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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13722 ***
+
+YOUTH AND SEX
+
+Dangers and Safeguards for Girls and Boys
+
+by
+
+MARY SCHARLIEB, M.D., M.S., AND F. ARTHUR SIBLY, M.A., LL.D.
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+PART I.: GIRLS.
+
+BY MARY SCHARLIEB, M.D., M.S.
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+  I. CHANGES OBSERVABLE DURING PUBERTY AND ADOLESCENCE IN GIRLS
+
+ II. OUR DUTIES TOWARDS ADOLESCENT GIRLS
+
+III. CARE OF THE ADOLESCENT GIRL IN SICKNESS
+
+ IV. MENTAL AND MORAL TRAINING
+
+  V. THE FINAL AIM OF EDUCATION
+
+
+PART II.: BOYS.
+
+BY F. ARTHUR SIBLY, M.A., LL.D.
+
+PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
+
+INTRODUCTORY NOTE
+
+  I. PREVALENCE OF IMPURITY AMONG BOYS: THE AUTHOR'S OWN EXPERIENCE
+
+ II. PREVALENCE OF IMPURITY AMONG BOYS: THE OPINIONS OF CANON LYTTELTON,
+     DR. DUKES AND OTHERS
+
+III. CAUSES OF THE PREVALENCE OF IMPURITY AMONG BOYS
+
+ IV. RESULTS OF YOUTHFUL IMPURITY
+
+  V. SEX KNOWLEDGE IS COMPATIBLE WITH PERFECT REFINEMENT AND INNOCENCE
+
+ VI. CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH PURITY TEACHING IS BEST GIVEN: REMEDIAL AND
+     CURATIVE MEASURES
+
+NOTE TO CORRESPONDENTS
+
+
+
+
+PART I.: GIRLS.
+
+BY MARY SCHARLIEB, M.D., M.S.
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+Probably the most important years in anyone's life are those eight or
+ten preceding the twenty-first birthday. During these years
+_Heredity_, one of the two great developmental factors, bears its
+crop, and the seeds sown before birth and during childhood come to
+maturity. During these years also the other great developmental force
+known as _Environment_ has full play, the still plastic nature is
+moulded by circumstances, and the influence of these two forces is
+seen in the manner of individual that results.
+
+This time is generally alluded to under two heads: (1) Puberty, (2)
+Adolescence.
+
+By Puberty we understand the period when the reproductive organs are
+developed, the boy or girl ceasing to be the neutral child and
+acquiring the distinctive characteristics of man or woman. The actual
+season of puberty varies in different individuals from the eleventh to
+the sixteenth year, and although the changes during this time are not
+sudden, they are comparatively rapid.
+
+By Adolescence we understand the time during which the individual is
+approximating to the adult type, puberty having been already
+accomplished. Adolescence corresponds to the latter half of the
+developmental period, and may be prolonged even up to twenty-five
+years.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+CHANGES OBSERVABLE DURING PUBERTY AND ADOLESCENCE IN GIRLS.
+
+
+1. Changes in the Bodily Framework.--During this period the girl's
+skeleton not only grows remarkably in size, but is also the subject of
+well-marked alterations and development. Among the most evident
+changes are those which occur in the shape and inclination of the
+pelvis. During the years of childhood the female pelvis has a general
+resemblance to that of the male, but with the advent of puberty the
+vertical portion of the hip bones becomes expanded and altered in
+shape, it becomes more curved, and its inner surface looks less
+directly forward and more towards its fellow bone of the other side.
+The brim of the pelvis, which in the child is more or less
+heart-shaped, becomes a wide oval, and consequently the pelvic girdle
+gains considerably in width. The heads of the thigh bones not only
+actually, in consequence of growth, but also relatively, in
+consequence of change of shape in the pelvis, become more widely
+separated from each other than they are in childhood, and hence the
+gait and the manner of running alters greatly in the adult woman. At
+the same time the angle made by the junction of the spinal column with
+the back of the pelvis, known as the sacro-vertebral angle, becomes
+better marked, and this also contributes to the development of the
+characteristic female type. No doubt the female type of pelvis can be
+recognised in childhood, and even before birth, but the differences of
+male and female pelves before puberty are so slight that it requires
+the eye of an expert to distinguish them. The very remarkable
+differences that are found between the adult male and the adult female
+pelvis begin to appear with puberty and develop rapidly, so that no
+one could mistake the pelvis of a properly developed girl of sixteen
+or eighteen years of age for that of a boy. These differences are due
+in part to the action of the muscles and ligaments on the growing
+bones, in part to the weight of the body from above and the reaction
+of the ground from beneath, but they are also largely due to the
+growth and development of the internal organs peculiar to the woman.
+All these organs exist in the normal infant at birth, but they are
+relatively insignificant, and it is not until the great developmental
+changes peculiar to puberty occur that they begin to exercise their
+influence on the shape of the bones. This is proved by the fact that
+in those rare cases in which the internal organs of generation are
+absent, or fail to develop, there is a corresponding failure in the
+pelvis to alter into the normal adult shape. The muscles of the
+growing girl partake in the rapid growth and development of her bony
+framework. Sometimes the muscles outgrow the bones, causing a peculiar
+lankiness and slackness of figure, and in other girls the growth of
+the bones appears to be too rapid for the muscles, to which fact a
+certain class of "growing pain" has been attributed.
+
+Another part of the body that develops rapidly during these momentous
+years is the bust. The breasts become large, and not only add to the
+beauty of the girl's person, but also manifestly prepare by increase
+of their glandular elements for the maternal function of suckling
+infants.
+
+Of less importance so far as structure is concerned, but of great
+importance to female loveliness and attractiveness, are the changes
+that occur in the clearing and brightening of the complexion, the
+luxuriant growth, glossiness, and improved colour of the hair, and the
+beauty of the eyes, which during the years which succeed puberty
+acquire a new and singularly attractive expression.
+
+The young girl's hands and feet do not grow in proportion with her
+legs and arms, and appear to be more beautifully shaped when
+contrasted with the more fully developed limb.
+
+With regard to the internal organs, the most important are those of
+the pelvis. The uterus, or womb, destined to form a safe nest for the
+protection of the child until it is sufficiently developed to maintain
+an independent existence, increases greatly in all its dimensions and
+undergoes certain changes in shape; and the ovaries, which are
+intended to furnish the ovules, or eggs (the female contribution
+towards future human beings), also develop both in size and in
+structure.
+
+Owing to rapid growth and to the want of stability of the young girl's
+tissues, the years immediately succeeding puberty are not only those
+of rapid physiological change, but they are those during which
+irreparable damage may be done unless those who have the care of young
+girls understand what these dangers are, how they are produced, and
+how they may be averted.
+
+With regard to the bony skeleton, lateral curvature of the spine is,
+in mild manifestation, very frequent, and is too common even in the
+higher degrees. The chief causes of this deformity are:
+
+(1) The natural softness and want of stability in the rapidly growing
+bones and muscles;
+
+(2) The rapid development of the bust, which throws a constantly
+increasing burden on these weakened muscles and bones; and
+
+(3) The general lassitude noticeable amongst girls at this time which
+makes them yield to the temptation to stand on one leg, to cross one
+leg over the other, and to write or read leaning on one elbow and
+bending over the table, whereas they ought to be sitting upright.
+Unless constant vigilance is exerted, deformity is pretty sure to
+occur--a deformity which always has a bad influence over the girl's
+health and strength, and which, in those cases where it is complicated
+by the pathological softness of bones found in cases of rickets, may
+cause serious alteration in shape and interfere with the functions of
+the pelvis in later life.
+
+2. Changes in the Mental Nature.--These are at least as remarkable
+as the changes in the bodily framework. There is a slight diminution
+in the power of memorising, but the faculties of attention, of
+reasoning, and of imagination, develop rapidly. Probably the power of
+appreciation of the beautiful appears about this time, a faculty which
+is usually dormant during childhood. More especially is this true with
+regard to the beauty of landscape; the child seldom enjoys a landscape
+as such, although isolated beauties, such as that of flowers, may
+sometimes be appreciated.
