any hope of making my condition intelligible. It was, however, abun- dantly intelligible to myself, and the more I dwelt upon it the more hopeless it appeared."
He now saw what had hitherto seemed incredible, that the habit of analysis tends to wear away the feelings. He felt " stranded at the commencement of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship and a rudder, but no sail; without any real desire for the ends which I had been so carefully fitted out to work for: no delight in virtue, or the general good, but also just as little in anything else. The fountains of vanity and ambition seemed to have dried up within me as completely as those of benevolence." His vanity had been gratified at too early an age, and, like all premature pleasures, they had caused indifference, until he despaired of creating any fresh association of pleasure with any objects of human desire. Meanwhile, dejected and melancholy as he was through the winter, he went on mechanically with his tasks; thought he found in Coleridge the first description of what he was feeling; feared the idiosyncrasies of his education had made him a being unique and apart. " I asked myself if I could or if I was bound to go on living, when life must be passed in this manner. I generally answered to myself that I did not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year." But within about half that time, in reading a pathetic passage of how a mere boy felt that he could save his family and take the place of all they had lost, a vivid conception of the scene came over him, and he was moved to tears. From that moment his burden grew lighter. He saw that his heart was not dead and that he still had some stuff left of which character and happiness were made; and although there were several later lapses, some of which lasted many months, he was never again as miserable as he had been.
These experiences left him changed in two respects. He had a new theory of life, having much in common with the anti-self-con- 568 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE sciousness theory of Carlyle. He still held happiness the end of life, but thought it must be aimed at indirectly and taken incidentally. The other change was that for the first time he gave its proper place to internal culture of the individual, especially the training of the feelings which became now cardinal. He realized and felt the power of poetry and art; was profoundly moved by music; fell in love with Wordsworth and with nature; and his later depressions were best re- lieved by the power of rural beauty, which wrought its charm not because of itself but by the states and feelings it aroused. His ode on the intimations of immortality showed that he also had felt that the first freshness of youthful joy was not lasting, and had sought and found compensation. He had thus come to a very different stand- point from that of his father, who had up to this time formed his mind and life, and developed on this basis his unique individuality.
Laurence Oliphant^ was born in 1829. When he was twelve, " with all his faculties and his whole being agog for novelty and incident," he traveled alone from England to the East and had no more systematic education. But his active mind was immensely stimulated by his mother, only eighteen years older than himself. By seventeen he was a confirmed *' rolling stone," and he never ceased his roving habits. He remained an adolescent all his life. He was intensely inter- ested by turns in all sorts of political, social, artistic, military, and religious matters, and a citizen of three continents.^ * Memoir of the Life of Laurence Oliphant and of Alice Oliphant, his Wife. By Margaret O. W. Oliphant. 2 vols. New York, 1891.
' In 1867, when he was thirty-eight, already well known as a somewhat Bohemian litterateur, he met a zealot preacher itinerating in England and followed him to America, to the consternation of his friends, to join a community at Brockton or Salem or Erie to "live the life." He was sent to sleep in a loft; to clean a large cattle stable, wheel dirt and rubbish; could speak to no one; and his food was conveyed to him by a silent messenger. The " infernals " were often active and infested many, who were brought to Harris, the leader, who could cast out devils. To bind evil spirits, it was sometimes necessary for victims to be robbed of their sleep. Men were assorted in groups according as their magnetism helped or hin- dered each other, for all were batteries of unseen force. Families were broken up that love for the race might supplant that for the individual. For three years Oli- phant led the life of a hard laborer. He was a teamster and " cadged strawberries " along the railroad, for all must serve a two years' novitiate. His delicate mother, Lady Oliphant, followed her son, and laying aside all the habits of her life, washed, scrubbed, cooked, and cleaned house; but though in the same community, could see her son, in whom her life was bound up and whose every serious thought she shared, only as other members of the community. After three years, in 1870, Oliphant returned and curiously dropped into the same place in society that he had held be- ADOLESCENCE IN LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY 5^9 Jeffries, when eighteen, began his Story of My Heart, which he said was an absolutely true confession of the stages of emotion in a soul from which all traces of tradition and learn- ing were erased, and which stood face to face with nature and the unknown.
