function. These areas have during the period of childhood lain dormant. 'Looking to the gradual development of men up to puberty,' says Clouston, 'and the enormous and rather sudden leap that is then taken towards the higher mental life of the adult, we must assume an almost completed apparatus ready to be brought into use just as the centres of respiration are ready for their functions at birth.' If it is borne in mind that the central nervous system is the most delicately adjusted part of the human organism, and that it requires a greater supply of blood to restore the metabolic changes which accompany mental activity, and that likewise this is the period when the greatest strain is made on the circulatory apparatus because of the rapid physiological development in all parts of the body, one will appreciate the high degree of improbability that these new brain areas should begin to function in a harmonious manner. The available energy is not sufficient to irrigate these new areas properly in order to stimulate their functional activity to its highest degree of efficiency. One sees striking evidence of this state of affairs in the fact that physiological disorders and spiritual difficulties are so apt to show themselves simultaneously. Even under the most wholesome physiological conditions, it is to be wondered at that this readjustment should be made without friction and waste of energy. The child must come out of his little sphere and almost suddenly become the possessor of the spiritual wisdom of his kind. This is tersely stated in the words. of Clouston: In the upward course of evolution the mental part of man's brain has been the highest point hitherto reached. It has been the goal towards which all else has apparently tended. It is the superstructure, without which all the other results of evolution would have had no meaning. Though it has probably taken hundreds of thousands of years of the evolutionary process to attain this high result, yet we must never forget that it takes only about five-and-twenty years 1. Clouston, Neuroses of Development, p. 112.

and nine months to develop this organic miracle in an individual from the sperm cell and the germ cell up to the grandeur of function, the immeasurable complexity and the inexhaustible capacity that is possessed by the brain of a man of genius. Instead of one brain cortex in a thousand going wrong in this developmental process, or failing to reach a fair working capacity of function, the wonder is that in almost any case it ever attains this.'1

The anguish of the person who undergoes storm and stress is analagous to the cry of the child at birth. He experiences a readjustment equivalent to a shock, and just as it requires a child usually one or two weeks to adapt himself to the new conditions and begin to grow, it is likewise perfectly natural that the youth should experience some years of turmoil in working out the higher spiritual readjustment. The pain accompaniment is the natural result of the lack of harmonious functioning in the organism. Incipient ideas begin to make themselves felt, but do not easily fit in with old customs and habits, and the mental life is accordingly strained and torn.

If the question should arise why pain results, it is answered by a similar question why, when a foreign substance comes in contact with a physiological organism, there is no rest until the new body has been cast out or assimilated. It is the nature of the mind to work out its environment into a systematic whole. 'One of the greatest pains,' says Bagehot, 'is the pain of a new idea.'

The youth is not simply struggling with a single idea as in trying to solve a difficult problem, but the authority and majesty of the world-order is bearing in on him from every side. The wisdom of the race appeals immediately to his inner consciousness. The multiplicity of the demands made upon him leave him. in a state of mental congestion. From the standpoint of his inner consciousness they appeal to him as vague, 1 Clouston, Neuroses of Development, p. III.

indefinable possibilities.

Peace can never come until equilibrium is restored; until he either gives up the struggle, or works over and assimilates the larger world that is crowding in upon him as part of his own personality.

If our analysis so far is correct, it is evident that adolescence is one of the most critical periods of development, a time when the youth should be treated with the utmost delicacy and discretion. The germinating personality is poised between an infinite variety of possibilities; new forces are tending to sweep it in this way and that; whatever culmination of forces and crystallisation of tendencies is undergone at this period will perhaps determine its whole future life. It is the point toward which all the lines of tendency during childhood converge, and interplay with racial forces to determine the direction of the later development. It is the point at which a blunder may prove most fatal, and that likewise in which wisdom and discretion can reap the greatest harvest. Especially in regard to religious training is the situation a delicate one. Religion is concerned with the deeper instincts, it touches life at its most vital point. It is noticeable, for example, that it is in connection with religious feeling that the pathological elements of adolescence reach their most malignant form. Most of all, the difficulties of one at this critical point should be taken seriously. It should be borne in mind that the forces that are imperative to consciousness are out of the reach of the individual, that there is a new budding personality that is trying to make its way. It is usually filled with self-distrust, and what it needs most of all is to be inspired by confidence and wise counsel.

It is doubtless the ideal to be striven after that the development during adolescence should be so even and symmetrical that no crisis would be reached, that the capacity for spiritual assimilation should be constantly equal to the demands that are made on consciousness. The attainment of such an ideal is perhaps to be reached

both from the physiological and the psychic side. From the physiological standpoint, the end will be partly attained when the conditions which are conducive to ill-health and unhygienic conditions during adolescence are counteracted: the avoidance of physical strains which make too great a draft on the nervous system, the observance of the laws of health in the way of wholesome exercise, outdoor games, fresh air, and the like, which stimulate circulation, and fill the brain with good rich red blood-these are means which will without doubt be conducive to spiritual health and beauty. On the psychic side, the dangers are readily appreciated. The fatality of impressing the fact of sin and personal unworthiness, of holding out before the adolescent, who is trying to develop, the horrors of eternal punishment, and of emphasising unduly the ideal of perfection, instead of stimulating the halting and self-distrustful soul towards wholesome activity-these and numerous other indiscretions which are so frequently indulged in need only be seen to be avoided.

In view of the significance of the storm and stress phenomena, it is hardly safe to lay it down as an inviolable rule that the ideal is to escape it entirely. Unless the condition is distinctly pathological, it is conceivable that the youth is, in such times, in a most normal and hopeful state. If he is discreetly let alone at the proper time and helped over difficulties when the occasion demands it, if he is honest and earnest in struggling with his difficulties, the strife may simply mean that he is on the border of a new spiritual revelation. Not infrequently the respondents say that the greatest significance for after-development has come out of the struggles of youth. Not infrequently the feeling towards the struggle is like that expressed in Browning's lines'Then, welcome each rebuff

That turns earth's smoothness rough,

Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!

Be our joys three-parts pain!

Strive and hold cheap the strain ;

Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!'

CHAPTER XVIII

ADOLESCENCE-DOUBT

DOUBT seems to belong to youth as its natural heritage. More than two-thirds of the persons whose experience we are studying passed through a period sometime, usually during adolescence, when religious authority and theological doctrines were taken up and seriously questioned. To be exact, 53 per cent. of the women 7 and 79 per cent. of the men have had a pretty distinct/ period of doubt, which was generally violent and intense. In Dr Burnham's 'Study of Adolescence,' three-fourths of his cases passed through such a period.

We shall find that the reason underlying the prevalence of doubt is a corollary to those we have come upon in the study of storm and stress. The racial push upward, and the individual adolescent development are both, most of all, a growth into a life of clear consciousness. It is a process of emerging from the sea of diffused sensitivity into a life which is characterised by clearness of definition, and which is fully organised on the basis of logical order and sequence. During childhood 7 the force of law and order has been largely external; but now the person must see it for himself-he must be the embodiment of law. In historical development the tendency has been for that which exists to lose sight of the reasons which produced it, and to become worked over into the nature of an authority. Although the authority may be based ultimately upon reasonable principles, the youth cannot accept it unless its excuse for being has worth to his own intellect. He turns logician and