4. Another clearly related alternation is that between selfishness and altruism. Before puberty, children are fed, clothed, sheltered, instructed, and done for, so that all the cur- rents in their environment, especially with parents who follow Froebel's injunction to live for their children, have flowed toward and converge in them. Now currents in the oppo- site direction arise and should normally gather strength until they predominate. Life is sacrifice, and in trite parlance, we really live for what we die for. Before, youth must be served; now, it must serve. Its wants, perhaps even its whims, have been supreme, but in the matin song of love the precepts of renunciation are heard. Just as the embryonic cell grows large till it can no longer be nourished from without and must then divide or die, so the individual must be subordinated to society and posterity. Life Is no longer ego-centric, bat altro-centric. Politeness and courtesy, and respect for the feelings of others, are often hard at first, but are a school of minor morals grad- uating into that of the higher virtues. Sympathy, and especially love, wither the individual, until self-subordination may be- come a passion. Youth devotes himself, perhaps by a vow, to a lifetime of self-denial or painful servitude to some great cause, or a career in which some of the deepest of human in- stincts must be mortified and eradicated. He or she would go on missions; labor for the sick, ignorant, depraved, and de- fective classes; espouse great philanthropic causes, and very often practise in secret asceticisms in the common and harmless pleasures and comforts of life, in food, drink, sleep, it may be, to the point of impairment of health, as if now glimpsing from afar the universal law which makes all individual good merely ancillary to the welfare of the species. Self-sacrifice may be ex- orbitant and vows gifts; humiliations are enthusiastic; selfish- ness seems mean; the ideal becomes a "pure life ruled by love alone"; the unselfishness may sometimes come in streaks and is often secreted, young people giving food or sweetmeats, stay- ing at home to give others pleasure, without telling. There is, on the one hand, increase of self-confidence, a sense that the individual " is important enough to be noticed anywhere "; but this is not incompatible with helping others as never before, and even performing disagreeable tasks for them, associating with the bad in order to make them better, and greater readiness to 82 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE give up any individual good. Our returns here show outcrops of the grossest selfishness and greediness side by side with a generosity and magnanimity rarely found in adult life save in poetry and romance. Others' rights of possession, food, and clothing sometimes are rudely trampled under foot, while the most delicate attentions and services, involving both fore- thought and hardship, are carried out to others or perhaps to the same persons. It seems as if expressions of extremely puerile selfishness were now particularly prone to be compen- sated for by extremes of the opposite nature, and vice versa; that often those most tender and considerate, most prone to take pains, to prefer others' enjoyment to their own, and to renounce ease, abandon cherished plans, and conquer the strongest natural desires in doing this, were those most liable occasionally to fall lowest in gloating self -gratification at the expense of others.1 Here, too, parents and teachers sometimes alternate between hope and despair for the 'young, before they slowly settle to fixed characteristics and conduct. Moreover, there is often ar- rest before the process of self-effacement is duly complete, so that we see in adults noble lives and acts veined with petty meannesses, which are the residual and unreduced organs of childhood.
5. Closely connected with the above are the alternations between good and bad conduct generally. Perhaps at no time of life can goodness be so exotically pure and true, virtue so spotless, and good works spring from such a depth of good- will, which, since Kant, is often made the source of all real morality. Conscience, though not new-born, now can first be- 1 The ego, Fichte argued, created not only its own consciousness but the objec- tive world, and is therefore sovereign lord of all. The self only exists, and all else, even other persons, are phantasmic projections of it. On this basis Max Stirner (Das Ich und sein Eigenthum) bases his monstrous ethics of absolute self- ishness. Each must get every possible pleasure and seek his own aggrandizement in every way. Fame, property, sense, and enjoyment must be striven for by every means that can be successful, and all ideas of morality, truthfulness, duty, are utter nullities evolved from the brain of superior individuals in furtherance of this aim. Nietzsche's "will to power" is a no less crass reversion to the egoism of savagery. Lust of power is glorified to the point of tyranny and to the actual disparagement of tenderness and humanity. Whatever truth there is in this view, it has its best outcrop in this age.
