are generally words thatdo not designate the things of sense. A tailor loses the power to namehis chalk, measure, shears, although he can long talk fluently of whatlittle he may chance to know of God, beauty, truth, virtue, happiness,prosperity, etc. The farmer is unable to name the cattle in his yardor his own occupations, although he can reason as well as ever aboutpolitics; can not discuss coin or bills, but can talk of financialpolicies and securities, or about health and wealth generally. Thereason obvious. It is because concrete thinking has two forms, theword and the image, and the latter so tends to take the place of theformer that it can be lost to both sense and articulation withoutgreat impairment, whereas conceptual thinking lacks imagery anddepends upon words alone, and hence these must persist because theyhave no alternate form which vicariates for them.

In its lower stages, speech is necessarily closely bound up with theconcrete world; but its real glory appears in its later stages and itshigher forms, because there the soul takes flight in the intellectualworld, learns to live amidst its more spiritual realities, to putnames to thoughts, which is far higher than to put names to things. Itis in this world that the best things in the best books live; and themodern school-bred distaste for them, the low-ranged mental actionthat hovers near the coastline of matter and can not launch out withzest into the open sea of thoughts, holding communion with the greatdead of the past or the great living of the distant present, seemsalmost like a slow progressive abandonment of the high attribute ofspeech and the lapse toward infantile or animal picture-thinking. Ifthe school is slowly becoming speechless in this sense, if it islapsing in all departments toward busy work and losing silence,repose, the power of logical thought, and even that of meditation,which is the muse of originality, this is perhaps the gravest of allthese types of decay. If the child has no resources in solitude, cannot think without the visual provocation, is losing subjective life,enthusiasm for public, social, ethical questions, is crippled forintellectual pursuits, cares only in a languid way for literary proseand poetry, responds only to sensuous stimuli and events at shortrange, and is indifferent to all wide relations and moralresponsibility, cares only for commercial self-interest, the tacticsof field sport, laboratory occupations and things which call beillustrated from a pedagogic museum, then the school is dwarfing, indawning maturity, the higher powers that belong to this stage ofdevelopment and is responsible for mental arrest.

In this deplorable condition, if we turn to the child study of speechfor help, we find that, although it has been chiefly occupied withinfant vocabularies, there are already a very few and confessedlycrude and feeble beginnings, but even these shed more light on thelost pathway than all other sources combined. The child once set intheir midst again corrects the wise men. We will first brieflyrecapitulate these and then state and apply their lessons.

Miss Williams[8] found that out of 253 young ladies only 133 did nothave favorite sounds, [long "a"] and a leading among the vowels,and l, r and m among the constants. Eighty-five had favoritewords often lugged in, 329 being good. Two hundred and twenty-one, aschildren, had favorite proper names in geography, and also for boys,but especially for girls. The order of a few of the latter is asfollows: Helen, 36; Bessie, 25; Violet and Lilly, 20; Elsie andBeatrice, 18; Dorothy and Alice, 17; Ethel, 15; Myrtle, 14; Mabel,Marguerite, Pearl, and Rose, 13; May, 12; Margaret, Daisy, and Grace,11; Ruth and Florence, 9; Gladys, 8; Maud, Nellie, and Gertrude, 7;Blanche and Mary, 6; Eveline and Pansy, 5; Belle, Beulah, Constance,Eleanor, Elizabeth, Eve, Laura, Lulu, Pauline, Virginia, and Vivian, 4each, etc.

Of ten words found interesting to adolescents, murmur was thefavorite, most enjoying its sound. Lullaby, supreme,annannamannannaharoumlemay, immemorial, lillibulero, burbled, andincarnadine were liked by most, while zigzag and shigsback were notliked. This writer says that adolescence is marked by some increasedlove of words for motor activity and in interest in words as things inthemselves, but shows a still greater rise of interest in new wordsand pronunciations; "above all, there is a tremendous rise in interestin words as instruments of thought." The flood of new experiences,feelings, and views finds the old vocabulary inadequate, hence "thedumb, bound feeling of which most adolescents at one time or anothercomplain and also I suspect from this study in the case of girls, wehave an explanation of the rise of interest in slang." "The secondidea suggested by our study is the tremendous importance of hearing inthe affective side of language."

Conradi[9] found that of 273 returns concerning children's pleasure inknowing or using new words, ninety-two per cent were affirmative,eight per cent negative, and fifty per cent gave words especially"liked." Some were partial to big words, some for those with z inthem. Some found most pleasure in saying them to themselves and somein using them with others. In all there were nearly three hundred suchwords, very few of which were artificial. As to words pretty or queerin form or sound, his list was nearly as large, but the greater partof the words were different. Sixty per cent of all had had periods ofspontaneously trying to select their vocabulary by making lists,studying the dictionary, etc. The age of those who did so would seemto average not far from early puberty, but the data are too meager forconclusion. A few started to go through the dictionary, some wished toastonish their companions or used large new words to themselves ortheir dolls. Seventy percent had had a passion for affecting foreignwords when English would do as well. Conradi says "the age varies fromtwelve to eighteen, most being fourteen to sixteen." Some indulge thistendency in letters, and would like to do so in conversation, but fearridicule. Fifty-six per cent reported cases of superfine elegance oraffected primness or precision in the use of words. Some had spells ofeffort in this direction, some belabor compositions to get a stylethat suits them, some memorise fine passages to this end, or modulatetheir voices to aid them, affect elegance with a chosen mate byagreement soliloquize before a glass with poses. According to hiscurve this tendency culminates at fourteen.

Adjectivism, adverbism, and nounism, or marked disposition to multiplyone or more of the above classes of words, and in the above order,also occur near the early teens. Adjectives are often used asadverbial prefixes to other adjectives, and here favorite words aremarked. Nearly half of Conradi's reports show it, but the list ofwords so used is small.

[Illustration: Graph showing Slang, Reading Craze, and Precision by
Age.]

Miss Williams presents on interesting curve of slang confessed asbeing both attractive and used by 226 out of 251. From this it appearsthat early adolescence is the curve of greatest pleasure in its use,fourteen being the culminating year. There is very little untileleven, when the curve for girls rises very rapidly, to fall nearly usrapidly from fifteen to seventeen. Ninety-three out of 104 who used itdid so despite criticism.

Conradi, who collected and prints a long list of current slang wordsand phrases, found that of 295 young boys and girls not one failed toconfess their use, and eighty-five per cent of all gave the age atwhich they thought it most common. On this basis he constructs theabove curve, comparing with this the curve of a craze for reading andfor precision in speech.

The reasons given are, in order of frequency, that slang was moreemphatic, more exact, more concise, convenient, sounded pretty,relieved formality, was natural, manly, appropriate, etc. Only a veryfew thought it was vulgar, limited the vocabulary, led to or was asubstitute for swearing, destroyed exactness, etc. This writerattempts a provisional classification of slang expressions under thesuggestive heads of rebukes to pride, boasting and loquacity,hypocrisy, quaint and emphatic negatives, exaggerations, exclamations,mild oaths, attending to one's own business and not meddling orinterfering, names for money, absurdity, neurotic effects of surpriseor shock, honesty and lying, getting confused, fine appearance anddress, words for intoxication which Partridge has collected,[10]foranger collated by Chamberlain,[11] crudeness or innocent naïveté, loveand sentimentality, etc. Slang is also rich in describing conflicts ofall kinds, praising courage, censuring inquisitiveness, and as aschool of moral discipline, but he finds, however, a very large numberunclassified; and while he maintains throughout a distinction betweenthat used by boys and by girls, sex differences are not very marked.The great majority of terms are mentioned but once, and a few undernearly all of the above heads have great numerical precedence. Asomewhat striking fact is the manifold variations of a pet typicalform. Twenty-three shock expletives, e.g., are, "Wouldn't that ——you?" the blank being filled by jar, choke, cook, rattle, scorch, get,start, etc., or instead of you adjectives are devised. Feeling is sointense and massive, and psychic processes are so rapid, forcible, andundeveloped that the pithiness of some of those expressions makes thembrilliant and creative works of genius, and after securing anapprenticeship are sure of adoption. Their very lawlessness helps tokeep speech from rigidity and desiccation, and they hit off nearlyevery essential phrase of adolescent life and experience.

Conventional modes of speech do not satisfy the adolescent, so that heis often either reticent or slangy. Walt Whitman[12] says that slangis "an attempt of common humanity to escape from bald literalism andto express itself illimitably, which in the highest walks producespoets and poems"; and again, "Daring as it is to say so, in the growthof language it is certain that the retrospect of slang from the startwould be the recalling from their nebulous condition of all that ispoetical in the stores of human utterance." Lowell[13] says, "There isdeath in the dictionary, and where language is too strictly limited byconvention, the ground for expression to grow in is limited also, andwe get a potted literature, Chinese dwarfs instead of healthy trees."Lounsbury asserts that "slang is an effort on the part of the users oflanguage to say something more vividly, strongly, concisely than thelanguage existing permits it to be said. It is the source from whichthe decaying energies of speech are constantly refreshed." Conradiadds in substance that weak or vicious slang is too feeble to survive,and what is vital enough to live fills a need. The final authority isthe people, and it is better to teach youth to discriminate betweengood and bad slang rather than to forbid it entirely. Emerson calls itlanguage in the making, its crude, vital, material. It is often aneffective school of moral description, a palliative for profanity, andexpresses the natural craving for superlatives. Faults are hit off andcondemned with the curtness sententiousness of proverbs devised byyouth to sanctify itself and correct its own faults. The pedagogueobjects that it violates good form and established usage, but whyshould the habits of hundreds of years ago control when they can notsatisfy the needs of youth, which requires a lingua franca of itsown, often called "slanguage"? Most high school and college youth ofboth sexes have two distinct styles, that of the classroom which is asunnatural as the etiquette of a royal drawing-room reception or aformal call, and the other, that of their own breezy, free, naturallife. Often these two have no relation to or effect upon each other,and often the latter is at times put by with good resolves to speak aspurely and therefore as self-consciously as they knew, with pettyfines for every slang expression. But very few, and these generallyhusky boys, boldly try to assert their own rude but vigorousvernacular in the field of school requirements.

These simple studies in this vast field demonstrate little or nothing,but they suggest very much. Slang commonly expresses a moral judgmentand falls into ethical categories. It usually concerns ideas,sentiment, and will, has a psychic content, and is never, like thelanguage of the school, a mere picture of objects of sense or adescription of acts. To restate it in correct English would be acourse in ethics, courtesy, taste, logical predication and opposition,honesty, self-possession, modesty, and just the ideal andnon-presentative mental content that youth most needs, and which thesensuous presentation methods of teaching have neglected. Those whosee in speech nothing but form condemn it because it is vulgar. Youthhas been left to meet these high needs alone, and the prevalence ofthese crude forms is an indictment of the delinquency of pedagogues innot teaching their pupils to develop and use their intellect properly.Their pith and meatiness are a standing illustration of the need ofcondensation for intellectual objects that later growth analyzes.These expressions also illustrate the law that the higher and largerthe spiritual content, the grosser must be the illustration in whichit is first couched. Further studies now in progress will, I believe,make this still clearer.

Again, we see in the above, outcrops of the strong pubescent instinctto enlarge the vocabulary in two ways. One is to affect foreignequivalents. This at first suggests an appetency for another languagelike the dog-Latin gibberish of children. It is one of the motivesthat prompts many to study Latin or French, but it has little depth,for it turns out, on closer study, to be only the affectation ofsuperiority and the love of mystifying others. The other is a verydifferent impulse to widen the vernacular. To pause to learn severalforeign equivalents of things of sense may be anti-educational if itlimits the expansion of thought in our own tongue. The two are, infact, often inversely related to each other. In giving a foreignsynonym when the mind seeks a new native word, the pedagogue does notdeal fairly. In this irradiation into the mother tongue, sometimesexperience with the sentiment or feeling, act, fact, or objectprecedes, and then a name for it is demanded, or conversely the sound,size, oddness or jingle of the word is first attractive and themeaning comes later. The latter needs the recognition and utilizationwhich the former already has. Lists of favorite words should bewrought out for spelling and writing and their meanings illustrated,for these have often the charm of novelty as on the frontier ofknowledge and enlarge the mental horizon like new discoveries. We mustnot starve this voracious new appetite "for words as instruments ofthought."

Interest in story-telling rises till twelve or thirteen, andthereafter falls off perhaps rather suddenly, partly because youth isnow more interested in receiving than in giving. As in the drawingcurve we saw a characteristic age when the child loses pleasure increating as its power of appreciating pictures rapidly arises, so now,as the reading curve rises, auditory receptivity makes way for thevisual method shown in the rise of the reading curve with augmentedzest for book-method of acquisition. Darkness or twilight enhances thestory interest in children, for it eliminates the distraction of senseand encourages the imagination to unfold its pinions, but the youthfulfancy is less bat-like and can take its boldest flights in broaddaylight. A camp-fire, or an open hearth with tales of animals,ghosts, heroism, and adventure can teach virtue, and vocabulary,style, and substance in their native unity.

The pubescent reading passion is partly the cause and partly an effectof the new zest in and docility to the adult world and also of thefact that the receptive are now and here so immeasurably in advance ofthe creative powers. Now the individual transcends his own experienceand learns to profit by that of others. There is now evolved apenumbral region in the soul more or less beyond the reach of allschool methods, a world of glimpses and hints, and the work here isthat of the prospector and not of the careful miner. It is the age ofskipping and sampling, of pressing the keys lightly. What is acquiredis not examinable but only suggestive. Perhaps nothing read now failsto leave its mark. It can not be orally reproduced at call, but onemergency it is at hand for use. As Augustine said of God, so thechild might say of most of his mental content in these psychic areas,"If you ask me, I do not know; but if you do not ask me, I know verywell"—a case analogous to the typical girl who exclaimed to herteacher, "I can do and understand this perfectly if you only won'texplain it." That is why examinations in English, if not impossible,as Goldwin Smith and Oxford hold, are very liable to be harmful, andrecitations and critical notes an impertinence, and always in dangerof causing arrest of this exquisite romantic function in whichliterature comes in the closest relation to life, keeping the heartwarm, reënforcing all its good motives, preforming choices, anduniversalizing its sympathies.

R. W. Bullock[14] classified and tabulated 2,000 returns fromschool-children from the third to the twelfth grade, both inclusive,concerning their reading. From this it appeared that the average boyof the third grade "read 4.9 books in six months; that the averagefalls to 3.6 in the fourth and fifth grades and rises to a maximum of6.5 at the seventh grade, then drops quite regularly to 3 in thetwelfth grade at the end of the high school course." The independenttabulation of returns from other cities showed little variation."Grade for grade, the girls read more than the boys, and as a rulethey reach their maximum a year sooner, and from a general maximum of5.9 books there is a drop to 3.3 at the end of the course." The age ofreading may be postponed or accelerated perhaps nearly a year by theabsence or presence of library facilities. Tabulating the shortstories read per week, it was found that these averaged 2.1 in thethird grade, rose to 7.7 per week in the seventh grade, and in thetwelfth had fallen to 2.3, showing the same general tendency.

The percentage tables for boys' preference for eight classes ofstories are here only suggestive. "War stories seem popular with thirdgrade boys, and that liking seems well marked through the sixth,seventh, and eighth grades. Stories of adventure are popular allthrough the heroic period, reaching their maximum in the eighth andninth grades. The liking for biography and travel or exploration growsgradually to a climax in the ninth grade, and remains well up throughthe course. The tender sentiment has little charm for the averagegrade boy, and only in the high school course does he acknowledge anyconsiderable use of love stories. In the sixth grade he is fond ofdetective stories, but they lose their charm for him as he growsolder." For girls, "stories of adventure are popular in the sixthgrade, and stories of travel are always enjoyed. The girl likesbiography, but in the high school, true to her sex, she prefersstories of great women rather than great men, but because she can notget them reads those of men. Pity it is that the biographies of so fewof the world's many great women are written. The taste for lovestories increases steadily to the end of the high school course.Beyond that we have no record." Thus "the maximum amount of reading isdone in every instance between the sixth and eighth grades, theaverage being in the seventh grade at an average age of fourteen andone-tenth years." Seventy-five per cent of all discuss their readingwith some one, and the writer urges that "when ninety-five per cent ofthe boys prefer adventure or seventy-five per cent of the girls preferlove stories, that is what they are going to read," and the duty ofthe teacher or librarian is to see that they have both in the highest,purest form.

Henderson[15] found that of 2,989 children from nine to fifteen, leastbooks were read at the age of nine and most at the age of fifteen, andthat there was "a gradual rise in amount throughout, the only breakbeing in the case of girls at the age of fourteen and the boys at theage of twelve." For fiction the high-water mark was reached for bothsexes at eleven, and the subsequent fall is far less rapid for girlsthan for boys. "At the age of thirteen the record for travel andadventure stands highest in the case of the boys, phenomenally so.There is a gradual rise in history with age, and a correspondingdecline in fiction."

Kirkpatrick[16] classified returns from 5,000 children from the fourthto the ninth grade in answer to questions that concerned theirreading. He found a sudden increase in the sixth grade, when childrenare about twelve, when there is often a veritable, reading craze.Dolls are abandoned and "plays, games, and companionship of others areless attractive, and the reading hunger in many children becomesinsatiable and is often quite indiscriminate." It seems to "mostfrequently begin at about twelve years of age and continue at leastthree or four years," after which increased home duties, socialresponsibilities, and school requirements reduce it and make it morediscriminating in quality. "The fact that boys read about twice, asmuch history and travel as girls and only about two-thirds as muchpoetry and stories shows beyond question that the emotional andintellectual wants of boys and girls are essentially different beforesexual maturity."

Miss Vostrovsky[17] found that among 1,269 children there was a greatincrease of taste for reading as shown by the number of books takenfrom the library, which began with a sharp rise at eleven andincreased steadily to nineteen, when her survey ended; that boys readmost till seventeen, and then girls took the precedence. The taste forjuvenile stories was declining and that for fiction and generalliterature was rapidly increased. At about the sixteenth year a changetook place in both sexes, "showing then the beginning of a greaterinterest in works of a more general character." Girls read morefiction than boys at every age, but the interest in it begins to bevery decided at adolescence. With girls it appears to come a littleearlier and with greater suddenness, while the juvenile storymaintains a strong hold upon boys even after the fifteenth year. Thecurve of decline in juvenile stories is much more pronounced in bothsexes than the rise of fiction. Through the teens there is a greatincrease in the definiteness of answers to the questions why bookswere chosen. Instead of being read because they were "good" or "nice,"they were read because recommended, and later because of some specialinterest. Girls relied on recommendations more than boys. The latterwere more guided by reason the former by sentiment. Nearly three timesas many boys in the early teens chose books because they were excitingor venturesome. Even the stories which girls called exciting were tamecompared with those chosen by boys. Girls chose books more than fourtimes as often because of children in them, and more often becausethey ware funny. Boys care very little for style, but must haveincidents and heroes. The author says "the special interest that girlshave in fiction begins about the age of adolescence. After thesixteenth year the extreme delight in stories fades," or schooldemands become more imperative and uniform. Girls prefer domesticstories and those with characters like themselves and scenes likethose with which they are familiar. "No boy confesses to a purelygirl's story, while girls frankly do to an interesting story aboutboys. Women writers seem to appeal more to girls, men writers to boys.Hence, the authors named by each sex are almost entirely different. Infiction more standard works, were drawn by boys than by girls." "Whenleft to develop according to chance, the tendency is often toward aselection of books which unfit one for every-day living, either bypresenting, on the one hand, too many scenes of delicious excitementor, on the other, by narrowing the vision to the wider possibilitiesof life."

Out of 523 full answers, Lancaster found that 453 "had what might becalled a craze for reading at some time in the adolescent period," andthinks parents little realize the intensity of the desire to read orhow this nascent period is the golden age to cultivate taste andinoculate against reading what is bad. The curve rises rapidly fromeleven to fourteen, culminates at fifteen, after which it fallsrapidly. Some become omnivorous readers of everything in their way;others are profoundly, and perhaps for life, impressed with somesingle book; others have now crazes for history, now for novels, nowfor dramas or for poetry; some devour encyclopedias; some imaginethemselves destined to be great novelists and compose long romances;some can give the dates with accuracy of the different periods of thedevelopment of their tastes from the fairy tales of early childhood tothe travels and adventures of boyhood and then to romance, poetry,history, etc; and some give the order of their development of tastefor the great poets.

The careful statistics of Dr. Reyer show that the greatest greed ofreading is from the age of fifteen to twenty-two, and is on theaverage greatest of all at twenty. He finds that ten per cent of theyoung people of this age do forty per cent of all the reading. Beforetwenty the curve ascends very rapidly, to fall afterward yet morerapidly as the need of bread-winning becomes imperative. Afterthirty-five the great public reads but little. Every youth should havehis or her own library, which, however small, should be select. Toseal some knowledge of their content with the delightful sense ofownership helps to preserve the apparatus of culture, keeps greenearly memories, or makes one of the best tangible mementoes ofparental care and love. For the young especially, the only ark ofsafety in the dark and rapidly rising flood of printer's ink is toturn resolutely away from the ideal of quantity to that of quality.While literature rescues youth from individual limitations and enablesit to act and think more as spectators of all time, and sharers of allexistence, the passion for reading may be excessive, and books whichfrom the silent alcoves of our nearly 5,500 American libraries rulethe world more now than ever before, may cause the young to neglectthe oracles within, weaken them by too wide reading, make conversationbookish, and overwhelm spontaneity and originality with asuperfetation of alien ideas.

The reading passion may rage with great intensity when the soul takesits first long flight in the world of books, and ninety per cent ofall Conradi's cases showed it. Of these, thirty-two per cent read tohave the feelings stirred and the desire of knowledge was a far lessfrequent motive. Some read to pass idle time, others to appear learnedor to acquire a style or a vocabulary. Romance led. Some specialized,and with some the appetite was omnivorous. Some preferred books aboutor addressed to children, some fairy tales, and some sought only thosefor adults. The night is often invaded and some become "perfectlywild" over exciting adventures or the dangers and hardships of truelovers, laughing and crying as the story turns from grave to gay, anda few read several books a week. Some were forbidden and read bystealth alone, or with books hidden in their desks or under schoolbooks. Some few live thus for years in an atmosphere highly chargedwith romance, and burn out their fires wickedly early with a suddenand extreme expansiveness that makes life about them uninteresting andunreal, and that reacts to commonplace later. Conradi prints some twoor three hundred favorite books and authors of early and of lateradolescence. The natural reading of early youth is not classic norblighted by compulsion or uniformity for all. This age seeks toexpress originality and personality in individual choices and tastes.

Suggestive and briefly descriptive lists of best books and authors byauthorities in different fields on which some time is spent in makingselection, talks about books, pooling knowledge of them, with nocourse of reading even advised and much less prescribed, is the bestguidance for developing the habit of rapid cursory reading. Othersbefore professor De Long, of Colorado, have held that the power ofreading a page in moment, as a mathematician sums up a column offigures and as the artist Doré was able to read a book by turning theleaves, can be attained by training and practise. School pressureshould not suppress this instinct of omnivorous reading, which at thisage sometimes prompts the resolve to read encyclopedias, and evenlibraries, or to sample everything to be found in books at home. Alongwith, but never suppressing, it there should be some stated reading,but this should lay down only kinds of reading like the fouremphasized in the last chapter or offer a goodly number of largealternative groups of books and authors, like the five of the LelandStanford University, and permit wide liberty of choice to both teacherand pupil. Few triumphs of the uniformitarians, who sacrificeindividual needs to mechanical convenience in dealing with youth inmasses, have been so sad as marking off and standardizing a definitequantum of requirements here. Instead of irrigating a wide field, thewell-springs of literary interest are forced to cut a deep canyon andleave wide desert plains of ignorance on either side. Besidesimitation, which reads what others do, is the desire to read somethingno one else does, and this is a palladium of individuality. Bad as isthe principle, the selections are worse, including the saccharinityineffable of Tennyson's Princess (a strange expression of theprogressive feminization of the high school and yet satirizing thescholastic aspiration of girls) which the virile boy abhors, booksabout books which are two removes from life, and ponderous Latinityauthors which for the Saxon boy suggest David fighting in Saul'sarmor, and which warp and pervert the nascent sentence-sense on aforeign model. Worst of all, the prime moral purpose of youthfulreading is ignored in choices based on form and style; and a growingprofusion of notes that distract from content to language, the studyof which belongs in the college if not in the university, develops thetendencies of criticism before the higher powers of sympatheticappreciation have done their work.[18]

(B) Other new mental powers and aptitudes are as yet too littlestudied. Very slight are the observations so far made, of children'shistoric, which is so clearly akin to literary, interest and capacity.With regard to this and several other subjects in the curriculum weare in the state of Watts when he gazed at the tea-kettle and began todream of the steam-engine; we are just recognizing a new power andmethod destined to reconstruct and increase the efficiency ofeducation, but only after a long and toilsome period of limitedsuccesses.

