riter, a clergyman, and one with experience of growing boys,
express himself as follows:--

"My experience confirms the opinion of the psychologists that most boys
of the public school age have a strongly mystical tendency. This is to
be expected, on account of the great emotional development of that
period of life. But it is obscured by the fact that the boy is both
unwilling and unable to give any verbal expression to this tendency. He
is unwilling because it is something very new and curious in his
experience; he is often a little frightened of it, and he is exceedingly
frightened of other people's contempt for it. And he is unable, because
the words he is accustomed to use are valueless in this connection, and
he feels priggish if he tries to use others.... But, though unexplained,
the mystical tendency is there, and should be appealed to and
developed."[153]

Now, clearly, all that can be reasonably meant by saying that a boy of,
apparently, from 12 to 16 has a mystical tendency, is that the
physiological changes incident to puberty are accompanied by a mass of
feeling of a vague and formless character. Naturally, his boyish
experience is unable to furnish him with the means of giving adequate
expression to his feelings. That can only come with the experience of
maturity. And with equal inevitability he is at the mercy of the
explanation furnished him by those whom he regards as his teachers and
guides. When he is told that this element of 'mysticism' is the
awakening of religion in his soul, he accepts the explanation precisely
as he accepts explanations of other things. That this 'mystical
tendency' should be appealed to and developed is a statement open to
very great doubt. It should rather be explained, not perhaps in a
brutally frank manner, but in a way that would lead the boy to see
himself as an organic part of society, with definite duties and
obligations. If this were done, adolescence might provide us with the
raw material for a much greater number of useful and intelligent
citizens than it does at present. The true nature of the process, so
elaborately misunderstood by Dr. Temple, is clearly outlined by Dr.
Mercier:--

"In connection with normal development, a large body of vague and
formless feeling arises, and, until experience gives it shape, the
possessor remains ignorant of the source and nature of the feeling. If
the circumstances are appropriate for the natural outlet and expression
of the ac