1 See its psychology and dangers well pointed out by M. H. Small: Psychical Relations of Society and Solitude. Pedagogical Seminary, YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE sense in which, for both society and for the individual, it makes no practical difference whether experts think there is some taint of insanity, provided only that irresponsibility is not hopelessly complete.
In few aspects of this theme do conceptions of and practises in regard to adolescence need more radical reconstruction. A mere accident of circumstance often condemns to criminal careers youths capable of the highest service to society, and for a mere brief season of temperamental outbreak or obstreperousness exposes them to all the infamy to which ignorant and cruel public opinion condemns all those who have once been detected on the wrong side of the invisible and ar- bitrary line of rectitude. The heart of criminal psy- chology is here; and not only that, but I would con- clude with a most earnest personal protest against the current methods of teaching and studying ethics in our academic institutions as a speculative, historical, and abstract thing. Here in the concrete and saliently objective facts of crime it should have its beginning, and have more blood and body in it by getting again close to the hot battle line between vice and virtue, and then only, when balanced and sanified by a rich ballast of facts, can it with advantage slowly work its way over to the larger and higher philosophy of con- duct, which, when developed from this basis, will be a radically different thing from the shadowy phantom, schematic speculations of many contemporary moralists, taught in our schools and colleges.
CHAPTER VIII BIOGRAPHIES OF YOUTH Knightly ideals and honor — Thirty adolescents from Shakespeare-^ Goethe — C. D. Warner — Aldrich — The fugitive nature of adolescent experience — Extravagance of autobiographies — Stories that attach to great names — Some typical crazes — Illustrations from George Eliot, Edison, Chatterton, Hawthorne, Whittier, Spencer, Huxley, Lyell, Byron, Heine, Napoleon, Darwin, Martineau, Agassiz, Madame Ro- land. Louisa Alcott, F. H. Burnett, Helen Keller, Marie Bashkirtseff, Mary MacLane, Ada Negri, De Quincey, Stuart Mill, Jefferies, and scores of others.
The knightly ideals and those of secular life gen- erally during the middle ages and later were in striking contrast to the ascetic ideals of the early Christian Church; in some respects they were like those of the Greeks. Honor was the leading ideal, and muscular de- velopment and that of the body were held in high respect; so that the spirit of the age fostered concep- tions not unlike those of the Japanese Bushido. Where elements of Christianity were combined with this we have the spirit of the pure chivalry of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, which affords perhaps the very best ideals for youth to be found in history, as we shall see more fully later.
In a very interesting paper, entitled " Shakespeare and Adolescence,'^ Dr. M. F. Libby ^ very roughly reck- ons *' seventy-four interesting adolescents among the 1 Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1901, vol. 8, pp. 163-205.
YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE comedies, forty-six among the tragedies, and nineteen among the histories/' 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 fol- lows: Romeo, Juliet, Hamlet, Ophelia, Imogen, Perdita, Arviragus, Guiderius, Palamon, Arcite, Emilia, Ferdi- nand, Miranda, Isabella, Mariana, Orlando, Rosalind, Biron, Portia, Jessica, Phebe, Katharine, Helena, Viola, Troilus, Cressida, Cassio, Marina, Prince Hal, and Rich- ard of Gloucester. The proof of the youth of these char- acters, 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 ex- tent he also finds the story of the Passionate Pilgrim '' replete with the deepest knowledge of the passions of early adolescence. ' ' The series culminates in Sonnet 116, 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.
In looking over current autobiographies 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 careful and suggestive philosophic reflec- tions. The development of his own tastes, capacities, BIOGRAPHIES OF YOUTH and his entire adult consciousness 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 prob- lems essential to his self-knowledge; and in the story of his life he has exploited all available resources of 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 mem- bers of his household, who are caricatured; all the pre- cious associations of early life on a New England farm are not only made absurd, but from beginning to end his book has not a scintilla of instruction or suggestion for those that are interested in child life. Aldrich ^ is bet- ter, 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 en- gagement later blighted his life. Howells,^ White,* Mitter,^ Grahame,® Heidi,^ and Mrs. Burnett,^ might perhaps represent increasing grades of merit in thi^ field in this respect.
Yoder,^ in his interesting study of the boyhood of great men, has called attention to the deplorable careless- 1 Being a Boy. 2 Story of a Bad Boy.
3 A Boy's Town. * Court of Boyville.
s The Spoilt Child, by Peary Chandmitter. Translated by G. D. Os- well. Thacker, Spink and Co., Calcutta, 1893. ^ The Golden Age.