Mrs. Barnes[19], told a story without date, place, name, or moral andcompared the questions which 1,250 children would like to haveanswered about it. She found that the interest of girls in persons, orthe number who asked the question "who," culminated at twelve, when itcoincided with that of boys, but that the latter continued to rise tofifteen. The interest to know "place where" events occurred culminatedat eleven with girls, and at fifteen, and at a far higher point, withboys. The questions "how" and "why," calling for the method andreason, both culminated at twelve for girls and fifteen for boys, butwere more infrequent and showed less age differences than thepreceding question. Interest in the results of the action was mostpronounced of all, culminating at twelve in girls and fifteen in boys.Details and time excited far less interest, the former jointlyculminating for both sexes at eleven. Interest in the truth of thenarrative was extremely slight, although it became manifest atfifteen, and was growing at sixteen. The number of inferences drawnsteadily increased with age, although the increase was very slightafter thirteen. Both legitimate and critical inferences increasedafter eleven, while imaginative inferences at that age had nearlyreached their maximum. Interest in names was very strong throughout,as in primitive people. Boys were more curious concerning "who,""where," and "how"; girls as to "why." In general, the historiccuriosity of boys was greater than that of girls, and culminatedlater. The inferences drawn from an imagined finding of a log-house,boat, and arrows on a lonely island indicate that the power ofinference, both legitimate and imaginative, develops strongly attwelve and thirteen, after which doubt and the critical faculties areapparent; which coincides with Mr. M.A. Tucker's conclusion, thatdoubt develops at thirteen and that personal inference diminishesabout that age.

The children were given two accounts of the fall of Fort Sumter, onein the terms of a school history and the other a despatch of equallength from Major Anderson, and asked which was best, should be kept,and why. Choice of the narrative steadily declined after eleven andthat of the despatch increased, the former reaching its lowest, thelatter its highest, point at fifteen, indicating a preference for thefirst-hand record. The number of those whose choice was affected bystyle showed no great change, from twelve to fifteen, but rose veryrapidly for the nest two years. Those who chose the despatch becauseit was true, signed, etc., increased rapidly in girls and boysthroughout the teens, and the preference for the telegram as a moredirect source increased very rapidly from thirteen to seventeen.

Other studies of this kind led Mrs. Barnes to conclude that childrenremembered items by groups; that whole groups were often omitted; thatthose containing most action were best remembered; that what isremembered is remembered with great accuracy; that generalities areoften made more specific; that the number of details a child carriesaway from a connected narrative is not much above fifty, so that theirnumbers should be limited; and from it all was inferred the necessityof accuracy, of massing details about central characters or incidents,letting action dominate, omitting all that is aside from the main lineof the story, of bringing out cause and effect and dramatizing wherepossible.

Miss Patterson[20] collated the answers of 2,237 children to thequestion "What does 1895 mean?" The blanks "Don't know" decreased veryrapidly from six to eight, and thereafter maintained a slight butconstant percentage. Those who expanded the phase a little withoutintelligence were most numerous from eight to ten, while theproportion who gave a correct explanation rose quite steadily for bothsexes and culminated at fourteen for girls and fifteen for boys. Thelatter only indicates the pupils of real historic knowledge. Thewriter concludes that "the sense of historical time is altogetherlacking with children of seven, and may be described as slight up tothe age of twelve." History, it is thought, should be introduced earlywith no difference between boys and girls, but "up to the age oftwelve or thirteen it should be presented in a series of strikingbiographies and events, appearing if possible in contemporary balladsand chronicles, and illustrated by maps, chronological charts, and asrichly as possible by pictures of contemporary objects, buildings, andpeople." At the age of fourteen or fifteen, another sort of workshould appear. Original sources should still be used, but they shouldillustrate not "the picture of human society moving before us in along panorama, but should give us the opportunity to study theorganization, thought, feeling, of a time as seen in its concreteembodiments, its documents, monuments, men, and books." The statesmen,thinkers, poets, should now exceed explorers and fighters; reflectionand interpretation, discrimination of the true from the false,comparison, etc., are now first in order; while later yet, perhaps incollege, should come severer methods and special monographic study.

Studies of mentality, so well advanced for infants and so well begunfor lower grades, are still very meager for adolescent stages so faras they bear on growth in the power to deal with arithmetic, drawingand pictures, puzzles, superstitions, collections, attention, reason,etc. Enough has been done to show that with authority to collect dataon plans and by methods that can now be operated and with aid whichshould now be appropriated by school boards and teachers'associations, incalculable pedagogic economy could be secured and thescientific and professional character of teaching every topic in uppergrammar and high school and even in the early college grades begreatly enhanced. To enter upon this laborious task in every branch ofstudy is perhaps our chief present need and duty to our youth inschool, although individual studies like that of Binet[21] belongelsewhere.

(C) The studies of memory up the grades show characteristic adolescentchanges, and some of these results are directly usable in school.

Bolton[22] tested the power of 1,500 children to remember and writedictated digits, and found, of course, increasing accuracy with theolder pupils. He also found that the memory span increased with agerather than with the growth of intelligence as determined by grade.The pupils depended largely upon visualisation, and this andconcentrated attention suggested that growth of memory did notnecessarily accompany intellectual advancement. Girls generallysurpassed boys, and as with clicks too rapid to be counted, it wasfound that when the pupils reached the limits of their span, thenumber of digits was overestimated. The power of concentrated andprolonged attention was tested. The probability of error for thelarger number of digits, 7 and 8, decreased in a marked way with thedevelopment of pubescence, at least up to fourteen years, with thesuggestion of a slight rise again at fifteen.

In comprehensive tests of the ability of Chicago children to rememberfigures seen, heard, or repeated by them, it was found that, fromseven to nine, auditory were slightly better remembered than visualimpressions. From that age the latter steadily increased over theformer. After thirteen, auditory memory increased but little, and wasalready about ten per cent behind visual, which continued to increaseat least till seventeen. Audiovisual memory was better than eitheralone, and the span of even this was improved when articulatory memorywas added. When the tests were made upon pupils of the same age indifferent grades it was found in Chicago that memory power, whethertested by sight, hearing, or articulation, was best in those pupilswhose school standing was highest, and least where standing waslowest.

When a series of digits was immediately repeated orally and a recordmade, it was found[23] that while from the age of eight to twelve thememory span increased only eight points, from fourteen to eighteen itincreased thirteen points. The number of correct reproductions ofnumbers of seven places increased during the teens, although thisclass of children remain about one digit behind normal children ofcorresponding age. In general, though not without exceptions, it wasfound that intelligence grew with memory span, although the former isfar more inferior to that of the normal child than the latter, andalso that weakness of this kind of memory is not an especiallyprominent factor of weak-mindedness.

Shaw[24] tested memory in 700 school children by dividing a story of324 words into 152 phrases, having it read and immediately reproducedby them, and selecting alternate grades from the third grammar to theend of the high school, with a few college students. The maximum powerof this kind of memory was attained by boys in the high school period.Girls remembered forty-three per cent in the seventh grade, and in thehigh school forty-seven per cent. The increase by two-year periods wasmost rapid between the third and fifth grades. Four terms wereremembered on the average by at least ninety per cent of the pupils,41 by fifty per cent, and 130 by ten per cent. The story written outin the terms remembered by each percentage from ten to ninety affordsa most interesting picture of the growth of memory, and even itserrors of omission, insertion, substitution and displacement. "Thegrowth of memory is more rapid in the case of girls than boys, and thefigures suggest a coincidence with the general law, that the rapiddevelopment incident to puberty occurs earlier in girls than in boys."

In a careful study of children's memory, Kemsies[25] concludes thatthe quality of memory improves with age more rapidly than thequantity.

W.G. Monroe tested 275 boys and 293 girls, well distributed, fromseven to seventeen years of age, and found a marked rise for bothvisual and auditory memory at fifteen for both sexes. For both sexes,also, auditory memory was best at sixteen and visual at fifteen.

When accuracy in remembering the length of tone was used as a test, itwas found there was loss from six to seven and gain from seven toeight for both sexes. From eight to nine girls lost rapidly for oneand gained rapidly for the following year, while boys were nearlystationary till ten, after which both sexes gained to their maximum atfourteen years of age and declined for the two subsequent years, bothgaining power from sixteen to seventeen, but neither attaining theaccuracy they had at fourteen.[26]

[Illustration: Girls and Boys at Memory Reproductions compared.]

Netschajeff[27] subjected 637 school children, well distributedbetween the ages of nine and eighteen, to the following tests. Twelvevery distinct objects were shown them, each for two seconds, whichmust them be immediately written down. Twelve very distinct noiseswere made out of sight; numbers of two figures each were read;three-syllable words, which were names of familiar objects, objectsthat suggested noises, words designating touch, temperature, andmuscle sensations, words describing states of feeling, and names ofabstract ideas also were given them. The above eight series of twelveeach were all reproduced in writing, and showed that each kind ofmemory here tested increased with age, with some slight tendency todecline at or just before puberty, then to rise and to slightlydecline after the sixteenth or seventeenth year. Memory for objectsshowed the greatest amount of increase during the year studied, andworks for feeling next, although at all ages the latter wasconsiderably below the former. Boys showed stronger memory for realimpressions, and girls excelled for numbers and words. The differenceof these two kinds of memory was less with girls than with boys. Thegreatest difference between the sexes lay between eleven and fourteenyears. This seems, at eighteen or nineteen, to be slightly increased."This is especially great at the age of puberty." Children from nineto eleven have but slight power of reproducing emotions, but thisincreases in the next few years very rapidly, as does that of theabstract words. Girls from nine to eleven deal better with words thanwith objects; boys slightly excel with objects. Illusions inreproducing words which mistake sense, sound, and rhythm, which is notinfrequent with younger children, decline with age especially atpuberty. Up to this period girls are most subject to these illusions,and afterward boys. The preceding tables, in which the ordinatesrepresent the number of correct reproductions and the abscissas theage, are interesting.

Lobsien made tests similar to those of Netschajeff,[28] withmodifications for greater accuracy, upon 238 boys and 224 girls fromnine to fourteen and a half years of age. The preceding tables showthe development of the various kinds of memory for boys and girls:

BOYS.

Age. Objects Noises Number Visual Acoustic Touch Feeling Sounds
Concepts Concepts Concepts Concepts

13-14-1/2 92.56 71.89 80.67 73.00 74.78 75.33 75.44 40.5612-13 76.45 57.38 72.33 69.67 64.89 73.67 58.67 37.8711-12 89.78 57.19 70.22 59.67 63.00 73.33 55.33 19.9910-11 87.12 55.33 49.33 55.11 48.44 57.11 38.33 12.449-10 64.00 53.33 49.09 46.58 43.78 43.67 27.22 7.22

Normal 82.2 59.02 64.8 60.6 59.4 64.2 31.2 24.0value.

GIRLS.

13-14-1/2 99.56 82.67 87.22 96.67 71.44 82.00 70.22 41.3312-13 92.89 75.56 74.89 77.22 63.11 74.67 67.33 34.8911-12 94.00 56.00 73.56 72.78 72.11 70.89 73.33 28.2210-11 75.78 46.22 62.44 56.22 54.78 58.78 43.22 10.449-10 89.33 46.22 50.44 54.22 38.22 51.11 32.89 6.89

Normal 91.4 62.2 71.8 71.0 60.2 67.2 59.4 23.8value.

The table for boys shows in the fourteenth year a marked increase ofmemory for objects, noises, and feelings, especially as compared withthe marked relative decline the preceding year, when there was adecided increase in visual concepts and senseless sounds. The twelfthyear shows the greatest increase in number memory, acousticimpressions, touch, and feeling. The tenth and eleventh years showmarked increase of memory for objects and their names. Thus theincrease in the strength of memory is by no means the same year byyear, but progress focuses on some forms and others are neglected.Hence each type of memory shows an almost regular increase anddecrease in relative strength.

The table for girls shown marked increase of all memory forms aboutthe twelfth year. This relative increase is exceeded only in thefourteenth year for visual concepts. The thirteenth year shows thegreatest increase for sounds and a remarkable regression for objectsin passing from the lowest to the next grade above.

In the accuracy of reproducing the order of impressions, girls muchexceeded boys at all ages. For seen object, their accuracy was twicethat of boys, the boys excelling in order only in number. In general,ability to reproduce a series of impressions increases and decreaseswith the power to reproduce in any order, but by no means in directproportion to it. The effect of the last member in a series by apurely mechanical reproduction is best in boys. The range and energyof reproduction is far higher than ordered sequence. In general girlsslightly exceed boys in recalling numbers, touch concepts, and sounds,and largely exceed in recalling feeling concepts, real things andvisual concept.

Colegrove[29] tabulated returns from the early memories of 1,658correspondents with 6,069 memories, from which he reached theconclusions, represented in the following curves, for the earliestthree memories of white males and females.

In the cuts on the following page, the heavy line represents the firstmemory, the broken the second, and the dotted the third. Age at thetime of reporting is represented in distance to the right, and the ageof the person at the time of the occurrence remembered is representedby the distance upward. "There is a rise in all the curves atadolescence. This shows that, from the age of twelve to fifteen, boysdo not recall so early memories as they do both before and after thisperiod." This Colegrove ascribes to the fact that the present seems solarge and rich. At any rate, "the earliest memories of boys at the ageof fourteen average almost four years." His curves for girls show thatthe age of all the first three memories which they are able to recallis higher at fourteen than at any period before or after; that atseven and eight the average age of the first things recalled is nearlya year earlier than it is at fourteen. This means that at pubertythere is a marked and characteristic obliteration of infantilememories which lapse to oblivion with augmented absorption in thepresent.

[Illustration: Untitled Graph.]

It was found that males have the greatest number of memories forprotracted or repeated occurrences, for people, and clothing,topographical and logical matters; that females have better memoriesfor novel occurrences or single impressions. Already at ten and elevenmotor memories begin to decrease for females and increase for males.At fourteen and fifteen, motor memories nearly culminate for males,but still further decline for females. The former show a markeddecrease in memory for relatives and playmates and an increase forother persons. Sickness and accidents to self are remembered less bymales and better by females, as are memories of fears. At eighteen andnineteen there is a marked and continued increase in the visualmemories of each sex and the auditory memory of females. Memory forthe activity of others increases for both, but far more strongly formales. Colegrove concludes from his data that "the period ofadolescence is one of great psychical awaking. A wide range ofmemories is found at this time. From the fourteenth year with girlsand the fifteenth with boys the auditory memories are stronglydeveloped. At the dawn of adolescence the motor memory of voice nearlyculminates, and they have fewer memories of sickness and accidents toself. During this time the memory of other persons and the activity ofothers is emphasized in case of both boys and girls. In general, atthis period the special sensory memories are numerous, and it is thegolden age for motor memories. Now, too, the memories of high ideals,self-sacrifice, and self-forgetfulness are cherished. Wider intereststhan self and immediate friends become the objects of reflection andrecollection."

After twenty there is marked change in the memory content. The maleacquires more and the female less visual and auditory memories. Thememories of the female are more logical, and topographical featuresincrease. Memories of sickness and accidents to self decrease with themales and increase with the females, while in the case of both thereis relative decline in the memories of sickness and accident toothers. From all this it would appear that different memoriesculminate at different periods, and bear immediate relation to thewhole mental life of the period. While perhaps some of the fineranalyses of Colegrove may invite further confirmation, his mainresults given above are not only suggestive, but rendered veryplausible by his evidence.

Statistics based upon replies to the question as to whether pleasantor unpleasant experiences were best remembered, show that the formerincrease at eleven, rise rapidly at fourteen, and culminate ateighteen for males, and that the curve of painful memories follows thesame course, although for both there is a drop at fifteen. Forfemales, the pleasant memories increase rapidly from eleven tothirteen, decline a little at fourteen, rise again at sixteen, andculminate at seventeen, and the painful memories follow nearly thesame course, only with a slight drop at fifteen. Thus, up totwenty-two for males, there is a marked preponderance of pleasant overpainful memories, although the two rise and fall together. Afterthirty, unpleasant memories are but little recalled. For the Indiansand negroes in this census, unpleasant memories play a far more andoften preponderating rôle suggesting persecution and sad experiences.Different elements of the total content of memory come to prominenceat different ages. He also found that the best remembered years oflife are sixteen to seventeen for males and fifteen for females, andthat in general the adolescent period has more to do than any other informing and furnishing the memory plexus, while the seventh and eighthyear are most poorly remembered.

It is also known that many false memories insert themselves into thetexture of remembered experiences. One dreams a friend is dead andthinks she is till she is met one day in the street; or dreams of afire and inquires about it in the morning; dreams of a present andsearches the house for it next day; delays breakfast for a friend, whoarrived the night before in a dream, to come down to breakfast; achild hunts for a bushel of pennies dreamed of, etc. These phantomsfalsify our memory most often, according to Dr. Colegrove, betweensixteen and nineteen.

Mnemonic devices prompt children to change rings to keep appointments,tie knots in the handkerchief, put shoes on the dressing-table, hidegarments, associate faces with hoods, names with acts, things, orqualities they suggest; visualize, connect figures, letters withcolors, etc. From a scrutiny of the original material, which I waskindly allowed to make, this appears to rise rapidly at puberty.

[Footnote 1: See my Ideal School as Based on Child Study. Proceedingsof the National Educational Association, 1901, pp. 470-490.]

[Footnote 2: Charles P.G. Scott: The Number of Words in the Englishand Other Languages. Princeton University Bulletin, May, 1902, vol.13, pp. 106-111.]

[Footnote 3: The Teaching of English. Pedagogical Seminary, June,1902, vol. 9, pp. 161-168.]

[Footnote 4: See my Some Aspects of the Early Sense of Self. American
Journal of Psychology, April, 1898, vol. 9, pp. 351-395.]

[Footnote 5: Sprachgeschichte und Sprachpsychologie, mit Rucksicht auf
B. Delbrück's "Grundfragen der Sprachforschung." Leipzig, W.
Engelmann, 1901]

[Footnote 6: Latin in the High School. By Edward Conradi. Pedagogical
Seminary, March, 1905, vol. 12, pp. 1-26.]

[Footnote 7: The Psychological and Pedagogical Aspect of Language.
Pedagogical Seminary, December, 1903, vol. 10, pp. 438-458.]

[Footnote 8: Children's Interest in Words. Pedagogical Seminary,
September, 1902, vol. 9, pp. 274-295.]

[Footnote 9: Children's Interests in Words, Slang, Stories, etc.
Pedagogical Seminary, October, 1903, vol. 10, pp. 359-404.]

[Footnote 10: American Journal of Psychology, April, 1900, vol. 11, p.345 et seq.]

[Footnote 11: American Journal of Psychology, January, 1895, vol. 6,pp. 585-592. See also vol. 10, p. 517 et seq.]

[Footnote 12: North American Review, November, 1885, vol. 141, pp.431-435.]

[Footnote 13: Introduction to the Biglow Papers, series ii.]

[Footnote 14: Some Observations on Children's Reading. Proceedings ofthe National Educational Association, 1897, pp. 1015-102l.]

[Footnote 15: Report on Child Reading. New York Report of State
Superintendent, 1897, vol. 2, p. 979.]

[Footnote 16: Children's reading. North-Western Monthly, December,1898, vol. 9, pp. 188-191, and January, 1899, vol. 9, pp. 229-233.]

[Footnote 17: A study of Children's Reading Tastes. Pedagogical
Seminary, December, 1899, vol. 6, pp. 523-535.]

[Footnote 18: Perhaps the best and most notable school reader is DasDeutsche Lesebuch, begun nearly fifty years ago by Hopf and Paulsiek,and lately supplemented by a corps of writers headed by Döbeln, all inten volumes of over 3,500 pages and containing nearly six times asmuch matter as the largest American series. Many men for years wentover the history of German literature, from the Eddas andNibelungenlied down, including a few living writers, carefullyselecting saga, legends, Märchen, fables, proverbs, hymns, a fewprayers, Bible tales, conundrums, jests, and humorous tales, with manydigests, epitomes and condensation of great standards, quotations,epic, lyric, dramatic poetry, adventure, exploration, biography, withsketches of the life of each writer quoted, with a large final volumeon the history of German literature. All this, it is explained, is"stataric" or required to be read between Octava[A] andObersecunda. It is no aimless anthology or chrestomathy likeChambers's Encyclopedia, but it is perhaps the best product ofprolonged concerted study to select from a vast field the best to feedeach nascent stage of later childhood and early youth, and to securethe maximum of pleasure and profit. The ethical end is dominantthroughout this pedagogic canon.]

[Footnote A: The Prussian gymnasium, whose course is classical andfits for the University, has nine classes in three divisions of threeclasses each. The lower classes are Octava, Septa, Sexta, Quinta, andQuarta; the middle classes, Untertertia, Obertertia, and Untersecunda;the higher classes, Obersecunda, Unterprima, and Oberprima. Pupilsmust be at least nine years of age and have done three yearspreparatory work before entrance.]

[Footnote 19: The Historic Sense among Children. In her Studies in
Historical Method. D. C. Heath and Co., Boston, 1896, p. 57.]

[Footnote 20: Special Study on Children's Sense of Historical Time.
Mrs. Barnes's Studies in Historical Method, D.C. Heath and Co.,
Boston, 1896, p. 94.]

[Footnote 21: L'Etude expérimentale de l'intelligence. Schleicher
Frères, Paris, 1903.]

[Footnote 22: The Growth of Memory in School Children. American
Journal of Psychology, April, 1892, vol. 9, pp. 362-380.]

[Footnote 23: Contribution to the Psychology and Pedagogy of
Feeble-minded Children. By G.E. Johnson. Pedagogical Seminary,
October, 1895, vol. 3, p. 270.]

[Footnote 24: A Test of Memory in School Children. Pedagogical
Seminary, October, 1898, vol. 4, pp. 61-78.]

[Footnote 25: Zeitschrift für pädagogische Psychologie, Pathologie und
Hygiene. February, 1900. Jahrgang II, Heft 1, pp. 21-30.]

[Footnote 26: See Scripture: Scientific Child Study. Transactions ofthe Illinois Society for Child Study, May, 1895, vol. 1, No. 2, pp.32-37.]

[Footnote 27: Experimentelle Untersuchungen über die
Gedächtnissentwickelung bei Schulkindern. Zeits. f. Psychologie, u.
Physiologie der Sinnes-organe, November, 1900. Bd. 24. Heft 5, pp.
321-351.]

[Footnote 28: See Note 4, p. 270.]

[Footnote 29: Memory: An Inductive Study. By F.W. Colegrove. Henry
Holt and Co., New York, 1900, p. 229. See also Individual Memories.
American Journal of Psychology, January, 1899, vol. 10, pp 228-255.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER XI

THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS

Equal opportunities of higher education now open—Brings new dangers towomen—Ineradicable sex differences begin at puberty, when the sexesshould and do diverge—Different interests—Sex tension—Girls moremature than boys at the same age—Radical psychic and physiologicaldifferences between the sexes—The bachelor women—Neededreconstruction—Food—Sleep—Regimen—Manners—Religion—Regularity—Thetopics for a girls' curriculum—The eternal womanly.

