November 3, 1904] 



NA TURE 



ADOLESCENCE. 



Adolescence: its Psychology and its Relations to 

 Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, 

 Religion. By G. Stanley Hall, Ph.D., LL.D., 

 President of Clark University and Professor of 

 Psychology and Pedagogy. Vol. i., pp. XX + 5S9; 

 vol. ii., pp. vi + 784. (New York: D. .^ppleton and 

 Co., 1904.) Price 31s. 6d. net. 



THIS work is one of wide-reaching scope and 

 interest. The subject of human growth has 

 already been studied in relation to the earlier years 

 and in its special features. The period intervening 

 between childhood and adult life, which has been com- 

 paratively neglected, is the one to which Dr. Hall has 

 directed his investigation. The work is thus of interest 

 in focussing attention on an important section of 

 human life; it is of value also in that the results of 

 biology and anthropology are freely used in supple- 

 menting and interpreting the data which are gained 

 from physiological and psychological investigation. 



The first three chapters deal mainly with physical 

 growth, taking up in order the increase in height and 

 weight, the growth of parts and organs, and the 

 growth in muscular power. The next two chapters 

 deal with the physical and mental disorders of 

 adolescence, and with juvenile faults and immorality. 

 Sex is taken up in three chapters, one relating to boys 

 and two to girls ; of these two chapters one deals with 

 the physiology of sex, the other with its bearing on 

 education. Dr. Hall insists with great earnestness on 

 the necessity of ceasing to mould woman's education 

 on that of man, and of finding an education which 

 shall be adapted to her nature, physical and mental. 

 The volume closes with an account of adolescence in 

 literature, biography, and history. 



In the second volume, after a preliminary survey of 

 changes in the senses and in voice, the emotional 

 phenomena of adolescence are treated under the head- 

 ings of adolescent love and adolescent feeling towards 

 nature. Several chapters deal with social and 

 historical relations ; initiations in savage and classical 

 times, confirmation as their correlative in modern 

 religion, the social instincts and institutions of youth, 

 ethnic psychology, and the treatment of uncivilised 

 races, form the subject of successive discussions. In 

 treating the subject of religious conversion, Dr. Hall 

 points out that it is peculiarly a phenomenon of 

 adolescence, and that it has close relations to the se.vual 

 life. " It is thus," he says, " no accidental syn- 

 chronism of unrelated events that the age of religion 

 and that of sexual maturity coincide." In the chapter 

 on intellectual development and education there is a 

 careful review of education in school and college, and 

 a discussion of its value in the light of the results 

 presented in preceding sections. Dr. Hall does not 

 hesitate to condemn vigorously and comprehensively 

 the studies and methods of schools for their aridity 

 and want of vital relation to the developing individual, 

 and though his criticisms are directed to American 

 schools, they have a wider application. 



It will thus be seen that we have in these volumes 

 a text-book of adolescence in which scientific and 

 NO. 1827, VOL 71] 



practical interests are closely blended. Underlying the 

 scientific treatment there may be said to be two lead- 

 ing principles. One principle is that of the intimate 

 union, or rather the identity, of physiological and 

 psychological processes. 



" More summarily, then," he says, " the idea of 

 soul we hold to is in its lower stages indistinguishable 

 from that of life, and so far in a sense we revert to 

 .\ristotle, in holding that any truly scientific psycho- 

 logy must be first of all biological. . . . The first 

 chapter of a scientific psychology, then, is metabolic 

 and nutritive, and the first function of the soul is in 

 food getting, assimilation, and dissimilation." 



The other principle, of greater novelty and interest, 

 is the application of the recapitulation theory to the 

 mental as well as the bodily life of childhood and youth. 



" Realising the limitations and qualifications of the 

 recapitulation theory in the biologic field, I am now 

 convinced that its psychogenetic applications have a 

 method of their own, and although the time has not 

 yet come when any formulation of these can have much 

 value, I have done the best with each instance as it 

 arose." 



In his application of this theory Dr. Hall is un- 

 doubtedly original, but it is strange that among the 

 many references to the literature of the subject there- 

 should be no mention of the work of Baldwin on 

 " Mental Development in the Child and the Race," in 

 which the same theory is applied in detail. 



That the work took its origin in courses of lectures 

 may perhaps explain in part the diffuseness and repeti- 

 tion which appear in these pages. There is an un- 

 necessarily frequent use of strange words ; one is at a 

 loss to understand, for example, what is meant by the 

 " solipsistic hopo " and by minds that are "rily." 

 One meets with long lists of objects and with masses 

 of facts which are not adequately correlated. 



It is impossible to enter on a discussion of the many 

 theoretical and practical questions which are raised. 

 The treatment of the material, gathered from the most 

 varied sources, is original and suggestive in a high 

 degree ; but among the wealth of new material and 

 new conceptions one misses an exact discussion of the 

 method by which the processes of psychogenesis are to 

 be ascertained. Prominent among the data in the 

 book are the results of the questionnaires which have 

 been so much used by Dr. Hall and his pupils. We 

 have, however, no presentation of the difficulties 

 inherent in such a method of investigation, and of the 

 precautions to be adopted in utilising its results. 

 Apart from this special point there is the difficulty, 

 which does not receive adequate attention, of dis- 

 tinguishing in any stage of adolescent development 

 what is to be regarded as " palasopsychic," what is 

 due to traditions and customs handed down from 

 generation to generation of boys and girls, and lastly, 

 what is conditioned primarily by the awakening mental 

 and physical activity of the individual as he reacts on 

 his experience. There is not sufficient treatment 

 of the idea of individual growth in completeness and 

 complexity, and of its relation to factors of de- 

 velopment, the meaning of which is to be sought in 

 past organic history ; and one feels that some of the 

 suggestions of racial influences are little more than. 



