THE CYCLE OF SEX 119 



It must not be overlooked that while a 

 pathological side may exist in very early 

 years, there is a still more important normal 

 experience, for even the infant is garnering, 

 though it be half-conseiously, its mother's 

 love. In the subsequent play -period there is 

 doubtless a partly imitative and partly 

 instinctive, but normally quite subconscious, 

 expression of the deep constitutional sex- 

 differences. 



ADOLESCENCE IN GENERAL. Leaving the 

 babe to his mother and the expert in eugenics, 

 and the child to his play and all that is 

 summed up in the word " School " (see 

 Prof. Findlay's excellent Schooliu this Library), 

 we have here to do with the adolescent. We 

 may regard adolescence as a main node on 

 the ascending curve of development, when 

 childish ways and childish things are put 

 away, when juvenile characters are for the 

 most part slipped off as a crab slips off its 

 shard, when adult characters are gradually 

 put on, when the life begins to take definitive 

 shape, when the limit of growth comes within 

 sight, and when sex-impulses, at first mere 

 passing whispers, compel a hearing to their 

 mingled voices. As regards the latter it is 

 practically the period between fifteen and 

 twenty or more in boys, between fourteen and 

 eighteen or nineteen in girls. 



We may profitably compare human adoles- 

 cence with the analogous period in animal 

 development; for while everything became 

 in a sense new with Man, there is an essential 

 unity of life which makes the whole world 

 kin. The growth of an organism is usually a 