+
+As might be anticipated, all things are changing with the child during
+these momentous years: its outlook on life, its appreciation of other
+people and of itself, alter greatly and continuously. The wonderfully
+rapid growth and alterations in structure of the generative organs
+have their counterpart in the mental and moral spheres; there are new
+sensations which are scarcely recognised and are certainly not
+understood by the subject: vague feelings of unrest, ill-comprehended
+desires, and an intense self-consciousness take the place of the
+unconscious egoism of childhood.
+
+The processes of Nature as witnessed in the season of spring have
+their counterpart in the changes that occur during the early years of
+adolescence. The earth warmed by the more direct rays of the sun and
+softened by recurring showers is transformed in a few weeks from its
+bare and dry winter garb into the wonderful beauty of spring. This
+yearly miracle fails to impress us as it should do because we have
+witnessed it every year of our lives, and so, too, the great
+transformation from child to budding woman fails to make its appeal to
+our understanding and sympathy because it is of so common occurrence.
+If it were possible for adults to really remember their own feelings
+and aspirations in adolescent years, or if it were possible for us
+with enlightened sympathy to gain access to the enchanted garden of
+youth, we should be more adequate guides for the boys and girls around
+us. As it is we entirely fail to appreciate the heights of their
+ambitions, hopes, and joys, and we have no measure with which to plumb
+the depths of their fears, their disappointments, and their doubts.
+The transition between radiant joy and confident hope in the future to
+a miserable misinterpretation of sensations both physical and
+psychical are rapid. It is the unknown that is terrible to us all, and
+to the child the changes in its body, the changes in its soul and
+spirit, which we pass by as commonplace, are full of suggestions of
+abnormality, of disaster, and of death. Young people suffer much from
+the want of comprehension and intelligent sympathy of their elders,
+much also from their own ignorance and too fervid imagination. The
+instability of the bodily tissues and the variability of their
+functions find a counterpart in the instability of the mental and
+moral natures and in the variability of their phenomena. Adolescents
+indeed "never continue in one stay;" left to themselves they will
+begin many pursuits, but persevere with, and finish, nothing.
+
+Youth is the time for rapidly-succeeding friends, lovers, and heroes.
+The schoolfellow or teacher who is adored to-day may become the object
+of indifference or even of dislike to-morrow. Ideas as to the calling
+or profession to be adopted change rapidly, and opinions upon
+religion, politics, &c., vary from day to day. It is little wonder
+that there is a special type of adolescent insanity differing entirely
+from that of later years, one in which, owing to the want of full
+development of mental faculties, there are no systematised delusions,
+but a rapid change from depression and melancholy to exaltation
+bordering on mania. Those parents and guardians who know something of
+the peculiar physical and mental conditions of adolescence will be
+best prepared both to treat the troubles wisely, and by sympathy to
+help the young people under their care to help themselves.
+
+One of the phenomena of adolescence is the dawn of the sexual
+instinct. This frequently develops without the child knowing or
+understanding what it means. More especially is this true of young
+girls whose home life has been completely sheltered, and who have not
+had the advantage, or disadvantage, of that experience of life which
+comes early to those who live in crowded tenements or amongst the
+outspoken people of the countryside. The children of the poorer
+classes have, in a way, too little to learn: they are brought up from
+babyhood in the midst of all domestic concerns, and the love affairs
+of their elders are intimately known to them, therefore quite early in
+adolescence "ilka lassie has her laddie," and although the attraction
+be short-lived and the affection very superficial, yet it is
+sufficient to give an added interest to life, and generally leads to
+an increased care in dress and an increased desire to make the most of
+whatever good looks the girl may possess. The girl in richer homes is
+probably much more bewildered by her unwonted sensations and by the
+attraction she begins to feel towards the society of the opposite sex.
+
+Probably in these days, when there is more intermingling of the sexes,
+the girl's outlook is franker, and, so far as this is concerned,
+healthier, than it was forty or fifty years ago. It is very amusing to
+elders to hear a boy scarcely in his teens talking of "his best girl,"
+or to see the little lass wearing the colour or ornament that her
+chosen lad admires. It is true that the "best girl" varies from week
+to week if not from day to day, but this special regard for a member
+of the opposite sex announces the dawn of a simple sentiment that
+will, a few years later, blossom out into the real passion which may
+fix a life's destiny.
+
+The mental and moral changes that occur during the early years of
+adolescence call for help and sympathy of an even higher order than do
+the changes in physical structure and function. Some of these changes,
+such as shyness and reticence, may be the cause of considerable
+suffering to the girl and a perplexity to her elders, but on the whole
+they are comparatively easy of comprehension, and are more likely to
+elicit sympathy and kindness than blame. It is far otherwise with such
+changes as unseemly laughter, rough manners, and a nameless difference
+in the girl's manner when in the presence of the other sex. A girl who
+is usually quiet, modest, and sensible in her behaviour may suddenly
+become boisterous and self-asserting, there is a great deal of
+giggling, and altogether a disagreeable transformation which too
+frequently involves the girl in trouble with her mother or other
+guardian, and is very frequently harshly judged by the child herself.
+In proportion as self-discipline has been taught and self-control
+acquired, these outward manifestations are less marked, but in the
+case of the great majority of girls there are, at any rate, impulses
+having their origin in the yet immature and misunderstood sex impulse
+which cause the young woman herself annoyance and worry although she
+is as far from understanding their origin as her elders may be. The
+remedies for these troubles are various. First in order of time and in
+importance comes a habit of self-control and self-discipline that
+ought to be coeval with conscious life. Fathers and mothers are
+themselves to blame if their girl lapses from good behaviour when they
+have not inculcated ideals of obedience, duty, and self-discipline
+from babyhood. It seems such a little thing to let the child have its
+run of the cake-basket and the sweet-box; it is in the eyes of many
+parents so unimportant whether the little one goes to bed at the
+appointed time or ten minutes later; they argue that it can make no
+difference to her welfare in life or to her eternal destiny whether
+her obedience is prompt and cheerful or grudging and imperfect. One
+might as well argue that the proper planting of a seed, its regular
+watering, and the influences of sun and wind make no difference to the
+life of a tree. We have to bear carefully in mind that those who sow
+an act reap a habit, who sow a habit reap a character, who sow a
+character reap a destiny both in this world and in that which is
+eternal. It is mere selfishness, unconscious, no doubt, but none the
+less fatal, when parents to suit their own convenience omit to
+inculcate obedience, self-restraint, habits of order and unselfishness
+in their children. Youth is the time when the soul is apt to be shaken
+by sorrow's power and when stormy passions rage. The tiny rill
+starting from the mountainside can be readily deflected east or west,
+but the majestic river hastening to the sea is beyond all such
+arbitrary directions. So it is with the human being: the character and
+habit are directed easily in infancy, with difficulty during
+childhood, but they are well-nigh impossible of direction by the time
+adolescence is established. Those fathers and mothers who desire to
+have happiness and peace in connection with their adolescent boys and
+girls must take the trouble to direct them aright during the plastic
+years of infancy and childhood. All natural instincts implanted in us
+by Him who knew what was in the heart of man are in themselves right
+and good, but the exercise of these instincts may be entirely wrong in
+time or in degree. The sexual instinct, the affinity of boy to girl,
+the love of adult man and woman, are right and holy when exercised
+aright, and it is the result of "spoiling" when these good and noble
+instincts are wrongly exercised. All who love their country, all who
+love their fellow men, and all who desire that the kingdom of God
+should come, must surely do everything that is in their power to
+awaken the fathers and mothers of the land to a sense of their heavy
+responsibility and of their high privilege. In this we are entirely
+separated from and higher than the rest of the animal creation, in
+that on us lies the duty not only of calling into life a new
+generation of human beings, but also the still higher duty, the still
+greater privilege and the wider responsibility of bringing up those
+children to be themselves the worthy parents of the future, the
+supporters of their country's dignity, and joyful citizens of the
+household of God.
+
+Another characteristic of adolescence is to be found in
+gregariousness, or what has been sometimes called the _gang spirit_.
