awakened susceptibility of sex; for it is only through the outward
senses that the selection of an individual mate is made and the
instinct utilized for nature's purposes. It would seem, however, that
nature was determined that the force and constancy of the instinct
must make up for its lack of precision, and that she was totally
unconcerned that this instinct ruthlessly seized the youth at the
moment when he was least prepared to cope with it; not only because
his powers of self-control and discrimination are unequal to the task,
but because his senses are helplessly wide open to the world. These
early manifestations of the sex susceptibility are for the most part
vague and formless, and are absolutely without definition to the youth
himself. Sometimes months and years elapse before the individual mate
is selected and determined upon, and during the time when the
differentiation is not complete--and it often is not--there is of
necessity a great deal of groping and waste.

This period of groping is complicated by the fact that the youth's
power for appreciating is far ahead of his ability for expression.
"The inner traffic fairly obstructs the outer current," and it is
nothing short of cruelty to over-stimulate his senses as does the
modern city. This period is difficult everywhere, but it seems at
times as if a great city almost deliberately increased its perils. The
newly awakened senses are appealed to by all that is gaudy and
sensual, by the flippant street music, the highly colored theater
posters, the trashy love stories, the feathered hats, the cheap
heroics of the revolvers displayed in the pawn-shop windows. This
fundamental susceptibility is thus evoked without a corresponding stir
of the higher imagination, and the result is as dangerous as possible.
We are told upon good authority that "If the imagination is retarded,
while the senses remain awake, we have a state of esthetic