212 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
proportion in the two sexes, is given by the different nature of the offenses which called forth the punishment : while in the boys active offenses prevailed — quarreling, fighting, thefts, and attempted thefts — the girls, on the contrary, surpass the boys in the number of what we may call passive or negative faults : idle- ness, negligence, and untidiness. The girls are more numerous in only one class of active offenses — sins of the tongue.
This psychic hyperaesthesia which in the male youth especially accompanies the development of puberty, and gives an indication of its appearance by the atavic spirit of combativeness in the degenerates, and among the normal youths by the restlessness which alters their conduct, constitutes the first powerful leaven of progress, in so far as through the law of transfest it becomes capable of arousing and maintaining the employment of force in the new directions in which is developed the social struggle for love no less than for the preservation of life Where the sympathy of the woman is seen, thither runs the activity of man. In the degenerate classes, both higher and lower, where physical force, reckless daring, are more highly prized than anything else, we have the violent criminality in full bloom : murders and robberies in the lower classes, and in the upper classes the duel.
In proportion as the lot of woman becomes better among the nations, and she is more free to follow the maternal instinct, better educated, better advised' on the choice of a husband, we see the man apply himself with greater energy and perseverance to the acquirement of the wealth and social position which make him preferred by the woman. The profiting by these tendencies even from the first years of puberty, that is, the turning to the benefit of the education of the young man, and to the profit of society, the new condition presented in him, is the greatest mark of ability in the persons appointed to direct the activity of the young. All our life long emotion is the steam engine placed at the serv- ice of our activity. Ideas, the cerebral patrimony, have only a limited part in the regulation of our actions ; the real impulse, the living force, which guides them comes from the emotions ; whence, the stronger and more strongly felt are these, the greater the activity to which they may urge the man. The more
