Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/231

 MORAL INFL UENCE OF PUBERAL DEVELOPMENT 2 I 7

by their labor a little money, and with the inalienable patrimony of the profession they have learned.

For the acquirement of agility, of force, of beauty, physical exercises are the more useful because they are wont to exercise so great an attraction upon youth, and the sexual emotion main- tained by the presence of persons of the other sex may aid not a little in maintaining alive the labor of acquiring such qualities.

But where this emotion must especially aid the youth is in his apprenticeship for the acquisition of wealth by means of regular and remunerative labor. The ready remuneration of labor which satisfies the sentiment of independence and of liberty, which flatters the self-love of the young man, and permits him to bear into the sexual life the fruits of his own labor, is the first condition of the development of character in the young man. Where it fails, true education is impossible. Our official reformatories are the best proof of it. Connected with that powerful emotion, the sexual, the ready remuneration of labor gives to this the more attraction, the more the savage experiences it in his daily occupation. Wealth is a necessity for the strife of love as for that of life. It is necessary to spend in order to satisfy the first needs that the young man feels in order to make himself beautiful, to win the favors of the person loved by means of gifts, just as it will be necessary later to have money to provide for the exigencies of a family. The mental repre- sentation of the first acts by which the young man shall have known how to provide for this need, bound to the so powerful influence that provokes them, will control the character of the person.

If the young man was accustomed to await from the bounty of others the means of satisfying these little and great needs of the period of puberty, his own character will bear the impress of such insufficiency. It is for this reason that from the career of studies, as it is in our country, are created, not only the social declasses, but also the moral waifs, young men, that is, accus- tomed to expect trom intrigue, from shrewdness, and from the protection of others that success which they have not the power of securing for themselves by the aid of labor. The sooner