young. But whether it be heroism or criminality that youth brings in its train, this phase of life is always one of stress and storm, of eruption, and of revelation. The organism then as it were shows its hand. It is exposed through the turmoil of rapid growth, and, like the sea in tempest, yields up its secrets.
Imagination, which is the motor power in mind, is of course dominant during this period. It is more uncontrolled if not more creative than it will ever be again. Even those who will never again be artists are artists in youth. Youths and girls hide verses they have written away, distrusting quite rightly the instinct of the older person on finding them.[1] And as even the most original imagination requires at first a guide or master, so every adolescent is at first a disciple. A popular orator or public person holds the imagination of many young people in secret for years, while the ideal of the parent, which may be a higher one in a sense, does not probably in the least attract them. The parent's ideal as a rule is rational, beyond the point where it remains lovely in the eyes of youth. As a rule, indeed, it is only the noblest elements in it that even feebly attract youth.
- ↑ The Germans have a word for this kind of literature—"Schwärmerei."
