first unconsciously, becomes the supreme motive. He is concerned with the question of the choice of a career and anxiety about making a living. His social ideals change; even parents are subjected to criticism, and now, if ever, humanity in him steps up to a higher level.

Adolescence is marked by the dominance of sentiment over thought, often by intense emotionalism and perfervid psychic states. It is the age of noble enthusiasms and hero-worship, of ambition, of symbolism and allegory, of poetry, and of intellectual curiosity especially concerning the ultimate problems of science and philosophy which are at once so tantalizing and so baffling. "Only if his lust to know nature and life is starved does his mind trouble him by in-growing."

Here, too, we see the beginning of the truly reflective consciousness. There is much more inner absorption, reverie, and introspection than before or after. Through the sex-factor there is a tremendous enlargement of the sphere of his interests, sometimes with an accompanying recoil of the individual upon himself as he realizes his immaturity and unfitness to cope with the new problems. It is a period at once of expansive growth and intensification of consciousness -the intensive made necessary by the extensive development. "One of the most important and comprehensive modifications is that, whereas most sense-stimuli before this age tend strongly to provoke reflex reactions, after it these tend to be delayed or better organized, as if there were a marked increase of associative or central functions." These are the increased irradiations, and long-circuiting, of deliberation and reflection. Hence puberty is the real birthday of the imagination, because at this time there must be developed within the individual the machinery for controling and synthesizing this greatly enlarged physical and social environment into which he so abruptly enters.

There is hunger for a fuller and larger life. The adolescent wrestles with the greatest problems. There is a dawning interest in the generic. He begins to feel the need of relating himself to a wider universe of ends and interests. Relationship is emphasized. And he now insists upon explanation. Judgment is developed. He penetrates to the motives and deeper reasons for things. There is growth of the historic sense. There is a new interest in nature and man, both dominated by what may be called the humanistic point of view.

"Youth needs repose, leisure, art, legends, romance, idealization, and, in a word, humanism." It is the time for the teaching of the cultural studies. Our educators have made the great blunder of postponing this to the college period and making the high school the time for the mastery of technique of all sorts, whereas this is just the age for laying the foundations of the fundamental cultural and social attitudes. The prime purpose of humanistic studies is moral. Dr. Hall insists that adolescence is the time for the study of the vernacular language and literature. He deplores the "excessive time given to other languages just at the psychological period of greatest linguistic plasticity and capacity for growth," "the subordination of literature and content to language-study," and "the too early substitution of reading and writing for hearing and speaking." He proposes a “radical change of base in the pedagogy of the vernacular language, literature, and history," and urges that

the prime purpose in all this field which should determine every choice of matter and method is moral, viz., to so direct intelligence and will as to secure the largest measure of social service, advance altruism, and reduce selfishness, and thus advance the higher cosmic order. Youth loves combat, and this may be developed into debate; it loves distinction and to exert influence, and this suggests oratory; it loves to assume rôles and to widen sympathy by representing . and this suggests drama. Its highest ideal is honor, and this has its best expression in what may be called the ethnic Bible of the Saxon race in its adolescent stage, the literature of chivalry. Its religious instincts are at their very best, and to these our Scriptures make the noblest appeal.

... •

Even the teaching of science should be humanistic at this age. Science itself arose by working over and over to ever more refined forms old nature-myths, and to some extent, in a true pedagogy, youth must repeat the process. The normal boy in the teens is essentially in the popular science age. He wants and needs great wholes, facts in profusion, but few formulæ. The soul naturally storms its way to the center of things with a rapid impetuosity. He is in the questioning age, but wants only

answers that are vague, brief, but above all suggestive.

Only when evolution becomes a conscious method in education and the subject-matter of curricula is presented in its true pedagogic order, a genetic rather than a logical order, so that the same material is lived over and over upon successively higher levels of growth in the child's mind-only then may we be said to have laid even the basis of a true educational philosophy.

Thus adolescence is the great plastic period in human infancy.

"The educational ideal is now to develop capacities in as many directions as possible,” to keep up the conflict, the struggle, the tension, but without allowing it ever to reach the breaking-point. "Let the diverse prepotencies struggle with each other." Keep everything fluid and fluent. "The possibility of variation in the soul is now at its height." "The chief end in view must now be to bring out all the polyphonous harmonies of human nature." The correlative educational problem is the question of elective versus proscribed courses of study.

All teaching of adolescents should be primarily inspirational rather than simply instructional. Many bright children are permanently eclipsed at this stage by injudicious training. As Dr. Hall finely says:

... •

In

There are many things it is impossible to do and remain a boy. many a schoolroom, a boy's incorrigibility saves him; the fussy martinet and red tape of schools are objects that provoke revolt in the healthy soul. . . . Youthful crime is an expression of educational failure.

