In the boy, is seen a progressive adaptation of body and brain to environment, in order to fit him for his man's task of coping with and advancing the conditions of life, material and ethical. And for this, the more delicate and sensitive woman-physique, demanding more of vital conservation for its upkeep, would be a handicap.
Biological adaptation for his part in reproduction occurs too. But the male development at this epoch is pre-eminently one of adaptation to environment; equipping him with bone and muscle, brain and enterprise, aggressiveness, initiative and energy. Racially indispensable as the reproductive function is in him, it is obviously incidental and subordinate to his general development.
The girl's transition to womanhood is seen, on the contrary, to be one almost entirely of adaptation, physiological and psychical, to the functions of wifehood and child-bearing. Her growth ceases. She loses, in place of gaining, nerve and muscle-power. While, in becoming emotional, her changed mentality unfits far more than it fits her to cope with life at first hand; with life unadapted, that is, and herself unshielded by the male. Her intelligence at eighteen is normally less keen and active—although of higher and more subtle quality and trend—than it had been at twelve.
Indications of Nature which point unmistakably to diametrically different modes of culture and of training for the sexes, and, in consequence, to wholly different applications of their respective powers and aptitudes in every department of life.
In the boy, the Male-traits receive, with adolescence, a great influx of energy; wholly dominating the Woman-traits which had made him more or less a feminine creature.
More and more each day, the potential virile in his every cell asserts itself in structure and in function; dominating the Woman-traits inherent in him. He waxes big and strong of body; restless and active of mentality. And the less, within normal limits, virility has been prematurely forced in him by too hard strain of mind or body, the better for the evolution of his manhood. Unless the Woman-traits have been unduly drilled and hardened out of him, they will now refine, inspire and fructify his awakening masculine powers. The too hard struggle for existence put, by necessity, on boys of the poorer classes, and, in the higher classes, forced on sensitive boys called upon, too young, to fight for survival in the semi-savage communities that public schools are, hardens them too soon and too summarily, and thus frustrates their best development.
It is said that there is no atrocity a boy-community will not commit.
In this stage of development, the moral consciousness of the genus is at low ebb. The accentuation of Male-traits now occurring occasions a recrudescence of primal instincts. And the collective atmosphere such recrudescence engenders in a boy-community, marooned in school-life apart from the refining, softening influences of home and womenkind, is only too often an evil and a demoralising one. Boarding-schools should be abolished; good day-schools substituted.
More than at any other phase of his existence, the masculine needs now the Woman-influences from without; because the Woman-traits within are, for a period, submerged beneath a surge of Maleness.
Notwithstanding these obvious truths, however, during the years when body and mind should be adapting gradually, consciously and subconsciously, to the social environment wherein their lives are to be passed; when the mental horizon should be expanding simultaneously with the expanding intelligence, when the moral should be rising to the new demands upon it, boys are imprisoned in scholastic institutions, where they are hemmed in by routine and restrictions, in an atmosphere of puerile conceptions, puerile traditions, puerile conventions and associations; their chief outlet and respite the narrow rules and the narrowing absorptions of so-called "Games," supervised by martinet Games-masters.