Read Ebook: Your boy and his training by Puller Edwin Seward

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Witness also the imagination displayed by Mary when she builds a house with a line of chairs, and peoples it with imaginary friends with whom she carries on extended conversations, and takes the several parts in the dialogue when the absence of playmates renders such expedient necessary. Impersonation is grounded in imagination. Every little girl impersonates her mother, with a doll as her make-believe self, and spends many hours in pretending to care for its physical needs, teaching it mentally, and even correcting its morals with some form of punishment with which she herself is acquainted, whether corporal or otherwise.

The stolid, dull child exhibits less of fancy and imagination than his keen bright companion and therefore is less frequently engaged in the numberless activities prompted by imagination, which require supervision. His very stolidity keeps him out of many acts termed "mischief" and therefore he is more easily "managed" in the sense that he does not require such continuous oversight and direction. The stolid one must be set going by being told how, what, and when to play, while the imaginative one, without aid, conjures up many fanciful dramas in which he plays the leading r?le and thus occupies the years of infancy. These figments of the brain give rise to stories and fanciful tales which are called "lies" by adults who fail to understand their psychology. These are of sufficient importance to warrant their discussion in a separate chapter of this volume.

It is during this period that the mother, with her Heaven-sent gift of love, sympathy, tenderness, and insight into the soul of childhood, is the effective teacher. Coming home one evening, I found a neighbor's son of six years sitting on his front steps awaiting his mother's return. He was sobbing to himself. I approached him and inquired, "Well, Robbie! What's the matter?"

He replied, through a mist of tears, "I fell down and bumped my head."

"Does it hurt you?" I continued, in my helpless way, unable to fathom the soul-depths of his disaster. "No," was the response, "it don't hurt, but I want muvver so I can cry in her arms, an' it will be well."

He needed first aid to his feelings--not to his body--and only mother with her infinite love, sympathy, and understanding could apply it. With a deep consciousness of the limitations of his sex, the author withdrew to await the balm of mother-love--that unfailing remedy for the physical and mental hurts of childhood.

Blest hour of childhood! then, and then alone, Dance we the revels close round pleasure's throne, Quaff the bright nectar from her fountain-springs, And laugh beneath the rainbow of her wings. Oh! time of promise, hope and innocence, Of trust, and love, and happy ignorance! Whose every dream is heaven, in whose fair joy, Experience has thrown no black alloy.

--THOUGHTS OF A RECLUSE.

At the age of eight or nine, when the child emerges from infancy into early boyhood, he begins gradually and imperfectly to leave behind the characteristics of childhood and, with the development of his mental and physical processes, he acquires the distinguishing traits of the individualistic period.

It should be borne in mind that the characteristic changes from one period to another are not abrupt transitions, but easy gradations; a gradual dropping of the distinctive features of the period left behind for the essentials of the period just attained. The progression is by easy, continuous stages, effected unconsciously and unobtrusively. This growth may be compared to the four periods of the development of a plant; first, the bursting of the seed into life and the tender stalk forcing its way upward into the light--the infantile period; then the formation of branches and leaves and the growth of stalk--the early boyhood period; then the putting forth of the bud which is the precursor of the flower, and the formation and development of petals, stamen, pistils, and pollen--the adolescent period; and finally the blossoming forth of the full-blown flower, the fertilization of the pistil by the pollen of the anther, the whole marvelous process of reproduction culminating in the formation of the embryonic plant contained in the seed--the period of maturity. All of these stages are characterized by an evolution which is as gradual as it is silent.