The long battle of woman and her friends for equal educational andother opportunities is essentially won all along the line. Heracademic achievements have forced conservative minds to admit that herintellect is not inferior to that of man. The old cloistral seclusionand exclusion is forever gone and new ideals are arising. It has beena noble movement and is a necessary first stage of woman'semancipation. The caricatured maidens "as beautiful as an angel but assilly as a goose" who come from the kitchen to the husband's study toask how much is two times two, and are told it is four for a man andthree for a woman, and go back with a happy "Thank you, my dear";those who love to be called baby, and appeal to instincts halfparental in their lovers and husbands; those who find all the spherethey desire in a doll's house, like Nora's, and are content to bemen's pets; whose ideal is the clinging vine, and who take no interestin the field where their husbands struggle, will perhaps soon surviveonly as a diminishing remainder. Marriages do still occur wherewoman's ignorance and helplessness seem to be the chief charm to men,and may be happy, but such cases are no farther from the present idealand tendency on the one hand than on the other are those which consistin intellectual partnerships, in which there is no segregation ofinterests but which are devoted throughout to joint work or enjoyment.

A typical contemporary writer[1] thinks the question whether a girlshall receive a college education is very like the same question forboys. Even if the four K's, Kirche, Kinder, Kuchen, and Kleider(which may be translated by the four C's, Church, Children, Cooking,and Clothes), are her vocation, college may help her. The besttraining for a young woman is not the old college course that hasproven unfit for young men. Most college men look forward to aprofessional training as few women do. The latter have often greatersympathy, readiness of memory, patience with technic, skill inliterature and language, but lack originality, are not attracted byunsolved problems, are less motor-minded; but their training is justas serious and important as that of men. The best results are wherethe sexes are brought closer together, because their separationgenerally emphasizes for girls the technical training for theprofession of womanhood. With girls, literature and language takeprecedence over science; expression stands higher than action; thescholarship may be superior, but is not effective; the educated woman"is likely to master technic rather than art; method, rather thansubstance. She may know a good deal, but she can do nothing." In mostseparate colleges for women, old traditions are more prevalent than incolleges for men. In the annex system, she does not get the best ofthe institution. By the coeducation method, "young men are moreearnest, better in manners and morals, and in all ways more civilizedthan under monastic conditions. The women do more work in a morenatural way, with better perspective and with saner incentives thanwhen isolated from the influence of the society of men. There is lesssilliness and folly where a man is not a novelty. In coeducationalinstitutions of high standards, frivolous conduct or scandals of anyform are rarely known. The responsibility for decorum is thrown fromthe school to the woman, and the woman rises to the responsibility."The character of college work has not been lowered but raised bycoeducation, despite the fact that most of the new, small, weakcolleges are coeducational. Social strain, Jordan thinks, is easilyregulated, and the dormitory system is on the whole best, because thecollege atmosphere is highly prized. The reasons for the presentreaction against coeducation are ascribed partly to the dislike of theidle boy to have girls excel him and see his failures, or becauserowdyish tendencies are checked by the presence of women. Some thinkthat girls do not help athletics; that men count for most because theyare more apt to be heard from later; but the most serious new argumentis the fear that woman's standards and amateurishness will take theplace of specialization. Women take up higher education because theylike it; men because their careers depend upon it. Hence their studiesare more objective and face the world as it is. In college the womendo as well as men, but not in the university. The half-educated womanas a social factor has produced many soft lecture courses and cheapbooks. This is an argument for the higher education of the sex.Finally, Jordan insists that coeducation leads to marriage, and hebelieves that its best basis is common interest and intellectualfriendship.

From the available data it seems, however, that the more scholasticthe education of women, the fewer children and the harder, moredangerous, and more dreaded is parturition, and the less the abilityto nurse children. Not intelligence, but education by present man-madeways, is inversely as fecundity. The sooner and the more clearly thisis recognized as a universal rule, not, of course, without manynotable and much vaunted exceptions, the better for our civilization.For one, I plead with no whit less earnestness and conviction than anyof the feminists, and indeed with more fervor because on nearly alltheir grounds and also on others, for the higher education of women,and would welcome them to every opportunity available to men if theycan not do better; but I would open to their election anothereducation, which every competent judge would pronounce more favorableto motherhood, under the influence of female principals who do notpublicly say that it is "not desirable" that women students shouldstudy motherhood, because they do not know whether they will marry;who encourage them to elect "no special subjects because they arewomen," and who think infant psychology "foolish."

Various interesting experiments in coeducation are now being made inEngland.[2] Some are whole-hearted and encourage the girls to doalmost everything that the boys do in both study and play. There aregirl prefects; cricket teams are formed sometimes of both sexes, butoften the sexes matched against each other; one play-yard, a dualstaff of teachers, and friendships between the boys and girls are nottabooed, etc. In other schools the sexes meet perhaps in recitationonly, have separate rooms for study, entrances, play-grounds, andtheir relations are otherwise restricted. The opinion of Englishwriters generally favors coeducation up to about the beginning of theteens, and from there on views are more divided. It is admitted that,if there is a very great preponderance of either sex over the other,the latter is likely to lose its characteristic qualities, andsomething of this occurs where the average age of one sex isdistinctly greater than that of the other. On the other hand, severalurge that, where age and numbers are equal, each sex is more inclinedto develop the best qualities peculiar to itself in the presence ofthe other.

Some girls are no doubt far fitter for boys' studies and men's careersthan others. Coeducation, too, generally means far more assimilationof girls' to boys' ways and work than conversely. Many people believethat girls either gain or are more affected by coeducation, especiallyin the upper grades, than boys. It is interesting, however, to observethe differences that still persist. Certain games, like football andboxing, girls can not play; they do not fight; they are not flogged orcaned as English boys are when their bad marks foot up beyond acertain aggregate; girls are more prone to cliques; their punishmentsmust be in appeals to school sentiment, to which they are exceedinglysensitive; it is hard for them to bear defeat in games with the samedignity and unruffled temper as boys; it is harder for them to acceptthe school standards of honor that condemn the tell-tale as a sneak,although they soon learn this. They may be a little in danger of beingroughened by boyish ways and especially by the crude and uniquelanguage, almost a dialect in itself, prevalent among schoolboys.Girls are far more prone to overdo; boys are persistingly lazy andidle. Girls are content to sit and have the subject-matter pumped intothem by recitations, etc., and to merely accept, while boys are moreinspired by being told to do things and make tests and experiments. Inthis, girls are often quite at sea. One writer speaks of a certainfeminine obliquity, but hastens to say that girls in these schoolssoon accept its code of honor. It is urged, too, that singing classesthe voices of each sex are better in quality for the presence of theother. In many topics of all kinds boys and girls are interested indifferent aspects of the same theme, and therefore the work isbroadened. In manual training, girls excel in all artistic work; boys,in carpentry. Girls can be made not only less noxiously sentimentaland impulsive, but their conduct tends to become more thoughtful; theycan be made to feel responsibility for bestowing their praise arightand thus influencing the tone of the school. Calamitous as it world befor the education of boys beyond a certain age to be entrustedentirely or chiefly to women, it would be less so for that of girls tobe given entirely to men. Perhaps the great women teachers, whose lifeand work have made them a power with girls comparable to that ofArnold and Thring with boys, are dying out. Very likely economicmotives are too dominant for this problem to be settled on its meritsonly. Finally, several writers mention the increased healthfulness ofmoral tone. The vices that infest boys' schools, which Arnold thoughta quantity constantly changing with every class, are diminished.Healthful thoughts of sex, less subterranean and base imaginings onthe one hand, and less gushy sentimentality on the other, are favored.For either sex to be a copy of the other is to be weakened, and eachcomes normally to respect more and to prefer its own sex.

Not to pursue this subject further here, it is probable that many ofthe causes for the facts set forth are very different and some of themalmost diametrically opposite in the two sexes. Hard as it is perse, it is after all a comparatively easy matter to educate boys. Theyare less peculiarly responsive in mental tone to the physical andpsychic environment, tend more strongly and early to specialinterests, and react more vigorously against the obnoxious elements oftheir surroundings. This is truest of the higher education, and moreso in proportion as the tendencies of the age are toward special andvocational training. Woman, as we saw, in every fiber of her soul andbody is a more generic creature than man, nearer to the race, anddemands more and more with advancing age an education that isessentially liberal and humanistic. This is progressively hard whenthe sexes differentiate in the higher grades. Moreover, nature decreesthat with advancing civilization the sexes shall not approximate, butdifferentiate, and we shall probably be obliged to carry sexdistinctions, at least of method, into many if not most of the topicsof the higher education. Now that woman has by general consentattained the right to the best that man has, she must seek a trainingthat fits her own nature as well or better. So long as she strives tobe manlike she will be inferior and a pinchbeck imitation, but shemust develop a new sphere that shall be like the rich field of thecloth of gold for the best instincts of her nature.

Divergence is most marked and sudden in the pubescent period—in theearly teens. At this age, by almost world-wide consent, boys and girlsseparate for a time, and lead their lives during this most criticalperiod more or less apart, at least for a few years, until the fermentof mind and body which results in maturity of functions then born andculminating in nubility, has done its work. The family and the homeabundantly recognize this tendency. At twelve or fourteen, brothersand sisters develop a life more independent of each other than before.Their home occupations differ as do their plays, games, tastes.History, anthropology, and sociology, a well as home life, abundantlyillustrate this. This is normal and biological. What our schools andother institutions should do, is not to obliterate these differencesbut to make boys more manly and girls more womanly. We should respectthe law of sexual differences, and not forget that motherhood is avery different thing from fatherhood. Neither sex should copy nor setpatterns to the other, but all parts should be played harmoniously andclearly in the great sex symphony.

I have here less to say against coeducation in college, still less inuniversity grades after the maturity which comes at eighteen or twentyhas been achieved; but it is high time to ask ourselves whether thetheory and practise of identical coeducation, especially in the highschool, which has lately been carried to a greater extreme in thiscountry than the rest of the world recognizes, has not brought certaingrave dangers, and whether it does not interfere with the naturaldifferentiations seen everywhere else. I recognize, of course, thegreat argument of economy. Indeed, we should save money and effortcould we unite churches of not too diverse creeds. We could thus givebetter preaching, music, improve the edifice, etc. I am by no meansready to advocate the radical abolition of coeducation, but we canalready sum up in a rough, brief way our account of profit and losswith it. On the one hand, no doubt each sex develops some of its ownbest qualities best in the presence of the other, but the questionstill remains, how much, when, and in what way, identical coeducationsecures this end?

As has been said, girls and boys are often interested in differentaspects of the same topic, and this may have a tendency to broaden theview-point of both and bring it into sympathy with that of the other,but the question still remains whether one be not too much attractedto the sphere of the other, especially girls to that of boys. No doubtsome girls become a little less gushy, their conduct more thoughtful,and their sense of responsibility greater; for one of woman's greatfunctions, which is that of bestowing praise aright, is increased.There is also much evidence that certain boys' vices are mitigated;they are made more urbane and their thoughts of sex made morehealthful. In some respects boys are stimulated to good scholarship bygirls, who in many schools and topics excel them. We should ask,however, What is nature's way at this stage of life? Whether boys, inorder to be well virified later, ought not to be so boisterous andeven rough as to be at times unfit companions for girls; or whether,on the other hand, girls to be best matured ought not to have theirsentimental periods of instability, especially when we venture toraise the question, whether for a girl in the early teens, when herhealth for her whole life depends upon normalizing the lunar month,there is not something unhygienic, unnatural, not to say a littlemonstrous, in school associations with boys when she must suppress andconceal her feelings and instinctive promptings at those times whichsuggest withdrawing, to let nature do its beautiful work ofinflorescence. It is a sacred time of reverent exemption from the hardstruggle of existence in the world and from mental effort in theschool. Medical specialists, many of the best of whom now insist thatthrough this period she should be, as it were, "turned out to grass,"or should lie fallow, so far as intellectual efforts go, one-fourththe time, no doubt often go too far, but their unanimous voice shouldnot entirely be disregarded.

It is not this, however, that I have chiefly in mind here, but theeffects of too familiar relations and, especially, of the identicalwork, treatment, and environment of the modern school.

We have now at least eight good and independent statistical studieswhich show that the ideals of boys from ten years on are almost alwaysthose of their own sex, while girls' ideals are increasingly of theopposite sex, or those of men. That the ideals of pubescent girls arenot found in the great and noble women of the world or in theirliterature, but more and more in men, suggests a divorce between theideals adopted and the line of life best suited to the interests ofthe race. We are not furnished in our public schools with adequatewomanly ideals in history or literature. The new love of freedom whichwomen have lately felt inclines girls to abandon the home for theoffice. "It surely can hardly be called an ideal education for womenthat permits eighteen out of one hundred college girls to state boldlythat they would rather be men than women." More than one-half of theschoolgirls in these censuses choose male ideals, as if those offemininity are disintegrating. A recent writer,[3] in view of thisfact, states that "unless there is a change of trend, we shall soonhave a female sex without a female character." In the progressivenumerical feminization of our schools most teachers, perhaps naturallyand necessarily, have more or less masculine ideals, and this does notencourage the development of those that constitute the glory ofwomanhood. "At every age from eight to sixteen, girls named from threeto twenty more ideals than boys." "These facts indicate a condition ofdiffused interests and lack of clear-cut purposes and a need ofintegration."

When we turn to boys the case is different. In most public highschools girls preponderate, especially in the upper classes, and inmany of them the boys that remain are practically in a girls' school,sometimes taught chiefly, if not solely, by women teachers at an agewhen strong men should be in control more than at any other period oflife. Boys need a different discipline and moral regimen andatmosphere. They also need a different method of work. Girls excelthem in learning and memorization, accepting studies upon suggestionor authority, but are often quite at sea when set to make tests andexperiments that give individuality and a chance for self-expression,which is one of the best things in boyhood. Girls preponderate in ourovergrown high school Latin and algebra, because custom and traditionand, perhaps, advice incline them to it. They preponderate in Englishand history classes more often, let us hope, from inner inclination.The boy sooner grows restless in a curriculum where form takesprecedence over content. He revolts at much method with meager matter.He craves utility, and when all these instincts are denied, withoutknowing what is the matter, he drops out of school, when with robusttone and with a truly boy life, such as prevails at Harrow, Eton, andRugby, he would have fought it through and have done well. Thisfeminization of the school spirit, discipline, and personnel is badfor boys. Of course, on the whole, perhaps, they are made moregentlemanly, more at ease, their manners improved, and all this to awoman teacher seems excellent, but something is the matter with theboy in early teens who can be truly called "a perfect gentleman." Thatshould come later, when the brute and animal element have hadopportunity to work themselves off in a healthful normal way. Theystill have football to themselves, and are the majority perhaps inchemistry, and sometimes in physics, but there is danger of a settledeviration. The segregation, which even some of our schools are nowattempting, is always in some degree necessary for full and completedevelopment. Just as the boys' language is apt to creep into that ofthe girl, so girls' interests, ways, standards and tastes, which arecrude at this age, sometimes attract boys out of their orbit. Whilesome differences are emphasized by contact, others are compromised.Boys tend to grow content with mechanical, memorized work and,excelling on the lines of girls' qualities, fail to develop those oftheir own. There is a little charm and bloom rubbed off the ideal ofgirlhood by close contact, and boyhood seems less ideal to girls atclose range. In place of the mystic attraction of the other sex thathas inspired so much that is best in the world, familiar comradeshipbrings a little disenchantment. The impulse to be at one's best in thepresence of the other sex prows lax and sex tension remits, and eachcomes to feel itself seen through, so that there is less motive toindulge in the ideal conduct which such motives inspire, because thecall for it is incessant. This disillusioning weakens the motivationto marriage sometimes on both sides, when girls grow careless in theirdress and too negligent in their manners, one of the best schools ofwoman's morals; and when boys lose all restraints which the presenceof girls usually enforces, there is a subtle deterioration. Thus, Ibelieve, although of course it is impossible to prove, that this isone of the factors of a decreasing percentage of marriage amongeducated young men and women.

At eighteen or twenty the girl normally reaches a stage of firstmaturity when her ideas of life are amazingly keen and true; when, ifher body is developed, she can endure a great deal; when she isnearest, perhaps, the ideal of feminine beauty and perfection. Of thiswe saw illustrations in Chapter VIII. In our environment, however,there is a little danger that this age once well past there willslowly arise a slight sense of aimlessness or lassitude, unrest,uneasiness, as if one were almost unconsciously feeling along the wallfor a door to which the key was not at hand. Thus some lose theirbloom and, yielding to the great danger of young womanhood, slowlylapse to a anxious state of expectancy, or desire something not withintheir reach, and so the diathesis of restlessness slowly supervenes.The best thing about college life for girls is, perhaps, that itpostpones this incipient disappointment; but it is a little patheticto me to read, as I have lately done, the class letters of hundreds ofgirl graduates, out of college one, two, or three years, turning alittle to art, music, travel, teaching, charity work, one after theother, or trying to find something to which they can devotethemselves, some cause, movement, occupation, where their capacity foraltruism and self-sacrifice can find a field. The tension is almostimperceptible, perhaps quite unconscious. It is everywhere overborneby a keen interest in life, by a desire to know the world at firsthand, while susceptibilities are at their height. The apple ofintelligence has been plucked at perhaps a little too great cost ofhealth. The purely mental has not been quite sufficiently kept back.The girl wishes to know a good deal more of the world and perfect herown personality, and would not marry, although every cell of her bodyand every unconscious impulse points to just that end. Soon, it may bein five or ten years or more, the complexion of ill health is in thesenotes, or else life has been adjusted to independence andself-support. Many of these bachelor women are magnificent in mind andbody, but they lack wifehood and yet more—motherhood.

In fine, we should use these facts as a stimulus to ask moresearchingly the question whether the present system of highereducation for both sexes is not lacking in some very essentialelements, and if so what these are. Indeed, considering the facts thatin our social system man makes the advances and that woman is bynature more prone than man to domesticity and parenthood, it is notimpossible that men's colleges do more to unfit for these than dothose for women. One cause may be moral. Ethics used to be taught as apractical power for life and reënforced by religious motives. Now itis theoretical and speculative and too often led captive bymetaphysical and epistemological speculations. Sometimes girls work orworry more over studies and ideals than is good for theirconstitution, and boys grow idle and indifferent, and thisproverbially tends to bad habits. Perhaps fitting for college has beentoo hard at the critical age of about eighteen, and requirements ofhonest, persevering work during college years too little enforced, orgrown irksome by physiological reaction of lassitude from the strainof fitting and entering. Again, girls mature earlier than boys; andthe latter who have been educated with them tend to certain elementsof maturity and completeness too early in life, and their growthperiod is shortened or its momentum lessened by an atmosphere offemininity. Something is clearly wrong, and more so here than we haveat present any reason to think is the case among the academic male orfemale youth of other lands. To see and admit that there is an evilvery real, deep, exceedingly difficult and complex in its causes, butgrave and demanding a careful reconsideration of current educationalideas and practises, is the first step; and this every thoughtful andwell-informed mind, I believe, must now take.

It is utterly impossible without injury to hold girls to the samestandards of conduct, regularity, severe moral accountability, andstrenuous mental work that boys need. The privileges and immunities ofher sex are inveterate, and with these the American girl in the middleteens fairly tingles with a new-born consciousness. Already sheoccasionally asserts herself in the public high school against a maleteacher or principal who seeks to enforce discipline by methods boysrespect, in a way that suggests that the time is at hand whenpopularity with her sex will be as necessary in a successful teacheras it is in the pulpit. In these interesting oases where girlsentiment has made itself felt in school it has generally carriedparents, committeemen, the press, and public sentiment before it, andhas already made a precious little list of martyrs whom, were I aneducational pope, I would promptly canonize. The progressivefeminization of secondary education works its subtle demoralization onthe male teachers who remain. Public sentiment would sustain them inmany parental exactions with boys which it disallows in mixed classes.It is hard, too, for male principals of schools with only femaleteachers not to suffer some deterioration in the moral tone of theirvirility and to lose in the power to cope successfully with men. Notonly is this often confessed and deplored, but the incessantcompromises the best male teachers of mixed classes must make withtheir pedagogic convictions in both teaching and discipline make theprofession less attractive to manly men of large caliber and of soundfiber. Again, the recent rapid increase of girls, the percentage ofwhich to population in high schools has in many communities doubled inbut little more than a decade, almost necessarily involves a declinein the average quality of girls, perhaps as much greater for them ascompared with boys as their increase has been greater. When but fewwere found in these institutions they were usually picked girls withsuperior tastes and ability, but now the average girl of the rank andfile is, despite advanced standard, of admission, of an order nativelylower. From this deterioration both boys and teachers suffer, eventhough the greatest good for the greatest number may be enhanced. Oncemore, it is generally admitted that girls in good boarding-schools,where evenings, food, and regimen are controlled, are in better healththan day pupils with social, church, and domestic duties and perhapsworries to which boys are less subject. This is the nascent stage ofperiodicity to the slow normalization of which, during these fewcritical years, everything that interferes should yield. Some kind oftacit recognition of this is indispensable, but in mixed classes everyform of such concession is baffling and demoralizing to boys.

The women who really achieve the higher culture should make it their"cause" or "mission" to work out the new humanistic or liberaleducation which the old college claimed to stand for and which nowneeds radical reconstruction to meet the demands of modern life. Inscience they should aim to restore the humanistic elements of itshistory, biography, its popular features at their best, and itsapplications in all the more non-technical fields, as described inChapter XII, and feel responsibility not to let the moral, religious,and poetic aspects of nature be lost in utilities. Woman should betrue to her generic nature and take her stand against all prematurespecialization, and when the Zeitgeist [Spirit of the Times] insistson specialized training for occupative pursuits without waiting forbroad foundations to be laid, she should resist all these influencesthat make for psychological precocity. Das Ewig-Weibliche [Theeternal womanly] is no iridescent fiction but a very definablereality, and means perennial youth. It means that woman at her bestnever outgrows adolescence as man does, but lingers in, magnifies andglorifies this culminating stage of life with its all-sided interests,its convertibility of emotions, its enthusiasm, and zest for all thatis good, beautiful, true, and heroic. This constitutes her freshnessand charm, even in age, and makes her by nature more humanistic thanman, more sympathetic and appreciative. It is not chiefly the 70,000superfluous Massachusetts women of the last census, butrepresentatives of every class and age in the 4,000 women's clubs ofthis country that now find some leisure for general culture in allfields, and in which most of them no doubt surpass their husbands.Those who still say that men do not like women to be their mentalsuperiors and that no man was ever won by the attraction of intellect,on the one hand, and those who urge that women really want husbands tobe their intellectual superiors, both misapprehend. The male in allthe orders of life is the agent of variation and tends by nature toexpertness and specialisation, without which his individuality isincomplete. In his chosen line he would lead and be authoritative, andhe rarely seeks partnership in it in marriage. This is no subjection,but woman instinctively respects and even reveres, and perhapseducated woman coming to demand, it in the man of her whole-heartedchoice. This granted, man was never more plastic to woman's great workof creating in him all the wide range of secondary sex qualities whichconstitute his essential manhood. In all this, the pedagogic fatherswe teach in the history of education are most of them about asluminous and obsolete as is patristics for the religious teacher, oras methods of other countries are coming to be in solving our ownpeculiar pedagogic problems. The relation of the academically trainedsexes is faintly typified by that of the ideal college to the idealuniversity, professional or technical school. This is the harmony ofcounterparts and constitutes the best basis of psychic amphimixis. Forthe reinstallation of the humanistic college, the time has come whencultivated woman ought to come forward and render vital aid. If shedoes so and helps to evolve a high school and an A.B. course that istruly liberal, it will not only fit her nature and needs far betterthan anything now existing, but young men at the humanistic stage oftheir own education will seek to profit by it, and she will thus repayher debt to man in the past by aiding him to de-universitize thecollege and to rescue secondary education from its gravest dangers.

