Adolescence ; its psychology and its relation to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion and education.

  • Hall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley), 1844-1924.
Date:
1905 [©1904]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Adolescence ; its psychology and its relation to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion and education. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    Ellery Sedgwick .tells us that at thirteen the mind of Thomas Paine ran on stories of the sea which his teacher had told him, and he attempted to enlist on the privateer Terrible. He was restless at home for years, and shipped on a trading vessel at nineteen. Indeed, modern literature in our tongue abounds in this element, from Childe Harold to the second and third long chapters in Mrs. Ward's David Grieve, ending with his engagement to Lucy Purcell; Thackeray's Arthur Pendennis and his characteristic love of the far older and scheming Fanny Fothcringay; David in Allen's Reign of Law, who read Darwin, was expelled from the Bible College and the Church, and finally was engaged to Gabriclle; and scores more might be enumerated There is even Sonny,' who, rude as he was and poorly as he did in all his studies, at the same ape when he began to keep company, tallered his hair, tied a bow of ribbon to the bugg] whip, and grew interested in manners, passing things, putting on bis coat and taking off bis bat at table, began t<> Study his menagerie of pet snakes, toads, lizards, wrote John Boroughs, helped him and got help in return, took to observing, and finally wrote a book about the forest and its occupants, all of which is very bien trouvi if not historic truth. Two singular reflections always rearise in reading Goethe's autobiographical writings: first, that both the age and the place, with its ceremonies, festivals, great pomp and stir- ring events in close quarters in the little province where he lived, were especially adapted to educate children and absorb them in externals; and, second, that this wonderful boy had an extreme propensity for moralizing and drawing lessons of practical serv- ice from all about him. This is no less manifest in Wilhelm Meister's apprenticeship and travels, which supplements the autobiography. Both together present a very unique type of adolescence, the elaborate story of which defies epitome. From the puppet craze well on into his precocious university life it was his passion to explore the widest ranges of experience and then to reflect, moralize, or poetize upon them. Perhaps no one ever studied the nascent stages of his own life and elab- orated their every incident with such careful observation and analysis. His peculiar diathesis enabled him to conserve their freshness on to full maturity, when he gave them literary form. Most lack power to fully utilize their own experience even for practical self-knowdedge and guidance, but with Goethe nothing was wasted from which self-culture could be extracted. 1 Sonny. Ruth McEnery Stuart. New York, 1896.