FEELINGS AND PSYCHIC EVOLUTION 83 gin to play a leading role. It awakens with a longing hunger and thirst for righteousness, prompts to highest aspiration and resolve. Benevolence and love to all persons and all being is fresh from its original source, and there are hearty good wishes for the general and special weal of others and ingenuity in anticipating and gratifying their desires, so that for brief periods youth and maidens sometimes seem too good for this earth.
But we need have no fear. From the same soil in which these budding virtues spring and bloom so delicately arise rank weeds; physical appetites are grossly indulged naively, even though they may sometimes seem almost bestial; propensities to lie break out, perhaps irresistibly, for a time. Anger slips its leash and wreaks havoc. Some petty and perhaps undreamed meanness surprises thfc onlooker. The common constraints of society are ruptured, or there are spasms of profanity; perhaps a sudden night of debauch, before knowledge had put up proper defenses; perhaps some lapse from virtue, which seems almost irretrievable, but which in fact should never be so readily par- doned and forgotten. The forces of sin and those of virtue never struggle so hotly for possession of the youthful soul. As statistics show, the age of most frequent conversions to true religion is precisely the years of the largest percentage of first commitments to houses of detention for crime. Now some new manifestations of vice surprise the soul in the midst of its ideal longings for absolute perfection, and wring it with grief and remorse. It seems a law of psychic development, that more or less evil must be done to unloose the higher powers of constraint and to practise them until they can keep down the baser in- stincts. The religious struggles of this stage bear abundant evidence to the violence of these storms and counter currents of which the human soul is now the arena. Temptations hith- erto unknown to sins hitherto impossible bring redeeming agencies also new into action, and while the juvenile offender and the debauchee is arrested in his development and remains through life under the power of evil, growth is benign, and those who achieve normal maturity domesticate their baser in- stincts into the service of goodness.
6. The same is true of the great group of social instincts, some of which rest upon the preceding. Youth is often bashful, 84 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE retiring, in love with solitude; perhaps wanders alone and com- munes with stars, sea, forest, animals; prefers nature to man; loves midnight walks; shuns the face of man, and especially the other sex; becomes interested in its own inner states and care- less of the objective while sunken in the subjective life. Some youth take to drink chiefly or solely to gain through it the courage to go into society. They know not how, or if they do so, find it hard to assert themselves sufficiently to do justice to their ideas of their own merits. This is most common among country youth, but it is also frequent enough in the city. Others spring into a new love of companionship; friendships are ce- mented; " mashes " and " crushes " occur; the gregarious pas- sion vents itself in all kinds of convivial associations, in organi- zations of many kinds, sometimes in riotous bouts and carous- als; some can never be alone and seem to have for a time no resources in themselves, but to be abjectly dependent for their happiness upon their mates. They lose independence, and not only run, but think and feel, with the gang and the class. Alone, they are uninteresting and uninterested, but with others, viva- cious, lively, and entertaining. To the inner circle of their chosen associates they bare their inmost soul. There are no reserves or secrets, but a love of confessional outpourings in intimate hours together or sometimes in letters. The desire to please dominates some, and that to rule and lead, others; while the more passive and inert gradually lose the power of indepen- dent action, thought, or impulse, and come into the settled hab- its of dependent henchmen and followers. The psychology of crowds show us how all human qualities are kept in counte- nance and developed, when like is paired with like; how joys are doubled and pains divided; how responsibility is attenuated until the greatest outrages are perpetrated by masses, from which every individual would revolt. Alternations between these two extremes of excessive or defective sociability are less frequent in the same individual, and if they occur, are at longer intervals.