+Boys, and to almost as great a degree girls, form themselves into
+companies or gangs, which frequently possess a high degree of
+organisation. They elaborate special languages, they have their own
+form of shorthand, their passwords, their rites and ceremonies. The
+gang has its elected leader, its officers, its members; and although
+it is liable to sudden disruption and seldom outlasts a few terms of
+school-life, each succeeding club or company is for the time being of
+paramount importance in the estimation of its members. The gang spirit
+may at times cause trouble and lead to anxiety, but if rightly
+directed it may be turned to good account. It is the germ of the
+future capacity to organise men and women into corporate life--the
+very method by which much public and national work is readily
+accomplished, but which is impossible to accomplish by individual
+effort.
+
+3. Changes in the Religion of the Adolescent.--The religion of the
+adolescent is apt to be marked by fervour and earnest conviction, the
+phenomenon of "conversion" almost constantly occurring during
+adolescence. The girl looks upon eternal truths from a completely new
+standpoint, or at any rate with eyes that have been purged and
+illuminated by the throes of conversion. From a period of great
+anxiety and doubt she emerges to a time of intense love and devotion,
+to an eager desire to prove herself worthy, and to offer a sacrifice
+of the best powers she possesses. Unfortunately for peace of mind, the
+happy epoch succeeding conversion not unfrequently ends in a dismal
+time of intellectual doubt and spiritual darkness. Just as the
+embryonic love of the youthful adolescent leads to a time when the
+opposite sex is rather an object of dislike than of attraction, so the
+fervour of early conversion is apt to lead to a time of desolation;
+but just as the incomplete sex love of early adolescence finds its
+antitype and fine flower in the later fully developed love of
+honourable man and woman, so does the too rapturous and uncalculating
+religious devotion of these early years revive after the period of
+doubt, transfigured and glorified into the religious conviction and
+devotion which makes the strength, the joy, and the guiding principle
+of adult life.
+
+Much depends on the circumstances and people surrounding the
+adolescent. Her unbounded capacity for hero-worship leads in many
+instances to a conscious or unconscious copying of parent, guardian,
+or teacher; and although the ideals of the young are apt to far
+outpace those of the adult whose days of illusion are over, yet they
+are probably formed on the same type. One sees this illustrated by
+generations in the same family holding much the same religious or
+political opinions and showing the same aptitude for certain
+professions, games, and pursuits. Much there is in heredity, but
+probably there is still more in environment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+OUR DUTIES TOWARDS ADOLESCENT GIRLS.
+
+
+These may be briefly summed up by saying that we have to provide
+adolescent girls with all things that are necessary for their souls
+and their bodies, but any such bald and wholesale enunciation of our
+duty helps but little in clearing one's ideas and in pointing out the
+actual manner in which we are to perform it.
+
+First, with regard to the bodies of adolescent girls; Their primary
+needs, just like the primary needs of all living beings, are food,
+warmth, shelter, exercise and rest, with special care in sickness.
+
+Food.--In spite of the great advance of knowledge in the present day,
+it is doubtful whether much practical advance has been made in the
+dietetics of children and adolescents, and it is to be feared that our
+great schools are especially deficient in this most important respect.
+Even when the age of childhood is past, young people require a much
+larger amount of milk than is usually included in their diet sheet. It
+would be well for them to begin the day with porridge and milk or some
+such cereal preparation. Coffee or cocoa made with milk should
+certainly have the preference over tea for breakfast, and in addition
+to the porridge or other such dish, fish, egg, or bacon, with plenty
+of bread and butter, should form the morning repast. The midday meal
+should consist of fresh meat, fish, or poultry, with an abundance of
+green vegetables and a liberal helping of sweet pudding. The articles
+of diet which are most deficient in our lists are milk, butter, and
+sugar. There is an old prejudice against sugar which is quite
+unfounded so far as the healthy individual is concerned. Cane sugar
+has recently been proved to be a most valuable muscle food, and when
+taken in the proper way for sweetening beverages, fruit, and puddings,
+it is entirely good. The afternoon meal should consist chiefly of
+bread and butter and milk or cocoa, with a fair proportion of simple,
+well-made cake, and in the case where animal food has been taken both
+at breakfast and dinner, the evening meal might well be bread and
+butter, bread and milk, or milk pudding with stewed or fresh fruit.
+But it is different in the case of those adolescents whose midday meal
+is necessarily slight, and who ought to have a thoroughly good dinner
+or supper early in the evening;
+
+One would have thought it unnecessary to mention alcohol in speaking
+of the dietary of young people were it not that, strange to say, beer
+is still given at some of our public schools. It is extraordinary that
+wise and intelligent people should still give beer to young boys and
+girls at the very time when what they want is strength and not
+stimulus, food for the growing frame and nothing to stimulate the
+already exuberant passions.
+
+An invariable rule with regard to the food of children should be that
+their meals should be regular, that they should consist of good,
+varied, nourishing food taken at regular hours, and that nothing
+should be eaten between meals. The practice of eating biscuits, fruit,
+and sweets between meals during childhood and adolescence not only
+spoils the digestion and impairs the nutrition at the time, but it is
+apt to lay the foundation of a constant craving for something which is
+only too likely to take the form of alcoholic craving in later years.
+It is impossible for the stomach to perform its duty satisfactorily if
+it is never allowed rest, and the introduction of stray morsels of
+food at irregular times prevents this, and introduces confusion into
+the digestive work, because there will be in the stomach at the same
+time food in various stages of digestion.
+
+Warmth.--Warmth is one of the influences essential to health and to
+sound development, and although artificial warmth is more urgently
+required by little children and by old people than it is by young
+adults, still, if their bodies are to come to their utmost possible
+perfection, they require suitable conditions of temperature. This is
+provided in the winter partly by artificial heating of houses and
+partly by the wearing of suitable clothing. Ideal clothing is loose of
+texture and woven of wool, although a fairly good substitute can be
+obtained in materials that are made from cotton treated specially.
+
+This is not the time or place in which to insist on the very grave
+dangers that accompany the use of ordinary flannelette, but a caution
+must be addressed in passing to those who provide clothing for others.
+In providing clothes it is necessary to remember the two reasons for
+their existence: (1) to cover the body, and (2) as far as possible to
+protect a large area of its surface against undue damp and cold.
+
+Adolescents, as a rule, begin early to take a great interest in their
+clothes. From the time that the appreciation of the opposite sex
+commences, the child who has hitherto been indifferent or even
+slovenly in the matter of clothing takes a very living interest in it;
+indeed the adornment of person and the minute care devoted to details
+of the toilet by young people of both sexes remind one irresistibly of
+the preening of the feathers, the strutting and other antics of birds
+before their mates.
+
+Girls especially are apt to forget the primary object of clothing, and
+to think of it too much as a means of adornment. This leads to
+excesses and follies such as tight waists, high-heeled shoes, to the
+ungainly crinoline or to indecent scantiness of skirts. Direct
+interference in these matters is badly tolerated, but much may be
+accomplished both by example and by cultivating a refined and artistic
+taste in sumptuary matters.
+
+Sleep.--Amongst the most important of the factors that conduce to
+well-being both of body and mind must be reckoned an adequate amount
+of sleep. This has been made the subject of careful inquiry by Dr.
+Dukes of Rugby and Miss Alice Ravenhill. Both these trained and
+careful observers agree that the majority of young people get far too
+little rest and sleep. We have to remember that although fully-grown
+adults will take rest when they can get it in the daytime, young
+people are too active, and sometimes too restless, to give any repose
+to brain or muscle except during sleep. In the early years of
+adolescence ten hours sleep is none too much; even an adult in full
+work ought to have eight hours, and still more is necessary for the
+rapidly-growing, continually-developing, and never-resting adolescent.
+It is unfortunately a fact that even in the boarding schools of the
+well-to-do the provision of sleep is too limited, and for the children
+of the poor, whose homes are far from comfortable and who are
+accustomed to doing pretty nearly as their elders do, the night seldom
+begins before eleven or even twelve o'clock. It is one of the saddest
+sights of London to see small children dancing on the pavement in
+front of the public-houses up to a very late hour, while groups of
+loafing boys and hoydenish girls stand about at the street corners
+half the night. There is little wonder that the morning finds them
+heavy and unrefreshed, and that schoolwork suffers severely from want
+of the alert and vigorous attention that might be secured by a proper
+night's sleep.
