power behind the throne. Let one youth be president, one treasurer, one secretary, and all the rest vice-presidents. Give everybody an office. Let them take turns in conducting the class recitation. You will probably think the lesson will not be so well taught. They will certainly think it is better. You will have to do more work, study harder. Have the class leader each week at your home and possibly spend hours going over the material with him or her, but the coöperation on the part of the class, the interest taken by them in their work, will well repay the effort. School after school, teacher after teacher are bearing witness to-day to the pedagogical value of this plan. Many a day school teacher, working out this system in the Sunday School, has said, "I never got such work out of my scholars before, as I do now." The Strengthening of Conscience. Mrs. Birney, in her book upon CHILDHOOD, says: "The budding conscience which appeared about the fourth year, and which, through its expansion, has led the boy to do without protest what his parents, his teacher, or society required, now feels a need for some other guide to conduct, some explanation of human life and its phenomena. Truly has this period of life been designated as a 'second birth.' The earlier years have been filled with external objects and physical growth and needs, and now the soul seems to spring into conscious activity and to assert its sovereignty over the mind and heart. This is the time for the development of altruism, of the ideal, of all that is noble and fine and great in human character. The mind is marvellously receptive to suggestion, the brain quick to perceive, the muscles to act. If evil inclinations manifest themselves, counteract their influence, not by dwelling upon them, but by putting something else in their place in the form of occupation or amusement. Someone has said: 'We grow toward goodness rather by pulling ourselves up to it, than by pushing ourselves away from evil.'”

Referring to A MODERN STUDY OF CONSCIENCE, by Huckell, we read: "It is at this point that a modern study of conscience may be said to take up the problem and to bring it into new light. This may be considered the modern view, as now generally held: Conscience has two elements-moral judgment and moral obligation. As to judgment, it is probable that reason acts in conscience as it acts in any other matter! And therefore the judg

ments of conscience are fallible; but as to obligation, there is something unique. We recognize that an ordinary judgment of reason may or may not involve obligation. There is a sense of the ought which is manifest and unmistakable. Now this fact of the sense of moral obligation must be accounted for. The question is, whether this norm, this sense of obligation, is native or acquired. The intuitionalists would say that it is native; the evolutionists, that it is acquired. The truest view would be probably a reconciliation of these views, for in a certain way this sense of obligation is both native and acquired. Many of the intuitionalists would not, however, agree to reconciliation, for they would not accept the cosmic theory of the evolutionists, although it may give a very full and noble view of life. The intuitionalists would hold that the successive epochs of life, consciousness, morality in man, were implanted ab extra at certain stages of life or in the individual man. Many ethical thinkers of to-day define conscience as the entire moral constitution or nature of man. Some hold that this moral nature is a separate faculty in man. Thus Dr. Thomas Reid defines it as 'an original power of the mind, a moral faculty by which we have the conceptions of right and wrong in human conduct, and the dictates of which form the first principles of morals.' Others hold that conscience apprehends the distinctions of right and wrong, but only applies them personally. Thus President Mark Hopkins says: 'We may define conscience to be the whole moral consciousness of a man in view of his own actions as related to moral law.' Others hold that 'conscience should not be used as an appellation for a separate or special moral faculty, for the reason. that there is no such faculty.' This was President Noah Porter's view. "The same intellect,' he contends, 'so far as it knows itself, acts with respect to moral relations under the same laws, and by the same methods of comparison, deduction, and inference as when it is concerned with other material.'"

We see, therefore, something of the meaning of the further differing definitions of conscience that are often given. Conscience, says a naturalist, is a highly important organ for preserving life. "A man's conscience," says Clifford, "is the voice. of his tribal self, the individual self being subordinate to the tribal self." Conscience, says another, is that phase of our na

ture which opposes inclination and manifests itself in the feeling of obligation and duty. "A man's conscience," says still another, Professor Starke, "is a particular kind of pleasure and pain felt in perceiving our own conformity or nonconformity to principles." "Conscience," says Professor Frederick Paulsen, "is a knowledge of a higher will by which the individual feels himself internally bound." Trendelenburg asserts that conscience is the reaction and proaction of the total God-centered man against the man as partial, especially against the selfseeking part of himself. Schlegel's definition is interesting: "Conscience is an inward revelation as a warning voice, which though sounding in us, is not of us, and makes itself to be felt as an awe and fear of Deity. It is in all human bosoms and lies at the source of all morality."

This subject will be dealt with again under the chapter on the Training of the Will.