But even should all this be done, coeducation would by means be thusjustified. If adolescent boys normally pass through a generalized oreven feminized stage of psychic development in which they arepeculiarly plastic to the guidance of older women who have such rareinsight into their nature, such infinite sympathy and patience withall the symptoms of their storm and stress metamorphosis, when theyseek everything by turns and nothing long, and if young men willforever afterward understand woman's nature better for living out morefully this stage of their lives and will fail to do so if it isabridged or dwarfed, it by no means follows that intimate daily andclass-room association with girls of their own age is necessary orbest. The danger of this is that the boy's instinct to assert his ownmanhood will thus be made premature and excessive, that he will reactagainst general culture, in the capacity for which girls, who areolder than boys at the same age, naturally excel them. Companionshipand comparisons incline him to take premature refuge in some onetalent that emphasizes his psycho-sexual difference too soon. Again,he is farther from nubile maturity than the girl classmate of his ownage, and coeducation and marriage between them are prone to violatethe important physiological law of disparity that requires the husbandto be some years the wife's senior, both in their own interests, asmaturity begins to decline to age, and in those of their offspring.Thus the young man with his years of restraint and probation ahead,and his inflammable desires, is best removed from the half-consciouscerebrations about wedlock, inevitably more insistent with constantgirl companionship. If he resists this during all the years of hisapprenticeship, he grows more immune and inhibitive of it when itsproper hour arrives, and perhaps becomes in soul a bachelor before histime. In this side of his nature he is forever incommensurate with andunintelligible to woman, be she even teacher, sister, or mother.Better some risk of gross thoughts and even acts, to which phylogenyand recapitulation so strongly incline him, than this subtleeviration. But if the boy is unduly repelled from the sphere of girls'interests, the girl is in some danger of being unduly drawn to his,and, as we saw above, of forgetting some of the ideals of her own sex.Riper in mind and body than her male classmate, and often excellinghim in the capacity of acquisition, nearer the age of her fullmaturity than he to his, he seems a little too crude and callow tofulfil the ideals of manhood normal to her age which point to olderand riper men. In all that makes sexual attraction best, a classmateof her own age is too undeveloped, and so she often suffers mutedisenchantment, and even if engagement be dreamed of, it would be, onher part, with unconscious reservations if not with some consciousrenunciation of ideals. Thus the boy is correct in feeling himselfunderstood and seen through by his girl classmates to a degree that issometimes quite distasteful to him, while the girl finds herselfmisunderstood by and disappointed in men. Boys arrive at thehumanistic stage of culture later than girls and pass it sooner; andto find them already there and with their greater aptitude excellinghim, is not an inviting situation, and so he is tempted to abridge orcut it out and to hasten on and be mature and professional before histime, for thus he gravitates toward his normal relation to her sex ofexpert mastership on some bread- or fame-winning line. Of course,these influences are not patent, demonstrable by experiment, ormeasurable by statistics; but I have come to believe that, like manyother facts and laws, they have a reality and a dominance that isall-pervasive and inescapable, and that they will ultimately prevailover economic motives and traditions.

To be a true woman means to be yet more mother than wife. The madonnaconception expresses man's highest comprehension of woman's realnature. Sexual relations are brief, but love and care of offspring arelong. The elimination of maternity is one of the great calamities, ifnot diseases, of our age. Marholm[4] points out at length how artagain to-day gives woman a waspish waist with no abdomen, as if tocarefully score away every trace of her mission; usually with no childin her arms or even in sight; a mere figurine, calculated perhaps toentice, but not to bear; incidentally degrading the artist who depictsher to a fashion-plate painter, perhaps with suggestions of the artsof toilet, cosmetics, and coquetry, as if to promote decadent reactionto decadent stimuli. As in the Munchausen tale, the wolf slowly atethe running nag from behind until he found himself in the harness, soin the disoriented woman the mistress, virtuous and otherwise, isslowly supplanting the mother. Please she must, even though she cannot admire, and can so easily despise men who can not lead her,although she become thereby lax and vapid.

The more exhausted men become, whether by overwork, unnatural citylife, alcohol, recrudescent polygamic inclinations, exclusive devotionto greed and pelf; whether they become weak, stooping, blear-eyed,bald-headed, bow-legged, thin-shanked, or gross, coarse, barbaric, andbestial, the more they lose the power to lead woman or to arouse hernature, which is essentially passive. Thus her perversions are hisfault. Man, before he lost the soil and piety, was not only herprotector and provider, but her priest. He not only supported anddefended, but inspired the souls of women, so admirably calculated toreceive and elaborate suggestions, but not to originate them. In theirinmost souls even young girls often experience disenchantment, findmen little and no heroes, and so cease to revere and begin to thinkstupidly of them as they think coarsely of her. Sometimes the girlishconceptions of men are too romantic and exalted; often the intimacy ofschool and college wear off a charm, while man must not forget thatto-day he too often fails to realize the just and legitimateexpectations and ideals of women. If women confide themselves, bodyand soul, less to him than he desires, it is not she, but he, who isoften chiefly to blame. Indeed, in some psychic respects, it seems asif in human society the processes of subordinating the male to thefemale, carried so far in some of the animal species, had alreadybegun. If he is not worshiped as formerly, it is because he is lessworshipful or more effeminate, less vigorous and less able to exciteand retain the great love of true, not to say great, women. Wheremarriage and maternity are of less supreme interest to an increasingnumber of women, there are various results, the chief of which are asfollows:

1. Women grow dollish; sink more or less consciously to man's level;gratify his desires and even his selfish caprices, but exact in returnluxury and display, growing vain as he grows sordid; thus, whilesubmitting, conquering, and tyrannizing over him, content with presentworldly pleasure, unmindful of the past, the future, or the above.This may react to intersexual antagonism until man comes to hate womanas a witch, or, as in the days of celibacy, consider sex a wile of thedevil. Along these lines even the stage is beginning to represent thetragedies of life.

2. The disappointed woman in whom something is dying comes to asserther own ego and more or less consciously to make it an end, aiming topossess and realize herself fully rather than to transmit. Despairingof herself as a woman, she asserts her lower rights in the place ofher one great right to be loved. The desire for love may be transmutedinto the desire for knowledge, or outward achievement become asubstitute for inner content. Failing to respect herself as aproductive organism, she gives vent to personal solutions; seeksindependence; comes to know very plainly what she wants; perhapsbecomes intellectually emancipated, and substitutes science forreligion, or the doctor for the priest, with the all-sidedimpressionability characteristic of her sex which, when cultivated, isso like an awakened child. She perhaps even affects mannish ways,unconsciously copying from those not most manly, or comes to feel thatshe has been robbed of something; competes with men, but sometimeswhere they are most sordid, brutish, and strongest; always expecting,but never finding, she turns successively to art, science, literature,and reforms; craves especially work that she can not do; and seeksstimuli for feelings which have never found their legitimateexpression.

3. Another type, truer to woman's nature, subordinates self; goesbeyond personal happiness; adopts the motto of self-immolation; entersa life of service, denial, and perhaps mortification, like theCountess Schimmelmann; and perhaps becomes a devotee, a saint, and, ifneed be, a martyr, but all with modesty, humility, and with ashrinking from publicity.

In our civilization, I believe that bright girls of good environmentof eighteen or nineteen, or even seventeen, have already reached theabove-mentioned peculiar stage of first maturity, when they see theworld at first hand, when the senses are at their very best, theirsusceptibilities and their insights the keenest, tension at itshighest, plasticity and all-sided interests most developed, and theirwhole psychic soil richest and rankest and sprouting everywhere withthe tender shoots of everything both good and bad. Some such—StellaKlive, Mary MacLane, Hilma Strandberg, Marie Bashkirtseff—havebeen veritable epics upon woman's nature; have revealed thecharacterlessness normal to the prenubile period in which everythingis kept tentative and plastic, and where life seems to have leastunity, aim, or purpose. By and by perhaps they will see in all theirscrappy past, if not order and coherence, a justification, and thenalone will they realize that life is governed by motives deeper thanthose which are conscious or even personal. This is the age when, ifever, no girl should be compelled. It is the experiences of this age,never entirely obliterated in women, that enable them to takeadolescent boys seriously, as men can rarely do, in whom theseexperiences are more limited in range though no less intense. It isthis stage in woman which is most unintelligible to man and evenunrealized to herself. It is the echoes from it that make vast numbersof mothers pursue the various branches of culture, often halfsecretly, to maintain their position with their college sons anddaughters, with their husbands, or with society.

But in a very few years, I believe even in the early twenties withAmerican girls, along with rapidly in creasing development of capacitythere is also observable the beginnings of loss and deterioration.Unless marriage comes there is lassitude, subtle symptoms ofinvalidism, the germs of a rather aimless dissatisfaction with life, alittle less interest, curiosity, and courage, certain forms ofself-pampering, the resolution to be happy, though at too great cost;and thus the clear air of morning begins to haze over andunconsciously she begins to grope. By thirty, she is perhaps goadedinto more or less sourness; has developed more petty self-indulgences;has come to feel a right to happiness almost as passionately as themen of the French Revolution and as the women in their late movementfor enfranchisem*nt felt for liberty. Very likely she has turned toother women and entered into innocent Platonic pairing-off relationswith some one. There is a little more affectation, playing a rôle, andinterest in dress and appearance is either less or more specializedand definite. Perhaps she has already begun to be a seeker who willperhaps find, lose, and seek again. Her temper is modified; there is aslight stagnation of soul; a craving for work or travel; a love ofchildren with flitting thoughts of adopting one, or else aversion tothem; an analysis of psychic processes until they are weakened andinsight becomes too clear; sense of responsibility without an object;a slight general malaise and a sense that society is a false"margarine" affair; revolt against those that insist that in her childthe real value of a woman is revealed. There are alternations betweenexcessive self-respect which demands something almost like adorationof the other sex and self-distrust, with, it may be, many dreameriesabout forbidden subjects and about the relations of the sexesgenerally.

A new danger, the greatest in the history of her sex, now impends,viz., arrest, complacency, and a sense of finality in the mostperilous first stage of higher education for girls, when, after all,little has actually yet been won save only the right and opportunityto begin reconstructions, so that now, for the first time in history,methods and matter could be radically transformed to fit the natureand needs of girls. Now most female faculties, trustees, and studentsare content to ape the newest departures in some one or more maleinstitutions as far as their means or obvious limitations makepossible with a servility which is often abject and with rarely ever athought of any adjustment, save the most superficial, to sex. It isthe easiest, and therefore the most common, view typically expressedby the female head of a very successful institution,[5] who was "earlyconvinced in my teaching experience that the methods for mentaldevelopment for boys and girls applied equally without regard to sex,and I have carried the same thought when I began to develop thephysical, and filled my gymnasium with the ordinary appliances used inmen's gymnasia." There is no sex in mind or in science, it is said,but it might as well be urged that there is no age, and hence that allmethods adapted to teaching at different stages of development may beignored. That woman can do many things as well as man does not provethat she ought to do the same things, or that man-made ways are thebest for her. Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer[6] was right in saying thatwoman's education has all the perplexities of that of man, and manymore, still more difficult and intricate, of its own.

Hence, we must conclude that, while women's colleges have to a greatextent solved the problem of special technical training, they havedone as yet very little to solve the larger one of the propereducation of woman. To assume that the latter question is settled, asis so often done, is disastrous. I have forced myself to go throughmany elaborate reports of meetings where female education wasdiscussed by those supposed to be competent; but as a rule, notwithout rare, striking exceptions, these proceedings are smitten withthe same sterile and complacent artificiality that was so long thecurse of woman's life. I deem it almost reprehensible that, save a fewgeneral statistics, the women's colleges have not only made no studythemselves of the larger problems that impend, but have oftenmaintained a repellent attitude toward others who wished to do so. Noone that I know of connected with any of these institutions, where therichest material is going to waste, is making any serious andcompetent research on lines calculated to bring out thepsycho-physiological differences between the sexes and those inauthority are either conservative by constitution or else intimidatedbecause public opinion is still liable to panics if discussion herebecomes scientific and fundamental, and so tend to keep prudery andthe old habit of ignoring everything that pertains to sex incountenance.

Again, while I sympathize profoundly with the claim of woman for everyopportunity which she can fill, and yield to none in appreciation ofher ability, I insist that the cardinal defect in the woman's collegeis that it is based upon the assumption, implied and often expressed,if not almost universally acknowledged, that girls should primarily betrained to independence and self-support, and that matrimony andmotherhood, if it come, will take care of itself, or, as some evenurge, is thus best provided for. If these colleges are, as the abovestatistics indicate, chiefly devoted to the training of those who donot marry, or if they are to educate for celibacy, this is right.These institutions may perhaps come to be training stations of anew-old type, the agamic or even agenic woman, be she nut, maid—oldor young—nun, school-teacher, or bachelor woman. I recognize the verygreat debt the world owes to members of this very diverse class in thepast. Some of them have illustrated the very highest ideals ofself-sacrifice, service, and devotion in giving to mankind what wasmeant for husband and children. Some of them belong to the class ofsuperfluous women, and others illustrate the noblest type of altruismand have impoverished the heredity of the world to its loss, as didthe monks, who Leslie Stephens thinks contributed to bring about theDark Ages, because they were the best and most highly selected men oftheir age and, by withdrawing from the function of heredity andleaving no posterity, caused Europe to degenerate. Modern ideas andtraining are now doing this, whether for racial weal or woe, can notyet be determined, for many whom nature designed for model mothers.

The bachelor woman is an interesting illustration of Spencer's law ofthe inverse relation of individuation and genesis. The completelydeveloped individual is always a terminal representative in her lineof descent. She has taken up and utilized in her own life all that wasmeant for her descendants, and has so overdrawn her account withheredity that, like every perfectly and completely developedindividual, she is also completely sterile. This is the veryapotheosis of selfishness from the standpoint of every biologicalethics. While the complete man can do and sometimes does this, womanhas a far greater and very peculiar power of overdrawing her reserves.First she loses mammary functions, so that should she undertakematernity its functions are incompletely performed because she can notnurse, and this implies defective motherhood and leaves love of thechild itself defective and maimed, for the mother who has never nursedcan not love or be loved aright by her child. It crops out again inthe abnormal or especially incomplete development of her offspring, inthe critical years of adolescence, although they may have beenhealthful before, and a less degree of it perhaps is seen in thediminishing families of cultivated mothers in the one-child system.These women are the intellectual equals and often the superiors of themen they meet; they are very attractive as companions, like Miss Mehr,the university student, in Hauptmann's "Lonely Lives," who alienatedthe young husband from his noble wife; they enjoy all the keenpleasures of intellectual activity; their very look, step, and bearingis free; their mentality makes them good fellows and companionable inall the broad intellectual spheres; to converse with them is ascharming and attractive for the best men as was Socrates's discoursewith the accomplished hetaerae; they are at home with the racquet andon the golf links; they are splendid friends; their minds, in alltheir widening areas of contact, are as attractive as their bodies;and the world owes much and is likely to owe far more to high Platonicfriendships of this kind. These women are often in every waymagnificent, only they are not mothers, and sometimes have very littlewifehood in them, and to attempt to marry them to develop thesefunctions is one of the unique and too frequent tragedies of modernlife and literature. Some, though by no means all, of them arefunctionally castrated; some actively deplore the necessity ofchild-bearing, and perhaps are parturition phobiacs, and abhor thelimitations of married life; they are incensed whenever attention iscalled to the functions peculiar to their sex, and the carefulconsideration of problems of the monthly rest are thought "not fit forcultivated women."

The slow evolution of this type is probably inevitable as civilizationadvances, and their training is a noble function. Already it hasproduced minds of the greatest acumen who have made very valuablecontributions to science, and far more is to be expected of them inthe future. Indeed, it may be their noble function to lead their sexout into the higher, larger life, and the deeper sense of its trueposition and function, for which I plead. Hitherto woman has not beenable to solve her own problems. While she has been more religious thanman, there have been few great women preachers; while she has excelledin teaching young children, there have been few Pestalozzis, or evenFroebels; while her invalidism is a complex problem, she has turned toman in her diseases. This is due to the very intuitiveness and naïvetéof her nature. But now that her world is so rapidly widening, she isin danger of losing her cue. She must be studied objectively andlaboriously as we study children, and partly by men, because their sexmust of necessity always remain objective and incommensurate withregard to woman, and therefore more or less theoretical. Again, inthese days of intense new interest in feelings, emotions, andsentiments, when many a psychologist now envies and, likeSchleiermacher, devoutly wishes he could become a woman, he can neverreally understand das Ewig-Weibliche, [The eternal womanly] one ofthe two supreme oracles of guidance in life, because he is a man; andhere the cultivated woman must explore the nature of her sex as mancan not, and become its mouthpiece. In many of the new fields openingin biology since Darwin, in embryology, botany, the study of children,animals, savages (witness Miss Fletcher), sociological investigation,to say nothing of all the vast body of work that requires painstakingdetail, perseverance, and conscience, woman has superior ability, orher very sex gives her peculiar advantages where she is to lead andachieve great things in enlarging the kingdom of man. Perhaps, too,the present training of women may in the end develop those who shallone day attain a true self-knowledge and lead n the next step ofdevising a scheme that shall fit woman's nature and needs.

For the slow evolution of such a scheme, we must first of alldistinctly and ostensively invert the present maxim, and educateprimarily and chiefly for motherhood, assuming that, if that does notcome, single life can best take care of itself, because it is lessintricate and lower and its needs far more easily met. While girls maybe trained with boys, coeducation should cease at the dawn ofadolescence, at least for a season. Great daily intimacy between thesexes in high school, if not in college, tends to rub of the bloom anddelicacy which can develop in each, and girls suffer in this respect,let us repeat, far more than boys. The familiar comradeship thatignores sex should be left to the agenic class. To the care of theirinstitutions, we leave with pious and reverent hands the idealsinspired by characters like Hypatia, Madame de Staël, the Misses Cobb,Martineau, Fuller, Bronté, by George Eliot, George Sand, and Mrs.Browning; and while accepting and profiting by what they have done,and acknowledging every claim for their abilities and achievements,prospective mothers must not be allowed to forget a still larger classof ideal women, both in history and literature, from the Holy Motherto Beatrice Clotilda de Vaux, and all those who have inspired men togreat deeds, and the choice and far richer anthology of noble mothers.

We must premise, too, that she must not be petted or pampered withregimen or diet unsuited to her needs; left to find out as best shecan, from surreptitious or worthy sources, what she most of all needsto know; must recognize that our present civilization is hard on womanand that she is not yet adjusted to her social environment; that asshe was of old accused of having given man the apple of knowledge ofgood and evil, so he now is liable to a perhaps no less seriousindictment of having given her the apple of intellectualism andencouraged her to assume his standards at the expense of health. Wemust recognize that riches are probably harder on her, on the whole,than poverty, and that poor parents should not labor too hard toexempt her from its wholesome discipline. The expectancy of change sostamped upon her sex by heredity as she advances into maturity mustnot be perverted into uneasiness or her soul sown with the tares ofambition or fired by intersexual competition and driven on, to quoteDr. R.T. Edes, "by a tireless sort of energy which is a compound ofconscience, ambition, and desire to please, plus a peculiar femaleobstinacy." If she is bright, she must not be overworked in the schoolfactory, studying in a way which parodies Hood's "Song of the Shirt";and if dull or feeble, she should not be worried by preceptresses likea eminent lady principal,[7] who thought girls' weakness is usuallyimaginary or laziness, and that doctors are to blame for suggestingillness and for intimating that men will have to choose between ahealthy animal and an educated invalid for a wife.

Without specifying here details or curricula, the ideals that shouldbe striven toward in the intermediate and collegiate education ofadolescent girls with the proper presupposition of motherhood, andwhich are already just as practicable as Abbotsholme[8] or L'Ecoledes Roches,[9] may be rudely indicated somewhat as follows.

First, the ideal institution for the training of girls from twelve orthirteen on into the twenties, when the period most favorable tomotherhood begins, should be in the country in the midst of hills, theclimbing of which is the best stimulus for heart and lungs, and tendsto mental elevation and breadth of view. There should be water forboating, bathing, and skating, aquaria and aquatic life; gardens bothfor kitchen vegetables and horticulture; forests for their seclusionand religious awe; good roads, walks, and paths that tempt to walkingand wheeling: playgrounds and space for golf and tennis, with largecovered but unheated space favorable for recreations in weather reallytoo bad for out-of-door life and for those indisposed; and plenty ofnooks that permit each to be alone with nature, for this developsinwardness, poise, and character, yet not too great remoteness fromthe city for a wise utilization of its advantages at intervals. Allthat can be called environment is even more important for girls thanboys, significant as it is for the latter.

The first aim, which should dominate every item, pedagogic method andmatter, should be health—a momentous word that looms up besideholiness, to which it is etymologically akin. The new hygiene of thelast few years should be supreme and make these academic areas soaredto the cult of the goddess Hygeia. Only those who realize whatadvances have been made in health culture and know something of itsvast new literature can realize all that this means. The health ofwoman is, as we have seen, if possible even more important for thewelfare of the race than that of man; and the influence of her bodyupon her mind is, in a sense, greater, so that its needs should besupreme and primary. Foods should favor the completest digestion, sothat metabolism be on the highest plane. The dietary should beabundant, plain, and varied, and cooked with all the refinementspossible in the modern cooking-school, which should be one of itsdepartments, with limited use of rich foods or desserts andstimulating drinks, but with wholesome proximity to dairy and farm.Nutrition is the first law of health and happiness, the primecondition and creator of euphoria; and the appetite should be, as italways is if unperverted, like a kind of somatic consciencesteadfastly pointing toward the true pole of needs.

Sleep should be regular, with a fixed retiring hour and curfew, onplain beds in rooms of scrupulous neatness reserved chiefly for itwith every precaution for quiet, and, if possible, with windows moreor less open the year round, and, like other rooms, never overheated.Bathing in moderation, and especially dress and toilet should bealmost raised to fine arts and objects of constant suggestion. Eachstudent should have three rooms, for bath, sleep, and study,respectively, and be responsible for their care, with everyencouragement for expressing individual tastes; but will, anall-dominant idea of simplicity, convenience, refinement, andelegance, without luxury. Girls need to go away from home a good partof every year to escape the indiscretion and often the coddling ofparents and to learn self-reliance; and a family dormitory system,with but few, twelve to twenty, in each building, to escape nervouswear and distraction, to secure intimacy and acquaintance with one ormore matrons or teachers and to ensure the most pedagogic dietetics,is suggested.

Exercise comes after regimen, of which it is a special reform. Swedishgymnastics should be abandoned or reduced to a minimum of best points,because it is too severe and, in forbidding music, lays too littlestress upon the rhythm element. Out-of-door walks and games shouldhave precedence over all else. The principle sometimes advocated, thatmethods of physical training should apply to both boys and girlswithout regard to sex, and with all the ordinary appliances found inthe men's gymnasia introduced, should be reversed and every possibleadjustment made to sex. Free plays and games should always haveprecedence over indoor or uniform commando exercises. Boating andbasket-ball should be allowed, but with the competition elementsedulously reduced, and with dancing of many kinds and forms the mostprominent of indoor exercises. The dance cadences the soul; thestately minuet gives poise; the figure dances train the mind; andpantomime and dramatic features should be introduced and evenspecialties, if there are strong individual predispositions. Thehistory of the dance, which has often been a mode of worship, a schoolof morals, and which is the root of the best that is in the drama, thebest of all exercises and that could be again the heart of our wholeeducational system, should be exploited, and the dancing school andclass rescued from its present degradation. No girl is educated whocan not dance, although she need not know the ballroom in its modernform.[10]

Manners, a word too often relegated to the past as savoring of theprimness of the ancient dame school or female seminary, are reallyminor or sometimes major morals. They can express everything in thewhole range of the impulsive or emotional life. Now that we understandthe primacy of movement over feeling, we can appreciate what a schoolof bearing and repose in daily converse with others means. I wouldrevive some of the ancient casuistry of details, but less the rules ofthe drawing-room, call and party, although these should not beneglected, than the deeper expressions of true ladyhood seen in anexquisite, tender and unselfish regard for the feelings of others.Women's ideal of compelling every one whom they meet to like them is anoble one, and the control of every automatism is not only a part ofgood breeding, but nervous health.