At times, young people feel that those who are liked fail to appreciate or even dislike them. They are repelled by society, feel sinful and lonely, and perhaps need a good cry, which quite relieves them. We find, too, admiration and contempt strangely mingled; now appreciation, which almost becomes abject hero FEELINGS AND PSYCHIC EVOLUTION 85 worship or fanaticism for great and new ideas, gushing devo- tion to literary and art products, etc., but all alternating with satire, burlesque, and parody, which seem to indicate that the power of reverence is lost and all the charm and modesty, which Plato found so becoming in youth, for a season quite extinct. There is always a wide range of change between more and less before a center of gravity is found and a definite social character established. Both, of course, are necessary, and there is much that is true in the Baconian adage, that character is perfected in solitude and talent in society. City life, the in- numerable clubs, business aggregations, sodalities, political and religious fraternization, seem a characteristic of this growingly urban age, and have no doubt perturbed the oscillations of the compass, so that it settles more slowly toward the pole of man's destiny than in other historic periods. We have seen these phenomena unusually accented in the early lives of Savonarola, Newton, Shelley, Patrick Henry, Keats, Hawthorne, Gifford, Jeffries, Boyeson, Nansen, and in the scores of our returns from men and women unknown to fame.
7. Closely akin to this are the changes from exquisite sen- sitiveness to imperturbability and even apathy, hard-hearted- ness, and perhaps cruelty. Many youthful murderers, callous to the sufferings of their victims, have had the keenest sym- pathy with pets and even with children. Most criminals are unfeeling and unhumane. They can not pity, and the sus- ceptibility to pathos is alien to them. The juvenile torturers often seem to have specialized psychic zones, where tenderness is excessive, as if to compensate for their defect. They weep over the pain, actual or imaginary, of their pets, while utterly hardened to the normal sentiments of kindness and help for suffering. The development of sympathy, as Sutherland has shown, has been slow and hard in the world, but it is basal for most of the factors of morality.
8. Curiosity and interest are generally the first outcrop of intellectual ability. Youth is normally greedy for knowledge, and that, not in one but in many directions. There is eagerness, zest, enthusiasm, which inspires corresponding activity to know that and only that which is of the highest worth. Wher- ever a new mine of great and fruitful discovery of truth is opened, a new field of activity appears, or new motives of self- 86 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE sacrifice are made operative, there youth is in its element. It is the age of questioning, exploration, investigation, testing ideas, men, and the world. Expectation is at its best and the impulse to be ready for any new occasion is at its strongest. Now first it is really felt that knowledge is power, and the noetic fever sometimes becomes too hot for the convenience of others, for conventionality, the routine of life, or even for health.
But the opposite is no less germane to these years. Here we find the inert moods and types, which are apathetic, which can not be profoundly stirred, that regard passionate mental interest as bad form, and cultivate indifference, that can not and will not admire. No devoted teacher need attempt to arouse and fire the mind in this condition. Sometimes this is all an af- fectation, mental posing, provoked by fashion or environment, and unconsciously imitative. Sometimes, alas! it is the direct result of excess, which saps the springs of life and brings senes- cent inertia before its time. It may be a product of fatigue and reaction from excessive effort, as in the case of Stuart Mill. It is not pain or pessimism, although, if real, it is the raw material out of which the latter is made. To the wise adult this is always pathetic, for what is youth without enthusiasm? These states always need wise diagnosis, because if they are recuperative, they should be let alone, and if results of dissipa- tion, they should be drastically treated. Institutions, especially the tone and traditions of colleges and high schools, differ widely in their prevailing atmosphere in this regard. Here, too, a considerable range is no doubt normal.
9. Another vacillation is between knowing and doing. Now the life of the study charms, and the ambition is to be learned, bookish, or there is a passion to read. Perhaps there is a love of poetic intoxication or of contemplation, such as Scott, Bryant, Fulton, Franklin, Newton, etc., experienced. This afferent, more passive, receptive mood is necessary, because in the civilized state youth always lives in the midst of a far higher culture than it could produce. But a reaction is almost always inevitable where this receptive passion is extreme, and soon either unconscious instinct or else purpose takes the youth out of doors, because he has fallen in love with nature, or, it may be, to cultivate muscle. His tastes and plans turn to active FEELINGS AND PSYCHIC EVOLUTION 87 occupation. He would achieve rather than learn. He feels sometimes, more or less unconsciously, the vanity of mere eru- dition, and wishes to storm the world of reality and win his spurs, make his mark, and become an active and perhaps crea- tive cause.
