THE CYCLE OF SEX 121 



new complexities and new controls) gains 

 which have to be paid for. Thus it is that 

 adolescence is full of portent as well as 

 promise. 



A third biological fact must enter into our 

 conception of adolescence. It embraces the 

 momentous, critical time when decision is 

 given in regard to the individual variations 

 that crop up during the juvenile period. It 

 is in early youth that variations or new 

 departures take shape ; the play period (poorly 

 though we provide for this) gives them some 

 elbow-room ; but it is in adolescence that 

 they have to run the gauntlet, and this at 

 once of natural selection and of social criticism. 

 From one side threaten the conditions of the 

 organic struggle for existence, on the other 

 the rules of the serious game of life, and with 

 these come all sorts of restrictions, from the 

 law of the jungle to the conventions of social 

 behaviour; each and all closing in upon the 

 individualities, the idiosyncrasies, the peculiar- 

 ities, in a word, the variations of the young 

 life. The same thing applies, in a measure at 

 least, to modifications, that is to say, those 

 bodily and mental peculiarities which are 

 acquired as the result of peculiarities of 

 nurture. Great modifiability is characteristic 

 of early youth, but it is often during the later 

 adolescent period that it is decided whether 

 a piece of juvenile veneer is to persist or not. 

 When youthful modifications, for good or ill, 

 survive the adolescent period, the chances 

 are that they wili persist throughout life. 



PUBERTY IN MAN. Puberty is not so much 

 an event as a result, that of a gradual process 