Regularity should be another all-pervading norm. In the main, eventhough he may have "played his sex symphony too harshly," E.H. Clarkwas right. Periodicity, perhaps the deepest law of the cosmos,celebrates its highest triumphs in woman's life. For years everythingmust give way to its thorough and settled establishment. In themonthly Sabbaths of rest, the ideal school should revert to themeaning of the word leisure. The paradise of stated rest should berevisited, idleness be actively cultivated; reverie, in which thesoul, which needs these seasons of withdrawal for its own development,expatiates over the whole life of the race, should be provided for andencouraged in every legitimate way, for, in rest, the whole momentumof heredity is felt in ways most favorable to full and completedevelopment. Then woman should realize that to be is greater thanto do; should step reverently aside from her daily routine and letLord Nature work. In this time of sensitiveness and perturbation, whenanemia and chlorosis are so peculiarly immanent to her sex, remissionof toil should not only be permitted, but required; and yet thegreatest individual liberty should be allowed to adjust itself to thevast diversities of individual constitutional needs. (See Chapter VIIon this point.) The cottage home, which should take the place of thedormitory, should always have special interest and attractions forthese seasons.

There should always be some personal instruction at these seasonsduring earlier adolescent years. I have glanced over nearly a score ofbooks and pamphlets that are especially written for girls; while allare well meant and far better than the ordinary modes by which girlsacquire knowledge of their own nature if left to themselves, they are,like books for boys, far too prolix, and most are too scientific andplain and direct. Moreover, no two girls need just the sameinstruction, and to leave it to reading is too indirect and causes themind to dwell on it for too long periods. Best of all is individualinstruction at the time, concise, practical, and never, especially inthe early years, without a certain mystic and religious tone whichshould pervade all and make everything sacred. This should not begiven by male physicians—and indeed most female doctors would make ittoo professional, and the maiden teacher must forever lack reverencefor it—but it should come from one whose soul and body are full ofwifehood and motherhood and who is old enough to know and is notwithout the necessary technical knowledge.

Another principle should be to broaden by retarding; to keep thepurely mental back and by every method to bring the intuitions to thefront; appeals to tact and taste should be incessant; a purelyintellectual man is no doubt biologically a deformity, but a purelyintellectual woman is far more so. Bookishness is probably a bad signin a girl; it suggests artificiality, pedantry, the lugging of deadknowledge. Mere learning is not the ideal, and prodigies ofscholarship are always morbid. The rule should be to keep nothing thatis not to become practical; to open no brain tracts which are not tobe highways for the daily traffic of thought and conduct; not tooverburden the soul with the impedimenta of libraries and records ofwhat is afar off in time or zest, and always to follow truly theguidance of normal and spontaneous interests wisely interpreted.

Religion will always bold as prominent a place in woman's life aspolitics does in man's, and adolescence is still more its seedtimewith girls than with boys. Its roots are the sentiment of awe andreverence, and it is the great agent in the world for transforminglife from its earlier selfish to its only really mature form ofaltruism. The tales of the heroes of virtue, duty, devotion, andself-sacrifice from the Old Testament come naturally first; thenperhaps the prophets paraphrased as in the pedagogic triumph of Kentand Saunders's little series; and when adolescence is at its heightthen the chief stress of religious instruction should be laid uponJesus's life and work. He should be taught first humanly, and onlylater when the limitations of manhood seem exhausted should His Deitybe adduced as welcome surplusage. The supernatural is a reflex of theheart; each sustains and neither can exist without the other. If thetranscendent and supernal had no objective existence, we should haveto invent and teach it or dwarf the life of feeling and sentiment.Whatever else religion is, therefore, it is the supremest poetry ofthe soul, reflecting like nothing else all that is deepest, mostgeneric and racial in it. Theology should be reduced to a minimum, butnothing denied where wanted. Paul and his works and ways should be forthe most part deferred until after eighteen. The juvenile well as thecyclone revivalist should be very carefully excluded; and yet in everyspringtime, when nature is recreated, service and teaching shouldgently encourage the revival and even the regeneration of all thereligious instincts. The mission recruiter should be allowed to do hiswork outside these halls, and everything in the way of infection andall that brings religion into conflict with good taste and good senseshould be excluded, while esthetics should supplement, reënforce, andgo hand in hand with piety. Religion is in its infancy; and woman, whohas sustained it in the past, must be the chief agent in its furtherand higher development. Orthodoxies and all narrowness should forevergive place to cordial hospitality toward every serious view, whichshould be met by the method of greater sympathy rather than by that ofcriticism.

Nature in her many phases should, of course, make up a large part ofthe entire curriculum, but here again the methods of the sexes shoulddiffer somewhat after puberty. The poetic and mythic factors and someglimpses of the history of science should be given more prominence;the field naturalist rather than the laboratory man of technic shouldbe the ideal especially at first; nature should be taught as God'sfirst revelation, as an Old Testament related to the Bible as aprimordial dispensation to a later and clearer and more special one.Reverence and love should be the motive powers, and no aspect shouldbe studied without beginning and culminating in interests akin todevotion. Mathematics should be taught only in its rudiments, andthose with special talents or tastes for it should go to agamicschools. Chemistry, too, although not excluded, should have asubordinate place. The average girl has little love of sozzling andmussing with the elements, and cooking involves problems in organicchemistry too complex to be understood very profoundly, but therudiments of household chemistry should be taught. Physics, too,should be kept to elementary stages. Meteorology should have a larger,and geology and astronomy increasingly larger places, and areespecially valuable because, and largely in proportion as, they aretaught out of doors, but the general principles and the untechnicaland practical aspects should be kept in the foreground. With botanymore serious work should be done. Plant-lore and the poetic aspect, asin astronomy, should have attention throughout, while Latinnomenclature and microscopic technic should come late if at all, andvulgar names should have precedence over Latin terminology. Flowers,gardening, and excursions should never be wanting. Economic and evenmedical aspects should appear, and prominent and early should come thewhole matter of self cross-fertilization and that by insects. Themoral value of this subject will never be fully understood till wehave what might almost be called a woman's botany, constructed onlines different from any of the text-books I have glanced at. Heremuch knowledge interesting in itself can be early taught, which willspring up into a world of serviceable insights as adolescence developsand the great law of sex unfolds.

Zoology should always be taught with plenty of pets, menagerieresources, and with aquaria, aviaries, apiaries, formicaries, etc., asadjuncts. It should start in the environment like everything else.Bird and animal lore, books, and pictures should abound in the earlystages, and the very prolific chapter of instincts should have ampleillustration, while the morphological nomenclature and details ofstructure should be less essential. Woman has domesticated nearly allthe animals, and is so superior to man in insight into their modes oflife and psychoses that many of them are almost exemplifications ofmoral qualities to her even more than to man. The peaco*ck is anembodied expression of pride; the pig, of filth; the fox, of cunning;the serpent, of subtle danger; the eagle, of sublimity; the goose, ofstupidity; and so on through all the range of human qualities, as wehave seen. At bottom, however, the study of animal life is coming tobe more and more a problem of heredity, and its problems should havedominant position and to them the other matter should grade up.

This shades over into and prepares for the study of the primitive manand child so closely related to each other. The myth, custom, belief,domestic practises of savages, vegetative and animal traits in infancyand childhood, the development of which is a priceless boon for thehigher education of women, open of themselves a great field of humaninterest where she needs to know the great results, the strikingdetails, the salient illustrations, the basal principles rather thanto be entangled in the details of anthropometry, craniometry,philology, etc.

All this lays the basis for a larger study of modern man—history,with the biographical element very prominent throughout, with plentyof stories of heroes of virtue, acts of valor, tales of saintly livesand the personal element more prominent, and specialization in thestudy of dynasties, wars, authorities, and controversies relegated toa very subordinate place. Sociology, undeveloped, rudimentary, and insome places suspected as it is, should have in the curriculum of herhigher education a place above political economy. The stories of thegreat reforms, and accounts of the constitution of society, of thehome, church, state, and school, and philanthropies and ideals, shouldto the fore.

Art in all its forms should be opened at least in a propædeutic wayand individual tastes amply and judiciously fed, but there should beno special training in music without some taste and gift, and the aimshould be to develop critical and discriminative appreciation and thegood taste that sees the vast superiority of all that is good andclassic over what is cheap and fustian.

In literature, myth, poetry, and drama should perhaps lead, and theknowledge of the great authors in the vernacular be fostered. Greek,Hebrew, and perhaps Latin languages should be entirely excluded, notbut that they are of great value and have their place, but because asmattering knowledge is bought at too high a price of ignorance ofmore valuable things. German, French, and Italian should be allowedand provided for by native teachers and by conversational methods ifdesired, and in their proper season.

In the studies of the soul of man, generally called the philosophicbranches, metaphysics and epistemology should have the smallest, andlogic the next least place. Psychology should be taught on the geneticbasis of animals and children, and one of its tap-roots should bedeveloped from the love of infancy and youth, than which nothing inall the world is more worthy. If a woman Descartes ever arises, shewill put life before theory, and her watchword will be not cogito,ergo sum, [I think, therefore I am] but sum, ergo cogito [I am,therefore I think]. The psychology of sentiments and feelings andintuitions will take precedence of that of pure intellect; ethics willbe taught on the basis of the whole series of practical duties andproblems, and the theories of the ultimate nature of right or theconstitution of conscience will have small place.

Domesticity will be taught by example in some ideal home building by akind of laboratory method. A nursery with all carefully selectedappliances and adjuncts, a dining-room, a kitchen, bedroom, closets,cellars, outhouses, building, its material, the grounds, lawn,shrubbery, hothouse, library, and all the other adjuncts of the hearthwill be both exemplified and taught. A general course in pedagogy,especially its history and ideals, another in child study, and finallya course in maternity the last year taught broadly, and not withoutpractical details of nursing, should be comprehensive and culminating.In its largest sense maternity might be the heart of all the highertraining of young women.

Applied knowledge will thus be brought to a focus in a department ofteaching as one of the specialties of motherhood and not as a vocationapart. The training should aim to develop power of maternity in soulas well as in body, so that home influence may extend on and upthrough the plastic years of pubescence, and future generations shallnot rebel against these influences until they have wrought theirperfect work.

The methods throughout should be objective, with copious illustrationsby way of object-lessons, apparatus, charts, pictures, diagrams, andlectures, far less book work and recitation, only a limited amount ofroom study, the function of examination reduced to a minimum, andeverything as suggestive and germinal as possible. Hints that are notfollowed up; information not elaborated into a thin pedagogic sillabubor froth; seed that is sown on the waters with no thought of reaping;faith in a God who does not pay at the end of each week, month, oryear, but who always pays abundantly some time; training which doesnot develop hypertrophied memory-pouches that carry, or creativepowers that discover and produce—these are lines on which such aninstitution should develop. Specialization has its place, but italways hurts a woman's soul more than a man's, should always comelater, and if there is special capacity it should be trainedelsewhere. Unconscious education is a power of which we have yet tolearn the full ranges.

In most groups in this series of ideal departments there should be atleast one healthful, wise, large-souled, honorable, married andattractive man, and, if possible, several of them. His very presencein an institution for young women gives poise, polarizes the soul, andgives wholesome but long-circuited tension at root no doubt sexual,but all unconsciously so. This mentor should not be more father thanbrother, though he should combine the best of each, but should addanother element. He need not be a doctor, a clergyman, or even a greatscholar, but should be accessible for confidential conferences eventhough intimate. He should know the soul of the adolescent girl andhow to prescribe; he should be wise and fruitful in advice, butespecially should be to all a source of contagion and inspiration forpoise and courage even though religious or medical problems beinvolved. But even if he lack all these latter qualities, though he sopoised that impulsive girls can turn their hearts inside out in hispresence and perhaps even weep on his shoulder, the presence of such abeing, though a complete realization of this ideal could be onlyremotely approximated, would be the center of an atmosphere mostwholesomely tonic.

In these all too meager outlines I have sketched a humanistic andliberal education and have refrained from all details and specialcurriculization. Many of the above features I believe would be ashelpful for boys as for girls, but woman has here an opportunity toresume her exalted and supreme position, to be the first in thishigher field, to lead man and pay her debt to his educationalinstitutions, by resuming her crown. The ideal institutions, however,for the two will always be radically and probably always increasinglydivergent.

As a psychologist, penetrated with the growing sense of thepredominance of the heart over the mere intellect, I believe myselfnot alone in desiring to make a tender declaration of being more andmore passionately in love with woman as I conceive she came from thehand of God. I keenly envy my Catholic friends their Maryolatry. Whoever asked if the Holy Mother, whom the wise men adored, knew theastronomy of the Chaldees or had studied Egyptian or Babylonian, oreven whether she knew how to read or write her own tongue, and who hasever thought of caring? We can not conceive that she bemoaned anylimitations of her sex, but she has been an object of adoration allthese centuries because she glorified womanhood by being more generic,nearer the race, and richer in love, pity, unselfish devotion andintuition than man. The glorified madonna ideal shows us how much morewhole and holy it is to be a woman than to be artist, orator,professor, or expert, and suggests to our own sex that to be a man islarger than to be gentleman, philosopher, general, president, ormillionaire.

But with all this love and hunger in my heart, I can not help sharingin the growing fear that modern woman, at least in more ways andplaces than one, is in danger of declining from her orbit; that she iscoming to lack just confidence and pride in her sex as such, and isjust now in danger of lapsing to mannish ways, methods, and ideals,until her original divinity may become obscured. But, if our worshipat her shrine is with a love and adoration a little qualified andunsteady, we have a fixed and abiding faith without which we shouldhave no resource against pessimism for the future of our race, thatshe will ere long evolve a sphere of life and even education whichfits her needs as well as, if not better than those of man fit his.

Meanwhile, if the eternally womanly seems somewhat less divine, we canturn with unabated faith to the eternally childish, the best of whichin each are so closely related. The oracles of infancy and childhoodwill never fail. Distracted as we are in the maze of new sciences,skills, ideals, knowledges that we can not fully coördinate by ourlogic or curriculize by our pedagogy; confused between the claims ofold and new methods; needing desperately, for survival as a nation anda race, some clue to thrid the mazes of the manifold modern cultures,we have now at least one source to which we can turn—we have foundthe only magnet in all the universe that points steadfastly to theundiscovered pole of human destiny. We know what can and willultimately coördinate in the generic, which is larger than the logicalorder, all that is worth knowing, teaching, or doing by the bestmethods, that will save us from misfits and the waste ineffable ofpremature and belated knowledge, and that is in the interests and lineof normal development in the child in our midst that must henceforthever lead us which epitomizes in its development all the stages, humanand prehuman; that is the proper object of all that strange new loveof everything that is naive, spontaneous, and unsophisticated in humannature. The heart and soul of growing childhood is the criterion bywhich we judge the larger heart and soul of mature womanhood; andthese are ultimately the only guide into the heart of the neweducation which is to be, when the school becomes what Melanchthonsaid it must be—a true workshop of the Holy Ghost—and what the newpsychology, when it rises to the heights of prophecy, foresees as thetrue paradise of restored intuitive human nature.

[Footnote 1: David Starr Jordan: The Higher Education of Women.
Popular Science Monthly, December, 1902, vol. 62, pp. 97-107. See also
my article on this subject in Munsey's Magazine, February, 1906, and
President Jordan's reply in the March number, 1906.]

[Footnote 2: Coeducation. A series of essays by various authors,edited by Alice Woods, with an introduction by M.E. Sadler. Longmans,Green and Co., London 1903, p. 148 et seq.]

[Footnote 3: The Evolution of Ideals. W.G. Chambers, Pedagogical
Seminary, March, 1903, vol. 10, pp. 101-143. Also, B.E. Warner: The
Young Woman in Modern Life. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1903, p. 218.]

[Footnote 4: The Psychology of Woman. Translated by G.A. Etchison.
Richards, London, 1899.]

[Footnote 5: Physical Development of Women and Children. By Miss M.E.
Allen. American Association for Physical Education., April, 1890.]

[Footnote 6: A Review of the Higher Education of Women. Forum,September, 1891, vol. 12, pp 25-40. See also G. von Bunge: Diezunehmende Unfähigkeit der Frauen ihre Kinder zu stillen. MünchenReinhardt, 1903, 3d ed. Also President Harper's Decennial Report, pp.xciv-cxi.]

[Footnote 7: Physical Hindrances to Teaching Girls, by Charlotte W.
Porter. Forum, September, 1891, vol. 12, pp. 41-49.]

[Footnote 8: Abbotsholme, 1889-1899: or Ten Years' Work in an
Educational Laboratory, by Cecil Reddie, G. Allen London, 1900.]

[Footnote 9: See L'Ecole des Roches, a school of the TwentiethCentury, by T.R. Croswell. Pedagogical Seminary, December, 1900, vol.7, pp. 479-491.]

[Footnote 10: See Chapter VI.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER XII

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING

Dangers of muscular degeneration and overstimulus of brain—Difficultiesin teaching morals—Methods in Europe—Obedience to commands—Goodhabits should be mechanized—Value of scolding—How to flog aright—Itsdangers—Moral precepts and proverbs—Habituation—Training will throughintellect—Examinations—Concentration—Originality—Froebel and thenaive—First ideas of God—Conscience—Importance of Old and NewTestaments—Sex dangers—Love and religion—Conversion.

From its nature as well as from its central importance it might beeasily shown that the will is no less dependent on the culture itreceives than is the mind. It is fast becoming as absurd to supposethat men can survive in the great practical strain to which Americanlife subjects all who would succeed, if the will is left to take itsdoubtful chances of training and discipline, as to suppose that themind develops in neglect. Our changed conditions make this chance ofwill-culture more doubtful than formerly. A generation or two ago[1]most school-boys had either farm work, chores, errands, jobsself-imposed, or required by less tender parents; they made things,either toys or tools, out of school. Most school-girls did house-work,more or less of which is, like farm-work, perhaps the most varied andmost salutary as well as most venerable of all schools for theyouthful body and mind. They undertook extensive works of embroidery,bed-quilting, knitting, sewing, mending, if not cleaning, and evenspinning and weaving their own or others' clothing, and cared for theyounger children. The wealthier devised or imposed tasks forwill-culture, as the German Kaiser has his children taught a trade aspart of their education. Ten days at the hoe-handle, axe, orpitchfork, said an eminent educator lately in substance, with no newimpression from without, and one constant and only duty, is aschooling in perseverance and sustained effort such as few boys nowget in any shape; while city instead of country life brings so manynew, heterogeneous and distracting impressions of motion rather thanrest, and so many privileges with so few corresponding duties, thatwith artificial life and bad air the will is weakened, and eupepticminds and stomachs, on which its vigor so depends, are rare. Machinessupersede muscles, and perhaps our athleticism gives skill too greatpreponderance over strength, or favors intense rather than constant,long-sustained, unintermittent energy. Perhaps too many of our coursesof study are better fitted to turn out many-sided but superficialparagraphists, than men who can lay deep plans, and subordinate manycomplex means to one remote end. Meanwhile, if there is any one thingof which our industries and practical arts are in more crying needthan another, it is the old-fashioned virtue of thoroughness, of akind and degree which does not address merely the eye, is not limitedby the letter of a contract, but which has some regard for itsproducts for their own sake, and some sense for the future. Whether inscience, philosophy, morals, or business, the fields for long-rangedcumulative efforts are wider, more numerous, and far more needy thanin the days when it was the fashion for men contentedly to concentratethemselves to one vocation, life-work, or mission, or when cathedralsor other yet vaster public works were transmitted, unfinished but everadvancing, from one generation of men to another.

It is because the brain is developed, while the muscles are allowed togrow flabby and atrophied, that the deplored chasm between knowing anddoing is so often fatal to the practical effectiveness of mental andmoral culture. The great increase of city and sedentary life has beenfar too sudden for the human body—which was developed by hunting,war, agriculture, and manifold industries now given over to steam andmachinery—to adapt itself healthfully or naturally to its newenvironment. Let any of us take down an anatomical chart of the humanmuscles, and reflect what movements we habitually make each day, andrealize how disproportionately our activities are distributed comparedwith the size or importance of the muscles, and how greatly modernspecialization of work has deformed our bodies. The muscles that movethe scribbling pen are insignificant fraction of those in the wholebody, and those that wag the tongue and adjust the larynx are alsocomparatively few and small. Their importance is, of course, notunderrated, but it is disastrous to concentrate education upon themtoo exclusively or too early in life. The trouble is that few realizewhat physical vigor is in man or woman, or how dangerously nearweakness often is to wickedness, how impossible healthful energy ofwill is without strong muscles which are its organ, or how enduranceand self-control, no less than great achievement, depend onmuscle-habits. Both in Germany and Greece, a golden age of letters waspreceded, by about a generation, by a golden age of national gymnasticenthusiasm which constitutes, especially in the former country, one ofthe most unique and suggestive chapters in the history of pedagogy.Symmetry and grace, hardihood and courage, the power to do everythingthat the human body can do with and without all conceivable apparatus,instruments, and even tools, are culture ideals that in Greece, Rome,and Germany respectively have influenced, as they might againinfluence, young men, as intellectual ideals never can do save in aselect few. We do not want "will-virtuosos," who perform feats hard tolearn, but then easy to do and good for show; nor spurtiness of anysort which develops an erethic habit of work, temper, and circulation,and is favored by some of our popular sports but too soon reacts intofatigue. Even will-training does not reach its end till it leads theyoung up to taking a intelligent, serious and life-long interest intheir own physical culture and development. This is higher thaninterest in success in school or college sport; and, though naturallylater than these, is one of the earliest forms of will-culture inwhich it is safe and wise to attempt to interest the young for its ownsake alone. In our exciting life and trying climate, in which theexperiment of civilization has never been tried before, these thoughtsare merely exercises.

But this is, of course, preliminary. Great as is the need, thepractical difficulties in the way are very great. First, there are notonly no good text-books in ethics, but no good manual to guideteachers. Some give so many virtues or good habits to be taught perterm, ignoring the unity of virtue as well as the order in which thechild's capacities for real virtue unfold. Advanced text-books discussthe grounds of obligation, the nature of choice or freedom, or thehedonistic calculus, as if pleasures and pains could be balanced asmeasurable quantities, etc., so that philosophic morality is clearlynot for children or teachers. Secondly, evolution encourages too oftenthe doubt whether virtue can be taught, when it should have theopposite effect. Perversity and viciousness of will are too oftentreated as constitutional disease; and insubordination or obstinacy,especially in school, are secretly admired as strength, instead ofbeing vigorously treated as crampy disorders of will, and the child iscoddled into flaccidity. Becomes the lowest develops first, there isdanger that it will interfere with the development of the higher, andthus, if left to his own, the child may come to have no will. Thethird and greatest difficulty is, that with the best effort to do so,so few teachers can separate morality from religious creed. So vitalis the religions sentiment here that it is hard to divorce the end ofeducation from the end of life, proximate from ultimate grounds ofobligation, or finite from infinite duties. Those whose training hasbeen more religious than ethical can hardly teach morality per sesatisfactorily to the noli me tangere [Touch me not] spirit ofdenominational freedom so wisely jealous of conflicting standards andsanctions for the young.