10. Less often we see one or more alternations between dominance by conservative and by radical instincts. The young man finds the world out of joint and would reform the church, school, perhaps social and family life; is sick at heart at the hollowness of established conventionality; is fired at the tyranny of wealth or trusts, and would himself reconstruct by doubting, casting out everything which does not seem to his own fledgling intelligence good, true, and beautiful. Some do and all ought to react from the party of progress to that of order, from burn- ing the products of the past to worshiping them, to caring and working that no goocl already attained be lost; they should at some period feel the force of conventionalities, the truth of highly saturated creeds, the value of established institutions, despite their possible betterment. There is especial danger that temperament or environment will destroy this balance and pre- cipitate the mind for life into one or another of these camps where extreme views are so easy and simple, and moderate ones so hard and complex. This is especially seen in the religious sphere, to which we shall turn later. The equipoise between atheism and bigotry is almost always disturbed; there is excess of skepticism or of credulity, affirmation or denial, doubt or faith, and youth is especially prone to be distracted between the instincts that make the devotee and those that make the heretic.
11. We find many cases of signal interest in which there is a distinct reciprocity between sense and intellect, as if each had its nascent period. We have already seen how the senses are acuminated and sense interests modified and generally en- hanced, so that occasionally youth is passionately devoted to seeing and hearing new things, is all eye, ear, taste, and would widen the surface of contact with the external world to the maximum, as if laying in stock for future mental elaboration; but there are also periods of inner absorption and meditation, when reality fades and its very existence is questioned, when the elements that make the content of the sensory shoot to- 88 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE gether into new unities. The inner eye that sees larger corre- spondences in time and space is opened; the bearings of familiar facts appear; wisdom is sought from books or friends, and is assimilated with amazing facility, so that a new consciousness is born within or above the old, and the attention is attracted to inner states which demand explanation. It is as if the projec- tive system, which acts and reacts upon the external world, had now its innings, to be later followed by a period when the energy of psychic growth is largely turned to the associative fibers, both ends of which are in the brain.
12. Closely connected with this is the juxtaposition of wisdom and folly. Now there are high intuitions that antici- pate maturity and even the best mental products of old age, an attitude of mind that seems to have anticipated the experi- ences of a lifetime, and to have found rest in the true goal of wisdom. Yet, interspersed with all this precocious philosophy, we find pitfalls of collapsing and childish folly. This may be ethical, in the form of irritability, greed, causeless and irra- tional freakishness and abandon to the lower impulses, or downright silliness. Those precocious in some are often ar- rested in other respects.
