in the male are
characterised by an impulse to travel, to adventures, but in addition to
all kinds of ideal efforts and to religious activity. The loftiest
ethical ideas alternate with a self-conscious bumptiousness. A change of
disposition manifests itself which is sharply contrasted with the
behaviour at an earlier and a subsequent age. This is no less true of
the girl. That which formerly was no more than a vague indication, now
becomes a manifest quality. More and more does the feminine mode of
feeling display itself. The "tom-boyishness" so often seen in girls
during the second period of childhood disappears. The former tomboy has
become one[51]--

"In whose orbs a shadow lies
Like the dusk in evening skies,"

and we see her--

"Standing, with reluctant feet,
Where the brook and river meet,
Womanhood and childhood fleet!

"Gazing, with a timid glance,
On the brooklet's swift advance,
On the river's broad expanse!"

The considerations put forward in this chapter show us how necessary it
was to explain the conception of puberty at the very outset of this
work. If the period of the puberal development be understood to
correspond to the development and ripening of the sexual life, we see
that this development begins much earlier than is commonly assumed in
books on the subject. Writers have been too ready to identify with this
developmental period the appearance of certain _external_
manifestations, more especially the growth of the pubic hair in both
sexes, the development of the breasts in the female, and the breaking of
the voice in the male; and the appearance of certain definite outward
signs--in the girl, the first menstruation, and in the boy, the first
ejaculation--has usually been regarded as marking a turning-point in
this development. But neither in the boy is the occurrence of the first
ejaculation a proof of capacity for reproduction, or a proof that the
period of the puberal development is completed; nor in the girl is the
occurrence of the first menstruation, which may long precede the
establishment of the far more important function of ovulation,
characteristic in either of these respects. Observations made on
children, accounts given by children and memories of childhood, and the
results of castration (and oophorectomy),[52] all combine to prove the
occurrence of sexual processes during childhood, at least as early as
the beginning of the second period of childhood. At th