How then can we ever hope to secure proper training for the will?

More than a generation ago Germany developed the following method:Children of Lutheran, Catholic and Jewish parentage, which includemost German children, were allowed one afternoon a week for severalyears, and two afternoons a week for a few months precedingconfirmation, to spend half of a school day with instructors of theserespective professions, who were nominated by the church, but examinedby the state as to their competence. These teachers are asprofessional, therefore, as those in the regular class work. Eachreligion is allowed to determine its own course of religiousinstruction, subject only to the approval of the cultus minister orthe local authorities. In this way a rupture between the religioussentiments and teaching of successive generations is avoided and it issought to bring religious training to bear upon morals. These classeslearn Scripture, hymns, church service,—the Catholics in Latin andthe Jewish in Hebrew,—the history of their church and people, andsometimes a little systematic theology. In some of these schools,there are prizes and diplomas, and the spirit of competition isappealed to. A criticism sometimes made against them, especiallyagainst the Lutheran religious pedagogy, is that it is toointellectual. It is, of course, far more systematic and effective fromthis point of view than the American Sunday School, so that whatevermay be said of its edifying effects, the German child knows thesetopics far better than the American. This system, with modifications,has been adopted in some places in France, England and in America,more often in private than in public schools, however.

The other system originated in France some years after theFranco-Prussian War when the clerical influence in French educationgave way to the lay and secular spirit. In these classes, for whichalso stated times are set apart and which are continued through allthe required grades under the name of moral and civic instruction, thereligious element is entirely absent, except that there are a fewhymns, Bible passages and stories which all agree upon as valuable.Most of the course is made up of carefully selected maxims andespecially stories of virtue, records of heroic achievements in Frenchhistory and even in literature and the drama. Everything, however, hasa distinct moral lesson, although that lesson is not made offensivelyprominent. We have here nearly a score of these textbooks, large andsmall. It would seen as though the resources of the French records andliterature had been ransacked, and indeed many deeds of heroism areculled from the daily press. The matter is often arranged underheadings such as cleanliness, acts of kindness, courage, truthfulnessversus lying, respect for age, good manners, etc. Each virtue is thustaught in a way appropriate to each stage of childhood, and quiteoften bands of mercy, rescue leagues and other societies are theoutgrowth of this instruction. It is, of course, exposed to muchcriticism from the clergy on the cogent ground that morality needs thesupport of religion, at the very least, in childhood. This system hashad much influence in England where several similar courses have beenevolved, and in this country we have at least one very praiseworthyeffort in this direction, addressed mainly, however, to olderchildren.

Besides this, two ways suggest themselves. First, we may try toassume, or tediously enucleate a consensus of religious truth as abasis of will training, e.g., God and immortality, and, ignoring theminority who doubt these, vote them into the public school. Pedagogyneed have nothing whatever to say respecting the absolute truth orfalsity of these ideas, but there is little doubt that they have aninfluence on the will, at a certain stage of average development,greater and more essential than any other; so great that even weretheir vitality to decay like the faith in the Greek or Germanmythology, we should still have to teach God and a future life as themost imperative of all hypotheses in a field where, as in morals,nothing is so practical as a good theory; and we should have to fallto teaching the Bible as a moral classic, and cultivate a criticalsympathy for its view of life. But this way ignores revelation andsupernatural claims, while some have other objections to emancipatingor "rescuing" the Bible from theology just yet. Indeed, the problemhow to teach anything that the mind could not have found out foritself, but that had to be revealed, has not been solved by modernpedagogy, which, since Pestalozzi, has been more and more devoted tonatural and developing methods. The latter teaches that there must notbe too much seed sown, too much or too high precept, or too muchiteration, and that, in Jean Paul's phrase, the hammer must not reston bell, but only tap and rebound, to bring out a clear tone. Again, aconsensus of this content would either have to be carefully definedand would be too generic and abstract for school uses, or elsedifferences of interpretation, which so pervade and are modified bycharacter, culture, temperament, and feeling, would make the consensusitself nugatory. Religious training must be specific at first, and,omitting qualifications, the more explicit the denominational faiththe earlier may religious motives affect the will.

This is the way of our hopes, to the closer consideration of which weintend to return in the future, though it must be expected that thehappiest consensus will be long quarantined from most schools.Meanwhile a second way, however unpromising, is still open. Nobletypes of character may rest on only the native instincts of the soulor even on broadly interpreted utilitarian considerations. But ifmorality without religion were only a bloodless corpse or a plank in ashipwreck, there is now need enough for teachers to study its form,drift, and uses by itself alone. This, at least, is our purpose inconsidering the will, and this only.

The will, purpose, and even mood of small children when alone, arefickle, fluctuating, contradictory. Our very presence imposes onegeneral law on them, viz., that of keeping our good will and avoidingour displeasure. As the plant grows towards the light, so they unfoldin the direction of our wishes, felt as by divination. They respectall you smile at, even buffoonery; look up in their play to call yournotice, to study the lines of your sympathy, as if their chiefvocation was to learn your desires. Their early lies are often sayingwhat they think will please us, knowing no higher touchstones oftruth. If we are careful to be wisely and without excess happy andaffectionate when they are good, and saddened and slightly cooled inmanifestations of love if they do wrong, the power of association inthe normal, eupeptic child will early choose right as surely aspleasure increases vitality. If our love is deep, obedience is aninstinct if not a religion. The child learns that while it can notexcite our fear, resentment or admiration, etc., it can act on ourlove, and this should be the first sense of its own efficiency. Thus,too, it first learns that the way of passion and impulse is not theonly rule of life, and that something is gained by resisting them. Itimitates our acts long before it can understand our words. As if itfelt its insignificance, and dreaded to be arrested in some lowerphase of its development, its instinct for obedience becomes almost apassion. As the vine must twine or grovel, so the child comesunconsciously to worship idols, and imitates bad patterns and examplesin the absence of worthy ones. He obeys as with a deep sense of beingour chattel, and, at bottom, admires those who coerce him, if themeans be wisely chosen. The authority must, of course, be ascendancyover heart and mind. The more absolute such authority the more thewill is saved from caprice and feels the power of steadiness. Suchauthority excites the unique, unfathomable sense of reverence, whichmeasures the capacity for will-culture, and is the strongest andsoundest of all moral motives. It is also the most comprehensive, forit is first felt only towards persons, and personality is a bond,enabling any number of complex elements to act or be treated as whole,as everything does and is in the child's soul, instead of in isolationand detail. In the feeling of respect culminating in worship almostall educational motives are involved, but especially those which alonecan bring the will to maturity; and happy the child who is bound bythe mysterious and constraining sympathy of dependence, by which, ifunblighted by cynicism, a worthy mentor directs and lifts the will.This unconscious reflection of our character and wishes is the divinerside of childhood, by which it is quick and responsive to everythingin its moral environment. The child may not be able to tell whetherits teacher often smiles, dresses in this way or that, speaks loud orlow, has many rules or not, though every element of her personalityaffects him profoundly. His acts of will have not been choices, buta mass of psychic causes far greater than consciousness can estimatehave laid a basis of character, than which heredity alone is deeper,before the child knows he has a will. These influences are nottransient but life-long, for if the conscious and intentional mayanywhere be said to be only a superficial wave over the depths of theunconscious, it is in the sphere of will-culture.

But command and obedience must also be specific to supplant nature.Here begins the difficulty. A young child can know no generalcommands. "Sit in your chair," means sit a moment, a sort of trick,with no prohibition to stand the next instant. Any just-forbidden actmay be done in the next room. All is here and now, and patientreiteration, till habit is formed, and no havoc-making rules which itcannot understand or remember, is our cue. Obedience can, however, beinstinct even here, and is its chief virtue, and there is no more fearof weakening the will by it than in the case of soldiers. As the childgrows older, however, and as the acts commanded are repugnant, orunusual, there should be increasing care, lest authority becompromised, sympathy ruptured, or lest mutual timidity andindecision, if not mutual insincerity and dissimulation, as well asparodied disobedience, etc., to test us, result. We should, of course,watch for favorable moods, assume no unwonted or preternatural dignityor owlish air of wisdom, and command in a low voice which does not toorudely break in upon the child's train of impressions. The acts wecommand or forbid should be very few at first, but inexorable. Weshould be careful not to forbid where we cannot follow a untrustychild, or what we can not prevent. Our own will should be a rock andnot a wave. Our requirements should be uniform, with no whim, mood, orperiodicity of any sort about them. If we alternate from caresses toseverity, are fields and capricious instead of commanding by a fixedand settled plan, if we only now and then take the child in hand, sohe does not know precisely what to expect, we really require the childto change its nature with every change in us, and well for the childwho can defy such a changeable authority, which not only unsettles butbreaks up character anew when it is just at the beginning of theformative period. Neglect is better than this, and fear ofinconsistency of authority makes the best parents often jealous ofarbitrariness in teachers. Only thus can we develop general habits ofwill and bring the child to know general maxims of conductinductively, and only thus by judicious boldness and hardihood incommand can we bring the child to feel the conscious strength thatcomes only from doing unpleasant things. Even if instant obedience beonly external at first, it will work inward, for moods are controlledby work, and it is only will which enlarges the bounds of personality.

Yet we must not forget that even morality is relative, and is onething for adults and often quite another for children. The child knowsnothing of absolute truth, justice, or virtues. The various stimuli ofdiscipline are to enforce the higher though weaker insights which thechild has already unfolded, rather than to engraft entirely unintuitedgood. The command must find some ally, feeble though it be, in thechild's own soul. We should strive to fill each moment with as littlesacrifice or subordination, as mere means or conditions to the future,as possible, for fear of affectation and insincerity. But yet thehardier and sounder the nature, the more we may address training tobarely nascent intuitions, with a less ingredient of immediatesatisfaction, and the deeper the higher element Of interest will begrounded in the end. The child must find as he advances towardsmaturity, that every new insight, or realization of his own revealsthe fact that you have been there before with commands, cultivatingsentiments and habits, and not that he was led to mistake yourconvenience or hobby for duty, or failed to temper the will bytemporizing with it. The young are apt to be most sincere at an agewhen they are also most mistaken, but if sincerity be kept at itsdeepest and best, will be least harmful and easiest overcome. Ifauthority supplement rather than supersede good motives, the childwill so love authority as to overcome your reluctance to apply itdirectly, and as a final result will choose the state and act you havepre-formed in its slowly-widening margin of freedom, and will be allthe less liable to undue subservience to priest or boss, or fashion ortradition later, as obedience gives place to normal, manlyindependence.

In these and many other ways everything in conduct should bemechanized as early and completely as possible. The child's notion ofwhat is right is what is habitual, and the simple, to which all elseis reduced in thought, is identified with the familiar. It is thisprimitive stratum of habits which principally determines our deepestbelief which all must have over and above knowledge—to which menrevert in mature years from youthful vagaries. If good acts are a dietand not a medicine, are repeated over and over again, as every newbeat of the loom pounds in one new thread, and sense of justice andright is wrought into the very nerve-cells and fibers; if this groundtexture of the soul, this "memory and habit-plexus," this sphere ofthoughts we oftenest think and acts we oftenest do, is early, rightlyand indiscerptibly wrought, not only does it become a web of destinyfor us, so all-determining is it, but we have something perdurable tofall back on if moral shock or crisis or change or calamity shall haverudely broken up the whole structure of later associations. Not onlythe more we mechanize thus, the more force of soul is freed for higherwork, but we are insured against emergencies in which the choice anddeed is likely to follow the nearest motive, or that which actsquickest, rather than to pause and be influenced by higher and perhapsintrinsically stronger motives. Reflection always brings in a new setof later-acquired motives and considerations, and if these are betterthan habit-mechanism, then pause is good; if not, he who deliberatesis lost. Our purposive volitions are very few compared with the longseries of desires, acts and reactions, often contradictory, many ofwhich were never conscious, and many once willed but now lapsed toreflexes, the traces of which crowding the unknown margins of thesoul, constitute the organ of the conscious will.

It is only so far as this primitive will is wrong by nature ortraining, that drastic reconstructions of any sort are needed. Onlythose who mistake weakness for innocence, or simplicity for candor, orforget that childish faults are no less serious because universal,deny the, at least, occasional depravity of all children, or fail tosee that fear and pain are among the indispensables of education,while a parent, teacher, or even a God, all love, weakens andrelaxes the will. Children do not cry for the alphabet; themultiplication table is more like medicine than confectionery, and itis only affected thoroughness that omits all that is hard. "The fruitsof learning may be sweet, but its roots are always bitter," and it isthis alone that makes it possible to strengthen the will whileinstructing the mind. The well-schooled will comes, like Herder, toscorn the luxury of knowing without the labor of learning. We mustanticipate the future penalties of sloth as well as of badness. Thewill especially is a trust we are to administer for the child, not ashe may now wish, but as he will wish when more mature. We must nowcompel what he will later wish to compel himself to do. To find hishabits already formed to the same law that his mature will and theworld later enjoin, cements the strongest of all bonds between mentorand child. Nothing, however, must be so individual as punishment. Forsome, a threat at rare intervals is enough; while for others, howeverominous threats may be, they become at once "like scarecrows, on whichthe foulest birds soonest learn to perch." To scold well and wisely isan art by itself. For some children, pardon is the worst punishment;for others, ignoring or neglect; for others, isolation from friends,suspension from duties; for others, seclusion—which last, however, isfor certain ages beset with extreme danger—and for still others,shame from being made conspicuous. Mr. Spencer's "natural penalties"can be applied to but few kinds of wrong, and those not the worst.Basedow tied boys who fell into temptation to a strong pillar to bracethem up; if stupid and careless, put on a fool's cap and bells; ifthey were proud, they were suspended near the ceiling in a basket, asAristophanes represented Socrates. Two boys who quarreled, were madeto look into each other's eyes before the whole school till theirangry expressions gave way before the general sense of the ridiculous.This is more ingenious than wise. The object of discipline is to avoidpunishment, but even flogging should never be forbidden. It maybereserved, like a sword in its scabbard, but should not get so rustedin that it can not be drawn on occasion. The law might even limit thesize and length of the rod, and place of application, as in Germany,but it should be of no less liberal dimensions here than there.punishment should, of course, be minatory and reformatory, and notvindictive, and we should not forget that certainty is more effectivethan severity, nor that it is apt to make motives sensuous, and delaythe psychic restraint which should early preponderate over thephysical. But will-culture for boys is rarely as thorough as it shouldbe without more or less flogging. I would not, of course, urge theextremes of the past. The Spartan beating as a gymnastic drill totoughen, the severity which prevailed in Germany for a long time afterits Thirty Years' Wars,[2] the former fashion in many English schoolsof walking up not infrequently to take a flogging as a plucky thing todo, and with no notion of disgrace attaching to it, shows at least anadmirable strength of will. Severe constraint gives poise, inwardness,self-control, inhibition, and not-willingness, if not willingness,while the now too common habit of coquetting for the child's favor,and tickling its ego with praises and prizes, and pedagogicpettifogging for its good-will, and sentimental fear of a judiciousslap to rouse a spoiled child with no will to break, to make it keepstep with the rest in conduct, instead of delaying a whole school-roomto apply a subtle psychology of motives on it, is bad. This remindsone of the Jain who sweeps the ground before him lest he unconsciouslytread on a worm. Possibly it may be well, as Schleiermacher suggests,not to repress some one nascent bad act in some natures, but let itand the punishment ensue for the sake of Dr. Spankster's tonic. Dermalpain is not the worst thing in the world, and by a judicious knowledgeof how it feels at both ends of the rod, by flogging and beingflogged, far deeper pains may be forefended. Insulting defiance,deliberative disobedience, ostentatious carelessness and bravado, arediseases of the will, and, in very rare cases of Promethean obstinacy,the severe process of breaking the will is needful, just as in surgeryit is occasionally needful to rebreak a limb wrongly set, or deformed,to set it over better. It is a cruel process, but a crampy will inchildhood means moral traumatism of some sort in the adult. Fewparents have the nerve to do this, or the insight to see just when itis needed. It is, as some one has said, like knocking a man down tosave him from stepping off a precipice. Even the worst punishments arebut very faint types of what nature has in store in later life forsome forms of perversity of will, and are better than sarcasm,ridicule, or tasks, as penalties. The strength of obstinacy isadmirable, and every one ought to have his own will; but a falsedirection, though almost always the result of faulty previous trainingwhen the soul more fluid and mobile, is all the more fatal. While sofew intelligent parents are able to refrain from the self-indulgenceof too much rewarding or giving, even though it injures the child, itis perhaps too much to expect the hardihood which can be justly coldto the caresses of a child who seeks, by displaying all its stock ofgoodness and arts of endearment, to buy back good-will afterpunishment has been deserved. If we wait too long, and punish in coldblood, a young child may hate us; while, if we punish on the instant,and with passion, a little of which is always salutary, on theprinciple, ohne Affekt kein Effekt, [Without passion, no effect] anolder child may fail of the natural reactions of conscience, whichshould always be secured. The maxim, summum jus summa injuria, [Therigor of the law may be the greatest wrong] we are often told, ispeculiarly true in school, and so it is; but to forego all punishmentis no less injustice to the average child, for it is to abandon one ofthe most effective means of will-culture. We never punish but a part,as it were, of the child's nature; he has lied, but is not therefore aliar, and we deal only with the specific act, and must love all therest of him.

And yet, after all, indiscriminate flogging is so bad, and the averageteacher is so inadequate to that hardest and most tactful of all hisvaried duties, viz., selecting the right outcrop of the right fault ofthe right child at the right time and place, mood, etc., for besteffect, that the bold statement of such principles as above is perhapsnot entirely without practical danger, especially in two cases whichMadame Necker and Sigismund have pointed out, and in several cases ofwhich the present writer has notes. First, an habitually good childsometimes has a saturnalia of defiance and disobedience; a series ofinsubordinate acts are suddenly committed which really mark the firstsudden epochful and belated birth of the instinct of independence andself-regulation, on which his future manliness will depend. He isquite irresponsible, the acts are never repeated, and very lenienttreatment causes him, after the conflict of tumultuous feelings hasexpanded his soul, to react healthfully into habitual docility again,if some small field for independent action be at once opened him. Theother case is that of ennui, of which children suffer such namelessqualms. When I should open half a dozen books, start for a walk, andthen turn back, wander about in mind or body, seeking but not findingcontent in anything, a child in my mood will wish for a toy, anamusem*nt, food, a rare indulgence, only to neglect or even reject itpetulantly when granted. These flitting "will-spectres" are physical,are a mild form of the many fatal dangers of fatigue; and punishmentis the worst of treatment. Rest or diversion is the only cure, and theteacher's mind must be fruitful of purposes to that end. Perhaps athird case for palliative treatment is, those lies which attend thefirst sense of badness. The desire to conceal it occasionallyaccompanies the nascent effort to reform and make the lie true. Thesecases are probably rare, while the temptation to lie is far greaterfor one who does ill than for one who does well, for fear is the chiefmotive, and a successful lie which concealed would weaken the desireto cure a fault.

We have thus far spoken of obedience, and come now to the laternecessity of self-guidance, which, if obedience has wrought itsperfect work, will be natural and inevitable. It is very hard tocombine reason and coercion, yet it is needful that children thinkthemselves free long before we cease to determine them. As we slowlycease to prescribe and begin to inspire, a very few well-chosenmottoes, proverbs, maxims, should be taught very simply, so that theywill sink deep. Education has been defined as working against thechance influences of life, and it is certain that without someprecepts and rules the will will not exert itself. If reasons aregiven, and energy is much absorbed in understanding, the child willassent but will not do. If the mind is not strong, many wide ideas arevery dangerous. Strong wills are not fond of arguments, and if a youngperson falls to talking or thinking beyond his experience, subjectiveor objective, both conduct and thought are soon confused by chaoticand incongruous opinions and beliefs; and false expectations, whichare the very seducers of the will, arise. There can be littlewill-training by words, and the understanding can not realize theideals of the will. All great things are dangerous, as Plato said, andthe truth itself is not only false but actually immoral to unexpandedminds. Will-culture is intensive, not extensive, and the writer knowsa case in which even a vacation ramble with a moralizing fabulist hasundermined the work of years. Our precepts must be made very familiar,copiously illustrated, well wrought together by habit and attentivethought, and above all clear cut, that the pain of violating them maybe sharp and poignant. Vague and too general precepts beyond thehorizon of the child's real experience do not haunt him if they areoutraged. Now the child must obey these, and will, if he has learnedto obey well the command of others.

One of the best sureties that he will do so is muscle-culture, for ifthe latter are weaker than the nerves and brain, the gap betweenknowing and doing appears and the will stagnates. Gutsmuths, thefather of gymnastics in Germany before Jahn, used to warn men not tofancy that the few tiny muscles that moved the pen or tongue had powerto elevate men. They might titillate the soul with words and ideas;but rigorous, symmetrical muscle-culture alone, he and his Turnersocieties believed, could regenerate the Fatherland, for it was onething to paint the conflict of life, and quite another to bear arms init. They said, "The weaker the body the more it commands; the strongerit is the more it obeys."

In this way we shall have a strong, well-knit soul-texture, made up ofvolitions and ideas like warp and woof. Mind and will will be socompactly organized that all their forces can be brought to a singlepoint. Each concept or purpose will call up those related to it, andonce strongly set toward its object, the soul will find itself bornealong by unexpected forces. This power of totalizing, rather than anytranscendent relation of elements, constitutes at least the practicalunity of the soul, and this unimpeded association of its elements istrue or inner freedom of will. Nothing is wanting or lost when thepowers of the soul are mobilized for a great task, and its substanceis impervious to passion. With this organization, men of really littlepower accomplish wonders. Without it great minds are confused andlost. They have only velleity or caprice. The will makes a series ofvigorous, perhaps almost convulsive, but short, inconsistent efforts.As Jean Paul says, there is sulphur, charcoal, and saltpetre in thesoul, but powder is not made, for they never find each other. Tounderstand this will-plexus is preeminent among the new demands nowlaid on educators.

But, although this focalizing power of acting with the whole ratherthan with a part of the soul, gives independence of many external,conventional, proximate standards of conduct, deepening our interestsin life, and securing us against disappointment by defining ourexpectations, while such a sound and simple will-philosophy is proofa*gainst considerable shock and has firmness of texture enough to bearmuch responsibility, there is, of course, something deeper, withoutwhich all our good conduct is more or less hollow. This is that betterpurity established by mothers in the plastic heart, before thesuperfoetation of precept is possible, or even before the "soul takesflight in language"; it is perhaps pre-natal or hereditary. Much everyway depends on how aboriginal our goodness is, whether the will actswith effort, as we solve an intricate problem, in solitude, or as wesay the multiplication table, which only much distraction can confuse,or as we repeat the alphabet, which the din of battle could nothinder. Later and earlier training should harmonize with each otherand with nature. Thrice happy he who is so wisely trained that hecomes to believe he believes what his soul deeply does believe, to saywhat he feels and feel what he really does feel, and chiefly whoseexpress volitions square with the profounder drift of his will as theresultant of all he has desired or wished, expected, attended to, orstriven for. When such an one comes to his moral majority by standingfor the first time upon his own careful conviction, against thepopular cry, or against his own material interests or predaceouspassions, and feels the constraint and joy of pure obligation whichcomes up from this deep source, a new, original force is brought intothe world of wills. Call it inspiration, or Kant's transcendentalimpulse above and outside of experience, or Spencer's deepreverberations from a vast and mysterious past of compacted ancestralexperiences, the most concentrated, distilled and instinctive of allpsychic products, and as old as Mr. Tyndall's "fiery cloud"—the nameor even source is little. We would call it the purest, freest, mostprevailing, because most inward, will or conscience.