We have already seen that body growth is not symmetrical, but to some extent the parts, functions, and organs grow in succession, so that the exact normal proportions of the body are temporarily lost, to be regained later on a new plan. The mind now grows in like manner. It is as if the various quali- ties of soul were developed successively; as if the energy of growth now stretched out to new boundaries, now in this and now in that direction. This is biological economy, as well as recapitulatory, because in some way that we do not understand nature follows in the psychic field the familiar mechanical prin- ciple we must so often appeal to by which power is best devel- oped over a large surface, to be later best applied at a point. The human plant circumnutates in a wider and wider circle, and the endeavor should be to prevent it from prematurely finding a support, to prolong the period of variation to which this stage of life is sacred, and to prevent natural selection from confirming too soon, the slight advantage which any quality may temporarily have in this struggle for existence among FEELINGS AND PSYCHIC EVOLUTION 89 many faculties and tendencies within us. The educational ideal is now to develop capacities in as many directions as possible, to indulge caprice and velleity a little, to delay consistency for a time, and let the diverse prepotencies struggle with each other. Now everything psychic tends in its turn to be intense to the point of illusion or positive obsession, but nature's rhythm, if allowed to have its due course, prevents stagnation and hebe- tude, and the passion to change keeps all powers fluent and plastic, gives elasticity and develops power of sanification. Sometimes there seem almost to be dual or multiplex personal- ities. The venerable four temperaments of the phrenologists seem contending with each other for dominance, but the soul should make some place for all of them in its many mansions. It is veritably like a batrachian, or insect struggling to get out of its last year's skin cfr chitin, or like sloughing off the old con- sciousness of childhood for the new one of maturity. It is thus that the soul explores the maximum area possible of human experience. This is now the meaning of the freedom of the will, and captious though it often seems, it is thus that the foun- dations of wise choices that first hear from all parts and parties are preformed. The mind is now in what the biologists call its generalized form. It is as if man were polyphyletic in his ori- gin and now the different ethnic stocks were successively harked back to. The possibility of variation in the soul is now at its height. Especially in races of mixed blood, our returns con- vince me, that more prepotencies clash or coincide, as the case may be, and we can often detect the voices of our forebears of very different races in the soul. Psychic life is thus for a term greatly perturbed. When the youth takes the helm of his own being, he navigates a choppy sea. Thus it would appear in nature's economy he must strive, fight, and storm his way up, if he would break into the kingdom of man. Here, too, many an impulse seeks expression, which seems strong for a time, but which will never be heard of later. Its function is to stimu- late the next higher power that can only thus be provoked to development, in order to direct, repress, or supersede it. Never is it so true that nothing human is alien from each individual, as in this fever of ephebeitis, which has so many peculiar fea- tures in the American temperament.
The popular idea, that youth must have its fling, implies 9° THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE the need of greatly and sometimes suddenly widened liberty, which nevertheless needs careful supervision and wise direc- tion, from afar and by indirect methods. The forces of growth now strain to their uttermost against old restrictions. It is the age of bathmism, or most rapid variation, which is sometimes almost saltatory. Nearly every latency must be developed, or else some higher power, that later tempers and coordinates it, lacks normal stimulus to develop. Instead of the phenomena of alternate generation, where certain potentialities lie dormant in one generation to appear in the next, we have corresponding psychic phenomena in one and the same individual by which faculties and impulses, which are denied legitimate expression during their nascent periods, break out well on in adult life — falsetto notes mingling with manly bass as strange puerilities. The chief end in view must now be to bring out all the poly- phonous harmonies of human nature. The individual can never again expand his nature to so nearly compass the life of the species. The voices of extinct generations, sometimes still and small, sometimes strident and shrill, now reverberate, and psychic development is by leaps and bounds, of which psycho- logical science has so far been able to know but very little.
Mental unity comes later. Consistency then has its place. The supreme Aristotelian virtue of temperance and the golden mean — which is courage well poised between timidity and fool- hardiness, liberality midway between the extremes of avarice and prodigality, modesty which combines the good and rejects the evil by excess of bashfulness and impudence, self-respect which is neither vainglory nor self-abasement — slowly knits up the soul, coordinates its many elements, represses illusions, and issues in settled character. The logical as contrasted with the genetic ideal now arises and prompts to reason, consistency, and coordinations in ever higher associations as cosmos rises from chaos. We see over and over again that the metamorphic stages of early adolescence are forgotten, and how impossible it is for the mature mind to remember or even credit, when they are noted or told by others, the preceding phases of instinctive transformations. In one sense, youth loses very much in be- coming adult. The ordered, regular life of maturity involves necessarily more or less degeneration for simple tendencies. Indeed, the best definition of genius is intensified and pro- FEELINGS AND PSYCHIC EVOLUTION 91 longed adolescence, to which excessive or premature system- atization is fatal. Even in commonplace lives, higher qualities, and often the very highest, appear in the teens for a brief flit- ting moment, or at least they barely hint their existence and then fade, sometimes because the demands of adulthood are too early or too insistently enforced.