172 SEX 



resistance would neither be enthusiastic nor 

 strong, in fact the surrender more speedy, 

 more complete, more willing even, than as 

 irate besiegers we commonly realise. 



Hence without, of course, here entering 

 into educational details beyond our present 

 province let us re-emphasise the significance 

 of adolescence as the critical phase between 

 childhood and maturity; and this for body 

 and mind, for soul and spirit : and plead here, 

 if possible more fully than even Stanley Hall 

 has done, for a reconsideration of that whole 

 scholastic and academic treatment of this, 

 which has been organised almost entirely in 

 relation to the equipment of knowledge, or 

 at most to the exercise of certain intellectual 

 powers ; and, we believe, with bad psychology 

 even for these too highly-rated fragments of 

 the problem, themselves too much dissociated 

 in practice. 



Only within comparatively recent memory 

 have our boarding-schools ceased seriously 

 to starve the growth of their boys and girls 

 at the very period when an ample diet is most 

 necessary; and even parents, who now know 

 sugar to be no luxury but a needed muscle 

 food, are still dubious of fruit ! Still on the 

 whole, the hungry boy now gets fed ; but he 

 is still apt to be starved of his own measure of 

 sleep. So let us support the family atid school 

 doctor in prescribing sleep as a first treatment 

 for the sleepy ; and even rest to those we are 

 apt to call lazy, when they are coming through 

 the languor of physical growth, or that yet 

 more pedagogically exasperating dullness and 

 inattention which is often but a symptom of 