In like manner it should be understood that the ages delimiting the four periods of boyhood are somewhat arbitrary and are subject to the controlling factors of race, climate, health, and individual temperament. The Latin races mature earlier than the Anglo-Saxon; the boy in the tropics reaches puberty more quickly than one in a colder zone; certain abnormalities of physical condition, as well as environment and heredity, conduce to early maturity; and temperamental characteristics contribute, in some degree, to a difference in the time required to traverse the various periods of boyhood. I have known boys of ten who were still infants, and I have in mind a boy friend of sixteen years, with the normal mental development of one of that age, in whom adolescence has not begun. Physically and psychologically he is eleven years old, although chronologically he is sixteen. He is, therefore, in the individualistic period of his existence and, in a large degree, he should be judged, governed, and trained by the rules applicable to that period. In so far as his moral concepts are influenced by mentality, his responsibility for deflection is that of one of his chronological age; but in that class of cases in which his moral viewpoint is controlled by his undeveloped physical or psychic state, his responsibility belongs to the individualistic period to which these qualities are attributable.

The individualistic period between eight and twelve is the era in which the boy regards himself as an individual not correlated to other individuals of society. He is essentially selfish, and individualism is his dominant characteristic. He has an excessive and exclusive regard for his personal interests. The great world of men forming society is beyond his perceptions. His thoughts chiefly concern himself and seldom embrace others, except when they cause him pleasure, annoyance, or pain. He recognizes them only as they contribute to his emotions. This tendency manifests itself in the selfishness exhibited in play and his unwillingness to perform the trifling services required of him by his elders, if they in any way interfere with his present enjoyment. Sociological consciousness, with its recognition of the duties and obligations of the individual toward the mass of individuals termed society, is still dormant. Its first awakening is seen in his recognition of duty toward his family, and later toward his playmates and friends, and last of all toward society--which is reached in the reflective period. His mental horizon is bounded entirely by his own activities and interests in which he is the central figure.

Carelessness, forgetfulness, and thoughtlessness of others are incidents common to childhood which gradually wane and disappear at the age when he enters the reflective period. As he lives in the immediate present, he does not plan for the future--not even for the morrow. Johnny comes home to supper from the playground, whirling through the house with cyclonic energy and leaving a trail of gloves, hat, overcoat, and superfluous garments in his wake, intent on the only thing which is of absorbing interest to him at that moment--his immediate presence at table to alleviate the excruciating pangs of hunger which are gnawing at his vitals. Everything else is forgotten in his efforts to satisfy the desires of the present. The next morning, when preparations for school are begun, all remembrance of the places where his wearing apparel was deposited is forgotten. Then ensues the daily hunt for the missing garments, interspersed with vociferous requests to all members of the household for assistance. The interrogatory, "Where's my hat?" is as common as oatmeal for breakfast. Order and system have little place in a routine which is regulated by present necessity.

A strong sense of proprietorship in personal possessions is now manifest, and is closely allied to the acquisitive faculty. About the ninth year he begins to make collections of various sorts of junk. This is the beginning of the collection craze which lasts throughout the individualistic period. Its initial manifestation is usually the collection of foreign and domestic postage stamps, which lasts from three to five years and furnishes one of the best methods for elementary scientific training. The term science implies knowledge systematized and reduced to an orderly and logical arrangement, with classification as its basis. Such collections teach him to group and classify their component parts according to some definite plan. The intellectual training afforded by the grouping and classifying necessary to preserve his collection possesses educational value of the highest quality. Geography now has a new and personal meaning as "the places where his stamps came from." Other phases of this tendency may be seen in collections of marbles, agates, tops, buttons, bird eggs, leaves, minerals, monograms, crest impressions, cigarette pictures, and cigar bands.

One boy proved his industry and trend toward personal acquisition by collecting and classifying several hundred tin cans which were formerly receptacles for fruit, beans, and meats, and the odors emanating from the mass in no wise diminished his pride in the collection, which he regarded in the same light as the connoisseur views his art treasures.

The sages say, Dame Truth delights to dwell, Strange mansion! in the bottom of a well. Questions are, then, the windlass and the rope That pull the grave old gentlewoman up.

--Dr. Walcot's PETER PINDAR.

