Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/430

414 CRITICAL NOTICES : due in part to the consciousness of a new danger in life, it will depend largely on the state of society and the grade of society in which girls are brought up, as well as upon the modesty of their character. Where women are sure of respect and a chivalrous attitude in men toward them, they will have little to fear. Do American and English girls of the better classes grow up into demure maidens with downcast looks, whose hearts flutter when- ever a man approach them? And can we imagine that such types as Catherine and Marie Tonsard in Balzac's Les Paysana were ever made timid by the advent of puberty? If we take next the supposed increase of sensibility with girls, what does this vague quality signify? Do they become more sensitive to all impressions of sight, touch, taste and hearing, or is it their feelings of pleasure and pain which are referred to ? Do their emotions become more intense and more easily excited ? And is it the fact that boys, on the other hand, become more audacious? Among boys badly brought up, in bad surroundings, with strong passions, indulging on all occasions when the other sex is spoken of in obscene language, awaiting the first oppor- tunity to gratify their desires, the advent of puberty may make them more audacious and impudent in relation to the other sex. But among boys well brought up, and where the tone of a school is good, the effect is often quite opposite. It is between the ages of sixteen and twenty or thereabouts that the bashfulness and timidity of youths in the presence of young women becomes so clearly manifested. Their new state, of which they may be but vaguely, if at all conscious, makes them suddenly shame-faced in the society of women. But even this result, if it be certainly in- fluenced by the advent of puberty, is largely conditioned by the preceding frequency or infrequency of social intercourse, and companionship in games and sports, between the sexes. If we then pretend to raise the study of character to the rank of a science, or if, more modestly, we merely attempt to study it by the scientific methods in use in general psychology, we cannot allow such loose and unanalysed statements as we have been considering to pass unchallenged. In describing any change of character it is not sufficient to give the names of its qualities, as 'modesty,' 'timidity,' 'delicacy'. Such qualities must be thoroughly analysed before they can be employed with anything approaching precision. Then only shall we be able to appreciate how much truth there may be in the current generalisations about them and the causes to which they are due. Unfortunately the recent works on the subject have mainly been composed of such loose statements, which we know not how to treat because we can get no grip of the thought contained in them. An error that is trenchant and cut into clear thought and expression we can deal with, but truth or error that lies concealed in the vague thought of those words^ which express the qualities of character reduces us to despair.