ABSTRACT
The most casual survey of the ways in which different societies have handled adolescence makes one fact inescapable: even in those cultures which have made most of the trait, the age upon which they focus their attention varies over a great range of years. In other parts of the continent, the guardian spirit is not sought at puberty, nor by all the youths of the tribe. Consequently the complex has in these cultures no kind of relationship with puberty rites even when any such exist. In cultures, the close association of marriage with economic transfer may quite obliterate the fact that marriage is fundamentally a matter of sexual and child-rearing adjustments. The diversity of culture result s not only from the ease with which societies elaborate or reject possible aspects of existence. It is due even more to a complex interweaving of cultural traits. The final form of any traditional institution goes far beyond the original human impulse.