During this age the imitative faculty is born, reaches its development, and is carried over into the heroic period. He follows companions in the kind of games and the seasons when they are played. If a playmate is the possessor of a sled, a bicycle, or a pair of skates, he must needs have their duplicates. He begins to follow closely the opinions, pastimes, games, and even the style of dress affected by others of his own class. If it is the fashion of his set, he will, with a persistency worthy of a better cause, wear the brim of his hat turned down and decorated with a multicolored hat band. He revels in a riot of color because aesthetics is an unexplored and unsuspected world. His proximity to the savage state is reflected in his love of the garish colors which are affected by savage peoples.

His faculty for imitation renders him highly susceptible to the influences of his environment. He imitates what he sees and hears. Therefore the influence of companions for good or evil, as well as the persuasive control of his parents by example, is potent. To a somewhat lesser degree is he affected by the class of literature which he reads. In the absence of stories suited to his psychological needs, he acquires a taste for the dime novel, nickel library, and other blood-and-thunder stories, the reading of which, if continued through the heroic period, frequently results in truancy and leaving home to "see the world."

Concurrent with all the psychic development of this period he shows himself to be a human dynamo of physical energy which manifests itself in ceaseless action. This period of motor activity should find its outlet, as well as its control, in play, athletics, and manual training. He is a bundle of twist, squirm, and wiggle which only time can convert into useful and productive activity.

ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY

The period of adolescence is truly one of storm and stress, caused by the wrecking of boy-nature to rebuild it into man-nature; it is a cataclysmic bursting of the bonds of infancy in preparation for the larger stature of manhood. In early adolescence the boy is neither child nor man. He is in the chrysalis stage of metamorphosis, which is shedding the characteristics of childhood and putting on the maturity of the adult. Neither one nor the other, he is a part of both. Adolescence covers the period of the boy's life between puberty and maturity. Puberty is the earliest age at which the individual is capable of reproducing the species and it usually begins at the age of thirteen or fourteen, subject to the influence of the factors stated in the preceding chapter. The growth and development of the sex organs during adolescence produce changes which are revolutionary rather than evolutionary in their nature. Marked physical alterations are always attended by still more marked psychic disturbances.

The physical indicia of puberty are the lengthening of the vocal cords, which causes the voice to change from the treble of boyhood to the bass of manhood and manifests itself in sudden and uncontrollable breaks in the voice in speaking and singing; the growth of the organs of reproduction and the filling of the seminal glands; the growth of hair on the pubes and face; the coarsening of the skin; broadening of the shoulders, deepening of the chest, and general change from the slenderness of childhood to the compactness of maturity.

This is the period of rapid physical growth wherein he shoots upwards like a cornstalk under the impulse of a July sun. Elongated arms and legs are now as conspicuous as they are unwieldy, and efforts to discipline them are futile. The demand for "long pants," heretofore quiescent or erupting intermittently, now becomes insistent and finally bursts forth with a fury produced by accumulated repression and fortified by the assertion that "Johnny Jones wears 'em and I'm bigger'n him"--the last word in argumentative conclusiveness. Physical awkwardness and ungainliness, illustrated in his inability to manage his hands and feet easily or gracefully, is due both to the extraordinary and rapid growth of the body and nervous system which takes place at this time, and to his instability of mind, wholly apart from his knowledge of social usages.

The psychic disturbances produced by adolescence are still more pronounced. The adolescent is in the throes of discarding the mental concepts of the child and adopting those of the adult. His viewpoint is lifted until his mental and moral horizon broadens to distances heretofore undreamed of and discloses new and strange moral and ethical problems. Old concepts melt away in the light of a newer and stronger vision. Sex-consciousness overwhelms him with its complexity and unrecognized import. The mental concepts of maturity clash with those of childhood. His barque is sailing on uncharted waters, without compass or rudder, while a fierce storm of uncertainty and instability beats about him as he experiences the travail of the birth of a new soul. It is truly the age "when a feller needs a friend"--one who can pilot him safely through the storm of adolescence to the calm of manhood.