+
+Great harm is done by allowing children to take work home with them
+from school; if possible, the day's work should finish with school
+hours, and the scanty leisure should be spent in healthy exercise or
+in sleep.
+
+Overcrowding.--In considering the question of adequate sleep it
+would be well to think of the conditions of healthy sleep.
+
+For sleep to be refreshing and health-giving, the sleeper ought to
+have a comfortable bed and an abundant supply of fresh air.
+Unfortunately the great majority of our people both in town and
+country do not enjoy these advantages. In both town and country there
+is a great deficiency of suitable dwellings at rents that can be paid
+with the usual rate of wages. In consequence families are crowded into
+one, two, or three rooms, and even in the case of people far above the
+status of day labourers and artisans it is the exception and not the
+rule for each individual to have a separate bed. The question of
+ventilation is certainly better understood than it was a few years
+ago, but still leaves much to be desired, and there is still an urgent
+necessity for preaching the gospel of the open window.
+
+Exercise.--In considering the question of the exercise of
+adolescents, one's thoughts immediately turn to athletics, games, and
+dancing. As a nation the English have always been fond of athletics,
+and have attributed to the influence of such team games as cricket and
+football not only their success in various competitions but also their
+success in the sterner warfare of life. This success has been obtained
+on the tented field and in the work of exploring, mountaineering, and
+other pursuits that make great demand not only on nerve and muscle but
+also on strength of character and powers of endurance.
+
+Team games appear to be the especial property of adolescents, for
+young children are more or less individualistic and solitary in many
+of their games, but boys and girls alike prefer team games from the
+pre-adolescent age up to adult life. It is certain that no form of
+exercise is superior to these games: they call into play every muscle
+of the body, they make great demands on accuracy of eye and
+coordination, they also stimulate and develop habits of command,
+obedience, loyalty, and _esprit de corps_. In the great public schools
+of England, and in the private schools which look up to them as their
+models, team games are played, as one might say, in a religious
+spirit. The boy or girl who attempts to take an unfair advantage, or
+who habitually plays for his or her own hand, is quickly made to feel
+a pariah and an outcast. Among the greatest blessings that are
+conveyed to the children of the poorer classes is the instruction not
+only in the technique of team games but also in the inoculation of the
+spirit in which they ought to be played. It is absolutely necessary
+that the highest ideals connected with games should be handed down,
+for thus the children who perhaps do not always have the highest
+ideals before them in real life may learn through this mimic warfare
+how the battle of life must be fought and what are the characters of
+mind and body that deserve and ensure success. It has been well said
+that those who make the songs of a nation help largely to make its
+character, and equally surely those who teach and control the games of
+the adolescents are making or marring a national destiny.
+
+Among the means of physical and moral advancement may be claimed
+gymnastics. And here, alas, this nation can by no means claim to be
+_facile princeps_. Not only have we been relatively slow in adopting
+properly systematised exercises, but even to the present day the
+majority of elementary schools are without properly fitted gymnasia
+and duly qualified teachers. The small and relatively poor
+Scandinavian nations have admirably fitted gymnasia in connection with
+their _Folkschule_, which correspond to our elementary schools. The
+exercises are based on those systematised by Ling; each series is
+varied, and is therefore the more interesting, and each lesson
+commences with simple, easily performed movements, leading on to those
+that are more elaborate and fatiguing, and finally passing through a
+descending series to the condition of repose.
+
+The gymnasia where such exercises are taught in England are relatively
+few and far between, and it is lamentable to find that many excellent
+and well-appointed schools for children, whose parents pay large sums
+of money for their education, have no properly equipped gymnasia nor
+adequately trained teachers. When the question is put, "How often do
+you have gymnastics at your school?" the answer is frequently, "We
+have none," or, "Half an hour once a week." Exercises such as Ling's
+not only exercise every muscle in the body in a scientific and
+well-regulated fashion, but being performed by a number of pupils at
+once in obedience to words of command, discipline, co-operation,
+obedience to teachers, and loyalty to comrades, are taught at the same
+time. The deepest interest attaches to many of the more complex
+exercises, while some of them make large demands on the courage and
+endurance of the young people.
+
+In Scandinavia the State provides knickerbockers, tunics, and
+gymnasium shoes for those children whose parents are too poor to
+provide them; and again, in Scandinavia there is very frequently the
+provision of bathrooms in which the pupils can have a shower bath and
+rub-down after the exercises. These bathrooms in connection with the
+gymnasia need not necessarily be costly; indeed many of them in
+Stockholm and Denmark merely consist of troughs in the cement floor,
+on the edge of which the children sit in a row while they receive a
+shower bath over their heads and bodies. The feet get well washed in
+the trough, and the smart douche of water on head and shoulders acts
+as an admirable tonic.
+
+Another exercise which ought to be specially dear to a nation of
+islanders is swimming, and this, again, is a relatively cheap luxury
+too much neglected amongst us. Certainly there are public baths, but
+there are not enough to permit of all the elementary school children
+bathing even once a week, and still less have they the opportunity of
+learning to swim. There is much to be done yet before we can be justly
+proud of our national system of education. We must not lose sight of
+the ideal with which we started--viz. that we should endeavour to do
+the best that is possible for our young people in body, soul, and
+spirit. The three parts of our nature are intertwined, and a duty
+performed to one part has an effect on the whole.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+CARE OF THE ADOLESCENT GIRL IN SICKNESS.
+
+
+If measured by the death-rate the period of adolescence should cause
+us little anxiety, but a careful examination into the state of health
+of children of school age shows us that it is a time in which
+disorders of health abound, and that although these disorders are not
+necessarily, nor even generally, fatal, they are frequent, they spoil
+the child's health, and inevitably bear fruit in the shape of an
+injurious effect on health in after life.
+
+That the health of adolescents should be unstable is what we ought to
+expect from the general instability of the organism due to the
+rapidity of growth and the remarkable developmental changes that are
+crowded into these few years. Rapidity of growth and increase of
+weight are very generally recognised, although their effects upon
+health are apt to be overlooked. On the other hand, the still more
+remarkable development that occurs in adolescence is very generally
+ignored.
+
+As a general rule the infectious fevers, the so-called childish
+diseases--such as measles, chicken-pox, and whooping-cough--are less
+common in adolescence than they are in childhood, while the special
+diseases of internal organs due to their overwork, or to their natural
+tendency to degeneration, is yet far in the future. The chief troubles
+of adolescents appear to be due to overstress which accompanies rapid
+development, to the difficulty of the whole organism in adapting
+itself to new functions and altered conditions, and no doubt in some
+measure to the unwisdom both of the young people and of their
+advisers.
+
+This is not the place for a general treatise on the diseases of
+adolescents, but a few of the commonest and most obvious troubles
+should be noted.
+
+The Teeth.--It is quite surprising to learn what a very large
+percentage of young soldiers are refused enlistment in the army on
+account of decayed or defective teeth, and anyone who has examined the
+young women candidates for the Civil Service and for Missionary
+Societies must have recognised that their teeth are in no way better
+than those of the young men. In addition to several vacancies in the
+dental series, it is by no means unusual to find that a candidate has
+three or even five teeth severely decayed. The extraordinary thing is
+that not only the young people and their parents very generally fail
+to recognise the gravity of this condition, but that even their
+medical advisers have frequently acquiesced in a state of things that
+is not only disagreeable but dangerous. A considerable proportion of
+people with decayed teeth have also suppuration about the margins of
+the gums and around the roots of the teeth. This pyorrhoea
+alveolaris, as it is called, constitutes a very great danger to the
+patient's health, the purulent discharge teems with poisonous
+micro-organisms, which being constantly swallowed are apt to give rise
+to septic disease in various organs. It is quite probable that some
+cases of gastric ulcer are due to this condition, so too are some
+cases of appendicitis, it has been known to cause a peculiarly fatal
+form of heart disease, and it is also responsible for the painful
+swelling of the joints of the fingers, with wasting of the muscles and
+general weakness which goes by the name of rheumatoid arthritis. In
+addition to this there are many local affections, such as swollen
+glands in the neck, that may be due to this poisonous discharge. One
+would think that the mere knowledge that decayed teeth can cause all
+this havoc would lead to a grand rush to the dentist, but so far from
+being the case, doctors find it extremely difficult to induce their
+patients to part with this unsightly, evil-smelling, and dangerous
+decayed tooth.
