craves utility, and when all these instincts are denied, without knowing what is
the matter, he drops out of school, when with robust tone and with a truly boy
life, such as prevails at Harrow, Eton, and Rugby, he would have fought it
through and have done well. This feminization of the school spirit, discipline,
and personnel is bad for boys. Of course, on the whole, perhaps, they are made
more gentlemanly, more at ease, their manners improved, and all this to a
woman teacher seems excellent, but something is the matter with the boy in
early teens who can be truly called "a perfect gentleman." That should come
later, when the brute and animal element have had opportunity to work
themselves off in a healthful normal way. They still have football to themselves,
and are the majority perhaps in chemistry, and sometimes in physics, but there is
danger of a settled eviration. The segregation, which even some of our schools
are now attempting, is always in some degree necessary for full and complete
development. Just as the boys' language is apt to creep into that of the girl, so
girls' interests, ways, standards and tastes, which are crude at this age, sometimes
attract boys out of their orbit. While some differences are emphasized by
contact, others are compromised. Boys tend to grow content with mechanical,
memorized work and, excelling on the lines of girls' qualities, fail to develop
those of their own. There is a little charm and bloom rubbed off the ideal of
girlhood by close contact, and boyhood seems less ideal to girls at close range.
In place of the mystic attraction of the other sex that has inspired so much that is
best in the world, familiar comradeship brings a little disenchantment. The
impulse to be at one's best in the presence of the other sex prows lax and sex
tension remits, and each comes to feel itself seen through, so that there is less
motive to indulge in the ideal conduct which such motives inspire, because the
call for it is incessant. This disillusioning weakens the motivation to marriage
sometimes on both sides, when girls grow careless in their dress and too
negligent in their manners, one of the best schools of woman's morals; and when
boys lose all restraints which the presence of girls usually enforces, there is a
subtle deterioration. Thus, I believe, although of course it is impossible to prove,
that this is one of the factors of a decreasing percentage of marriage among
educated young men and women.
At eighteen or twenty the girl normally reaches a stage of first maturity when her
ideas of life are amazingly keen and true; when, if her body is developed, she
can endure a great deal; when she is nearest, perhaps, the ideal of feminine
beauty and perfection. Of this we saw illustrations in Chapter VIII. In our
environment, however, there is a little danger that this age once well past there
will slowly arise a slight sense of aimlessness or lassitude, unrest, uneasiness, as