Truancy reaches its flood tide during adolescence. The instinct of wanderlust appears in response to the promptings of his savage nature, his unease of mind, and his desire to know the unknown in the world about him, and culminates in runaways as a revolt against the exercise of parental authority which he believes to be unnecessarily restrictive or severe. He is now in the formative, fermenting period when he is reaching out to find himself, with indifferent success.

There is at this time a noticeable want of continuity of purpose or action. He jumps from one interest to another, evincing little stability of mind. There is want of psychophysical co?rdination. The transmission between mind and body is faulty; and the imperfect gear of intellect and will frequently fails to engage the cogwheels of morals. The machine works poorly because it is neither complete nor fully equipped. Workmen are still engaged on the unfinished job.

William now evinces a disposition to find fault with his home, his clothing, his food, and restrictions on his conduct and routine. He betrays a mental uneasiness unknown to prepubertal days, and a willingness to argue with his parents in a self-assertive or combative mood quite unlike his former self. Incongruities of character are shown in petulance, irritability, disobedience, stubbornness, and rebellion, sometimes even taking the form of cruelty to persons or animals. This latter manifestation has been ascribed to atavism which manifests itself in the recurrence of the savage traits of his primeval ancestors. Dr. G. Stanley Hall thus comments on this tendency in his exhaustive work on adolescence: "Assuming the bionomic law, infant growth means being loaded with paleoatavistic qualities in a manner more conformable to Weismannism, embryonic growth being yet purer, while the pubescent increment is relatively neoatavistic."

His proximity to the savage state is shown in his appreciation of primitive humor. The unexpected which causes discomfiture or pain is excruciatingly ludicrous. It is the crude, slap-stick comedy which excites his disposition to risibility. The knockabout comedian who falls down stairs or beats his partner over the head with an inflated bladder produces the same degree of laughter in a boy as the felling of one savage by another with a war club produces in the onlooking members of their tribe. The rapier wit of keen intellectuality and the subtle humor of fine distinctions observed in a play on words all pass over his unscathed head.

He is a living paradox who displays at times the gallantry, courtesy and chivalry of the knight-errant with the thoughtlessness, rudeness, and boisterousness of the harum-scarum rowdy.

Sex-consciousness now asserts itself in an increased but diffident interest in the opposite sex, accompanied by blushes, embarrassment, and self-consciousness when in their presence. The desire to appear attractive in the eyes of his girl friends prompts minute and painstaking attention to dress, and the brilliant plumage of the male bird is reflected in the bright colors of his attire. Formerly he regarded girl playmates from the same viewpoint from which he regarded boys and they were placed on the same plane and received the same consideration as that accorded to those of his own sex, except where the teaching of the sex-conscious parent required him to display a gentleness toward them which his own lack of sex-consciousness failed to prompt. Now, gentleness, courtesy, and gallantry are inspired by adolescence from within. The companionship of the adolescent with pure, high-minded girls of his own age is beneficial to both in the greatest degree. Such associations are of educational value in that they project high ideals of the feminine traits of gentleness, sweetness, and purity whose influence is reflected in his improved manners, dress, and conduct. It fosters the idealistic and spiritual phase of love and removes it from the coarseness and baseness engendered by the purely sexual appeal. These love affairs are numerous but transitory--their duration being dependent upon the time required to satisfy his idealism; and at the first suggestion that his idol has feet of clay his affection is transferred to another pretty face and sweet nature. Not infrequently he bestows his affection upon a girl several years older than himself, to which he is actuated by two impulses--the half-formed sex-impulse of the man to seek a mate, and his adolescent need of "mothering," both of which are measurably gratified by the reciprocal love of an older girl.

