ADOLESCENCE
ADOLESCENCE
BY
CONSTABLE & COMPANY
LIMITED LONDON
First printed 1917.
This lecture was read toOxford University ExtensionStudents, in the SheldonianTheatre, in August, 1917. Thegeneral subject of the lectures andclasses was “The Near Future:problems of construction and reconstruction.”
The Master of University College,who presided over the meeting,pointed out that I had said nothingof the help which is given to youngmen by their sisters. He spoke[6]of the legions of young men who“keep straight” because they keepin mind what their sisters are tothem. I ought to have said somethingof this influence of home-life.
And I ought, perhaps, to havedefined with more exactness thevery words which I would use, ifit were my duty to attempt a boy’s“sex-education”—we could hardlyfind an uglier title for it. But Iwas afraid to say more than I didsay. The great thing is, that theparent, or it may be the teacher,should be able to tell the child,“Do come to me, right away,[7]whenever you are puzzled orshocked at anything that you read,or hear, or notice: and I will tellyou, as well as I can, all that youneed to know about it.” And thegreatest thing of all is careful self-preparation.To answer a childwith evasive or lying nonsense isto offend the child: and we haveit on good authority that we deservefor that offence the millstoneround our necks, and the depth ofthe sea.
The honour of coming herewas embittered by the difficultyof deciding what to say andhow to say it. One of the hardestof all subjects, adolescence, wasgiven to me: with this added hardship,that I was to consider it assomething which may be reconstructedin the near future; or asa problem which we may somehowsolve. It needs more than a man[10]to understand adolescence: it needs,at the very least, a Royal Commission.I do not understand, reallyunderstand, anybody except myself;indeed, I do not thoroughly understandeven me. One thing, to beginwith, I did know about adolescence.I knew that it was a Latin word.So I looked it up in the Latin dictionary.And there I found to mysurprise that the ancients were notagreed as to the term of adolescence.Varro reckons it from the15th to the 30th year of life. Cicerospeaks of Crassus, at 34, as adolescent:he even uses the word of[11]Brutus and Cassius, when theywere 40; and, what is most unexpectedof all, he uses it of himself,in the year of his Consulship,when he was 44. Nothing couldbe more incorrigibly middle-agedthan Cicero at 44; nothing couldbe more finally settled beyond allpossibility of unsettlement. Wecannot discuss adolescence, if it isto inclu