532 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE 1582, when she died, had estabHshed sixteen of these foundations. Nine months later her body was found " perfect and uncorrupted." Seven years later it was hardly changed save a few parts that had been cut off for relics. Now her dead heart at Avila glows at times with such ardor and devotion as to break a glass ball under which it is preserved. At Naples her scapula, at Paris a lump of her flesh, at Craco two large slices " highly scented," at Rome her right foot, at Lisbon her left arm, at Seville her fingers are venerated.
St. Rose of Lima (1617) was named from her complexion, and so added the name Mary. When playing with her brother, he plas- tered her long, rich, brown hair with mud, and when she sulked he said, " You little know what a frizzling girl's hairs get in hell-fire if they are vain of them." So, although she was but five, she shaved her head, to the grief and horror of her parents. Later, when in festivals she had to wear wreaths and garlands of flowers, she proceeded to bind thorns into them. When her mother required her to sleep in gloves to make her hands soft, she inserted nettles, till they were blotched and inflamed. When she had a cold and plasters were ap- plied, she would not remove them till the skin fell off. When her fingers were admired, she rubbed them with lime till they were useless for thirty days. She pulled the flocks from her pillows and stuffed them with chips; wore a crown of ninety-nine thorns, as she is repre- sented in art, and was mystically married to the Infant Jesus.
St. Francis of Sales (1622) at the age of eleven implored permis- sion to take the tonsure. At seventeen his conscience awoke and he felt that he was not in a state of grace, and prayed in anguish for six weeks, when at last near death his eye caught sight of the famous prayer of St. Bernard. He vowed chastity, and the clouds lifted and God's favor was shown.
St. Vincent of Paul (1660) was a peasant's child watching sheep and swine, but would secretly climb into an oak to say his prayers. Later he found the hollow of a tree and used it as a cell, and this was the manner of his call. / The knightly ideals and those of secular life generally during the middle ages and later were in striking contrast to all this; in some respects they were like those of the Greeks. Honor was the leading ideal, and muscular development and that of the body were held in high respect; so that the spirit of the age fostered conceptions not unlike those of the Japa- nese Bushido (Chapter III). Where elements of Christianity were combined with this we have the spirit of the pure chiv- alry of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, which afifords perhaps the very best ideals for youth to be found in history, as we shall see more fully later.
ADOLESCENCE IN LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY 533 In a very interesting paper, entitled Shakespeare and Adolescence, Dr. M. F. Libby ^ very roughly reckons " seventy-four interesting adolescents among the comedies, forty-six among the tragedies, and nineteen among the his- tories." He selects '' thirty characters who, either on account of direct references to their age, or because of their love- stories, or because they show the emotional and intellectual plasticity of youth, may be regarded as typical adolescents." His list is as follows: Romeo, Juliet, Hamlet, Ophelia, Imo- gen, Perdita, Arviragus, Guiderius, Palamon, Arcite, Emilia, Ferdinand, Miranda, Isabella, Mariana, Orlando, RosaHnd, Biron, Portia, Jessica, Phebe, Katharine, Helena, Viola, Troilus, Cressida, Cassio, Marina, Prince Hal, and Richard of Gloucester. The proof of the youth of these characters, as set forth, is of various kinds, and Libby holds that besides these, the sonnets and poems perhaps show a yet greater, more profound and concentrated knowledge of adolescence. He thinks Venus and Adonis a successful attempt to treat sex in a candid, naive way, if it be read as it was meant, as a catharsis of passion, in which is latent a whole philosophy of art. To some extent he also finds the story of the Passion- ate Pilgrim " replete with the deepest knowledge of the passions of early adolescence." The series culminates in Sonnet 1 1 6, which makes love the sole beacon of humanity. It might be said that it is connected by a straight line with the best teachings of Plato, and that here humanity picked up the clue, lost, save with some Italian poets, in the great interval.