He begins his love-making slyly and shamefacedly. George waits after school, occupied with an ostensible engagement which will consume the time until Mary shall appear. His meeting with her, after all these elaborate plans, appears to be quite unexpected. A diffident greeting is followed by an inquiry as to whether she is going home. Her affirmative answer is seized upon as his excuse for walking in her direction. Then follows his request to be permitted to carry her books. They discuss matters of mutual interest in school or social life, while he, with furtive glances, notes the beauty of her face, the wealth of her hair, and the velvet of her cheek. Sunlight is playing hide-and-seek in her eyes, while the roses in her cheeks blush a deeper red, matching the ribbon which adorns her pigtails as she feels the flood of his unexpressed admiration surging over her. Never was there such a wondrous being in all the world! He idealizes her every attribute until she surmounts a pedestal far removed from things earthy. A smile of approval from this young goddess is treasured in his heart of hearts, sacred from the misunderstandings of a profane world. He is assailed by daydreams of knight-errantry in which he is performing some chivalrous act of heroism to which the maiden shall be a witness. Or better still, he imagines himself playing the part of a cavalier rescuing her own sweet self from distress or danger and then receiving as his reward her avowal of affection, while he protests that his heroism is nothing and that he would do a thousand times more for her.

Evidences of his tender regard for the girl of his choice are given in secret, as too holy for an unappreciative world to comprehend, and the twittings of his elders on the subject of puppy love are met with prompt and positive denials. Such manifestations of incipient affection should be recognized as the intermediary elaboration of a high and spiritual love whose ultimate fruition will be matrimony. All the world loves a lover--provided he is not a boy. The adult who cannot see the psychology in such incidents must be blind indeed.

The exceptional plasticity of mind characteristic of this age renders him highly susceptible to influences for good or evil. It is the great character-building period of his life in which are crystallized his moral and ethical concepts which attain their latter perfection in the succeeding period. Your boy is putty in your hands. He is a superlative impressionist. His impressionistic mind is molded as deeply by evil as by good. For this reason, it is necessary that his environment--which is the cumulative influence of the precept, example, and conditions which surround him--should be good and wholesome. As the drip-drip-drip of water wears away the stone, so the constant drip of environing influences wears its way into character.

The foundations of will-power are now laid in his efforts to propel himself into a choice between the good and the bad, between right and wrong. Judgment and discretion appear in embryonic form and slowly and laboriously develop into cautious discernment and the faculty of deciding justly and wisely, which reach their approximate maturity late in the reflective period.

It may be interesting to note that the law presumes that every person at the age of fourteen has common discretion and understanding, until the contrary is made out; but under that age there is no such presumption. It therefore follows that when a child under fourteen years of age is offered as a witness in a court of law, a preliminary examination conducted by the judge must be made to ascertain whether he has sufficient intelligence to relate the facts as they occurred and sufficient moral sense to comprehend the nature and obligation of an oath. But the law is conservative in its presumption, as such intelligence and moral comprehension are, in most instances, developed in the child at a much earlier age and numerous cases are cited in the law reports in which children as young as seven or eight have qualified, after examination, as witnesses competent to testify.

During this period occur three cycles of particular susceptibility to religious influence. The first appears about the age of twelve under the stimulus of witnessing the conversion or affiliation with the church of some adult whom he looks up to, and is chiefly due to the faculty of imitation--one of the characteristics carried over from the individualistic period; the next occurs at age of fourteen, when his emotionalism is dominant, under the excitement of a powerful emotional experience; the third cycle of religious conversion appears at sixteen when he is leaving the heroic period and entering the thoughtful or reflective stage of his adolescence and such a conversion is grounded in the thoughtful promptings of the intellect, rather than the emotions.

This is also the age of experimentation in which his longing to know the unknown leads him to make short excursions into the fields of mechanics, physics, electricity, hydraulics, magic, and others which hide their secrets from the casual observer. This trend of his activities may be directed by suggestion, supplemented with the necessary equipment, toward manual training and handicraft--ideal employments for the early adolescent.