+
+The Throat.--Some throat affections, such as diphtheria and quinsy,
+are well known and justly dreaded; and although many a child's life
+has been sacrificed to the slowness of its guardians to procure
+medical advice and the health-restoring antitoxin, yet on the whole
+the public conscience is awake to this duty. Far otherwise is it with
+chronic diseases of the tonsils: they may be riddled with small cysts,
+they may be constantly in a condition of subacute inflammation
+dependent on a septic condition, but no notice is taken except when
+chill, constipation, or a general run-down state of health aggravates
+the chronic into a temporary acute trouble. And yet it is perhaps not
+going too far to say that for one young girl who is killed or
+invalided rapidly by diphtheria there are hundreds who are condemned
+to a quasi-invalid life owing to this persistent supply of poison to
+the system.
+
+Another condition of the throat which causes much ill-health is well
+known to the public under the name of adenoids. Unfortunately,
+however, many people have an erroneous idea that children will "grow
+out of adenoids." Even if this were true it is extremely unwise to
+wait for so desirable an event. Adenoids may continue to grow, and
+during the years that they are present they work great mischief. Owing
+to the blocking of the air-passages the mouth is kept constantly open,
+greatly to the detriment of the throat and lungs. Owing to the
+interference with the circulation at the back of the nose and throat,
+a considerable amount both of apparent and real stupidity is produced,
+the brain works less well than it ought, and the child's appearance is
+ruined by the flat, broad bridge of the nose and the gaping mouth. The
+tale of troubles due to adenoids is not even yet exhausted; a
+considerable amount of discharge collects about them which it is not
+easy to clear away, it undergoes very undesirable changes, and is then
+swallowed to the great detriment of the stomach and the digestion. The
+removal of septic tonsils and of adenoids is most urgently necessary,
+and usually involves little distress or danger. The change in the
+child's health and appearance that can thus be secured is truly
+wonderful, especially if it be taught, as it should be, to keep its
+mouth shut and to breathe through the nose. In the course of a few
+months the complexion will have cleared, the expression will have
+regained its natural intelligence, digestion will be well performed,
+and the child's whole condition will be that of alert vigour instead
+of one of listless and sullen indifference.
+
+Errors of Digestion.--From the consideration of certain states of
+the nose, mouth, and throat, it is easy to turn to what is so often
+their consequence. Many forms of indigestion are due to the septic
+materials swallowed. It would not, however, be fair to say that all
+indigestion is thus caused; not infrequently indigestion is due to
+errors of diet, and here the blame must be divided between the poverty
+and ignorance of many parents and the self-will of adolescents. The
+foods that are best for young people--such as bread, milk, butter,
+sugar, and eggs--are too frequently scarce in their dietaries owing to
+their cost; and again, in the case of many girls whose parents are
+able and willing to provide them with a thoroughly satisfactory
+diet-sheet, dyspepsia is caused by their refusal to take what is good
+for them, and by their preference for unsuitable and indigestible
+viands.
+
+A further cause of indigestion must be sought in the haste with which
+food is too often eaten. The failure to rise at the appointed time
+leads to a hasty breakfast, and this must eventually cause
+indigestion. The food imperfectly masticated and not sufficiently
+mixed with saliva enters the stomach ill-prepared, and the hasty rush
+to morning school or morning work effectually prevents the stomach
+from dealing satisfactorily with the mass so hastily thrust into it.
+
+There is an old saying that "Those whom the gods will destroy they
+first make mad," and in many instances young people who fall victims
+to the demon of dyspepsia owe their sorrows, if not to madness, at any
+rate to ignorance and want of consideration. The defective teeth,
+septic tonsils, discharging adenoids, poverty of their parents and
+their own laziness, all conspire to cause digestive troubles which
+bear a fruitful crop of further evils, for thus are caused such
+illnesses as anæmia and gastric ulcer.
+
+Constipation claims a few words to itself. And here again we ought
+to consider certain septic processes. The refuse of the food should
+travel along the bowels at a certain rate, but if owing to
+sluggishness of their movements or to defects in the quality and
+amount of their secretion, the refuse is too long retained the masses
+become unduly dry, and, constantly shrinking in volume, are no longer
+capable of being urged along the tube at the proper rate. In
+consequence of this the natural micro-organisms of the intestine cease
+to be innocent and become troublesome; they lead in the long run to a
+peculiar form of blood-poisoning, and to so many diseased conditions
+that it is impossible to deal with them at the present moment. The
+existence of constipation is too often a signal for the administration
+of many doses of medicine. The wiser, the less harmful, and the more
+effectual method of dealing with it would be to endeavour to secure
+the natural action of the bowels by a change in the diet, which should
+contain more vegetable and less animal constituents. The patient
+should also be instructed to drink plenty of water, either hot or
+cold, a large glassful on going to bed and one on first awaking, and
+also if necessary an hour before each meal. Steady exercise is also of
+very great service, and instead of starting so late as to have no time
+for walking to school or work, a certain portion of the daily journey
+should be done on foot. Further, in all cases where it is possible,
+team games, gymnastics, and dancing should be called in to supplement
+the walk.
+
+Headache.--Headache may be due to so many different causes that it
+would be impossible in this little book to adequately consider them,
+but it would not be fair to omit to mention that in many cases the
+headache of young people is due to their want of spectacles. The idea
+that spectacles are only required by people advanced in life is by
+this time much shaken, but even now not only many parents object to
+their children enjoying this most necessary assistance to imperfect
+vision, but also employers may be found so foolish and selfish as to
+refuse to employ those persons who need to wear glasses. The folly as
+well as selfishness of this objection is demonstrated by the far
+better work done by a person whose vision has been corrected, and the
+absolute danger incurred by all who have to deal with machinery if
+vision is imperfect. Among other causes for headache are the defects
+of mouth, throat, stomach, and bowels already described, because in
+all of them there is a supply of septic material to the blood which
+naturally causes headache and other serious symptoms.
+
+Abnormalities of Menstruation.--The normal period should occur at
+regular intervals about once a month. Its duration and amount vary
+within wide limits, but in each girl it should remain true to her
+individual type, and it ought not to be accompanied by pain or
+distress. As a rule the period starts quite normally, and it is not
+until the girl's health has been spoiled by over-exertion of body or
+mind, by unwise exertion during the period, or by continued exposure
+to damp or cold, that it becomes painful and abnormal in time or in
+amount.
+
+One of the earliest signs of approaching illness--such as consumption,
+anæmia, and mental disorder--is to be found in the more or less sudden
+cessation of the period. This should always be taken as a
+danger-signal, and as indicating the need of special medical advice.
+
+Another point that should enter into intimate talk with girls is to
+make them understand the co-relation of their own functions to the
+great destiny that is in store. A girl is apt to be both shocked and
+humiliated when she first hears of menstruation and its phenomena.
+Should this function commence before she is told about it, she will
+necessarily look upon it with disgust and perhaps with fear. It is
+indeed a most alarming incident in the case of a girl who knows
+nothing about it, but if, before the advent of menstruation, it be
+explained to her that it is a sign of changes within her body that
+will gradually, after the lapse of some years, fit her also to take
+her place amongst the mothers of the land, her shame and fear will be
+converted into modest gladness, and she will readily understand why
+she is under certain restrictions, and has at times to give up work or
+pleasure in order that her development may be without pain, healthy,
+and complete.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+MENTAL AND MORAL TRAINING.
