away. Work makes him forget religion; success keeps him from feeling its need. It is a law of life that use gives strength; a capacity unused weakens and dies. It is as true of the religious instinct as of any other. One need not be a sinner to lose God; he need only forget Him.

(2) This is life's doubting time. About the beginning of the twenties many-perhaps most-men and women pass through a period of doubt and negation respecting the truths of religion. There are many causes. The disillusionment of these years often brings a sense of the worthlessness of religious hopes. The college student's first vision of the great truths of science calls in question the religious conceptions he had before acquired—and all too often rightly, because his teachers have forced upon him dogmas that he could not understand, and with the best of intentions have led him to believe impos sible things. The youth, too, who gets no higher education catches the spirit of the popular science of newspapers and magazines, with a more disastrous result because it is poor science on the one hand, and he is less able to understand on the other. Perhaps he is caught by the argument of the labor agitator or socialist leader, who inveighs against religion because the church is itself a "club of the rich." Aside from all these external incentives, however, the youth is impelled to doubt from within. His metaphysical instincts have awakened. His reason is active. He must know what he believes, and he must systematize his principles of life. He seeks a unity of conception. He is a creed-maker. And just because his old religious ideas were the ideas of a child, they will not fall into unity and harmony with one another or with the new conceptions which every day brings. He can no longer be content with the old answer that these are mysteries. Youth acknowledges no mysteries. He turns to doubt.

7. But later adolescence has its reconstructive forces. Great as are the chances for disintegration in these years, life builds itself anew. We note three such forces:

(1) Education. Doubt can be met and resolved by more complete knowledge. Youth is open-minded. Take your young doubter at his word, and meet his intellectual difficulty with an intellectual answer, and you need have no fear. He is no skeptic. He seeks the truth, and he will accept it when it comes. Make sure that you know enough to teach him; make sure that you have the truth.

The routine dullness of labor, too, may be banished if the youth but learns more of his task and its bearings upon human life. Disillusionment may become warm-hearted comprehension as one gets to know,

and his interests widen. We have often wrongly defined culture. It does not mean mere acquaintance with books and paintings, or the ability to talk of historical events. It means breadth of interest-the ability to understand what the next man is doing, and to see the vital relations which his life sustains to mine, and mine to his.

"If a child goes into a sewing factory with a knowledge of the work she is doing in relation to the finished product; if she is informed concerning the material she is manipulating and the processes to which it is subjected; if she understands the design she is elaborating in its historic relation to art and decoration, her daily life is lifted from drudgery to one of self-conscious activity, and her pleasure and intelligence is registered in her product. Education must be planned so seriously and definitely for the years between fourteen and sixteen that it will be actual trade training so far as it goes, with attention given to the conditions under which money will be actually paid for industrial skill; but at the same time, that the implications, the connections, the relations to the industrial world, will be made clear. A man who makes, year after year, but one small wheel in a modern watch factory, may, if his education has properly prepared him, have a fuller life than did the old watchmaker who made a watch from beginning to end. . . . When all the young people working in factories shall come to use their faculties intelligently, and as a matter of course be interested in what they do, then our manufactured products may at last meet the demands of a cultivated nation, because they will be produced by cultivated workmen. The machine will not be abandoned by any means, but will be subordinated to the intelligence of the man who manipulates it, and will be used as a tool." ""*

For this education, too, the youth is ready who has experienced anything of the disappointment it is meant to heal. The large number of young men who are in the night schools of great cities, or who are taking correspondence courses, bears witness to this fact. The time is fast coming when our public schools will meet more adequately than they have ever done the needs of that great industrial population which constitutes the body of society.

(2) Love between the sexes. In the closing years of this period and in the early twenties "the greatest thing in the world" is likely to

* Addams: "The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets," pp. 122-128.

come into life. It is true that the sex-instincts are susceptible of grave abuse, and that passion may lead to the worst of sins. Yet life has no greater spiritual force than love for one of the opposite sex. It lifts the self above all that is carnal and gross. It makes selfishness impossible. It gains life through losing life. It brings new strength to resist temptation, and puts a new joy into work. The instinct to make a home and to live for one's children is sacred. It is God's revelation of His own nature within us. Too early marriages, of course, are unfortunate; and the conditions of modern life compel the young man of to-day to wait longer than his father did. Yet he is blessed who falls really in love with the right girl. His time of waiting and working will be one of spiritual uplift.

