214 THE BIOLOGY OF THE SEASONS 



It seems useful, therefore, to turn on the biological 

 light in considering the human facts, which are, in a way, 

 too near us to be fully appreciated. Let us think 

 vividly of the transition - period between tadpole and 

 frog, between caterpillar and butterfly, and so on, and 

 take back again to human life the impression of re- 

 differentiations and reintegrations (that is, of new com- 

 plexities and of new controls), of inflammatory crises and 

 of losses that mean gains. For thus we begin to under- 

 stand better why adolescence is so full of portent as well 

 as promise. 



A third fact which lends further importance to adolesc- 

 ence is that it extends over the momentous, critical time 

 when decision is given in regard to the individual variations 

 which crop up during the juvenile period. We have seen 

 that each young thing is an original, that a child is always 

 leading the race, that it is in youth that the fountain of 

 unrealised capacity wells up. We have still to consider, 

 following Groos and others, the biological importance of 

 the play-period, when inborn variations have elbow-room, 

 when new departures have a chance, when there is an oppor- 

 tunity for originality to gain self-confidence, for a new 

 pattern of personality to gain some stability. Every one 

 knows that man, like other domesticated creatures, has 

 strong play instincts. 



But on the heels of the period in which play instincts 

 find or should find full and free expression comes the 

 adolescent period, during which the conditions of the 

 struggle for existence, the rules of the serious game of life, 

 all sorts of restrictions and conventions, from the law of 

 the jungle to the etiquette of social behaviour, begin to 

 close in upon the individualities, the idiosyncrasies, the 

 peculiarities, in a word, the variations of the young life. 

 The organism must run the gauntlet of criticism, and often 