+
+
+The years of adolescence, during which rapid growth and development
+inevitably cause so much stress and frequently give rise to danger,
+are the very years in which the weight of school education necessarily
+falls most heavily. The children of the poor leave school at fourteen
+years of age, just the time when the children of the wealthier classes
+are beginning to understand the necessity of education and to work
+with a clearer realisation of the value and aim of lessons. The whole
+system of education has altered of late years, and school work is now
+conducted far more intelligently and with a greater appreciation of
+the needs and capacities of the pupils than it was some fifty years
+ago. Work is made more interesting, the relation of different studies
+to each other is more adequately put in evidence, and the influence
+that school studies have on success in after life is more fully
+realised by all concerned. The system of training is, however, far
+from perfect. In the case of girls, more particularly, great care has
+to be exercised not to attempt to teach too much, and to give careful
+consideration to the physiological peculiarities of the pupils. It is
+impossible for girls who are undergoing such rapid physiological and
+psychical changes to be always equally able and fit for strenuous
+work. There are days in every girl's life when she is not capable of
+her best work, and when a wise and sympathetic teacher will see that
+it is better for her to do comparatively little. And yet these slack
+times are just those in which there is the greatest danger of a girl
+indulging in daydreams, and when her thoughts need to be more than
+usually under control. These times may be utilised for lighter
+subjects and for such manual work as does not need great physical
+exertion. It is not a good time for exercises, for games, for dancing,
+and for gardening, nor are they the days on which mathematics should
+be pressed, but they are days in which much supervision is needed, and
+when time should not be permitted to hang heavily on hand.
+
+Just as there are days in which consideration should be shown, so too
+there are longer periods of time in which it is unwise for a girl to
+be pressed to prepare for or to undergo a strenuous examination. The
+brain of the girl appears to be as good as that of the boy, while her
+application, industry, and emulation are far in advance of his, but
+she has these physiological peculiarities, and if they are disregarded
+there will not only be an occasional disastrous failure in bodily or
+mental health, but girls as a class will fail to do the best work of
+which they are capable, and will fail to reap the fullest advantage
+from an education which is costly in money, time, and strength. It
+follows that the curriculum for girls presents greater difficulties
+than the curriculum for boys, and that those ladies who are
+responsible for the organisation of a school for girls need to be
+women of great resource, great patience, and endowed with much
+sympathetic insight. The adolescent girl will generally do little to
+help her teachers in this matter. She is incapable of recognising her
+own limitations, she is full of emulation, and is desirous of
+attaining and keeping a good position not only in her school but also
+in the University or in any other public body for whose examination
+she may present herself. The young girl most emphatically needs to be
+saved from herself, and she has to learn the lessons of obedience and
+of cheerful acquiescence in restrictions that certainly appear to her
+simply vexatious.
+
+One of the difficulties in private schools arises from the necessity
+of providing occupation for every hour of the waking day, while
+avoiding the danger of overwork with its accompanying exhaustion. In
+the solution of this problem such subjects as gymnastics, games,
+dancing, needlework, cooking, and domestic economy will come in as a
+welcome relief from the more directly intellectual studies, and
+equally as a relief to the conscientious but hard-pressed woman who is
+trying to save her pupils from the evils of unoccupied time on the one
+hand and undue mental pressure on the other.
+
+Boys, and to a less extent girls, attending elementary schools who
+leave at fourteen are not likely to suffer in the same way or from the
+same causes. One of the difficulties in their case is that they leave
+school just when work is becoming interesting and before habits of
+study have been formed, indeed before the subjects taught have been
+thoroughly assimilated, and that therefore in the course of a few
+years little may be left of their painfully acquired and too scanty
+knowledge. Free education has been given to the children of the poor
+for nearly fifty years, and yet the mothers who were schoolgirls in
+the seventies and eighties appear to have saved but little from the
+wreck of their knowledge except the power to sign their names and to
+read in an imperfect and blundering manner.
+
+Here, too, there are many problems to be solved, one among them being
+the great necessity of endeavouring to correlate the lessons given in
+school to the work that the individual will have to perform in after
+life. It would appear as if the girls of the elementary schools, in
+addition to reading, writing, and simple arithmetic, sufficient to
+enable them to write letters, to read books, and to keep simple
+household accounts, ought to be taught the rudiments of cookery, the
+cutting out and making of garments, and the best methods of cleansing
+as applied to houses, household utensils and clothing. In addition,
+and as serious subjects, not merely as a recreation, they should be
+taught gymnastics, part singing and mother-craft. No doubt in
+individual schools much of this modification of the curriculum has
+been accomplished, but more remains to be done before we can be
+satisfied that we have done the best in our power to fit the children
+of the country for their life's work.
+
+Another of the great problems connected with the children in
+elementary schools, a problem which, indeed, arises out of their
+leaving at fourteen, is that of the Continuation School or Evening
+School, and the system which is known as "half-timing." It is well
+known that although young people from fourteen to sixteen years of age
+are well able to profit by continued instruction, they are, with very
+few exceptions, not at all well adapted for commencing their life's
+work as industrials. The general incoherency and restlessness peculiar
+to that age frequently lead to a change of employment every few
+months, while their general irresponsibility and want of self-control
+lead to frequent disputes with foremen and other officials in
+factories and shops, in consequence of which the unfortunate child is
+constantly out of work. In proportion to the joy and pride caused by
+the realised capacity to earn money and by the sense of independence
+that employment brings, is the unhappiness, and in many cases the
+misery, due to unemployment, and to repeated failures to obtain and to
+keep an independent position. The boy or girl out of work has an
+uneasy feeling that he or she has not earned the just and expected
+share towards household expenses. The feeling of dependence and
+well-nigh of disgrace causes a rapid deterioration in health and
+spirits, and it is only too likely that in many instances where
+unemployment is continuous or frequently repeated, the unemployed
+will quickly become the unemployable.
+
+So far as the young people themselves are concerned, it would be
+nearly always an unmixed benefit that they should pass at fourteen
+into a Technical School or Continuation School, as the case may be.
+Among the great difficulties to the solution of this problem is the
+fact that in many working-class households the few weekly shillings
+brought into the family store by the elder children are of very real
+importance, and although the raising of the age of possible employment
+and independence would enable the next generation to work better and
+to earn higher and more continuous wages, it is difficult for the
+parents to acquiesce in the present deprivation involved, even though
+it represents so much clear gain in the not distant future.
+
+At the present time there are Evening Schools, but this system does
+not work well. All busy people are well aware that after a hard day's
+work neither brain nor body is in the best possible condition for two
+or three hours of serious mental effort. The child who has spent the
+day in factory or shop has really pretty nearly used up all his or her
+available mental energy, and after the evening meal is naturally
+heavy, stupid, irritable, and altogether in a bad condition for
+further effort. The evenings ought to be reserved for recreation, for
+the gymnasium, the singing class, the swimming bath, and even for the
+concert and the theatre.
+
+The system of "half-timing" during ordinary school life does not work
+well, and it would be a great pity should a similar system be
+introduced in the hope of furthering the education of boys and girls
+who are just entering industrial life. There is reason to hope that a
+great improvement in education will be secured by Mr. Hayes Fisher's
+bill.
+
+Another subject to which the attention of patriots and philanthropists
+ought to be turned is the sort of employment open to children at
+school-leaving age. The greatest care should be taken to diminish the
+number of those who endeavour to achieve quasi-independence in those
+occupations which are well known as "blind alleys." In England it is
+rare that girls should seek these employments, but in Scotland there
+is far too large a number of girl messengers. In this particular, the
+case of the girl is superior to that of the boy. The "tweeny" develops
+into housemaid or cook; the young girls employed in superior shops to
+wait on the elder shopwomen hope to develop into their successors, and
+the girls who nurse babies on the doorsteps are, after all, acquiring
+knowledge and dexterity that may fit them for domestic service or for
+the management of their own families a few years later.
+
+The girls of the richer classes have not the same difficulties as
+their poorer sisters. They generally remain at school until a much
+later age, and subsequently have the joy and stimulus of college life,
+of foreign travel, of social engagements, or of philanthropic
+enterprise. Still, a residue remains even of girls of this class whose
+own inclinations, or whose family circumstances, lead to an aimless,
+purposeless existence, productive of much injury to both body and
+mind, and only too likely to end in hopeless ennui and nervous
+troubles. It should be thoroughly understood by parents and guardians
+that no matter what the girl's circumstances may be, she ought always
+to have an abundance of employment. The ideas of obligation and of
+duty should not be discarded when school and college life cease. The
+well-to-do girl should be encouraged to take up some definite
+employment which would fill her life and provide her with interests
+and duties. Any other arrangement tends to make the time between
+leaving school or college and a possible marriage not only a wasted
+time but also a seed-time during which a crop is sown of bad habits,
+laziness of body, and slackness of mind, that subsequently bear bitter
+fruit. It is quite time for us to recognise that unemployment and
+absence of duties is as great a disadvantage to the rich as it is to
+the poor; the sort of employment must necessarily differ, but the
+spirit in which it is to be done is the same.