The Century Dictionary defines Conscience as: "The Consciousness that the acts for which a person believes himself to be responsible do or do not conform to his ideal of right; the moral judgment of the individual applied to his own conduct, in distinction from the perception of right and wrong in the abstract, and in the conduct of others. It manifests itself in the feeling of obligation or duty, the moral imperative-I ought, or, I ought not; hence, the Voice of Conscience."

The latter part of this definition permits us to divide this much debated subject into two parts, which can then be separately handled and settled. There is the moral judgment of the individual, which, like his literary or artistic judgment, can be developed by training, until it becomes his reasonable adviser in all matters that come within its province, and it is the function of moral judgment, thus trained and reliable, or, on the contrary, untrained or mistrained and unreliable, to present the case arising in any moral crisis before the individual mind. At such a moment Conscience, apprehending the presentation, discharges its whole function of the feeling of obligation by issuing the moral imperative-Do this; or, Refrain from doing it.

The Enlightenment, the Clearing-up Time. The youth is easily guided and led out of his erratic doubtings, into definite,

clear convictions on any subject. Give him logical, reasonable proof, and he is satisfied. His reason is so active that it demands proof. This period has been called the "Aufklärung," the "clearing-up" of the unsettled questions. Statements accepted hitherto on faith in the source or person making them, must now be re-settled, with the proof. The youth is eager for facts and reasons. His animated face shows it. "The mask-like, impassive face at this age," says Forbush, "is a sign of a loss of youth or of purity." "He who is a man at sixteen, will be a child at sixty." Starbuck fixes the acme of the doubt-period at eighteen, the commencement of Later Adolescence. The storm and stress period ends in a Crisis. There is at first the lull, then the storm, then peace; and at the end, when peace comes, we find we have Man or Woman in place of Boy or Girl.

The youth has gone through the turbulent rapids and has come out into the quiet lake beyond. No wonder a father said the other day: "I understand now why my boy wrote home from college, 'Father, I can't explain how I am different, but somehow there seems to be rolled away from me a great load. I look at the world differently. I seem to be lighter-headed, and it all seems to be brighter around me.' Of course it did, it

was the Enlightenment.

Development of Will. We have referred before to the fact that Will is developed during this period, and we devote a special chapter toward the end of the book which treats of the Development and Training of Will. The father looks one day into the eyes of what he thought was his little boy, and sees looking out the unaccustomed and free spirit of a young and unconquerable personality. "Some mad parents," says James, "take this time to begin the charming task of breaking the child's will, which is usually set about with the same energy and implements as the beating of carpets." But the boy is too big to be licked or to be mentally or morally coerced. Haslett says: "Most fights occur at this stage. The youth is apt to cause more real commotion and trouble to the hour than at any other time between birth and maturity. It would seem that he smells fight and contention in the very air he breathes. If he cannot fight, then smaller ones are encouraged to engage in a friendly scrimmage trouble he must have. Some reformers think that if a

change for a purer moral life does not occur before the age of twelve it is not likely to be accomplished except at great cost afterwards. The forces and qualities that are present and dominant before puberty are likely to be strengthened by the change. Hence the argument for the early and careful religious and moral training of children. It is an illustration of the greater fact that life tends to hold together, each stage preparing for the following stage.

The moral sense in boys is not as acute as in girls. Boys do not make such fine distinctions in relation to right and wrong. Swearing, stealing, lying, incendiarism, murder, etc., are crimes to be avoided as the boy of thirteen or fourteen views things. Acts must be very wrong, very violent and harmful or he will not be so likely to think them serious. Girls mention immodesty, untidiness, pouting, carelessness, masculinity, etc., as wrong. With them it is taken for granted that the baser and more violent crimes are violations of right. The first crime that comes under the ban of the law is vagrancy, including petty acts of pilfering. This is the age when boys are apt to become general nuisances, imitating in no small degree their superiors in this line. It is the dime novel, the "yellow-back literature" stage. General meanness develops fast when once started. Crime against property follows that of vagrancy, as a rule. Destructiveness manifests itself with native tendency to torture and destroy. This is the age when orchards are apt to be visited frequently by boys; buildings, notices, and fences disfigured. Crime against persons follows that against property. Dr. Marro finds that before fifteen, crime against persons is rare compared to the ten years following that year. Most frequent infractions in prisons are by young men. Sikorski reported that the most frequent infractions against the rules of the military school were from thirteen to fifteen. A study made by Dr. Marro of over 3,000 students in academies in Italy, shows that conduct is good at eleven, but fell away down to the lowest point at fourteen, and then gradually rose until the highest point was reached at eighteen.

We hesitate whether more to be afraid of or alarmed for this creature, who has become endowed with the passions and independence of manhood while still a child in foresight and