His heart long seemed dusty and parched for want of feeling, and he frequented 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, its mystery and glory. I addressed the sun, desiring the sole equiva- lent of his light and brilliance, his endurance, and unwearied race. I turned to the blue heaven over, gazing into its depth, inhaling its exquisite color and sweetness. The rich blue of the unobtainable flower of the sky drew my soul toward it, and there it rested, for pure color is the rest of the heart. By all these I prayed. I felt an emotion of the soul beyond all definition; prayer is a puny thing to it." lie prayed by the thyme; by the earth; the flowers which he touched; the dust which he let fall through his fingers; was filled with " a rapture, an ecstasy, an inflatus. With this inflatus I prayed...I hid my face in the grass; I was wholly prostrated; I lost myself in the wrestle...I see now that what I labored for was soul life, more soul learning." After gazing upward he would turn his face into the fore. Still enthusiastic in his admiration of Harris, he urged that men must forsake all for the cross and be drudges and martyrs in the modern sense of the word in order to embody heavenly ideas. Both had found peace and content in this com- munity and its spiritual atmosphere, although he slept on straw over a stable, rose at four to clean and feed horses, and worked till eight to thrash the devil out of him. He still regarded Brockton as the ideal of society. Soon after returning, a little sobered from his first elation, he met in Paris the beautiful and accomplished Alice le Strange, descended from a long line of country gentlefolk. She was a fine musician, full of inexplicable charm, vivacity, and beauty, and had already tasted all the applause of society until, like Edward Irving, she wanted something larger and more authoritative. It was almost love at first sight, and in 1872 they were betrothed, despite the protest of her friends. He infected her with love of his American scheme, and when, after some postponements, they were married, she entered enthusiastically into his plans, and even placed the whole of her property in the hands of Harris. The year 1873 found him with mother and wife back at Brockton under the "father," who separated husband and wife, and finally sent Alice to his new settlement in California. After some wandering on his part, dur- ing which he tried to exploit the Dead Sea for its chemical and mineral deposits, if only the Sultan had consented, the husband and wife were reunited. They went to Egypt, then to Palestine, always writing and scheming, and composing one strange book, " Synpneumata, " in common, till at last, in 1878, she died; her spirit remained with her devoted, adventurous, and visionary husband, who mar- ried again in 1888, and died shortly after.
570 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE grass, shutting out everything with hands each side, till he felt down into the earth and was absorbed in it, whispering deep down to its centen Every natural impression, trees, insects, air, clouds, he used for prayer, " that my soul might be more than the cosmos of life." His "Lyra" prayer was to live a more exalted and intense soul life; enjoy more bodily pleasure and live long and find power to execute his designs. He often tried, but faile(i for years to write at least a meager account of these experiences. He felt himself immortal just as he felt beauty. He was in eternity already; the supernatural is 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 a pyre of pine wood on a high hill, to have his ashes scattered wide and broadcast, to be thrown into the space he longed for while living, but he feared that such a luxury of resolution into the elements would be too costly. Thus his naked mind, close against naked mother Nature, wrested from her the conviction of soul, immortality, deity, under conditions as primitive as those of the cave man, and his most repeated prayer was, " Give me the deepest soul life."
In other moods he felt the world outre-human, and his mind could by no twist be fitted to the cosmos. Ugly, designless creatures caused him to cease to look for deity in nature, where all happens by chance. He at length concluded there is something higher than soul and above deity, and better than God, for which he searched and labored. He found favorite thinking places, to which he made pilgrimages, where he " felt out into the depths of the ether." His frame could not bear the labor his heart demanded. Work of body was. his meat and drink. " Never have I had enough of it. I wearied long before I was satis- fied, and weariness did not bring a cessation of desire, the thirst was still there. I rode; I used the ax; I split tree-trunks with wedges; my arms tired, but my spirit remained fresh and chafed against the physical weariness." Had he been indefinitely stronger, he would have longed for more strength. He was often out of doors all day and often half the night; wanted more sunshine; wished the day was sixty hours long; took pleasure in braving the cold so that it should be not life's destroyer but its renewer. Yet he abhorred asceticism. He wrestled with the problem of the origin of his soul and its destiny, but could find no solution; revolted at the assertion that all is designed for the best; " a man of intellect and humanity could cause everything to happen in an infinitely superior manner." He discovered that no one ever died of old age, but only of disease; that we do not even know what old age would be like; found that his soul is infinite, but lies in abeyance; that we are murdered by our ancestors and must roll back the tide of death; that a hundredth part of man's labor would suffice for his support; that idleness is no evil; that in the future nine-tenths of the time will be leisure, and to that end he will work with all his heart. " I was not more than eighteen when an inner and esoteric meaning began to come to me from all the visible universe, and inde- finable aspirations filled me."
ADOLESCENCE IN LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY 57 ^ Interesting as is this document, it is impossible to avoid the sus- picion that the seventeen years which intervened between the begin- ning of these experiences and their final record, coupled with the perhaps unconscious tendency toward literary effect, detract more or less from their value as documents of adolescent nature.
