poses, is called "consciousness." Consciousness is the ultimate fact of mental life. It is a characteristic of the mind. "Consciousness also includes the power of the soul to know itself as the knower. This is the great central fact of the mind. Indeed it is so fundamental that it is often regarded as being synonymous with the mind itself. It is this that gives me my sense of personal identity, that gives me the knowledge that I am I, without which there would be no basis for other mental operations. Consciousness is the general name for all mental operations. The soul gains knowledge through the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. One sense helps another. At a railroad crossing we read, 'Stop, look, listen.' The senses have been called 'Scouts of the soul.'" They are the windows through which the mind looks out on the material world. Sensations crowd in upon the boy's experience and the range of his utterance is constantly enlarging. In genuine manhood, manhood of the largest measure, there is a longing of the soul for knowledge, an intellectual trend, positive and intense, that is ceaseless in its pursuit of truth. It is our privilege to open up to youth the world of truth and reality in which he dwells, so that he will see beauty where there is beauty, his heart will 14 See, "The Teaching of Bible Classes," p. 93. respond to all that is pure and noble, his sympathies be aroused by every wail of distress, he will delight in all that is good and spurn all that is evil, he will be keenly alive to the moral qualities of every act, he will realize that every violation of the moral law gives pain-he will be the complete man, considerate of the feelings of others and responsive to all the calls of humanity. "Know thyself as the Lord of the chariot, The body as only the car, Know also the reason as driver, "There's always a lower, a higher choice, With cheer in its tones, 'Well done.' Your loss or your gain, and 'tis yours to say, "The safe course? Need I repeat the thought? The clearer the vision the mind has caught, The sweeter the song's refrain. And upward mounting the soul's sure flight "For what is all that time can give, Unless in tune we truly live? And what at end is human gold, Some soul's been purged because of touch CHAPTER III EMOTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS "For there are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion, That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together." Longfellow-The Courtship of Miles Standish-Part VI. There are some people who think that a boy has but little feeling and they trample upon many of the things which he deems holy as if they were mere bubbles. A careless word, an unsympathetic attitude, an unfortunate laugh has caused a kind of grief to the boy which time itself has failed to heal. Boys call it "hurt feelings." Failure to understand a boy's feelings or emotions, often accounts for the inability of older people to "hold" him during his "storm and stress" period. "Feeling," says H. Thiselton Mark, "is the quality of pleasurableness or painfulness which attaches in some degree to practically all our experiences." We feel hungry, feel tired, feel rested, feel well, feel angry, feel afraid. "To say that we are born with definite capacities for feeling is but another way of saying that we are born with one of the first essentials of conscious personality." "Feelings which have a basis in intelligence are generally called emotions, and are sometimes sub-divided and designated passions, emotions, and sentiments. With this classification, emotions occupy the middle ground, as medium in intensity, while passions are violent emotions, emotion which has passed beyond restraint, and sentiments are emotions of a mild type. Passions are the whirlwind of feelings, sentiments are a gentle breeze, while emotion is a word which stands for the general body of feelings, capable of passionate excess on the one hand or a gentle flow on the other.” The emotional life of boys between thirteen and eighteen years of age undergoes great and sudden changes, a series of paradoxes. These peculiarities may be the better understood if we have a definition of the four great types of temperament. First the weak motor temperament, formerly called the sanguine. This is the lively, excitable, enthusiastic, "red headed" or "tow 1 Mark, "The Unfolding of Personality," p. 82. 2 Fisk, "Man Building," p. 134. headed" boy with blue eyes, fair skin, and animated face, a boy with respiratory and circulatory system well developed, requiring very little stimulation to exertion, but, unfortunately, the effects of stimulation soon die away. He depends largely upon his feelings, a sort of "Georgie Giveup." Second, the strong motor temperament, or the choleric, the intense, hottempered boy of action, energetic, full of determination, self-reliance, and confidence, with the will generally uppermost; a boy with well-developed muscular system, hair and eyes dark, complexion sometimes sallow, face impassive. He has slower reaction and is more enduring than the boy of sanguine temperament. Third, the strong sensor temperament, or sentimental or perhaps better still "reflective" type, usually a boy of thought, reflection, and sentiment, who has great love of poetry, music, and nature; not very practical, the dreamer, a boy with slender figure and delicate, motions quick, head large, eyes bright and expressive. Fourth, the weak sensor temperament, or phlegmatic, a slow-andsteady, patient, self-reliant boy, somewhat sluggish, with mind heavy and torpid, sometimes stupid; a boy with face round and expressionless, lips thick, abdomen large, body generally disinclined to exertion, ready for the "eats" at all times and hours. While boys generally |