(3) Altruism and social service. The older adolescent is as ready as was the younger to sacrifice self for sake of others--but now he is more practical about it. Altruism is no longer a vague ideal; he seeks definite forms of social service and wants to see results. Not unselfishness in general, but a particular bit of unselfishness that counts for something, will enlist his sympathy and co-operation. The great trouble with many classes and clubs and other organizations for youths who are almost men is that they seem to have nothing real to do. Give the youth responsibility; couple him up to the real work of social betterment; make him feel that he is a worker along with you toward the same ends, instead of being himself the object of your endeavor-and you need not work to make a man of him. He will make a man of himself.

8. Finally, we dare not forget that the close of later adolescence marks "the danger line in religion." We remember from the figures quoted in the last chapter that there is a time of special religious interest at twenty, and a relatively large number of conversions. But less than one-sixth of the conversions studied took place after twenty. One-half of these, again, were before twenty-five. The chances are a thousand to one against conversion after thirty. Our duty is obvious. Preachers have appealed for repentance on the ground that we know not what hour we shall die. Stronger far is the appeal of the facts respecting the age of conversion. Now is the time, not because of what we do not know about death, but because of what we do know about life. Every day's postponement makes it the more certain that our pupil never will consecrate his life to God.

QUESTIONS

1. What are some of the factors which contribute to the development of individuality in later adolescence?

2. Into what three great classes do differences of education divide our pupils in later adolescence?

3. In what sense does later adolescence bring a new and direct contact with reality?

4. Tell something of the physical and intellectual energy of later adolescence.

5. Discuss some of the forces which tend to tear life down in this period.

6. Why is later adolescence a time when religion may easily be lost?

7. Why is later adolescence a time of doubt? How does its doubt differ from that of early adolescence?

8. Show how education may serve as a reconstructive force in a life that has been attacked by doubt, disillusionment or temptation. 9. Discuss the spiritual value of love between the sexes.

10. How does the altruism of later adolescence differ from that of early adolescence?

11. Why does the close of later adolescence mark the danger line in religion?

We have thought now of the chief characteristics of each stage in the development of a child. We have learned something of how personality grows. It would be well if we could take up the other problem of how the mind works. We should think then of those great principles of mental life which hold true in every stage of its development. But there will not be time to do that in any systematic way.

We shall spend three lessons, however, in a closer study of the laws that determine action. We have spoken a good deal of instinct, habit and will; and it is highly important that we understand clearly just what we mean by these terms. At the same time these three lessons may serve to recall and summarize many of the things we have learned thus far.

One thing must be said at the outset. When we distinguish instinct, habit and will as determining action, we do not mean to classify actions into mutually exclusive groups. In most of our behavior, the three are together present as determining factors. Any ordinary action is partly instinctive, partly voluntary, and partly habitual. Instinct determines our general tendencies or attitudes in presence of a situation, and so lays down certain broad limits within which action will lie. The will determines its specific character and purpose. Habit, finally, takes care of the details of its execution. Take as an example your conversation and behavior in any social group. Instinct determines the general attitudes you take toward others—whether shy or eager to entertain, ready or slow of speech, vivacious or phlegmatic. Your ideas determine what you want to say and do. Habit forms your words with lips and tongue, maintains your posture and makes your gestures.*

1. Instincts are natural tendencies to act in certain ways which result from the inborn organization of the nervous system. This organ ization is a matter, partly of inheritance from the race as a whole, partly

* One other thing should be said at the outset. These chapters aim to do nothing more than present briefly the substance of Professor James' doctrine on their topics. He has made these subjects peculiarly his own, by his fresh insight and wonderfully clear and attractive treatment. The teacher should read his "Talks to Teachers on Psychology."