This essay is intended to deepen our understanding of the fundamental causes of the characteristic features of contemporary adolescence, and of their significance. Since the reader will not be unfamiliar with the phenomena, his personal experience may be relied on to supplement a description which would otherwise be too concise. The description is based on data, research and summary accounts drawn from the literature of various countries, which is suggestive because of its uniformity. It suggests five conclusions which bring into focus the general condition and position of contemporary adolescence:

1. While the development of the adolescent used to take place during the few years traditionally called “adolescence” (ages 15 to 18), it has steadily expanded during the last century, and recently with an ever-increasing speed. Nowadays, it reaches up to age 25, and in many cases and in many areas beyond this, and includes in the opposite direction the majority of the 13-to-14-year-olds without, however, having ceased to exert its attraction on what was traditionally called “childhood.” An enormous extension of adolescence has thus taken place, and this is already reflected to a large extent in the development of legal notions. Modern man spends a considerable portion of his life as an adolescent.

Whoever knows a little about China—even very little—knows, in one way or another, about the Taoist Immortals, although our knowledge may be limited to the representation of them on a bit of sculptured jade, on a Han mirror or in some wood engraving. One has heard of them as an essential part of Chinese folklore. In the book of Taoist saints, the Liesien tchouan, they may be observed in all their oddness, living on pine cones or the “marrow of stones” and flying off into the air toward the apotheosis of some unknown paradise. This aspect of the Immortals has been studied often and well. But there is another aspect to the Immortals no less important, a philosophical aspect which, I believe, deserves our attention. Sun Yat-sen, the “Father of the Chinese Republic,” is certainly not given the name of “Hidden Immortal” (Yat-sen, Yi-sien) out of a simple interest in folklore, and the heroes of the Chinese novel, Kia Pao-yu of the first Hong-leou mong, dedicated themselves to achieve the way of the Immortals for reasons that went deeper and were more intelligent than mere superstitious emulation of some grotesqueries of occult folklore. No, the Chinese Immortal is a veritable hero of the same stamp as Saints of the Christian tradition and like the latter he embodies a religious philosophy of the highest inspiration.

To the casual observer and professional analyst, to the intellectual both here and abroad, American politics have frequently appeared as an amalgam of confusion, frustration and irrationality. The political parties have seemed devoid of cohesion and unity, and innocent of a coherent political philosophy. Long ago, for example, Lord Bryce observed that our major parties have nothing to say on vital issues; that “neither party has any clean-cut principles, any distinctive tenets. Both have traditions. Both claim to have tendencies. Both have certainly war cries, organizations, interests enlisted in their support. But those interests are, in the main, the interests of getting, or keeping, the patronage of the government. Distinctive tenets and policies, points of political doctrine and points of political practice, have all but vanished. They have not been thrown away, but they have been stripped away by Time and the progress of events, fulfilling some policies, blotting out others. All has been lost except office or the hope of It.”

The ceremony of gathering twelve-year old children together in each parish for the first sacrament of the Eucharist is not an old custom. The primitive Church took Christ's word literally: “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” (John, VI, 53), from which it was generally thought that children who died before having received communion were as damned as if they had not been baptised. The initiation of neophytes required successively both sacraments and confirmation. When the custom was established of baptising the new born (2nd and 3rd centuries) they received communion at the same time. As they were incapable of eating the host, the blood of Christ was conferred upon them in the guise of wine.

Art is eternal. Beauty is pure pleasure. Genius in creation and taste in appreciation are one.—One is accustomed to encounter such time-honored aesthetic views and one takes them often without questioning whether they adequately honor time. On the following pages a different approach to art will be outlined; on its horizon these views and many others which need not be cited now, will appear as false. Some hallowed names can be invoked as authority for them. So much the worse. Amicus Plato sed magis amica Veritas.

There are only three distinct temporal relationships between art and theory: either the development of new events precedes theory, or both develop side by side, or theory anticipates the appearance of the new artistic current. This temporal relationship is, to some degree, fundamental in the relationship between both phenomena. If one is dealing with the first case, theories of art serve only to redress a balance. The art-theory introduces nothing in any way new; it serves only to explain an artistic process which has already flowered. At most, largely thanks to critical studies, it helps the public understand the new works unexpectedly arising in the field of art, and plays the role of popularizing these new works, in the best sense of the word.