duplicate those of the chooser. "There is an apparent struggle between the real
actual self and the ideal self; a pretty strong desire to have a chum that embodies
the traits youth most desire but which they are conscious of lacking." The strong
like the weak; those full of fun the serious; the timid the bold; the small the
large, etc. Only children[23] illustrate differing effects of isolation, while
"mashes" and "crushes" and ultra-crony-ism with "selfishness for two" show the
results of abnormal restriction of the irradiation of the social instinct which
should now occur.[24]
M. H. Small,[25] after pointing out that communal animals are more intelligent
than those with solitary habits, and that even to name all the irradiations of the
social instinct would be write a history of the human race, studied nearly five
hundred cases of eminent men who developed proclivities to solitude. It is
interesting to observe in how many of these cases this was developed in
adolescence when, with the horror of mediocrity, comes introspection, apathy,
irresolution, and subjectivism. The grounds of repulsion from society at this age
may be disappointed hunger for praise, wounded vanity, the reaction from over-
assertion, or the nursing of some high ideals, as it is slowly realized that in
society the individual cannot be absolute. The motives to self-isolation may be
because youth feels its lack of physical or moral force to compete with men, or
they may be due to the failure of others to concede to the exactions of inordinate
egotism and are directly proportional to the impulse to magnify self, or to the
remoteness of common social interests from immediate personal desire or need,
and inversely as the number and range of interests seen to be common and the
clearness with which social relations are realized. While maturity of character
needs some solitude, too much dwarfs it, and more or less of the same paralysis
of association follows which is described in the nostalgia of arctic journeys,
deserts, being lost in the jungle, solitary confinement, and in the interesting
stories of feral men.[26] In some of these cases the mind is saved from entire
stultification by pets, imaginary companions, tasks, etc. Normally "the tendency
to solitude at adolescence indicates not fulness but want"; and a judicious
balance between rest and work, pursuit of favorite lines, genuine sympathy, and
wise companionship will generally normalize the social relation.
First forms of spontaneous social organizations.— Gulick has studied the
propensity of boys from thirteen on to consort in gangs, do "dawsies" and
stumps, get into scrapes together, and fight and suffer for one another. The
manners and customs of the gang are to build shanties or "hunkies," hunt with