This is the age of hero-worship and every boy in this period, without exception, has a personal hero. He may not take the world into his confidence by divulging his secret, but whether admitted or not, he possesses a hero whom he looks up to, admires, and copies. I know a thirteen-year-old lad whose hero is his eighteen-year-old cousin for whom his admiration manifests itself to the extent of trying to imitate his tone of voice, his walk, his gestures, and personal appearance, including the wearing of the same kind of ties which his cousin affects. He never ceases praising the football prowess of his relative and continually quotes him as an authority on athletics.

The boy of this age worships a physical hero. Power, strength, and authority make a powerful appeal. His hero may be the policeman on his beat who is the emblem of physical strength and vested with the authority of law to make arrests; the fireman who displays wonderful courage in the rescue of imperiled persons from burning buildings; the engineer who guides the locomotive dashing like a meteor through the blackness of night; the prize fighter who has won a championship in the squared ring; or the baseball or football athlete whose name is on every tongue. His hero must be a mighty man of action, for he worships at the shrine of athletic prowess. To test the truth of this statement, ask any boy you may meet, between the ages of twelve and sixteen, whether he would rather be the winner of the Nobel prize for scientific achievement or Ty Cobb , and the unanimous verdict will be in favor of the ballplayer. So strongly is hero-worship implanted in his nature and so completely does it dominate his viewpoint that it remains, with gradually diminishing intensity, for many years thereafter. Happy the boy whose father is his hero and happy the father who is a hero to his son!

The objective of hero-worship is always an older male--never a female. No instance of normal heroine-worship has ever been noted. The wealth of love which he may manifest toward his mother, female friend or teacher is entirely disassociated from hero-worship. It lacks the sex-element necessary to inspire emulation. He wants to be a man--not a woman. For this reason, it is desirable that he should have opportunity for association, during adolescence, with men of strong character and personality. The differences between the psychologic processes of the male and the female adult are too well known to require discussion here. Widows who keenly appreciate the absence of the father's guiding hand frequently attempt to be both father and mother to their sons, and in so doing the apron strings are knotted doubly hard and fast. Then ensues a conflict between the feminine and maternal policy and the adolescent longing and reaching out for ultimate masculinity. The mother is the last person to recognize adolescence in her son; she wants him to remain the infant she has always regarded him. His beginnings to emulate masculinity clash with her desire to keep him a child. I have in mind a mother who is rearing the most lady-like boy in my acquaintance. Her inherent delicacy and refinement of nature prompt her to develop these same qualities in her son as the ultimate end to be attained. With no qualifications for boy-training except mother-love, feminine ideals, and an ambition to rear her son to beautiful manhood, she refuses him participation in rough and tumble sports and games because they are "rude and ungentlemanly" and besides, they would soil his clothes. Many mothers of the neighborhood hold him up to their own unregenerate offspring as a model of neatness and a paragon of propriety, but the boys call him "Sissy." The author has witnessed many examples of apron-string policy whose unpsychological and repressive tendencies cannot fail to be detrimental to the ideal development of adolescence.

Gratitude is a virtue displayed by few boys prior to the reflective period, because they fail to appreciate the motives which inspire the act which should call forth expressions of gratitude, especially if the act or service is of an altruistic nature. Of course, he will thank you for a gift of candy or a toy; but never for the time and thought expended in giving him instruction or moral training, or taking him in the woods for a day, or pointing out to him the constellations at night. He is not ungrateful. He merely accepts these things as a matter of course until he reaches the age which recognizes and appreciates the sacrifices incurred by the giver of altruistic service.

The beginning of the reflective period witnesses the subsidence of the fierce storms of earlier adolescence and is followed by comparative physical and emotional calm, although attended by intellectual agitations of lesser import. The boy now enters an era of mental development characterized by a thoughtful, reflective attitude toward the great problems of life. A serious viewpoint is developed which changes the previous aspect of the world. He devotes much thought to his life-work; to making choice of an occupation or profession and preparing for it. His future career looms large in the foreground of his problems, and prompts a close analysis of his inclinations, aptitudes, and qualifications for special lines of work. The realization that he must soon take his place among the men who are doing the world's work overwhelms him, at times, with the immensity of his job. Introspection, as a part of his self-analysis, becomes a habit which induces him to make continual comparisons between his own natural endowments and those of others of his own age. He seeks, with all the faculties at his command, to find that niche in the business, professional, or industrial world which he can best fill and it is at this time that he needs the vocational guidance of his father.