7 Frau Spyri. s The One I Knew the Best of All.
9 The Study of the Boyhood of Great Men. Pedagogical Seminary, YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE ness of their biographers concerning the facts and in- fluences of their youth. He advocates the great ped- agogic 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-flve such accounts in 1849, also sought to revive. Yoder selected fifty great modern biographies, autobiographies pre- ferred, for his study. He found a number of lives 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, imagination is perhaps still more a youthful condition of eminence; magnifies the stim- ulus of poverty, the fact that elder sons become prom- inent nearly twice as often as younger ones; and raises the question whether too exuberant physical develop- ment 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 trans- itory and very easily forgotten, so that they are often totally lost to the adult consciousness. Lancaster ^ ob- serves that we are constantly told by adults past thirty that they never had this and that experience, and that those who have had them are abnormal; 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 1 The Vanishing Character of Adolescent Experiences. North- Western Monthly, June, 1898, vol. 8, p. 644.
BIOGRAPHIES OF YOUTH 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 resolutions 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 conclu- sively that she had passed through about all the phases described. These phenomena are sometimes very in- tense and may come late in life, but it is impossible to remember feelings and emotions wdth 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 AVhite,^ 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 banished among the pur- blind grown-ups. The town of Boyville 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 writ- ers have given true pictures of the chief traits of this developmental period, which can rarely be ascertained with accuracy. The adult finds it hard to recall the 1 The Court of BojryiUe, by William Allen White. New York, 1899, YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE emotional and instinctive life of the teens which is ban- ished without a trace, save as scattered hints may be gathered from diaries, chance experiences, or the recol- lections of others. But the best observers see but very little of what goes on in the youthful soul, the develop- ment 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 reap- pears in somewhat different 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 characterizations of adolescence are so marked by ex- travagance, and sometimes even by the struggle for lit- erary effects, that they are not always the best documents, although often based on personal experience. Con- fessionalism is generally overdrawn, distorted, and es- pecially the pains of this age are represented as too keen. Of George Eliot's types of adolescent character, this may best be seen in Maggie Tulliver, with her enthusiastic self-renunciation, with " her volcanic upheavings of im- prisoned 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 1 The Study of Adolescence. Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1891, BIOGRAPHIES OF YOUTH swayed in feeling and action by the presence of a person of the other sex whom she 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 conduct tended to promote proposals." Exaggeration, although not the perversions of this age often found in adult characterizations, 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 practi- cal affairs. If Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the ado- lescent 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 biographies, 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 leadership; 49 had great longings of many kinds; 46 developed scientific 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 passionately altruistic; 23 became idealists; 23 showed powers of invention; 17 were devoted to older friends; 1 Lancaster: The Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence. Peda- gogical Seminary, July, 1897, vol. 5, p. 106.
YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE 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 complete.
A few typical instances from Lancaster must here suffice. Savonarola was solitary, pondering, meditating, felt profoundly the evils of the world and need of re- form, and at twenty-two spent a whole night planning his career. Shelley during these years was unsocial, much alone, fantastic, wandered 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 inspiration of his life. George Eliot at thirteen had a passion for music and became a clever pianist. At sixteen she was religious, founded societies for the poor and for 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 purpose 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 religious experience at seventeen and wept for joy over his new life. He had a period before twenty when BIOGRAPHIES OF YOUTH 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, immensely in love, wept often without cause, etc. Keats had a great change at fourteen, wrestling with frequent obscure and pro- found stirrings of soul, with a sudden hunger for knowl- edge 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 seven- teen 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 wan- derer, sitting idly for hours under the trees. Alexander Murray awoke to life at fifteen and acquired several languages in less than two years. Gifford was dis- traught for lack of reading, went to sea at thirteen, be- came 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 alien- ated 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 Cambridge; 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 Boston; 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, mercurial, devoted to nature, art, and literature.
YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE He became a painter of talent, then a poet, and left home at seventeen. Bryant was sickly till fourteen- and be- came permanently well thereafter; was precociously de- voted to nature, religion, prayed for poetic genius and wrote Thanatopsis before he was eighteen. Jefferson doted on animals and nature at fourteen, and at seven- teen studied fifteen hours a day. Garfield, though liv- ing 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 before 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. AVhittier 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. J. T. Trowbridge learned German, French, and Latin alone before twenty-one; composed poetry at the plow and wrote it out in the even- ing. Joseph Henry followed a rabbit under the Pub- lic Library at Albany, found a hole in the floor that admitted him to the shelves, and, unknown to any one, 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 be- came a good amateur actor. H. H. Boyesen 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- BIOGRAPHIES OF YOUTH teen, had almost a horror of destroying a leaf, flower, or fly. Jahn found growing in his heart, at this age, an inextinguishable 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 engi- neer 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 lit- erature, 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 there- after 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; commanded 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 them- selves 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