Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/201

 If, on the other hand, the parents wished their children to stay and the children were unwilling to do so, the remedy was simple. They had but to transgress seriously the rules of the pastor's household, and they would be expelled; if they feared to return to their parents, there were always other relatives.

So the attitude of the church in respect to chastity held only the germs of a conflict which was seldom realised, because of the flexibility with which it adapted itself to the nearly inevitable. Attendance at the girls' main boarding school was an attractive prospect. The fascination of living in a large group of young people where life was easier and more congenial than at home, was usually a sufficient bribe to good behaviour, or at least to discretion. Confession of sin was a rare phenomenon in Samoa. The missionaries had made a rule that a boy who transgressed the chastity rule would be held back in his progress through the preparatory school and seminary for two years after the time his offence was committed. It had been necessary to change this ruling to read two years from the detection of the offence, because very often the offence was not detected until after the student had been over two years in the seminary, and under the old ruling, he would not have been punished at all. Had the young people been inspired with a sense of responsibility to a heavenly rather than an earthly decree and the boy or girl been answerable to a recording angel, rather than a spying neighbour, religion would have provided a real