ague limit
of maturity. The child's temperament does not commonly answer to this
description during infancy and the years of close tutelage, when the
child still habitually seeks contact with its mother at every turn of
its daily life. During this earlier period there is little aggression
and little propensity for antagonism. The transition from this
peaceable temper to the predaceous, and in extreme cases malignant,
mischievousness of the boy is a gradual one, and it is accomplished
with more completeness, covering a larger range of the individual's
aptitudes, in some cases than in others. In the earlier stage of his
growth, the child, whether boy or girl, shows less of initiative and
aggressive self-assertion and less of an inclination to isolate himself
and his interests from the domestic group in which he lives, and he
shows more of sensitiveness to rebuke, bashfulness, timidity, and the
need of friendly human contact. In the common run of cases this early
temperament passes, by a gradual but somewhat rapid obsolescence of the
infantile features, into the temperament of the boy proper; though there
are also cases where the predaceous futures of boy life do not emerge at
all, or at the most emerge in but a slight and obscure degree.

In girls the transition to the predaceous stage is seldom accomplished
with the same degree of completeness as in boys; and in a relatively
large proportion of cases it is scarcely undergone at all. In such cases
the transition from infancy to adolescence and maturity is a gradual and
unbroken process of the shifting of interest from infantile purposes and
aptitudes to the purposes, functions, and relations of adult life. In
the girls there is a less general prevalence of a predaceous interval
in the development; and in the cases where it occurs, the predaceous and
isolating attitude during the interval is commonly less accentuated.

In the male child the predaceous interval is ordinarily fairly well
marked and lasts for some time, but it is commonly terminated (if at
all) with the attainment of maturity. This last statement may need very
material qualification. The cases are by no means rare in which the
transition from the boyish to the adult temperament is not made, or
is made only partially--understanding by the "adult" temperament the
average temperament of those adult individuals in modern industrial life
who have some serviceability for the purposes of the collective life
process