Mr. H. Fielding, author of The Soul of a People, has since written a book ^ in which, beginning with many defini- tions of Christianity, weighing the opinion of those who think all our advance is made because of, against those who think it in spite of Christianity, he proceeds to give the story of a boy, probably himself, who till twelve was almost entirely reared by women and with children younger than himself.
He was sickly, and believed not in the Old but in the New Testa- ment; in the Sermon on the Mount, which he supposed all accepted and lived by; that war and wealth were bad, and learning apt to be a snare; that the ideal life was that of a poor curate, working hard and unhappy. At twelve he went to a boarding-school, passed from a woman's world into a man's, out of the New Testament into the Old, out of dreams into reality. War was a glorious opportunity, and all followed the British victories, which were announced publicly. Big boys were going to Sandhurst or Woolwich; there were parties; and the school code never turned the other cheek. Wars were God's storms, stirring stagnant natures to new life; wealth was worshiped; certain lies were an honor; knowledge was an extremely desirable thing — all this was at first new and delightful, but extremely wicked. Sunday was the only other Old Testament rule, but was then forgotten. Slowly a repugnance of religion in all its forms arose. He felt his teachers hypocrites; he raised no alarm, " for he was hardly conscious that his anchor had dragged or that he had lost hold " of it forever. At eighteen he read Darwin and found that if he were right Genesis was wrong; man had risen, not fallen; if a part was wrong, the whole was. If God made the world, the devil seemed to rule it; prayer can not in- fluence him; the seven days of creation were periods, Heaven knows how long. Why did all profess and no one believe religion? Why is God so stern and yet so partial, and how about the Trinity? Then explanations were given. Heaven grew repulsive, as a place for the poor, the maimed, the stupid, 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 not open him. In the East one can live in quiet solitude, with no ^ The Hearts of Men. London, 1891, p. 324.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE effort, close to nature. The representatives of all faiths wear ostenta- tiously their 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, but religion grows rankly from a rich soil, so the boy wrote three demands: a reasonable theory of the universe, a workable and working code of conduct, and a promise of something desirable hereafter. So he read books and tried to make a system.
On a hill, in a thunder-storm in the East, he realized how Thor was born. Man fears thunder; it seems the voice of a greater man. Deny eyes, legs, and body of the Deity, and nothing is left. God as an abstract spirit is unthinkable, but Buddhism offers us no God, only law. Necessity, blind force, law, and a free personal will, that is alternative. Freedom limits omnipotence; the two can never mix. " The German Emperor's God, clanking round the heavenly mansions wearing a German 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 and freedom are true, but truth is for the sake of light.
Thor had no moral code; the Greeks were unmoral. Jehovah at first asked 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 all others. They are the same in praising not wealth, greatness, or power, but purity, renunciation of the world, as if one fitted one's self for one 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 is nothing in all the world so babyish." One can hardly imagine a man with a deep voice, with the storm of life beating his soul, amid those baby faces. If happiness in any act or attitude is perfect, it will last forever. Where is due the weariness or satiety? But if happiness be perfect, this is impossible; so life would be monotony akin to annihila- tion. But life is change, and change is misery. There is eiTort here, but there will be none in the great peace that passes understanding; no defeat, therefore no victory; no friends, because no enemies; no joyous meetings, because no farewells. It is the shadows and the dark mysteries that sound the depths of our hearts. No man that ever lived, if told that he could be young again or go to any heaven, would choose the latter. Men die for many things, but all fear the beyond. Thus no religion gives us an intelligible First Cause, a code or a heaven that we want. The most religious man is the peasant listen- ing to the angelus, putting out a little ghi for his God; the woman crying in the pagoda. Thus we can only turn to the hearts of men for the truth of religion.
ADOLESCENCE IN LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY 573 Anthony Trollope's autobiography is pitiful. He was poor and disHked by most of his masters and treated with ignominy by his fellow pupils.
He describes himself as always in disgrace. At fifteen he walked three miles each way twice a day to and from school. As a sizar he seemed a wretched farmer's boy, reeking from the dunghill, sitting next the sons of big peers. All were against him, and he was allowed to join no games,and learned, he tells us, absolutely nothing but a little Greek and Latin. Once only, goaded to desperation, he rallied and whipped a bully. The boy was never able to overcome the isolation of his school position, and while he coveted popularity with an eager- ness which was almost mean, and longed exceedingly to excel in cricket or with the racquet, was allowed to know nothing of them. He remembers at nineteen never to have had a lesson in writing, arith- metic, French, or German. He knew his masters by their ferules and they him. He believes that he has " been flogged oftener than any human being alive." " It was just possible to obtain five scourgings in one day at Winchester, and I have often boasted that I have ob- tained them all." Prizes were distributed prodigally, but he never got one. For twelve years of tuition, he says, " I do not remember that I ever knew 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 was tolerably happy because he could fancy himself in love with pretty girls and had been removed from the real misery of school, but had not a single aspiration regarding his future. Three of his household were dying of consumption, and his mother was day nurse, night nurse, and divided her time between pill-boxes and the ink-bottle, for when she was seventy-six she had written one hundred and forty volumes, the first of which was not written till she was fifty.
