an agony of doubt; and it may mean the shipwreck of a soul. We need to remember that the child now has both imagination and reason, and that he will continue throughout life to need both. We must recognize the distinction that he draws between "just stories" and "things that really happened." We must minister both to the story-appetite and to the hunger for facts. And-most important of all-we must show him that there is a vast middle ground between mere fancy on the one hand and the plain recital of fact on the other; the middle ground of truth presented under the forms of the imagination. "Faust," Macbeth," "Enoch Arden," "The Idylls of the King"-who cares whether the events they tell ever happened in just that way? These tell more than facts; they feed the soul upon truth. Literature is more than history; it is a seer's vision of truth set down in pictures that we too may see. The Bible is more than a chronicle of events; it is a divinely inspired interpretation of history, a book of life and truth. 99 66 No distinction that life will bring is more important than this threefold one: literal fact, imaginative truth and mere fancy. And now, when the distinction begins to be made, is the time to shape it if we would have the boy become what he ought to be-a man of perfect fidelity to fact on the one hand, and of whole-souled appreciation of literature and art on the other, discriminating in both the true from the idle and the false. Give both the truth and the story of Santa, therefore, the myths of the Greeks and Norsemen as well as primary lessons in science, the fact with the figure in the Bible story. Do not be afraid to answer when a child asks whether a story ever happened, “No, it never happened; but don't you think it tells us something true?"-and show him just what you mean. The child is not ready, of course, to receive the whole truth on every subject-in fact, not on any. But that is not necessary. To hold something back is not to evade or deceive. We need give only so much as his spontaneous interests demand; and that must be in a form that he can understand. Children's questions about birth and sex constitute a special problem, and one peculiarly grave. The parent who evades them condemns his boy to find out from companions in ways that are full of impure suggestion. Frankly and plainly, without preaching and without mystery, these questions should be answered with the simple and literal truth-never going beyond the child's spontaneous interest, but satisfying it completely. They are not for the teacher to answer, however. It is the sacred duty of the father and mother. 6. The child of this age is still self-centered and must be dealt with individually. He likes to be with other children, but the competitive motive is strong and he has no idea of subordinating self to the good of the group. The real awakening of the social instincts comes afterward, in later childhood. The instinct of imitation, however, leads the child out in a measure beyond himself. He now imitates the doer rather than the deed. Instead of copying single actions, he wants to be like the person behind the action. He begins to think of what he would like to be when grown up, and his choice is always the reflection of what those nearest to him are—father, mother, friend or teacher. Your influence is never greater than right now. 1. Where shall we place the transition from early to middle childhood? Why? 2. Describe the physical growth and health of this period. 3. How does the play of middle childhood differ from that of early childhood? J E 4. What is the process of apperception? State the law of apperception. What problem does the process of apperception set the teacher? 5. Why are the apperceptions of middle childhood especially hard to understand? 6. How may the Sunday school teacher best make sure that he understands the ideas of Primary children? Public Sch 7. How does the imagination of middle childhood differ from that of early childhood? 8. What proofs are there that the child's reason is now awakening? 9. What is meant by the statement that the child reasons only in terms of sequence? 10. Why ought we be consistent in our dealings with children? II. How ought we meet a child's questions in search of the truth? Give all the reasons you can for your answer. 12. How does the individualism of middle childhood differ from that of early childhood? Its imitation? LESSON V LATER CHILDHOOD Life is unique in the years from nine to thirteen. The boy and girl are unlike the children that were, or the youth and maid that will be. Later childhood has as distinctive characteristics as adolescence. “Health is almost at its best, activity is greater and more varied than it ever was before or ever will be again, and there is peculiar endurance, vitality and resistance to fatigue.,.. Perception is very acute, and there is great immunity to exposure, danger, accident, as well as to temptation.”* Yet it is hard to say exactly where the period begins. The average child enters it when he begins to read easily and naturally; and it will be best for our purpose to let this mark the transition. When a child can understand and enjoy books for himself, life acquires a new range. The whole wide world of literature lies open before him, and he plunges into it with a mind as eager as ever his senses had been to make acquaintance with the material world. 1. This is a period of slow growth, of health and hardihood. The first marked difference between the sexes appears, girls being quicker to develop than boys. The tenth year in girls and the eleventh in boys are years of very slow growth. In both sexes, this retardation is followed by an acceleration which heralds the coming of adolescence. Since this acceleration begins a year or more earlier in girls, they are apt to be taller and heavier than boys at the close of this period and the beginning of the next. During the three years from nine to twelve, a boy increases in weight 29 per cent and in height less than 11 per cent-a less rapid growth than that of middle childhood. Girls increase in weight 37 per cent and in height 13 per cent. In both sexes, it is a time of good health and of boundless energy. Dr. Hartwell's tables, compiled from a careful study of Boston children in the census years 1875, 1885 and 1890, show that the power to resist disease is highest in the twelfth year for girls and in the thirteenth year for boys.