This free, habitual guidance by the highest and best, by convictionwith no sense of compulsion or obligation, impractical if notdangerous ideal, for it can be actually realized only by the rarestmoral genius. For most of us, the best education is that which makesus the best and most obedient servants. This is the way of peace andthe way of nature, for even if we seriously try to keep up a privateconscience at all, apart from feeling, faction, party or class spirit,or even habit, which are our habitual guides, the difficulties are sogreat that most hasten, more or less consciously and voluntarily, toput themselves under authority again, serving only the smallest marginof independence in material interests, choice of masters, etc, andyielding to the pleasing and easy illusion that inflates the minimumto seem the maximum of freedom, and uses the noblest ideal of history,viz., that of pure autonomous oughtness, as a pedestal for idols ofselfishness, caprice and conceit. The trouble is in interpreting thesemoral instincts, for even the authorities lack the requisiteself-knowledge in which all wisdom culminates. The moral interregnumwhich the Aufklärung [Enlightenment] has brought will not end tillthese instincts are rightly interpreted by in intelligence. Therichest streams of thought must flow about them, the best methods mustpeep and pry till their secrets are found and put into theidea-pictures in which most men think.

This brings us, finally, to the highest and also immediately practicalmethod of moral education, viz., training the will by and forintellectual work. Youth and childhood must not be subordinated asmeans to maturity. Learning is more useful than knowing. It is the wayand not the goal, the work and not the product, the acquiring and notthe acquisition, that educates will and character. To teach onlyresults, which are so simple, without methods by which they wereobtained, which are so complex and hard, to develop the sense ofpossession without the strain of activity, to teach great matters tooeasily or even as play, always to wind along the lines of leastresistance into the child's mind, is imply to add another and mostenervating luxury to child-life. Only the sense and power of effort,which made Lessing prefer the search to the possession of truth, whichtrains the will in the intellectual field, which is becoming more andmore the field of its activity, counts for character and makesinstruction really educating. This makes mental work a series of acts,or living thoughts, and not merely words. Real education, that we canreally teach, and that which is really most examinable, is what we do,while those who acquire without effort may be extremely instructedwithout being truly educated.

It is those who have been trained to put forth mental power that cometo the front later, while it is only those whose acquisitions are nottranspeciated into power who are in danger of early collapse.

It is because of this imperfect appropriation through lack ofvolitional reaction that mental training is so often dangerous,especially in its higher grades. Especially wherever good precepts areallowed to rest peacefully beside undiscarded bad habits, moralweakness is directly cultivated. Volitional recollection, or forcingthe mind to reproduce a train of impressions, strengthens what we maycall the mental will; while if multifarious impressions which exciteat the time are left to take their chances, at best, fragmentaryreproduction, incipient amnesia, the prelude of mental decay, may besoon detected. Few can endure the long working over of ideas,especially if at all fundamental, which is needful to full maturity ofmind, without grave moral danger. New standpoints and ideas requirenew combinations of the mental elements, with constant risk thatduring the process, what was already secured will fall back into itslower components. Even oar immigrants suffer morally from the changeof manners and customs and ideas, and yet education menus change; themore training the more change, as a rule, and the more danger duringthe critical transition period while we oscillate between control byold habits, or association within the old circle of thought, and bythe new insights, as a medical student often suffers from trying tobring the regulation of his physical functions under new and imperfecthygienic insights. Thus most especially if old questions, concerningwhich we have long since ceased to trust ourselves to give reasons,need to be reopened, there is especial danger that the new equilibriumabout which the dynamic is to be re-resolved into static power will beestablished, if at all, with loss instead of with gain. Indeed, it isa question not of schools but of civilization, whether mentaltraining, from the three R's to science and philosophy, shall reallymake men better, as the theory of popular education assumes, andwhether the genius and talent of the few who can receive and bear itcan be brought to the full maturity of a knowledge fully facultized—aquestion paramount, even in a republic, to the general education ofthe many.

The illusion is that beginnings are hard. They are easy. Almost anymind can advance a little way into almost any subject. The feeblestyouth can push on briskly in the beginning of a new subject, but heforgets, and so does the examiner who marks him, that difficultiesincrease not in arithmetical but in almost geometrical ratio as headvances. The fact, too, that all topics are taught by all teachersand that we have no specialized teaching in elementary branches, andthat examinations are placed in the most debilitating part of ourpeculiarly debilitating spring, these help us to solve the problemwhich China has solved so well, viz., how to instruct and not toeducate. A pass mark, say of fifty, should be given not for mastery ofthe first half of the book, or for knowledge of half the matter in it,but for that of three-fourths or more. Suppose one choose the easiermethod of tattooing his mind by attaining the easy early stages ofproficiency in many subjects, as is possible and even encouraged intoo many of our school and college curricula, he weakens thewill-quality of his mind. Smattering is dissipation of energy. Onlygreat, concentrated and prolonged efforts in one direction reallytrain the mind, because only they train the will beneath it. Manylittle, heterogeneous efforts of different sorts leave the mind in amuddle of heterogeneous impressions, and the will like a rubber bandis stretched to flaccidity around one after another bundle of objectstoo large for it to clasp into unity. Here again, in der Beschränkungzeigt sich der Meister [The master shows himself in self-limitation];all-sidedness through one-sidedness; by stalking the horse or cow outin the spring time, till he gnaws his small allotted circle of grassto the ground, and not by roving and cropping at will, can he betaught that the sweetest joint is nearest the root, are convenientsymbols of will-culture in the intellectual field. Even a long cram,if only on one subject, which brings out the relations of the parts,or a "one-study college," as is already devised in the West, or thecombination of several subjects even in primary school grades into a"concentration series," as devised by Ziller and Rein, the universitypurpose as defined by Ziller of so combining studies that each shallstand in the course next to that with which it is inherently closestconnected by matter and method, or the requirements of one central andtwo collateral branches for the doctorate examination—all these devicesno doubt tend to give a sense of efficiency, which is one of thedeepest and proudest joys of life, in the place of a sense ofpossession so often attended by the exquisite misery of consciousweakness. The unity of almost any even ideal purpose is better thannone, if it tend to check the superficial one of learning to repeatagain or of boxing the whole compass of sciences and liberal arts, asso many of our high schools or colleges attempt.

Finally, in the sphere of mental productivity and originality, a justpreponderance of the will-element makes men distrust new insights,quick methods, and short cuts, and trust chiefly to the genius ofhonest and sustained work, in power of which perhaps lies the greatestintellectual difference between men. When ideas are ripe forpromulgation they have been condensed and concentrated, thoughttraverses them quickly and easily—in a word, they have becomepractical, and the will that waits over a new idea patiently andsilently, without anxiety, even though with a deepening sense ofresponsibility, till all sides have been seen, all authoritiesconsulted, all its latent mental reserves heard from, is the man who"talks with the rifle and not with the water-hose," or, in a roughfarmer's phrase, "boils his words till he can give his hearers sugarand not sap." Several of the more important discoveries of the presentgeneration, which cost many weary months of toil, have been enumeratedin a score or two of lines, so that every experimenter could set uphis apparatus and get the results in a few minutes. Let us not forgetthat, in most departments of mental work, the more we revise andreconstruct our thought, the longer we inhibit its final expression,while the oftener we return to it refreshed from other interests, theclearer and more permeable for other minds it becomes, because themore it tends to express itself in terms of willed action, which is"the language of complete men."

So closely bound together are moral and religious training that adiscussion of one without the other would be incomplete. In a word,religion is the most generic kind of culture as opposed to all systemsor departments which are one sided. All education culminates in itbecause it is chief among human interests, and because it gives innerunity to the mind, heart, and will. How now should this common elementof union be taught?

To be really effective and lasting, moral and religious training mustbegin in the cradle. It was a profound remark of Froebel that theunconsciousness of a child is rest in God. This need not beunderstood in guy pantheistic sense. From this rest in God thechildish soul should not be abruptly or prematurely aroused. Even theprimeval stages of psychic growth are rarely so all-sided, so purelyunsolicited, spontaneous, and unprecocious, as not to be in a sense afall from Froebel's unconsciousness or rest in God. The sense oftouch, the mother of all the other senses, is the only one which thechild brings into the world already experienced; but by the pats,caresses, hugs, etc., so instinctive with young mothers, variedfeelings and sentiments are communicated to the child long before itrecognizes its own body as distinct from things about it. The mother'sface and voice are the first conscious objects as the infant soulunfolds, and she soon comes to stand in the very place of God to herchild. All the religion of which the child is capable during this byno means brief stage of its development consists of thosesentiments—gratitude, trust, dependence, love, etc., now felt onlyfor her—which are later directed toward God. The less these are nowcultivated toward the mother, who is now their only fitting if nottheir only possible object, the more feebly they will later be felttoward God. This, too, adds greatly to the sacredness and theresponsibilities of motherhood. Froebel perhaps is right that thusfundamental religious sentiments can be cultivated in the earliestmonths of infancy. It is of course impossible not to seem, perhapseven not to be, sentimental upon this theme, for the infant soul hasno other content than sentiments, and because upon these rests thewhole superstructure of religion in child or adult. The mother'semotions, and physical and mental states, indeed, imparted andreproduced in the infant so immediately, unconsciously, and through somany avenues, that it is no wonder that these relations see mystic.Whether the mother is habitually under the influence of calm andtranquil emotions, or her temper is fluctuating or violent, or hermovements are habitually energetic or soft and caressing, or she beregular or irregular in her ministrations to the infant in her arms,all these characteristics and habits are registered in the primevallanguage of touch upon the nervous system of the child. From thispoint of view, poise and calmness, the absence of all intense annuliand of sensations or transitions which are abrupt or sudden, and anatmosphere of quieting influences, like everything which retards bybroadening, is in the general line of religious culture. The soul ofan infant is well compared to a seed planted in a garden. It is notpressed or moved by the breezes which rustle the leaves overhead. Thesunlight does not fall upon it, and even dew and evening coolnessscarcely reach it; but yet there is not a breath of air or a ray ofsunshine, nor a drop of moisture to which it is responsive, and whichdoes not stir all its germinant forces. The child is a plant, mustlive out of doors in proper season, and there must be no forcing.Religion, then, at this important stage, at least, is naturalism pureand simple, and religious training is the supreme art of standing outof nature's way. So implicit is the unity of soul and body at thisformative age that care of the body is the most effectiveethico-religious culture.

Next to be considered are the sentiments which unfold under theinfluence of that fresh and naive curiosity which attends the firstimpressions of natural objects from which both religion and sciencespring as from one common root. The awe and sublimity of athunderstorm, the sights and sounds of a spring morning, objects whichlead the child's thoughts to what is remote in time and space, oldtrees, ruins, the rocks, and, above all, the heavenly bodies—theutilization of these lessons is the most important task of thereligious teacher during the kindergarten stage of childhood. Stillmore than the undevout astronomer, the undevout child under suchinfluences is abnormal. In these directions the mind of the child isas open and plastic as that of the ancient prophet to the promptingsof the inspiring Spirit. The child can recognize no essentialdifference between nature and the supernatural, and the products ofmythopoeic fancy which have been spun about natural objects, and whichhave lain so long and so warm about the hearts of generations andraces of men, are now the best of all nutriments for the soul. Toteach scientific rudiments only about nature, on the shallow principlethat nothing should be taught which must be unlearned, or to encouragethe child to assume the critical attitude of mind, is dwarfing theheart and prematurely forcing the head. It has been said that countrylife is religion for children at this stage. However this may be, itis clear that natural religion is rooted in such experiences, andprecedes revealed religion in the order of growth and education,whatever its logical order in systems of thought may be. A littlelater, habits of truthfulness[3] are best cultivated by the use of thesenses in exact observation. To see a simple phenomenon in nature andreport it fully and correctly is no easy matter, but the habit oftrying to do so teaches what truthfulness is and leaves the impress oftruth upon the whole life and character. I do not hesitate to say,therefore, that elements of science should be taught to children forthe moral effects of its influences. At the same time all truth is notsensuous, and this training alone at this age tends to make the mindpragmatic, dry, and insensitive or unresponsive to that other kind oftruth the value of which is not measured by its certainty so much asby its effect upon us. We must learn to interpret the heart and ournative instincts as truthfully as we do external nature, for ourhappiness in life depends quite as largely upon bringing our beliefsinto harmony with the deeper feelings of our nature as it does uponthe ability to adapt ourselves to our physical environment. Thus notonly all religious beliefs and moral acts will strengthen if theytruly express the character instead of cultivating affectation andinsincerity in opinion, word, and deed, as with mistaken pedagogicmethods they may do. This latter can be avoided only by leaving all tonaturalism and spontaneity at first, and feeding the soul onlyaccording to its appetites and stage of growth. No religious truthmust be taught as fundamental—especially as fundamental tomorality—which can be seriously doubted or even misunderstood. Yet itmust be expected that convictions will be transformed and worked overand over again, and only late, if at all, will an equilibrium betweenthe heart and the truth it clings to as finally satisfying beattained. Hence most positive religious instruction, or public piety,if taught at all, should be taught briefly as most serious but toohigh for the child yet, or as rewards to stimulate curiosity for themlater, but sacred things should not become too familiar or beconventionalized before they can be felt or understood.

The child's conception of God should not be personal or too familiarat first, but He should appear distant and vague, inspiring awe andreverence far more than love; in a word, as the God of nature ratherthan as devoted to serviceable ministrations to the child's individualwants. The latter should be taught to be a faithful servant ratherthan a favorite of God. The inestimable pedagogic value of theGod-idea consists in that it widens the child's glimpse of the whole,and gives the first presentment of the universality of laws, such asare observed in its experiences and that of others, so that all thingsseem comprehended under one stable system or government. The slowrealization that God's laws are not like those of parents andteachers, evadible, suspensible, but changeless, and their penaltiessure as the laws of nature, is most important factor of moraltraining. First the law, the schoolmaster, then the Gospel; firstnature, then grace, is the order of growth.

The pains or pleasures which follow many acts are immediate, while theresults that follow others are so remote or so serious that the childmust utilize the experience of others. Artificial rewards andpunishments must be cunningly devised so as to simulate and typify asclosely as possible the real natural penalty, and they must beadministered uniformly and impartially like laws of nature. Ascommands are just, and as they are gradually perceived to spring fromsuperior wisdom, respect arises, which Kant called the bottom motiveof duty, and defined as the immediate determination of the will bylaw, thwarting self-love. Here the child reverences what is notunderstood as authority, and to the childish "Why?" which alwaysimplies imperfect respect for the authority, however displeasing itsbehest, the teacher or parent should always reply, "You cannotunderstand why yet," unless quite sure that a convincing andcontrolling insight can be given, such as shall make all futureexercise of outward authority in this particular unnecessary. Fromthis standpoint the great importance of the character and nativedignity of the teacher is best seen. Daily contact with some teachersis itself all-sided ethical education for the child without a spokenprecept. Here, too, the real advantage of male over female teachers,especially for boys, is seen in their superior physical strength,which often, if highly estimated, gives real dignity and commands realrespect, and especially in the unquestionably greater uniformity oftheir moods and their discipline.

During the first years of school life, a point of prime importance inethico-religious training is the education of conscience. This latteris the most complex and perhaps the most educable of all our so-called"faculties." A system of carefully arranged talks, with copiousillustrations from history and literature, about such topics as fairplay, slang, cronies, dress, teasing, getting mad, prompting in class,white lies, affectation, cleanliness, order, honor, taste,self-respect, treatment of animals, reading, vacation pursuits, etc.,can be brought quite within the range of boy-and-girl interests by asympathetic and tactful teacher, and be made immediately and obviouslypractical. All this is nothing more or less than conscience-building.The old superstition that children have innate faculties of such afinished sort that they flash up and grasp the principle of things bya rapid sort of first "intellection," an error that made alldepartments of education so trivial, assumptive and dogmatic forcenturies before Comenius, Basedow and Pestalozzi, has been banishedeverywhere save from moral and religious training, where it stillpersists in full force. The senses develop first, and all the higherintuitions called by the collective name of conscience gradually andlater in life. They first take the form of sentiments without muchinsight, and are hence liable to be unconscious affectation, and arecaught insensibly from the environment with the aid of inheritedpredisposition, and only made more definite by such talks as theabove. But parents are prone to forget that healthful and correctsentiments concerning matters of conduct are, at first, very feeble,and that the sense of obligation needs the long and carefulguardianship of external authority. Just as a young medical studentwith a rudimentary notion of physiology and hygiene is sometimesdisposed to undertake a more or less complete reform of his diet,regimen, etc., to make it "scientific" in a way that an older and amore learned physician would shrink from, so the half-insights of boysinto matters of moral regimen are far too apt, in the Americantemperament, to expend, in precocious emancipation and crude attemptsat practical realization, the force which is needed to bring theirinsights to maturity. Authority should be relaxed gradually,explicitly, and provisionally over one definite department of conductat a time. To distinguish right and wrong in their own nature is thehighest and most complex of intellectual processes. Most men and allchildren are guided only by associations of greater or less subtlety.Perhaps the whole round of human duties might be best taught bygathering illustrations of selfishness and tracing it in its countlessdisguises and ramifications through every stage of life. Selfishnessis opposed to a sense of the infinite and is inversely as realreligion, and the study of it is not, like systematic ethics, apt tobe confused and made unpractical by conflicting theories.

The Bible, the great instrument in the education of conscience, is farless juvenile than it is now the fashion to suppose. At the veryleast, it expresses the result of the ripest human experience, thenoblest traditions of humanity. Old Testament history, even more thanmost very ancient history, is distilled to an almost purely ethicalcontent. For centuries Scripture was withheld from the masses for thesame reason that Plato refused at first to put his thoughts intowriting, because it would be sure to be misunderstood by very many andlead to that worst of errors and fanaticism caused by half-truths.Children should not approach it too lightly.

The Old Testament, perhaps before or more than the New, is the Biblefor childhood. A good, protracted course of the law pedagogicallyprepares the way for the apprehension of the Gospel. Then the study ofthe Old Testament should begin with selected tales, told, as in theGerman schools, impressively, in the teacher's language, butobjectively, and without exegetical or hortatory comment. The appealis directly to the understanding only at first, but the moral lessonis brought clearly and surely within the child's reach, but notpersonally applied after the manner common with us.

Probably the most important changes for the educator to study arethose which begin between the ages of twelve and sixteen and arecompleted only some years later, when the young adolescent receivesfrom nature a new capital of energy and altruistic feeling. It isphysiological second birth, and success in life depends upon the careand wisdom with which this new and final invoice of energy ishusbanded. These changes constitute a natural predisposition to achange of heart, and may perhaps be called, in Kantian phrase, itsschema. Even from the psychophysic standpoint it is a correctinstinct which has slowly led churches to center so much of theircultus upon regeneration. In this I, of course, only assert here theneurophysical side, which is everywhere present, even if everywheresubordinate to the spiritual side. As everywhere, so here, too, thephysical may be called in a sense regulative rather than constitutive.It is therefore not surprising that statistics show that far moreconversions, proportionately, take place during the adolescent period,which does not normally end before the age of twenty-four or five,than during any other period of equal length. At this age mostchurches confirm.

Before this age the child lives in the present, is normally selfish,deficient in sympathy, but frank and confidential, obedient toauthority, and without affectation save the supreme affectation ofchildhood, viz., assuming the words, manners, habits, etc., of thoseolder than itself. But now stature suddenly increases, and the powerof physical and mental endurance and effort diminishes for a time;larynx, nose, chin change, and normal and morbid ancestral traits andfeatures appear. Far greater and more protracted, though unseen, arethe changes which take place in the nervous system, both in thedevelopment of the cortex and expansion of the convolutions and thegrowth of association-fibers by which the elements shoot together andrelation of things are seen, which hitherto seemed independent, towhich it seems as if for a few years the energies of growth werechiefly directed. Hence this period is so critical and changes incharacter are so rapid. No matter how confidential the relations withthe parent may have been, an important domain of the soul now declaresits independence. Confidences are shared with those of equal age andwithheld from parents, especially by boys, to an extent probablylittle suspected by most parents. Education must be addressed tofreedom, which recognizes only self-made law, and spontaneity ofopinion and conduct is manifested, often in extravagant and grotesqueforms. There is now a longing for that kind of close sympathy andfriendship which makes cronies and intimates; there is a craving forstrong emotions which gives pleasure in exaggerations; and there arenameless longings for what is far, remote, strange, which emphasizesthe self-estrangement which Hegel so well describes, and which marksthe normal rise of the presentiment of something higher than self.Instincts of rivalry and competition now grow strong in boys, andgirls grow more conscientious and inward, and begin to feel theirmusic, reading, religion, painting, etc., and to realize the bearingof these upon their future adult life. There is often a stronginstinct of devotion and self-sacrifice toward some, perhaps almostany, object, or in almost any cause which circ*mstances may present.Moodiness and perhaps a love of solitude are developed. "Growing fits"make hard and severe labor of body and mind impossible withoutdwarfing or arresting the development, by robbing of its nutritionsome part of the organism—stomach, lungs, chest, heart, back, brain,etc.—which is peculiarly liable to disease later. It is never so hardto tell the truth plainly and objectively and without any subjectivetwist. The life of the mere individual ceases and that of person, orbetter, of the race, begins. It is a period of realization, and henceoften of introspection. In healthy natures it is the golden age oflife, in which enthusiasm, sympathy, generosity, and curiosity are attheir strongest and best, and when growth is so rapid that, e.g., eachcollege class is conscious of a vast interval of development whichseparates it from the class below; but it is also a period subject toWertherian crises, such as Hume, Richter, J.S. Mill, and others passedthrough, and all depends on the direction given to these new forces.

The dangers of this period are great and manifest. The chief of these,far greater even than the dangers of intemperance, is that the sexualelements of soul and body will be developed prematurely anddisproportionately. Indeed, early maturity in this respect is itselfbad. If it occurs before other compensating and controlling powers areunfolded, this element is hypertrophied and absorbs and dwarfs theirenergy and it is then more likely to be uninstructed and to suck upall that is vile in the environment. Far more than we realize, thethoughts and feelings of youth center about this factor of his nature.Quite apart, therefore, from its intrinsic value, education shouldserve the purpose of preoccupation, and should divert attention froman element of our nature the premature or excessive development ofwhich dwarfs every part of soul and body. Intellectual interests,athleticism, social and esthetic tastes, should be cultivated. Thereshould be some change in external life. Previous routine anddrill-work must be broken through and new occupations resorted to,that the mind may not be left idle while the hands are mechanicallyemployed. Attractive home-life, friendships well chosen and on a highplane, and regular habits, should of course be cultivated. Now, too,though the intellect is not frequently judged insane, so thatpubescent insanity is comparatively rare, the feelings, which are yetmore fundamental to mental sanity, are most often perverted, and lackof emotional steadiness, violent and dangerous impulses, unreasonableconduct, lack of enthusiasm and sympathy, are very commonly caused byabnormalities here. Neurotic disturbances, such as hysteria, chorea,and, in the opinion of some physicians, sick-headache and earlydementia are peculiarly liable to appear and become seated during thisperiod. In short, the previous selfhood is broken up like theregulation copy handwriting of early school years, and a newindividual is in process of crystallization. All is solvent, plastic,peculiarly susceptible to external influences.