Gradually the boy became alive to the blighted ambition of his father's life and the strain his mother was enduring, nursing the dying household and writing novels to provide a decent roof for them to die under. Anthony had got his position without an examination; knew no French nor science; was a bad speller and worse writer, and could not have sustained an examination on any subject. Still he could not bear idleness, and was always going about with some castle in the air firmly built in his mind, carrying on for weeks and years the same continuous story; binding himself down to certain laws, proprieties, and unities; always his own hero, excluding everything violently Im- probable. To this practise, which he calls dangerous and which began six or seven years before he went to the post-office, he ascribes his power to maintain an interest in a fictitious story and to live in an entirely outside imaginative life. During these seven years he acquired a character of irregularity and grew reckless.
Mark Pattison^ shows us how his real life began in the middle * See his Memoirs, London, 1855.
574 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE teens, when his energy was " directed to one end, to improve myself "; " to form my own mind; to sound things thoroughly; to be free from the bondage of unreason and the traditional prejudices.which, when I first began to think, constituted the whole of my mental fabric." He entered upon life with a " hide-bound and contracted intellect," and depicts " something of the steps by which I emerged from that frozen condition." He believes that to " remember the dreams and confusions of childhood and never to lose the recollection of the curi- osity and simplicity of that age, is one of the great gifts of the poetic character," although this, he tells us, was extraordinarily true of George Sand, but not of himself. From the age of twelve on, a Fel- lowship at Oriel was the ideal of his life, and although he became a commoner there at seventeen, his chief marvel is that he was so im- mature and unimpressionable.
Mark Rutherford ^ learned little at school, save Latin and good penmanship, but his very Hfe was divided into halves — Sundays and week days — and he reflects at some length upon the immense dan- gers of the early teens; the physiological and yet subtler psychic pen- alties of error; callousness to fine pleasures; hardening of the con- science; and deplores the misery which a little instruction might have saved him. At fourteen he underwent conversion, understood in his sect to be a transforming miracle, releasing higher and imprisoning lower powers. He compares it to the saving of a mind from vice by falling in love with a woman who is adored, or the reclamation of a young woman from idleness and vanity by motherhood. But as a boy he was convinced of many things which were mere phrases, and at- tended prayer-meetings for the clanship of being marked off from the world and of walking home with certain girls. He learned to say in prayer that there was nothing good in him; that he was rotten and filthy and his soul a mass of putrefying sores, but no one took him at his word and expelled him from society, but thought the better of him. Soon he began to study theology, but found no help in suppress- ing tempestuous lust, in understanding the Bible, or getting his doubts answered, and all the lectures seemed irrelevant chattering. An infidel was a monster whom he had rarely ever seen. At nineteen he began to preach, but his heart was untouched till he read Wordsworth's lyrical ballads, and this recreated a living God for him, melted his heart to tears, and made him long for companionship; its effect was in- stantly seen in his preaching, and made him soon slightly suspected as heretical.* * S«e his Autobiography, edited by Reuben Shapcott. 2 vols. London, 188 1.
2 The rest of the two volumes is devoted to his further life of a dissenting min- ister, who later became something of a literary man; relating how he was slowly driven to leave his little church, 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 his remarkable daughter. All in all it is a rare study of emancipation.
ADOLESCENCE IN LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY 575 John Addington Symonds, in his biography, describes his " insect- like " devotion to creed in the green infancy of ritualism. In his early teens at boarding-school he and his mates, with half sincerity, followed a classmate to compline, donned surplices, tossed censers, arranged altars in their studies, bought bits of painted glass for their windows, and illuminated crucifixes with gold dust and vermilion. When he was confirmed, this was somewhat of an epoch. Preparation was like a plowshare, although it turned up nothing valuable, and stimulated esthetic and emotional ardor. In a dim way he felt God near, but he did not learn to fling the arms of the soul in faith around the cross of Christ. Later the revelation he found in Plato removed him farther from boyhood. He fell in love with gray Gothic churches, painted glass, organ lofts, etc.