Youth_ Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene - G. Stanley Hall

manners, habits, etc., of those older than itself. But now stature suddenly
increases, and the power of physical and mental endurance and effort diminishes
for a time; larynx, nose, chin change, and normal and morbid ancestral traits and
features appear. Far greater and more protracted, though unseen, are the changes
which take place in the nervous system, both in the development of the cortex
and expansion of the convolutions and the growth of association-fibers by which
the elements shoot together and relation of things are seen, which hitherto
seemed independent, to which it seems as if for a few years the energies of
growth were chiefly directed. Hence this period is so critical and changes in
character are so rapid. No matter how confidential the relations with the parent
may have been, an important domain of the soul now declares its independence.
Confidences are shared with those of equal age and withheld from parents,
especially by boys, to an extent probably little suspected by most parents.
Education must be addressed to freedom, which recognizes only self-made law,
and spontaneity of opinion and conduct is manifested, often in extravagant and
grotesque forms. There is now a longing for that kind of close sympathy and
friendship which makes cronies and intimates; there is a craving for strong
emotions which gives pleasure in exaggerations; and there are nameless longings
for what is far, remote, strange, which emphasizes the self-estrangement which
Hegel so well describes, and which marks the normal rise of the presentiment of
something higher than self. Instincts of rivalry and competition now grow strong
in boys, and girls grow more conscientious and inward, and begin to feel their
music, reading, religion, painting, etc., and to realize the bearing of these upon
their future adult life. There is often a strong instinct of devotion and self-
sacrifice toward some, perhaps almost any, object, or in almost any cause which
circumstances may present. Moodiness and perhaps a love of solitude are
developed. "Growing fits" make hard and severe labor of body and mind
impossible without dwarfing or arresting the development, by robbing of its
nutrition some part of the organism—stomach, lungs, chest, heart, back, brain,
etc.—which is peculiarly liable to disease later. It is never so hard to tell the
truth plainly and objectively and without any subjective twist. The life of the
mere individual ceases and that of person, or better, of the race, begins. It is a
period of realization, and hence often of introspection. In healthy natures it is the
golden age of life, in which enthusiasm, sympathy, generosity, and curiosity are
at their strongest and best, and when growth is so rapid that, e.g., each college
class is conscious of a vast interval of development which separates it from the
class below; but it is also a period subject to Wertherian crises, such as Hume,
Richter, J.S. Mill, and others passed through, and all depends on the direction
given to these new forces.