In conclusion, it may be said that, in general, what is true of boys at this age is true of girls, with these two important exceptions: first, that the period of maximal growth at pubescence comes earlier in girls; and, second, that puberty is a more serious change for a girl, involving, as it often does, periodic incapacity for the ordinary activities of life. Whether the sex-difference should be made a fundamental one in education; whether woman's intellect is inferior to that of man; whether scholastic training is injurious to woman, tending to reduce her fecundity by postponing or threatening her marriageability; and coeducation versus exclusive education of adolescent boys and girls- these are some of the problems which center about this important topic.

VASSAR COLLEGE.

H. HEATH BAWDEN.

First Report of the Tenement House Department of the City of New York, January 1, 1902–July 1, 1903. Two volumes, pp. 426 and 480. By the Commissioners, Robert W. De FOREST AND LAWRENCE VEILLU.

This model report is an illustration of the value of scientific training in the public service. Good citizenship, when it seeks to give effective form to amiable intentions, must supply itself with facts and present them to the public in intelligible and telling form.

The photographic illustrations of unfit tenements give the reader almost everything but the foul odor of noisome cellar and closet. The graphic devices make statistics impressive. The tabular presentation gives the report the value of a primary document. All these systematic and even dramatic pictures of the nude and repulsive reality are used to introduce a practical program for improvement, a definite policy which is the ripe product of long study of the world's experience.

The use of the phrase "sociological work" is queer, for it is interpreted as including records of death, contagious diseases, tuberculosis, and density of population. This careless expression is out of place in a book of such high value, and it illustrates the vague way in which the scope of sociology is conceived even among intelligent persons.

The principal social interests actually treated are those of health and cost, the former being predominant; but the administrative organization is analyzed with fine precision, and the bearing of habitation on morality is more than once placed in a strong light. The method of expelling prostitution from the dwellings of honest wage-workers is worthy of imitation in other cities. Altogether the report stands in the front rank of its kind and deserves careful study. C. R. HENDERSON.

Annual Report of the State Board of Charities for the Year 1903. Volume III: "Charity Legislation in New York, 16091900." Albany: O. A. Quayle, 1904. Pp. 1300.

No previous publication has placed before the student of the history of public relief such a body of reliable materials. The archives of the state of New York have yielded rich documents, and the secretary of the State Board of Charities, and his assistants, Mr. E. H. Leggett and Mr. W. D. Ives, are entitled to great credit for the vast achievement. The compilers in the preface frankly tell us what they have done, and challenge the historians of the subject to connect the documents in a causal series. They have effaced themselves in the steadfast determination to let the primary record offer its own message, without taking space for their own opinions. Even as the materials stand in chronological order, they are interesting and intelligible. The natural periods are: the Dutch Colony of New Netherlands, 1609-64; the English Colony of New York, 1664-1776; and the State of New York, 1776–1900.

C. R. HENDERSON.

The Development of Primary and Secondary Public Education in Michigan. By DANIEL PUTNAM, Professor in the Normal College, Ypsilanti. Ann Arbor: G. Wahr, 1904. Pp. 273. For more than half a century the author of this historical sketch has been identified with all that was best in the development of education in the Middle West. His memory is an original document, and his judgment of men and testimony is always carefully and intelligently formed. The subjects of the chapters are: education in the territorial period, constitutional provisions, the state system, development of public schools of the various grades, courses of study, support, required attendance, preparation of teachers, supervision, textbooks, libraries, rights and privileges, moral and religious instruction, state board and superintendent, special institutions, statistics and references.

C. R. HENDERSON.

Yearbook of Legislation, 1903. Edited by ROBERT H. WHITTEN, Sociology Librarian, New York State Library. Albany: New York State Education Department, 1904.

This thick, handsome volume is a fine example of the splendid service which the great library with ample means and efficient agents is able to render the public and especially students. The messages of the governors of states for 1903 are valuable indications of the demands made on legislatures in all parts of the Union; the summary of legislation shows how much of these demands was actually embodied in statutes; and there are reviews of legislation by numerous specialists on interpretations of the significance and tendencies of the entire movement. Having frequent occasion to use these documents, the teacher of practical sociology has special reasons for recording his grateful recognition of their value.

C. R. HENDERSON.

Dr. Barnardo. By REV. JOHN H. BATT. London: S. W. Partridge & Co., 1904. Pp. 196.

The Duke of Argyll writes an introduction in which he speaks with enthusiasm of the work of Dr. Barnardo for the waifs of English cities, "the most fruitful enterprise of our day." The text describes the personality of the founder, whose phenomenal career has attracted the attention of the world of philanthropy, and tells the