HI. In looking over current biographies of well-known modern men who deal with their boyhood, one finds curious extremes. On the one hand are those of which Goethe's is a type, where details are dwelt upon at great length with care- ful and suggestive philosophic reflections. The development of his own tastes, capacities, and his entire adult conscious- ness was assumed to be due to the incidents of childhood and youth, and especially the latter stage was to him full of the most serious problems essential to his self-knowledge; and in the story of his life he has exploited all available resources of 534 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE this genetic period of storm and stress more fully perhaps than any other writer. At the other extreme, we have writers like Charles Dudley Warner/ a self-made man, whose early life was passed on the farm, and who holds his own boyhood there in greater contempt than perhaps any other reputable writer of such reminiscences. All the incidents are treated not only with seriousness, but with a forced drollery and catchy superficiality which reflect unfavorably at almost every point upon the members of his household, who are cari- catured; all the precious associations of early life on a New England farm are not only made absurd, but from be- ginning to end his book has not a scintilla of instruction or suggestion for those that are interested in child life. Aldrich ^ is better, and we have interesting glimpses of the pet horse and monkeys, of his fighting the boy bully, running away, and falling in love with an older girl whose engagement later blighted his life. Howells,^ White,^ Mitter,^ Grahame,^ Heidi,''' and Mrs. Burnett,^ might perhaps represent increasing grades of merit in this field in this respect.
Yoder,^ in his interesting study of the boyhood of great men, has called attention to the deplorable carelessness of their biographers concerning the facts and influences of their youth. He advocates the great pedagogic influence of biography, and would restore the high appreciation of it felt by the Bolandists, which Comte's positivist calendar, that renamed all the days of the year from three hundred and sixty- five such accounts in 1849, also sought to revive. Yoder se- lected fifty great modern biographies, autobiographies pre- ferred, for his study. He found a number whose equipment and momentum have been strikingly due to some devoted aunt, and that give many glimpses of the first polarization of genius in the direction in which fame is later achieved. He holds that while the great men excelled in memory, that imagination is perhaps still more a youthful condition of eminence, magnifies the stimulus of poverty, the fact that elder sons become prom- * Being a Boy. ' Story of a Bad Boy. ' A Boy's Town.
* Court of Boyville. » The Spoilt Child. « The Golden Age. ' Frau Spyri. « The One I Knew Best of All.
* The Study of the Boyhood of Great Men. Fed. Sem., October, 1894, vol ADOLESCENCE IN LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY 535 inent nearly twice as often as younger ones, and raises the question whether too exuberant physical development does not dull genius and talent.
One striking and cardinal fact never to be forgotten in considering its each and every phenomenon and stage is that the experiences of adolescence are extremely transitory and very easily forgotten, so that they are often totally lost to the adult consciousness. Lancaster ^ observes that we are con- stantly told by adults past thirty that they never had this and that experience, and that those who have had them are ab- normal; that they are far more rare than students of childhood assert, etc. He says, " Not a single young person with whom I have had free and open conversation has been free from serious thoughts of suicide," but these are forgotten later. A typical case 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 the typical phases of adolescence, declared that she must have been abnormal, for she knew nothing of any of these experiences. Her mother, however, produced her diary, and there she read for the first time since it was written, beginning in the January of her thirteenth year, a long series of resolu- tions which revealed a course of conduct that brought the color to her face, that she should have found it necessary to pledge not to swear, lie, etc., and which showed conclusively that she had passed through about all the phases described. These phenomena are sometimes very intense and may come late in life, but it is impossible to remember feelings and emo- tions with definiteness, and these now make up a large part of life. Hence we are prone to look with some incredulity upon the immediate records of the tragic emotions and experiences typical and normal at this time, because development has scored away their traces from the conscious soul.
There is a wall around the town of Boyville, says White,^ in substance, which is impenetrable when its gates have once shut upon youth. An adult may peer over the wall and try to ape the games inside, but finds it all a mockery and himself * The Vanishing Character of Adolescent Experiences. North Western Mo., ' The Court of Boyville, by William Allen White. New York, 1899, p. 358.
53^ THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE banished among the purbHnd grown-ups. The town of Boy- ville was old when Nineveh was a hamlet; it is ruled by ancient laws; has its own rulers and idols; and only the dim, unreal noises of the adult world about it have changed.
In exploring such sources we soon see how few writers have given true pictures of the chief traits of this develop- mental period, which can rarely be ascertained with accuracy. The adult finds it hard to recall the emotional and instinctive life of the teens which is banished without a trace, save as scattered hints may be gathered from diaries, chance experi- ences, or the recollections of others. But the best observers see but very little of what goes on in the youthful soul, the development of which is very largely subterranean. Only when the feelings erupt in some surprising way is the process manifest. The best of these sources are autobiographies, and of these only few are full of the details of this stage. Just as in the mythic prehistoric stage of many nations there is a body of legendary matter, which often reappears in somewhat difTerent form, so there is a floating plankton-like mass of tradition and storiology that seems to attach to eminence wherever it emerges and is repeated over and over again, concerning the youth of men who later achieve distinction, which biographers often incorporate and attach to the time, place, and person of their heroes.
