Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/233

 MORAL I NFL UENCE OF PUBERAL DEVELOPMENT 2 1 9

cannot reach the feeling of independence and of individual liberty which animates the American. He maintains himself in such a degree of civility as to support the confiscation of every liberty, not only political and religious, but even domestic, as happens in the industrial convents, where the master lodges and feeds his workmen, regulating their life by the sound of a bell — the hour of rising, of going to work, of eating, of going to bed, forbidding them to live where they please, to eat as they please, and also to dispose according to their own desire of the hours free from work.

Among the Anglo-Saxons and North Americans it is the parties interested who seek each other in order to get married ; the precocity of marriages in these nations is an indication of the spirit of individual enterprise which, stimulated by love, early leads the young people to the acquisition of those conditions which permit the forming of a new family and becomes a very important factor of the strong character which distinguishes such nations.

Dr. Antonio Marro.