Early in this period a morbid self-consciousness frequently appears as the result of a too minute introspection with eyes whose views of life are not correlated. He discovers defects in his personal appearance, faults of character and deficiencies of intellect which are magnified out of their true proportions. His sense of perspective is in its formative stage and this causes many molehills to loom high as mountains. He is now his own most severe critic and imagines that his immature conclusions as to his personality are shared by all others; and many hours of humility and mental depression ensue from this condition. Egotism and an exalted appreciation of his own worth are also manifest, due to the same uncoordinated sense of values. He often exhibits alternate states of exaltation and depression produced by a trifling remark or a trivial incident which is given an importance it does not deserve. As he advances through this period, his perspective finds truer adjustment, his sense of values becomes settled, his judgment ripens and these anomalies disappear. But he may be saved many hours of soul-stress by the father who is able to diagnose his condition, or who is on sufficiently intimate terms of confidence with his son to inspire a frank avowal of his troubles. Here is the opportunity for the father to apply his common sense, ripe judgment and experience to the solution of these problems of the later adolescent.

Attention has already been called to his impressionability to religious influences during the early part of this period through an appeal based in intellectualism , to which the ethical concepts now being formed are closely related.

Another distinguishing trait is the evolution of his sociological consciousness through which he recognizes himself as a unit in the social economy, with all its attendant rights and duties. He discards the selfishness and individualism of an earlier era and adopts the obligations of altruism. His desire to be of genuine service to his fellow man seeks expression first in visionary plans to reform the world, followed afterward by practical work in help for others, such as leadership in boys' clubs, secretarial duties or teaching in Sunday schools, or similar employments of altruistic purport. Government under processes of law takes on a newer, clearer and more personal meaning. And with it comes recognition of civic responsibility.

Intellectual storms gather when vague, unassorted, inchoate, and impossible theories of social and political reform--long since tried and discarded--loom big on his horizon and are eagerly seized upon and advocated as original discoveries. His opinions are expressed with a dogmatism which characterizes the cocksureness of youth. Verbal limitations inspired by sound judgment and broad experience, as well as the cautious phraseology of scientific conservatism have no place in his vocabulary. His theories are all promulgated with an arrogant assertiveness born of the optimism of inexperience. He is now fairly bursting with self-importance. But all these manifestations are important only as indicating his desire to solve the great problems of life and are the precursors of a sounder judgment which will come with maturity of intellect and experience.

It is at or near the beginning of this period that the youth looks down on the younger boy, whom he characterizes as a "kid." The dislike and even positive aversion of the older boy for companionship with the younger has its basis not so much in their differing physical and mental attainments as in their differing viewpoints caused by their unequal psychological development. Illustration of this may be observed in two boys, both of whom are sixteen years of age and of equal mentality and physique, one of whom has and the other has not entered the reflective period. Such boys are out of harmony with each other in every taste, desire, and predilection which is actuated by psychological impulse, and find a common ground of companionship only in athletics and classroom studies.

Will power, born during the heroic period, is now stimulated to rapid growth which culminates during the latter part of the reflective period. No longer is he a straw borne on every passing wind of influence, but a human being capable of exercising a moral choice between two courses of action.

His mental and moral stature has been reached by gradual and almost unnoticed gradations; and such growth, which had its beginning in blank chaos, has been even greater and more marvelous than his physical growth between birth and maturity.

Self-flattered, unexperienced, high in hope, When young, with sanguine cheer and streamers gay, We cut our cable, launch into the world And fondly dream each wind and star our friend.

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