assertive. Her greatest problem is that of relating new experiences to each other and to the old. She must be so understood that the energy of these capricious, boisterous, finical, headstrong years may be conserved for the reconstruction which must soon follow.

Helpful Books for Further Reading. Bibliography, Numbers 22, 28, 32, 58, 64, 69, 75, 79, 80, 94, 105, 109, 111.

CHAPTER VI

THE PERSONAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS

WHETHER the girl's mind understands it or not, her whole self now feels that she is in a new relation to the world of persons. Of course nothing is clear yet, for her life is in a process of differentiation. Spiritual life, like physical, comes to maturity by growing from the simple to the complex. The body, with its bones and muscles and viscera, its sense-organs and brain and nerves, develops from a single cell because as the germ grows and divides it differentiates. That is, each new cell has a smaller proportion of some elements of the original life stuff, and a greater proportion of others. This differentiation continues with growth, until all the tissues are completed, ready for their final uses.

Differentiation of Affections. A child's affections and personal relations are vigorous and vital, but still undifferentiated. The possibilities of sex life and affection are present to some degree throughout childhood, and false education can stimulate them precociously. Those who wish to corrupt the child mind count unerringly on the peculiar certainty of interest and response to sex suggestion. But in the child, sex is normally sleeping. In early adolescence it is tremendously awake and must be reckoned with, yet writers on adolescence frequently overemphasize the suddenness

of its appearance. The interests due to race instincts now grow with a rapidity which makes them seem a new phase of life, but they are only a development from the same root as the old but now distinct family affections. Complete differentiation will not occur till later, and the vital instinct for motherhood and mating matures last of all.

In this early adolescent period has begun a special growth in which lie possibilities of friendships and loyalties and all sorts of efforts and sacrifices, of personal intimacies and civic relationships. From this indistinct mass of potential affections now emerge the new, absorbing personal interests of this period-the Boy, the girl Chum, and the Adorée.

The Boy. Normally, the girl's new interest in the boy is in the species. If social environment or community ideals tend to narrow her interest to any one specimen, the result is even more harmful than with the pre-adolescent girl. The average, healthy-minded young girl has this instinctive interest strongly enough developed so that she has numerous boy comrades. Against premature sentimentality in her relations toward them there is "safety in numbers." If her mental activity has developed faster than other factors, she is apt at this time to have special joy in competing with boy rivals for school and social honors. The anemic, neurotic, or emotional girl, or the one with wrong training, at this stage shows her lack of normality either by intensified sex-repellence, or by boisterous familiarity, sickly sentimentality, or clandestine meetings. The goal, for both boys and girls, is a definite and dignified understanding of the meaning of sex; the recognition that modern life postpones

the personal completion of its functions; and then the frank and companionable acceptance of each other as human beings, with whom to work and study and play and grow up together.

The Chum. The girl chum is the connecting link between the old interests and the new. As she is frequently one of childhood's playmates, or at least selected from the present circle of school friends, the basis of the intimacy is a feeling of shared experiences. With the active, objective-minded girl, this chum is probably a "pal" in all her adventures and escapades. With the more introspective, subjective type, she is the chosen confidante for the new and wonderful ideals and ambitions and emotions which no one else can understand. It is hard for a girl to think of her mother as having ever been different from what she is now. These heart-thumpings are a perfectly new experience in the world; how could mother understand? The adorée, on the other hand, is too wonderful a creature to be troubled with her small concerns, and so the chum becomes another self for the interchange of self-expression. If both girls are clean-minded, and unselfish enough not to monopolize time that belongs to family and other friends, the chum is one of the most helpful and permanent interests of this period.

The Adorée. While the familiar world of the home has become in one sense a new one through the adolescent girl's feeling toward it, the world outside the home begins to hold many new and fascinating figures. To her growing sensitiveness to details and contrasts, beauty, harmony, and grace make a new appeal. With all the energetic sturdiness of most growing girls of

this age, there is nevertheless a peculiar responsiveness to graciousness and charm of manner, and to beauty or "distinction" of face and figure. Through her successive phases of hero-worship, the little girl, as we have seen, has been formulating her Ideal. Now as she enters this new adventure in living, there grows an inner certainty that this ideal woman must exist; and she must find her, and give her all the affection and loyalty that exalted character compels.

A writer about girls in private secondary schools in the United States commented on her statistics, a few years ago, "52,649 ardent creatures, who must have somebody to adore!" This phrase suggested to the present writer the coined word "adorêe," which will, therefore, be here used to signify the woman who is the object of the girl's idealizing affection. The emotion is normally compounded of wholesome affection, honest admiration for fine character, and the romantic glamour of experience for which the girl is herself a-tiptoe and a-tingling. It forms one of the strongest motives in the girl's development. If accompanied by a self-respect which prevents "mushy sentimentality," and respect for the adorée's rights which prevents monopolizing tendencies, the ardor of this affection need not be feared.

To a girl, "the object of this adoration is usually" a woman with "a character that commands respect, and shows the mystery of complete development, joined as a rule with sympathetic and gracious treatment. It is a passing phase, and involves the projection of an ideal to which the older person may in reality only remotely approximate." The recipient would be "deficient in intellect or character to treat the matter