BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1265 



problems. We cannot do more than recall some of the fundamental 

 facts. Firstly, adolescence is a period when there is a re-acceleration 

 of growth ; therefore, it is a time when the growing life requires plenty 

 of sleep, rest and food. Secondly, it is a time when definite re-arrange- 

 ments are going on in the body, in the nervous system in particular ; 

 such as new emotions and ambitions, which must be regarded 

 generously and tolerantly, provoking as they so often are. The 

 cruelty and the insurgence of youth are familiar, but let us try to 

 appreciate them biologically; they are the expressions of a new 

 outlook. Thirdly, it is during this time of adolescence that the 

 reproductive hormones find normal activity — sometimes in a very 

 gentle way like the dawn, sometimes in a stormy way like a volcanic 

 explosion. In some way or other the sex-urge and the emotion of 

 love must find expression. Here arise much-discussed problems. 

 Only a few suggestions can be made here. It is possible, it seems to 

 us, that part of the modern emphasis laid on sex difficulties is mis- 

 taken, that there is a tendency to some extent to make a scapegoat 

 of sex, whereas what is really wrong is a poverty of nature. In the 

 second place, there is much hope in having sound biology on the 

 one hand and definite physiology on the other. We must help our 

 children to face the physiological facts, teaching them as imperson- 

 ally as possible, getting the facts clear and leaving the deductions to 

 be drawn therefrom. Of course, much more is needed than physi- 

 ology; we must help the young to think of these things in a big way, 

 to hitch the wagon of sex to the stars, we must remind them from 

 history that some of the finest things in the world have been done 

 because of the love between men and women. Of course we should 

 nail to the counter the lie, which is so prevalent, that continence 

 in young men is bad for health. That lie, at any rate, should be 

 exposed to the senior boys. No doubt we are moving away from 

 the idea of preventing people from going wrong by fear. But perhaps 

 there is a wholesome fear. There is utility in telling the youth what 

 the late Sir Frederick Mott has told us about the consequences of 

 over-indulgence on the man's side in early years. Mott pointed out 

 the correlation between the opposite of continence and mental 

 disease in later life. This is a question for experts, but if it be true 

 that sexual intemperance is apt to be correlated with a nervous 

 breakdown in later life, then the fear of that should be rather fostered 

 than ignored. Perhaps we should have more fear of a great many 

 things — fear of obscurity, fear of coming to a rapid conclusion, fear 

 of a great many evils. Perhaps we must not too hurriedly try to 

 dispense with the fear-factor in education, although greater and more 

 powerful is what Dr. Thomas Chalmers called "the expulsive power 

 of a new affection." 



Following the curve a little further we come to falling in love, 

 or, as it should be called, rising in love— a great chapter in the trajec- 



VOL. II MM 