As Burnham ^ well intimates, many of the literary char- acterizations of adolescence are so marked by e:?rfravagance, and sometimes even by the struggle for literaj^ effects, that they are not always the best documents, although often based on personal experience. Confessionalism is generally over- drawn, distorted, and especially the pains of this age are rep- resented as too keen. Of George EHot's types of adolescent character, this may best be seen in Maggie Tulliver, with her enthusiastic self-renunciation, with " her volcanic upheavings of imprisoned passions," with her " wide, hopeless yearning for that something, 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 of the other sex whom she * The Study of Adolescence. Ped. Sem., vol. i, p. 174 et seq.
ADOLESCENCE IN LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY 537 had never seen before." There was " the resolute action from instinct and the setting at defiance of calculation and reason, the want of any definite desire to marry, while all her con- duct tended to promote proposals." Exaggeration, although not the perversions of this age often found in adult charac- terizations, is a marked trait of the writings of adolescents, whose conduct meanwhile may appear rational, so that this suggests that consciousness may at this stage serve as a harmless vent for tendencies that would otherwise cause great trouble if turned to practical affairs. If Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the adolescent tyrant slayers of Greece, had been theorists, they might have been harmless on the principle that its analysis tends to dissipate emotion.
Lancaster ^ gathered and glanced over a thousand biogra- phies, from which he selected 200 for careful study, choosing them to show different typical directions of activity. Of these, 120 showed a distinct craze for reading in adolescence; 109 became great lovers of nature; 58 wrote poetry; 58 showed a great and sudden development of energy; 55 showed great eagerness for school; 53 devoted themselves for a season to art and music; 53 became very religious; 51 left home in the teens; 51 showed dominant instincts of leader- ship; 49 had great longings of many kinds; 46 developed sci- entific tastes; 41 grew very anxious about the future; 34 de- veloped increased keenness of sensation or at least power of observation; in 32 cases health was better; 31 were passion- ately altruistic; 23 became idealists; 23 showed powers of invention; 17 were devoted to older friends; 15 would reform society; 7 hated school. These, like many other statistics, have only indicative value, as they are based on numbers that are not large enough and upon returns not always com- plete.
A few typical instances from Lancaster must here suffice. Savonarola was solitary, pondering, meditating, felt pro- foundly the evils of the world and need of reform, and at twenty-two spent a whole night planning his career. Shelley during these years was unsocial, much alone, fantastic, wan- * Lancaster: The Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence. Ped. Sem., July, 53 8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE dered much by moonlight communing with stars and moon, was attached to an older man. Beecher was intoxicated with nature, which he declared afterward to have been the inspira- tion of his life. George Eliot had a passion for music at thirteen and became a clever pianist. At sixteen she was religious, founded societies for the poor and animals, and had flitting spells of misanthropy. Edison undertook to read the Detroit Free Library through, read fifteen solid feet as the books stand on the shelves, was stopped, and says he has read comparatively little since. Tolstoi found the aspect of things suddenly changed. Nature put on a new appearance. He felt he might commit the most dreadful crimes with no pur- pose save curiosity and the need of action. The future looked gloomy. He became furiously angry without cause; thought he was lost; hated by everybody, was perhaps not the son of his father, etc. At seventeen he was solitary, musing about immortality, human destiny, feeling death at hand, giving up his studies, fancying himself a great man with new truths for humanity. By and by he took up the old virtuous course of life with fresh power, new resolutions, with the feeling that he had lost much time. He had a deep reUgious experience at seventeen and wept for joy over his new life. He had a period before twenty when he told desperate lies, for which he could not account, then a passion for music, and later for French novels. Rousseau at this age was discontented, im- mensely in love, wept often without cause, etc. Keats had a great change at fourteen, wrestling with frequent obscure and profound stirrings of soul, with a sudden hunger for knowledge which consumed his days with fire, and " with passionate longing to drain the cup of experience at a draft." He was *' at the morning hour when the whole 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. John Hunter was dull and hated study, but at twenty his mind awoke as did