† Hall: "Youth: Its Education, Regimen and Hygiene," p. 1. ↑ Hartwell: Report of Director of Physical Training, 1894, School Document No. 8, Boston, Mass., cited in Tyler: "Growth and Education,” p. 269. In the year 1907, throughout the registration area which contains nearly one-half the population of the United States, there were 10,513 deaths of children from ten to fourteen, against 15,287 from five to nine, 18,359 from fifteen to nineteen, 27,876 from twenty to twenty-four and 29,415 from twenty-five to thirty. There were over one hundred and eighty thousand deaths of children under five; and in each of the remaining five-year periods up to eighty there were more than thirty thousand.* 2. Independence and self-assertion are, to fond mothers especially, the most obvious characteristics of the period. "The child develops a life of its own outside the home circle, and its natural interests are never so independent of adult influence."† And now certainly, if at no other time, the boy's interests reflect the activities of a more prim itive generation. Fighting, hunting, fishing, exploring, collecting, go to make up his life. He is more likely to play truant or to run away than at any other period. He is full of daring and adventure, of dash and go. He cares no longer for imaginative play or for fairy stories. He is frank and practical, and has, he feels, put away childish things. 3. But there is another side. With all its independence and selfassertion, its primitive instincts and love of adventure, later childhood is amenable to law. Its "gang spirit" and its "hero-worship” mark a distinct advance in moral development. The child's social instincts begin to ripen in this period; and obedience to law becomes to him a matter of social well-being resting upon his own initiative, rather than of mere habit or imitation or authority. (1) The sexes now draw apart. Boys and girls no longer share the same interests, or enjoy the same games. Boys get a wholesome contempt for the gentler sex; and girls can see nothing nice in such rude and messy creatures as boys have gotten to be. In the latter half of this period, and in the first few years of adolescence, girls are more mature than boys of the same age. They develop more quickly, not only in body, but in mind. A high school principal expressed the difference in a striking, though somewhat extreme way, by saying that the average boy in the senior class of a high school is little more mature than the average girl in the freshman class of the same school. (2) Social motives predominate in the games of the period, which are almost wholly competitive. Some are games in which individual competes with individual, each striving for his own success and glory. * United States Census, Mortality Statistics for 1907, p. 282. But more and more the boy becomes interested in games that call for team-play rather than for individual prowess. He begins to like baseball, basketball, hockey and the like, and even tries football. In these, the best player is he who can fit best into a system of play, and work most unselfishly for the success of the team as a whole, instead of seeking to shine individually. (3) Team games call for organization; yet even aside from them, the "gang instinct," as it has been called, is at work. Boys and girls of this age naturally and spontaneously organize themselves into informal groups-the boys into "gangs" and the girls into "crowds". and into more or less formal clubs. Dr. Sheldon's study of such spontaneously organized clubs gives some very definite information concerning boyhood and girlhood. Of over a thousand boys from ten to sixteen who answered his inquiries, 851 belonged to organizations of this sort. Of the remainder, many were in clubs formed for them by adults, and some were thrown with other boys so little that they had no chance. Eight hundred and sixty-two societies were reported, and 623 fully described. Of these, 11⁄2 per cent were philanthropic, 31⁄2 per cent secret, 44 per cent social (for "good times"), 44 per cent devoted to literature, music or art, 81⁄2 per cent industrial, 17 per cent predatory (for exploring, building, hunting, fighting, preying), and 61 per cent athletic. It will be noted that physical activity is the keynote of by far the larger number-861⁄2 per cent if we add the industrial to the predatory and athletic clubs. The figures for the ages at which these clubs are formed are as follows: at eight, 28; at nine, 44; at ten, 118; at eleven, 155; at twelve, 164; at thirteen, 188; at fourteen, 90; at fifteen, 80; at sixteen, 34; at seventeen, II. We note that the ages at which the most societies are formed are eleven, twelve and thirteen. Over 87 per cent are formed between ten and fifteen, less than eight per cent before ten, and only I per cent at seventeen. The interests, too, change with age. Predatory societies are at their height at eleven, and then gradually disappear. Athletic societies multiply rapidly until thirteen, then diminish in number. The interest in literary societies grows steadily, though never very great. Girls and boys naturally organize in separation from one another. Girls form five times as many social societies as boys, twice as many philanthropic, and three times as many secret, industrial and literary. On the other hand, boys form four times as many predatory and seven times as many athletic societies as the girls-these two classes forming but 10 per cent of the girls' societies as opposed to 78 per cent of the |