The whole significance, then, of puberty and adolescence is the entry of the individual into the larger life of the race. It is, too, a statement beyond reasonable dispute that if we eliminate religion altogether from the environment there is not a single feeling experienced at adolescence, not a single intellectual craving, that would not undergo full development and receive complete satisfaction. The proof of the truth of this is that it occurs in a large number of cases. Sacrifice, the craving for the ideal, with every other feeling associated by many with religion, exist in connection with non-religious phases of life. It is idle to argue that some people have a craving for religion, and nothing but religion will satisfy them. Where an individual is in complete ignorance of the nature and significance of his own development, and those around him no better informed; where, moreover, there are others in a position of authority ready with a special interpretation, it is not surprising if the religious explanation is accepted as the genuine and only one. But in reality a sound judgment is formed, not on the basis of what some declare they cannot do without, but on the basis of what others actually do without, and suffer no observable loss in consequence. We do not estimate the value of alcohol on the basis of those who declare they cannot do without it. The true test is found in those who abstain from its use. So, also, in the case of religion. That some, even the majority, declare that religious belief is essential to their welfare, proves little or nothing. Human nature being what it is, and the history of society being what it is, it would be surprising were it otherwise. There is much greater significance in so large a number of people finding complete satisfaction in purely secular activities. After what has been said of the misinterpretation of mental and emotional states in terms of religious belief, it is not surprising to find a writer, 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]