that of Patrick Henry, who before was a lonely wanderer, sitting idly for hours under the trees. Alexander Murray awoke to life at fifteen and ac- quired several languages in less than two years. Gififord was distraught for lack of reading, went to sea at thirteen, became ADOLESCENCE IN LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY 539 a shoemaker, studying algebra late at night, was savagely unsociable, sunk into torpor from which he was roused to do splenetic and vexatious tricks, which alienated his friends. Rittenhouse at fourteen was a plowboy, covering the fences with figures, musing on infinite time and space. Benjamin Thompson was roused to a frenzy for sciences at fifteen; at seventeen walked nine miles daily to attend lectures at Cam- bridge; and at nineteen married a widow of thirty-three. Franklin had a passion for the sea; at thirteen read poetry all night; wrote verses and sold them on the streets of Bos- ton; doubted everything at fifteen; left home for good at sev- enteen; started the first public library in Philadelphia before he was twenty-one. Robert Fulton was poor, dreamy, mer- curial, devoted to nature, art, and literature. He became a painter of talent, then a poet, and left home at seventeen. Bryant was sickly till fourteen and became permanently well thereafter; was precociously devoted to nature, religion, prayed for poetic genius and wrote Thanatopsis before he was eighteen. Jefferson doted on animals and nature at fourteen, and at seventeen studied fifteen hours a day. Garfield, though living in Ohio, longed for the sea, and ever after this period the sight of a ship gave him a strange thrill. Hawthorne was devoted to the sea and wanted to sail on and on forever and never touch shore again. He would roam through the Maine woods alone; was haunted by the fear that he would die be- fore twenty-five. Peter Cooper left home at seventeen; was passionately altruistic; and at eighteen vowed he would build a place like his New York Institute. Whittier at fourteen found a copy of Burns, which excited him and changed the current of his life. Holmes had a passion for flowers, broke into poetry at fifteen, and had very romantic attachments to certain trees in particular. J. T. Trowbridge learned German, French, and Latin alone before twenty-one; composed poetry at the plow and wrote it out in the evening. Joseph Henry followed a rabbit under the Public Library at Albany, found a hole in the floor that admitted him to the shelves, and, unknown to any one, he read all the fiction the library contained, then turned to physics, astronomy, and chemistry, and developed a passion for the sciences. He was stage- struck, and became a good amateur actor. H. H. Boyesen 540 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE was thrilled by nature and by the thought that he was a Norseman. He had several hundred pigeons, rabbits, and other pets; loved to be in the woods at night; on leaving home for school was found with his arms around the neck of a calf to which he was saying good-by. Maxwell, at six- teen, had almost a horror of destroying a leaf, flower, or fly. Jahn found growing in his heart, at this age, an inextinguish- able feeling for right and wrong — which later he thought the cause of all his inner weal and outer woe. When Nansen 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 one and live like Crusoe. T. B. Reed, at twelve and thirteen, had a passion for reading; ran away at seventeen; painted, acted, and wrote poetry. Cartwright, at sixteen, heard voices from the sky saying, " Look above." " Thy sins are forgiven thee." Herbert Spencer became an engineer at seventeen, after one idle year. He never went to school, but was a private pupil of his uncle. Sir James Mackintosh grew fond of history at eleven; fancied he was the Emperor of Constantinople; loved solitude at thirteen; wrote poetry at fourteen; and fell in love at seventeen. Thomas Buxton loved dogs, horses, and literature, and combined these while riding on an old horse. At sixteen he fell in love with an older literary woman, which aroused every latent power to do or die, and thereafter he took all the school prizes. Scott began to like poetry at thirteen. Pascal wrote treatises on conic sections at sixteen and invented his arithmetical machine at nineteen. Nelson went to sea at twelve; com- manded a boat in peril at fifteen, which at the same age he left to fight a polar bear. Banks, the botanist, was idle and listless till fourteen, could not travel the road marked out for him; when coming home from bathing, he was struck by the beauty of the flowers and at once began his career. Montcalm and Wolfe both distinguished themselves as leaders in battle at sixteen. Lafayette came to America at nineteen, thrilled by our bold strike for liberty. Gustavus Adolphus declared his own majority at seventeen and was soon famous. Ida Lewis rescued four men in a boat at sixteen. Joan of Arc began at thirteen to have the visions which were the later guide of her life.
ADOLESCENCE IN LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY 54 1