ent to generalize regarding the
differences between country and city life in matters of sex, but it is
certainly true, when rural life is empty of commanding interests and
when it is coarsened by low traditions and the presence of defective
persons, that there is a precocious emphasis of sex. This is expressed
both by early marrying and by loose sex relations. It is doubtful
whether the commercializing of sex attraction in the city has equal
mental significance, for certainly science clearly shows that it is the
precocious expression of sex that has largest psychic dangers. In so far
as the environment of a rural community tends to bring the sexual life
to early expression, we have every reason to suppose that at this point
at least the influence of the community is such as to tend toward a
comparative mental arrest or a limiting of mental ability, for which the
country later suffers socially. Each student of rural life must, from
experience and observation, evaluate for himself the significance of
this sex precociousness. When sex interests become epidemic and the
general tendency is toward precocious sex maturity, the country
community is producing for itself men and women of inferior resources as
compared with their natural possibilities. Even the supposed social
wholesomeness of earlier marrying in the country must be scrutinized
with the value of sex sublimation during the formative years clearly in
mind.

PSYCHIC CAUSES OF RURAL MIGRATION

IX

PSYCHIC CAUSES OF RURAL MIGRATION

In modern civilization the increasing attractiveness of the city is one
of the apparent social facts.[6] Social psychology may reasonably be
expected to throw light upon the causes of this movement of population
from rural to urban conditions of life. Striking illustrations of
individual preference for city life, even in opposition to the person's
economic interests, suggest that this problem of social behavior so
characteristic of our time contains important mental factors.

Since sensations give the mind its raw material,[7] the mind may be said
to crave stimulation. "In the most general way of viewing the matter,
beings that seem to us to possess minds show in their physical life
what we may call a great and discriminating sensitiveness to what goes
on at any present time in their environment."[8] This interest of the
mind in the receiving of stimulation for its own activity is an
essential element in any social probl