308 BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN PROBLEMS 



arises from the fact that these emotions represent a 

 fundamental and essential biological fact, the 

 necessity of maintaining the species, and that to 

 ignore it in education is to overlook a force powerful 

 for good or evil, and hence dangerous to pass by. 



I do not consider it possible to formulate in an 

 academic manner any general rules for the education 

 of the sexually based emotions, for the reason that 

 the psychology of these emotions is as yet too little 

 understood. Yet it is possible for us to begin to 

 think of this subject as one worthy of the recogni- 

 tion of parents and educators. 



Before the ripening of the sexual glands, that is, 

 before the time of puberty, the question of directing 

 and educating the sexual instinct and the emotions 

 based on it can hardly be said to arise. But with the 

 physical maturity of boy or girl definite and complex 

 problems arise in an almost abrupt manner. The 

 outward signals that this time has arrived are char- 

 acteristic for each sex, but boy and girl have at least 

 one psychical feature in common the growth of a 

 new emotional life. This emotional life finds expres- 

 sion in a decline in interest in ordinary amusements 

 and occupations, and a corresponding growth of 

 interest in matters pertaining to the relations of the 

 sexes, to courtship, love, marriage, social functions, 

 etc. There is often a distinct lack of stability of the 

 nervous system at this time, an increased self-con- 

 sciousness, and a disposition to take a more serious, 

 and often a more egotistical, view of life. There is 