Between love and religion, God and nature have wrought a strong andindissoluble bond. Flagellations, fasts, exposure, excessive penancesof many kinds, the Hindoo cultus of quietude, and mental absorption invacuity and even one pedagogic motive of a cultus of the spiritual andsupernatural, e. g. in the symposium of Plato, are all designed aspalliatives and alteratives of degraded love. Change of heart beforepubescent years, there are several scientific reasons for thinkingmeans precocity and forcing. The age signalized by the ancient Greeksas that at which the study of what was comprehensively called musicshould begin, the age at which Roman guardianship ended, as explainedby Sir Henry Maine, at which boys are confirmed in the modern Greek,Catholic, Lutheran and Episcopal churches, and at which the childJesus entered the temple, is as early as any child ought consciouslyto go about his heavenly Father's business. If children are instructedin the language of these sentiments too early, the all-sided deepeningand broadening of soul and of conscience which should come withadolescent years will be incomplete. Revival sermon which the writerhas heard preached to very young children are analogous to exhortingthem to imagine themselves married people and inculcating the dutiesof that relation. It is because this precept is violated in theintemperate haste for immediate results that we may so often hearchildish sentiments and puerile expressions so strangely mingled inthe religious experience of otherwise apparently mature adults, whichremind one of a male voice constantly modulating from manly tones intoboyish falsetto. Some one has said of very early risers that they wereapt to be conceited all the forenoon, and stupid and uninteresting allthe afternoon and evening. So, too, precocious infant Christians areapt to be conceited and full of pious affectations all the forenoon oflife, and thereafter commonplace enough in their religious life. Oneis reminded of Aristotle's theory of Catharsis, according to which thesoul was purged of strong or bad passions by listening to vividrepresentations of them on the stage. So, by the forcing method wedeprecate, the soul is given just enough religious stimulus to act asan inoculation against deeper and more serious interest later. At thisage the prescription of a series of strong feelings is very apt tocause attention to concentrate on physical states in a way which mayculminate in the increased activity of the passional nature, or mayinduce that sort of self-flirtation which is expressed in morbid loveof autobiographic confessional outpourings, or may issue in thesupreme selfishness of incipient and often unsuspected hysteria. Thosewho are led to Christ normally by obeying conscience are not apt toendanger the foundation of their moral character if they should laterchance to doubt the doctrine of verbal inspiration or some of themiracles, or even get confused about the Trinity, because theirreligious nature is not built on the sand. The art of leading youngmen through college without ennobling or enlarging any of thereligious notions of childhood is anti-pedagogic and unworthyphilosophy, and is to leave men puerile in the highest department oftheir nature.

At the age we have indicated, when the young man instinctively takesthe control of himself into his own hands, previous ethico-religioustraining should be brought to a focus and given a personalapplication, which, to be most effective, should probably, in mostcases, be according to the creed of the parent. It is a serious andsolemn epoch, and ought to be fittingly signalised. Morality now needsreligion, which cannot have affected life much before. Now dutiesshould be recognised as divine commands, for the strongest motives,natural and supernatural, are needed for the regulation of the newimpulses, passions, desires, half insights, ambitions, etc., whichcome to the American temperament so suddenly before the methods ofself-regulation can become established and operative. Now a deeppersonal sense of purity and impurity are first possible, and indeedinevitable, and this natural moral tension is a great opportunity tothe religious teacher. A serious sense of God within, and ofresponsibilities which transcend this life as they do the adolescent'spower of comprehension; a feeling for duties deepened by a realizationand experience of their conflict such as some have thought to be theorigin of religion itself in the soul—these, too, are elements of the"theology of the heart" revealed at this age to every serious youth,but to the judicious emphasis and utilization of which, the teachershould lend his consummate skill. While special lines of interestleading to a career must be now well grounded, there must also be aculture of the ideal and an absorption in general views and remote anduniversal ends. If all that is pure and disciplining in what istranscendent, whether to the Christian believers, the poet or thephilosopher, had even been devised only for the better regulation ofhuman energies set free at this age, but not yet fully defined orrealized, they would still have a most potent justification on thisground alone. At any rate, what is often wasted in excess here, ifhusbanded, ripens into philosophy, the larger love to the world, thetrue and the good, in a sense not unlike that in the symposium ofPlato.

Finally, there is danger lest this change, as prescribed andformulated by the church, be too sudden and violent, and the capitalof moral force which should last a lifetime be consumed in a brief,convulsive effort, like the sudden running down of a watch if itsspring be broken. Piety is naturally the slowest because the mostcomprehensive kind of growth. Quetelet says that the measure of thestate of civilization in a nation is the way in which it achieves itsrevolutions. As it becomes truly civilized, revolutions cease to besudden and violent, and become gradually transitory and without abruptchange. The same is true of that individual crisis whichpsycho-physiology describes as adolescence, and of which theologyformulates a higher spiritual potency as conversion. The adolescentperiod lasts ten years or more, during all of which development ofevery sort is very rapid and constant, and it is, as already remarked,intemperate haste for immediate results, of reaping without sowing,which has made so many regard change of heart as an instantaneousconquest rather than as a growth, and persistently to forget thatthere is something of importance before and after it in healthfulreligious experience.

[Footnote 1: See author's Boy Life, in Massachusetts Country TownForty Years Ago. Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1906, vol. 13, pp.192-207.]

[Footnote 2: Those interested in school statistics may value therecord kept by a Swabian schoolmaster named Hauberle, extending overfifty-one years and seven months' experience as a teacher, as follows:911,527 blows with a cane; 124,010 with a rod; 20,939 with a ruler;136,715 with the hand; 19,295 over the mouth; 7,905 boxes on the ear;1,115,800 snaps on the head; 22,763 nota benes with Bible, catechism,hymnbook and grammar; 777 times boys had to kneel on peas; 613 timeson triangular blocks of wand; 5,001 had to carry a timber mare; and,7,701 hold the rod high; the last two being punishments of his owninvention. Of the blows with the cane 800,000 were for Latin vowels,and 76,000 of those with the rod for Bible verses and hymns. He used ascolding vocabulary of over 3,000 terms, of which one-third were ofhis own invention.]

[Footnote 3: For most recent and elaborate study of children's liessee Zeitschrift für pädagogische Psychologie, Pathologie und Hygiene,Juli, 1905. Jahrgang 7, Heft 3, pp. 177-205.]

* * * * *

GLOSSARY

AGAMIC. Unmarried; unmarriageable, sometimes non-sexed.

AGENIC. Lacking in reproductive power; sterile.

AMPHIMIXIS. That form of reproduction which involves themingling of substance from two individuals so as to effecta mixture of hereditary characteristics. It includes thephenomena of conjugation and fertilization among bothunicellular and multicellular organisms.

ANABOLISM. See METABOLISM.

ANAMNESIC. Pertaining to or aiding recollection.

ANEMIC. Deficient in blood; bloodless.

ANTHROPOMORPHISM. The attributing of human characteristicsto natural, supernatural, or divine beings.

ANTHROPOMETRY. Science of measurement of the human body.

ARTIFACT. Any artificial product.

APHASIA. Impairment or lose of the ability to understand oruse speech.

ASSOCIATIONISM. The psychological theory which regards thelaws of association as the fundamental laws of mental actionand development.

ATAVISTIC. Pertaining to reversion through the influence ofheredity to remote ancestral characteristics.

ATAXIC. Pertaining to inability to coördinate voluntary movements;irregular.

CALAMO-PAPYRUS. Reed papyrus or pen-paper.

CATABOLISM. See METABOLISM.

CATHARSIS. Purgation or cleansing. Aristotle's esthetic theorythat little renders immune for much.

CEREBRATION. Brain action, conscious or unconscious.

CHOREA. St. Vitus's dance; a nervous disease marked by irregularand involuntary movements of the limbs and face.

CHRESTOMATHY. A collection of extracts and choice pieces.

CHRISTENTHUM. The Christian belief; the spirit of Christianity.

COMMANDO EXERCISES. Gymnastic exercises whose order is dependentupon the spoken command of the director.

CORTEX. The gray matter of the brain, mostly on its surface.

CORTICAL. Pertaining to the cortex.

CRANIOMETRY. The measurement of skulls.

CRYPTOGAMOUS. Having an obscure mode of fertilization; or,of plants that do not blossom.

CULTUS. A system of religious belief and worship.

DEUTSCHENTHUM. The spirit of the German people.

DIATHESIS. A constitutional predisposition.

EPHEBIC. Pertaining to the Greek system of instruction givento young men to fit them for citizenship; adolescent.

EPIGONI. Successors; followers who only follow.

EPISTEMOLOGY. The theory of knowledge; that branch of logicwhich undertakes to explain how knowledge is possible andto define its limitations, meaning, and worth.

EUPEPTIC. Having good digestion.

EUPHORIA. The sense of well-being; of fullness of life.

EVIRATION. Emasculation; loss of manly characteristics.

FERAL. Wild by nature; untamed; undomesticated.

FORMICARY. An artificial ants' nest.

GEMÜTH. Disposition; the entire affective soul and its habitualstate.

HEBETUDE. Dullness; stupidity.

HEDONISTIC. Relating to hedonism, that form of Greek philosophywhich taught that pleasure is the chief end ofexistence.

HETAERA. A Greek courtesan. This class was often highlytrained in music and social art, and represented the highestgrade of culture among Greek women.

HETEROGENY. (1) The spontaneous generation of animals andvegetables, low in the scale of organization, from inorganicelements. (2) That kind of generation in which the parent,whether plant or animal, produces offspring differing instructure or habit from itself, but in which after one ormore generations the original form reappears.

HETERONOMOUS. Having a different name.

HOROLOGY. The science of measuring time and of constructinginstruments for that purpose.

HYGEIA. The Greek goddess of health; health.

HYPERMETHODIC. Methodic to excess; overmethodic.

HYPERTROPHY. Excessive growth.

INDISCERPTIBLE. Incapable of being destroyed by separation ofparts.

INHIBITION. Interference with the normal result of a nervousexcitement by an opposing force.

IRRADIATION. The diffusion of nervous stimuli out of the path ofnormal discharge which, as a result of the excitation of aperipheral end organ may excite other central organs thanthose directly connected with it.

KINESOLOGICAL. Pertaining to the science of tests andmeasurements of bodily strength.

KINESOMETER. An instrument for measuring muscular strength.

MEDULLATION. The investment of nerve fibers with a protectivecovering or medullary sheath, consisting of white, fat-likematter.

MERISTIC. Pertaining to the levels or spinal and cerebralsegments of the body.

METABOLISM. The act or process by which, on the one hand, deadfood is built up into living matter—anabolism, and bywhich, on the other, the living matter is broken down intosimpler products within a cell or organism—catabolism.

METAMORPHOSIS. Change of form or structure; transformation.

METEMPSYCHOSIS. The doctrine of the transmigration of thesoul from one body to another.

MONOPHRASTIC. Pertaining to or consisting of a single phrase.

MONOTECHNIC. Pertaining to a single art or craft.

MORPHOLOGY. The science of form and structure of plants andanimals without regard to function.

MYOLOGY. The scientific knowledge of the muscular system.

MYTHOPOEIC. Producing or having a tendency to produce myths.

NOETIC. Of, pertaining to, or conceived by, mind.

NUANCE. Slight shade; difference; distinction; degree.

ORTHOGENIC. Pertaining to right beginning and development.

ORTHOPEDIC. Relating to the art of curing deformities.

OSSUARY. A depository of dry bones.

PALEOPSYCHIC. Pertaining to the antiquity of the soul.

PANTHEISTIC. Relating to that doctrine which holds that theentire phenomenal universe, including man and nature, isthe ever-changing manifestation of God, who rises toself-consciousness and personality only in man.

PATRISTICS. That department of study occupied with thedoctrines and writings of the fathers of the Christian Church.

PHOBIA. Excessive or morbid fear of anything.

PHYLETICALLY. In accordance with the phylum or race; racially.

PHYLETIC. Pertaining to a race or clan.

PHYLOGENY. The history of the evolution of a species or group;tribal history; ancestral development as opposed to ontogenyor the development of the individual.

PHYLUM. A term introduced by Haeckel to designate the greatbranches of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Each phylummay include several classes.

PICKELHAUBE. The spiked helmet of the German army.

PLANKTON. Sea animals and plants collectively; distinguishedfrom coast or bottom forms and floating in a great mass.

POLYGAMIC (LOVE). Pertaining to the habit of having more thanone mate of the opposite sex.

POLYPHRASTIC. Having many phrases; pertaining to rambling,incoherent speech.

POST-SIMIAN. Pertaining to an age later than that in whichsimian or monkey-like forms prevailed.

PRENUBILE. Pertaining to the age before sexual maturity ormarriageability is reached.

PRIE DIEU. A praying desk.

PROPEDEUTIC. Preliminary; introductory.

PROPHYLACTIC. Any medicine or measure efficacious in preventingdisease.

PSEUDOPHOBIAC. Pertaining to a morbid condition in which thesubject is continually in fear of having said something notstrictly true.

PSYCHOGENESIS. The origin and development of soul.

PSYCHONOMIC. Pertaining to the laws of mind.

PSYCHOSIS. Mental constitution or condition; any change inconsciousness, especially if abnormal.

PUBERTY. The age of sexual maturity.

PUBESCENT. Relating to the dawning of puberty.

PYGMOID. Of pygmy size and form.

RABULIST. A chronic wrangler; one who argues about everything.

SCHEMA. A synopsis; a summary. In the Kantian sense, ageneral type.

SCHEMATISM. An outline of any systematic arrangement; anoutline.

SUPERFOETATION. A second conception some time after a priorone, by which two foetuses of different age exist togetherin the same female. Often used figuratively.

TEMIBILITY. (From Italian temibile, to be feared.) The principleof adjustment of penalty to crime in just that degree necessaryto prevent a repetition of the criminal act.

TIC. A nervous affection of the muscles; a twitching.

TRANSCENDENTAL. In the Kantian system having an a prioricharacter, transcending experience, presupposed in andnecessary to experience.

TRAUMATA. Wounds.

TRAUMATISM. A wound; any morbid condition produced bywounds or other external violence.

VERBIGERATION. The continual utterance of certain words orphrases at short intervals, without reference to their meaning,as seen in insane Gedankenflucht or rapid flight ofthought.

INDEX

* * * * *

Abstract words, need ofAccessory and fundamental movementAccuracy of memory overdoneActivity of children, motorAdolescence biography and literature of characterizedAgricultureAlternations of physical and psychic statesAltruism of country children of woman, cutlet forAmphimixis, psychic, basis ofAngerAnthropometry and ideal of gymnasticsArboreal life and the handArt studyArts and crafts movementAssociations devised or guided by adultsAstronomyAthletic festivals in GreeceAthletics as a conversation topic dangers and defects of records inAttention fostered by commando exercises rhythm in spontaneousAuthority and adolescenceAutobiographies of boyhoodAutomatisms motor, causes and kinds of control and serialization of danger of premature control of desirable

Bachelor womenBasal muscles, development ofBasal powers, development ofBathingBeauty, age of feminineBelief, habit and muscle determiningBible, the influence of, in adolescence methods of teaching study of, for girls study of, in German method of will training study of, order in study of, postponed study of, preparation forBiography and adolescenceBlood vessels, expansion at pubertyBlushing, characteristic of pubertyBody training, GreekBotanyBoxingBoys age of little affection in dangers of coeducation for differences between, and girls latitude in conduct and studies of, before puberty puberty in, characteristics ofBrain action, unity inBullyingBushido

CakewalkCastration, functional in womenCatharsis, Aristotle's theory ofCharacter and musclesChildren faults and crimes of motor activity of motor defects of selfishness ofChivalry, medievalChoreaChristianity, muscularChums and croniesChurch, feminity in theCity children vs. country childrenCivilized men, savages physically superior toClimbing hill muscles, age for exercise ofCoeducation, dangers inCollege coeducation in English requirements of woman's ideal school andCombat, personal, as exerciseCommando exercises restricted for girlsConcentrationConcreteness in modern language study, criticizedConduct mechanized of Italian schoolboys tabulated weather andConfessionalism of young women passional inducement toConflict, see CombatControl nervous, through dancing of anger of brute instincts of children's movementsConversation, athletics in degeneration in, causes ofConversionCoördination loosened at adolescence inherited tendencies of muscularCorporal punishmentCountry children vs. city childrenCrime, juvenile causes of education and reading andCruelty, a juvenile faultCulture heroes

Dancing
Deadly sins, the seven, vs. modern juvenile faults
Debate and will-training
Doll curve
Domesticity
Dramatic instinct of puberty
Drawing, curve of stages of
Dueling

Education
art in
crime and
industrial
intellectual
manual
moral and religious
of boys
of girls
physical
Effort, as a developing force
Emotions
dancing completest language of the
religion directed to
Endurance
Energy and laziness
English
language and literature, pedagogy of
pedagogic degeneration in, causes of
requirements of college
sense language, dangers of
Ennui
Erect position and true life
Ethics, study of, criticized
Ethical judgments of children
Euphoria and exercise
Evolution, movement as a measure of
Exercise
health and
measurements and
music and
nascent periods and
rhythm and

Farm workFatigue at puberty chores and not a cause for punishment play and restlessness expressive of result of labor with defective psychic impulsion rhythm of activity and will-culture andFaults of childrenFavorite sounds and wordsFecundity of college womenFemininity in the church in the school and collegeFeministsFightingFloggingForeign languages, dangers ofFrance, religious training inFriendships of adolescenceFundamental and accessoryFuture life, as a school teaching

Games
groups
Panhellenic
Gangs, organized juvenile
Genius, early development of
Germany, will-training in
Girl graduates
aversion to marriage of
fecundity of
sterility of
Girls
and boys, differences between
coeducation for, dangers of
education of
education of, humanistic
education of, manners in
education of, more difficult than of boys
education of, nature in
education of, regularity in
education of, religion in
ideal school and curriculum for
overdrawing their energy
Grammar, place of
Greece, athletic festivals in
Greek body training
Group games
Growth
at puberty
gymnastics and its effect on
of muscle structure and function, measure of
periods
rhythmic
Gymnastics
effect on growth, its
ideal of, and anthropometry
ideals, its four unharmonized, and
military ideals and
nascent periods and
patriotism and
proportion and measurement for, criticized
Swedish

Habits and muscle
Hand and arboreal life
Health, exercise and
of girls
Heredity, a factor in development
High School, the coeducation in
language study and
Hill-climbing
Historic interest, growth of
Home, restraint of, detrimental
Honor, among hoodlums
in sports
Hoodlums
Hysteria

Imagination, at puberty
of children
play and
Individuality, growth of, at puberty
Industrial education
Industry and movement
Inhibition
Intellect, adolescence in
Intemperance

Knightly ideas of youth
Knowing and doing

Language, concreteness in, degeneration through dangers of, through eye and hand precision curve of vs. literatureLatin, danger ofLaughterLaziness and energyLiesLiterary men, youth of women, youth ofLiterature and adolescence language vs.

Machinery and movementMammae, loss of function ofManners in girls' educationManual training defects and criticisms of difficulties ofMarriage, dangers in delay of influenced by coeducation influenced by college trainingMastery in art-craft, equipment forMaternity, dangers of deferredMeasurements and exerciseMemory, accuracy, age, and kinds of sex curve of types ofMilitary drill ideals and gymnasticsMind and motilityMoney senseMonthly period and SabbathMotherhood, training forMotor, activity, primitive automatisms defects of children defects, general economies powers, general growth of precocity psychoses, muscles and recaptulation regularityMovement and industryMovements, passive precocity ofMuscle tension and thoughtMuscles, per cent by weight of body character and motor psychoses and small, and thought will andMuscular ChristianityMusic and exerciseMyths, study of

Nascent periods and exercises
Nature in girls' education

Obedience

Panhellenic gamesPassive movementsPatriotism and gymnasticsPeace, man's normal statePeriodicity in growth in womenPhilology, dangers ofPlasticity of growth at pubertyPlay course of study imagination and prehistoric activity and problem sex and stages and ages of work andPlays and games, codification ofPrecocity, motor in the motor spherePredatory organizationsPrimitive motor activityPunishments in school, causes of

Reading age crime and curveReason, development ofRecapitulation and motor heredityRecords in athleticsRegularity in education of girlsReligious training, age for for girls in Europe premature two methods ofRetardation as a means of broadeningRevivalistsRhythm, exercise and in primitive activities of work and rest

Savages physically superior to civilized menSchool, language study in need of enthusiasm in punishments in, causes of reading inScientific men, youth ofSedentary lifeSelfishness of childrenSex, play and sports andSlang curve value ofSleep, in education of girlsSloyd, origin, aims, criticism ofSocial activities organizations of youthSolitudeSounds, favorite, and wordsSports, values of different codification of sexual influence in team work inSpurtinessSterility of girl graduatesStory-telling, interest inStruggle-for-lifeursStudents' associationsStuttering and stammeringSwedish gymnasticsSwimming

Talent, early development of
Teachers, aversions to
Team spirit
Technical courses, need of
Telegraphic skill
Temibility
Theft, juvenile
Thought and muscle tension
Transitory nature of youthful experiences
Tree life and erect posture
Truancy
Truth-telling
Turner movement

Unmarried women, dangers to

Vagabondage
Vagrancy
Virility in the Church

Weather and conduct
Will, muscles and
training
Womanly, the eternal
Women, bachelors
dangers to, in not marrying
education of, ideal
young, confessionalism of
Work at its best, play
play and
rest and, rhythm of
Wrestling

Young Men's Christian Association

* * * * *

INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES.

* * * * *

AN IDEAL SCHOOL; OR, LOOKING FORWARD.

By Preston W. Search, Honorary Fellow in Clark University. With anIntroduction by Pres. G. Stanley Hall. Vol. 52. 12mo. Cloth, $1.20net.

"I am not concerned that the things presented in this littleconstructive endeavor will not find bodily incorporation in schools;for it is cross-fertilization and not grafting that has given us ourrichest varieties of fruits and flowers. This work is an attempt atspirit, not letter; at principle, not method."—From the Author'sPreface.

"A book I wish I could have written myself; and I can think of nosingle educational volume in the world-wide range of literature inthis field that I believe so well calculated to do so much good at thepresent time, and which I could so heartily advise every teacher inthe land, of whatever grade, to read and ponder."—Pres. G. StanleyHall, Clark University.

"It is to my mind the most stimulating book that has appeared for along time. The conception here set forth of the function of the schoolis, I believe, the broadest and best that has been formulated. Thechapter on Illustrative Methods is worth more than all the books on'Method' that I know of. The diagrams and tables are very convincing.I am satisfied that the author has given us an epoch-makingbook."—Henry H. Goddard, Ph.D., State Normal School, West Chester,Pa.

"I received a copy of 'An Ideal School,' and I am satisfied that Imade no mistake when I, with the other two members of the bookcommittee, recommended the book to the 310 teachers in ourcounty."—J.G. Dundore, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania.

"Certainly one of the most notable books on education published inmany years"—P.P. Claxton, Editor Atlantic Educational Journal.

"You have done the cause of real education an important service. This
book is, in my opinion, one of the most useful in the International
Education Series."—Albert Leonard, Editor of the Journals of
Pedagogy.

* * * * *

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.

DICKENS AS AN EDUCATOR.

By JAMES I. HUGHES, Inspector of Schools, Toronto. Vol. 49. 12mo.
Cloth, $1.50.

ADOPTED BY SEVERAL STATE TEACHERS' READING CIRCLES.

All teachers have read Dickens's novels with pleasure. Probably few,however have presumably thought definitely of him as a greateducational reformer. But Inspector Hughes demonstrates that such ishis just title. William T. Harris says of "Dickens as an Educator":"This book is sufficient to establish the claim for Dickens as aneducational reformer. He has done more than any one else to secure forthe child considerate treatment of his tender age. Dickens standsapart and alone as one of the most potent influences of social reformin the nineteenth century, and therefore deserves to be read andstudied by all who have to do with schools, and by all parentseverywhere in our day and generation." Professor Hughes asserts that"Dickens was the most profound exponent of the kindergarten and themost comprehensive student of childhood that England has yetproduced." The book brings into connected form, under proper headings,the educational principles of this most sympathetic friend ofchildren.

"Mr. James L. Hughes has just published a book that will rank as oneof the finest appreciations of Dickens ever written."—ColoradoSchool Journal.

"Mr. Hughes has brought together in an interesting and most effectivemanner the chief teachings of Dickens on educational subjects. Hisextracts make the reader feel again the reality of Dickens'sdescriptions and the power of the appeal that he made for a saner,kindlier, more inspiring pedagogy, and thus became, through hisimmense vogue, one of the chief instrumentalities working for the neweducation."—Wisconsin Journal of Education.