+
+One point that one would wish to emphasise with regard to all
+adolescents is that although occupation for the whole day is most
+desirable, hard work should occupy but a certain proportion of the
+waking hours. For any adolescent, or indeed for any of us to attempt
+to work hard for twelve or fourteen hours out of the twenty-four is to
+store up trouble. It is not possible to lay down any hard and fast
+rule as to the length of hours of work, because the other factors in
+the problem vary so greatly. One person may be exhausted by four
+hours of intellectual effort, whereas another is less fatigued by
+eight; and further, the daily occupations vary greatly in the demand
+that they make on attention and on such qualities as reason, judgment,
+and power of initiation. Those who teach or learn such subjects as
+mathematics, or those who are engaged in such occupations as
+portrait-painting and the higher forms of musical effort, must
+necessarily take more out of themselves than those who are employed in
+feeding a machine, in nursing a baby, or in gardening operations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE FINAL AIM OF EDUCATION.
+
+
+The great problem before those who have the responsibility for the
+training of the young is that of preparing them to take their place in
+the world as fathers, mothers, and citizens, and among the fundamental
+duties connected with this responsibility must come the placing before
+the eyes of the young people high ideals, attractive examples, and the
+securing to them the means of adequate preparation. As a nation it
+seems to be with us at present as it was with the people of Israel in
+the days of Eli: "the word of the Lord was precious (or scarce) in
+those days; there was no open vision." We seem to have come to a time
+of civilisation in which there is much surface refinement and a
+widespread veneer of superficial knowledge, but in which there is
+little enthusiasm and in which the great aim and object of teaching
+and of training is but too little realised. In the endeavour to know a
+little of all things we seem to have lost the capacity for true and
+exhaustive knowledge of anything. It would appear as if the remedy for
+this most unsatisfactory state of things has to commence long before
+the years of adolescence, even while the child is yet in its cradle.
+The old-fashioned ideas of duty, obedience, and discipline must be
+once more household words and living entities before the race can
+enter on a period of regeneration. We want a poet with the logic of
+Browning, the sweetness of Tennyson, and the force of Rudyard Kipling,
+to sing a song that would penetrate through indifference, sloth, and
+love of pleasure, and make of us the nation that we might be, and of
+which the England of bygone years had the promise.
+
+Speaking specially with regard to girls, let us first remember that
+the highest earthly ideal for a woman is that she should be a good
+wife and a good mother. It is not necessary to say this in direct
+words to every small girl, but she ought to be so educated, so guided,
+as to instinctively realise that wifehood and motherhood is the flower
+and perfection of her being. This is the hope and ideal that should
+sanctify her lessons and sweeten the right and proper discipline of
+life. All learning, all handicraft, and all artistic training should
+take their place as a preparation to this end. Each generation that
+comes on to the stage of life is the product of that which preceded
+it. It is the flower of the present national life and the seed of that
+which is to come. We ought to recognise that all educational aims and
+methods are really subordinate to this great end; if this were
+properly realised by adolescents it would be of the greatest service
+and help in their training. The deep primal instinct of fatherhood and
+motherhood would help them more than anything else to seek earnestly
+and successfully for the highest attainable degree of perfection of
+their own bodies, their own minds, and their own souls. It is,
+however, impossible to aim at an ideal that is unseen and even
+unknown, and although the primal instinct exists in us all, its
+fruition is greatly hindered by the way in which it is steadily
+ignored, and by the fact that any proclamation of its existence is
+considered indiscreet and even indelicate. How are children to develop
+a holy reverence for their own bodies unless they know of their
+wonderful destiny? If they do not recognise that at least in one
+respect God has confided to them in some measure His own creative
+function, how can they jealously guard against all that would injure
+their bodies and spoil their hopes for the exercise of this function?
+There is, even at the present time, a division of opinion as to when
+and in what manner children are to be made aware of their august
+destiny. We are indeed only now beginning to realise that ignorance is
+not necessarily innocence, and that knowledge of these matters may be
+sanctified and blessed. It is, however, certain that the conspiracy of
+silence which lasted so many years has brought forth nothing but evil.
+If a girl remains ignorant of physiological facts, the shock of the
+eternal realities of life that come to her on marriage is always
+pernicious and sometimes disastrous. If, on the other hand, such
+knowledge is obtained from servants and depraved playfellows, her
+purity of mind must be smirched and injured.
+
+Even among those who hold that children ought to be instructed, there
+is a division of opinion as to when this instruction is to begin. Some
+say at puberty, others a few years later, perhaps on the eve of
+marriage, and yet others think that the knowledge will come with less
+shock, with less personal application, and therefore in a more natural
+and useful manner from the very beginning of conscious life. These
+last would argue--why put the facts of reproduction on a different
+footing from those of digestion and respiration? As facts in the
+physical life they hold a precisely similar position. Upon the due
+performance of bodily functions depends the welfare of the whole
+organism, and although reproduction, unlike the functions of
+respiration and digestion, is not essential to the life of the
+individual, it is essential to the life of the nation.
+
+The facts of physiology are best taught to little children by a
+perfectly simple recognition of the phenomena of life around them--the
+cat with her kittens, the bird with its fledgelings, and still more
+the mother with her infant, are all common facts and beautiful types
+of motherhood. Instead of inventing silly and untrue stories as to the
+origin of the kitten and the fledgeling, it is better and wiser to
+answer the child's question by a direct statement of fact, that God
+has given the power to His creatures to perpetuate themselves, that
+the gift of Life is one of His good gifts bestowed in mercy on all His
+creatures. The mother's share in this gift and duty can be observed
+by, and simply explained to, the child from its earliest years; it
+comes then with no shock, no sense of shame, but as a type of joy and
+gladness, an image of that holiest of all relations, the Eternal
+Mother and the Heavenly Child.
+
+Somewhat later in life, probably immediately before puberty in boys
+and shortly after puberty in girls, the father's share in this mystery
+may naturally come up for explanation. The physiological facts
+connected with this are not so constantly in evidence before children,
+and therefore do not press for explanation in the same way as do those
+of motherhood, but the time comes soon in the schoolboy's life when
+the special care of his own body has to be urged on him, and this
+knowledge ought to come protected by the sanction that unless he is
+faithful to his trust he cannot look to the reward of a happy home
+life with wife and children. In the case of the girl the question as
+to fatherhood is more likely to arise out of the reading of the Bible
+or other literature, or by her realisation that at any rate in the
+case of human parenthood there is evidently the intermediation of a
+father. The details of this knowledge need not necessarily be pressed
+on the adolescent girl, but it is a positive cruelty to allow the
+young woman to marry without knowing the facts on which her happiness
+depends.
+
+Another way in which the mystery of parenthood can be simply and
+comfortably taught is through the study of vegetable physiology. The
+fertilisation of the ovules by pollen which falls directly from the
+anthers on to the stigma can be used as a representation of similar
+facts in animal physiology. It is very desirable, however, that this
+study of the vegetable should succeed and not precede that of the
+domestic animals in the teaching of boys and girls.
+
+Viewed from this standpoint there is surely no difficulty to the
+parent in imparting to the child this necessary knowledge. We have to
+remember that children have to know the mysteries of life. They cannot
+live in the world without seeing the great drama constantly displayed
+to them in family life and in the lives of domesticated animals. They
+cannot read the literature of Greece and Rome, nay, they cannot study
+the Book of Books, without these facts being constantly brought to
+mind. A child's thirst for the interpretation of this knowledge is
+imperative and unsatiable--not from prurience nor from evil-mindedness,
+but in obedience to a law of our nature, the child demands this
+knowledge--and will get it. It is for fathers and mothers to say
+whether these sublime and beautiful mysteries shall be lovingly
+and reverently unveiled by themselves or whether the child's mind
+shall be poisoned and all beauty and reverence destroyed by depraved
+school-fellows and vulgar companions.
+
+In the hope of securing the purity, reverence and piety of our
+children, in the hope that they may grow up worthy of their high
+destiny, let us do what we may to keep their honour unsmirched, to
+preserve their innocence, and to lead them on from the unconscious
+goodness of childhood to the clear-eyed, fully conscious dignity of
+maturity, that our sons may grow up as young plants, and our daughters
+as the polished corners of the temple.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.: BOYS.
+
+BY F. ARTHUR SIBLY, M.A., LL.D.
+
+PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
+
+
+My contribution to this little book was originally intended for the
+eyes of parents, scoutmasters, and other adults. Since 1913, when the
+book was first published, it has been my privilege to receive from
+these so many letters of warm appreciation that it seems needless to
+retain the apologetic preface which I then wrote. The object which I
+had in view at that time was the hastening of a supremely important
+reform. I have to-day the very deep joy of knowing that my words have
+carried conviction to many adults and have given help to countless
+boys.
+
+One result of this publication was entirely unlooked for. It did not
+occur to me, as I wrote, that the book would be read by boys and young
+men. It was not written at all for this purpose. In some respects its
+influence over them has, however, been increased by this obvious fact.
+In this book boys have, as it were, overheard a confidential
+conversation about themselves carried on by adults anxious for their
+welfare, and some at least are evidently more impressed by this
+conversation than by a direct appeal--in which they are liable to
+suspect exaggeration.
+
+I have received hundreds of letters from boys and young men. These
+confirm in _every_ way the conclusions set forth in this book, and
+prove that the need for guidance in sex matters is acute and
+universal. The relief and assistance which many boys have experienced
+from correspondence with me, and the interest which I find in their
+letters have caused me--spite of the extreme preoccupation of a
+strenuous life--to issue a special invitation to those who may feel
+inclined to write to me.
+
+Great diversity of opinion exists as to the best method of giving sex
+instruction, and those who have had experience of one method are
+curiously blind to the merits of other methods, which they usually
+strongly denounce. While I have my own views as to the best method to
+adopt, I am quite sure that each one of very many methods can, in
+suitable hands, produce great good, and that the very poorest method
+is infinitely superior to no method at all.
+
+Some are for oral teaching, some for the use of a pamphlet, some
+favour confidential individual teaching, others collective public
+teaching. Some would try to make sex a sacred subject; some would
+prefer to keep the emotional element out and treat reproduction as a
+matter-of-fact science subject. Some wish the parent to give the
+teaching, some the teacher, some the doctor, some a lecturer specially
+trained for this purpose. Good results have been obtained by every
+one of these methods.
+
+During recent years much additional evidence has accumulated in my
+hands of the beneficent results of such teaching as I advocate in
+these pages, and I am confident that of boys who have been wisely
+guided and trained, few fail to lead clean lives even when associated
+with those who are generally and openly corrupt. I must, however,
+emphasise my belief that the cleanliness of a boy's life depends
+ultimately not upon his knowledge of good and evil but upon his
+devotion to the Right.
+
+    "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
+    These three alone lead life to sovereign power."
+
+Where these are not, it is idle to inculcate the rarest and most
+difficult of all virtues.
+
+F. ARTHUR SIBLY.
+
+WYCLIFFE, STONEHOUSE, GLOS.
+_September 1918._
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
+
+
+The term puberty will so often be used in the following chapters that
+a brief account of the phenomena of puberty may appropriately be given
+at the outset of this work. Puberty is a name given to the age at
+which a boy becomes capable of being a father. In temperate climates
+this age is reached at about fifteen years, though some boys attain it
+at twelve and some not until seventeen. The one obvious and invariable
+sign of puberty is a change of pitch in the voice, which assumes its
+bass character after an embarrassing period of squeaky alternations
+between the high and low tones.
+
+The age is a critical one, as several important changes take place in
+body and in mind. The reproductive organs undergo considerable
+development and become sensitive to any stimulus, physical or mental.
+The seminal fluid, which in normal cases has hitherto been secreted
+little, if at all, is now elaborated by the testicles, and contains
+spermatazoa--minute organisms which are essential to reproduction.
+Under the stimulus of sexual thoughts this fluid is secreted in such
+quantity as to give rise to involuntary discharge during sleep. These
+nocturnal emissions are so often found among boys and young men that
+some physiologists consider them to be quite normal. My experience
+leads me to doubt this conclusion.
+
+Another physical change associated with puberty is the growth of hair
+on the pubes and on the face: in this latter situation the growth is
+slow.
+
+With the capacity for fatherhood comes a very strong awakening of the
+sexual instinct, which manifests itself in passion and in lust--the
+unconscious and the conscious sex hunger. The passion shows itself in
+a ludicrously indiscriminate and exaggerated susceptibility to female
+attractions--a susceptibility the sexual character of which is usually
+quite unrecognised. Among boys who have sex knowledge there is also a
+tendency to dwell on sexual thoughts when the mind is not otherwise
+occupied. Passion and lust do not at once develop their full strength;
+but, coming at a time when self-control is very weak, and coming with
+all the attraction of novelty, they often dominate the mind even in
+normal cases, and may become tyrannous when the reproductive system
+has been prematurely stimulated.
+
+A heightened self-consciousness and an antagonism to authority so
+often follow the attainment of puberty that they are usually
+considered to be its results. My own experience with boys satisfies me
+that this conclusion is not correct. Self-consciousness, when it
+occurs in boyhood, is usually the result of an unclean inner life.
+Puberty merely increases the self-consciousness by intensifying its
+cause. When the mind is clean there is no marked change in this
+respect at puberty. The antagonism to authority so often observed
+after puberty is the product of unsatisfactory external influences.
+With puberty the desire to stand well with others, and in particular
+the desire to seem manly, increases. If a debased public opinion
+demands of a boy the cheap manliness of profanity, tobacco, and
+irreverence, the demand creates a plentiful supply, while it also
+suppresses as priggish or "pi" any avowed or suspected devotion to
+higher ideals. A healthy public opinion, working in harmony with a
+boy's nobler instincts, calls forth in him an earnest devotion to high
+ideals, and causes him to exercise, on the development of his powers
+and in a crusade against wrong, the new energies which a wholesome
+puberty places at his disposal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+PREVALENCE OF IMPURITY AMONG BOYS: THE AUTHOR'S OWN EXPERIENCE.
+
+
+Of the perils which beset the growing boy all are recognised, and, in
+a measure, guarded against except the most inevitable and most fatal
+peril of all. In all that concerns the use and abuse of the
+reproductive organs the great majority of boys have hitherto been left
+without adult guidance, and have imbibed their ideas from the coarser
+of their companions and from casual references to the subject in the
+Bible and other books. Under these conditions very few boys escape two
+of the worst dangers into which it is possible for a lad to fall--the
+artificial stimulation of the reproductive organs and the acquisition
+of degraded ideas on the subject of sex. That many lives are thus
+prematurely shortened, that many constitutions are permanently
+enfeebled, that very many lads who might otherwise have striven
+successfully against the sexual temptations of adult life
+succumb--almost without a struggle--to them, can be doubted by no one
+who is familiar with the inner life of boys and men.
+
+Of these two evils, self-abuse, though productive of manifold and
+disastrous results, is distinctly the less. Many boys outgrow the
+physical injuries which, in ignorance, they inflict upon themselves in
+youth; but very few are able wholly to cleanse themselves from the
+foul desires associated in their minds with sex. These desires make
+young men impotent in the face of temptation. Under their evil
+dominance, even men of kind disposition will, by seduction, inflict on
+an innocent girl agony, misery, degradation, and premature death. They
+will indulge In the most degrading of all vices with prostitutes on
+the street. They will defile the atmosphere of social life with filthy
+talk and ribald jest. Even a clean and ennobling passion can do little
+to redeem them. The pure stream of human love is made turbid with
+lust. After a temporary uplifting in marriage the soul is again
+dragged down, marriage vows are broken and the blessings of home life
+are turned into wormwood and gall.
+
+That a system so destructive of physical and of spiritual health
+should have lasted almost intact until now will, I believe, shortly
+become a matter for general amazement; for while evidence of the
+widespread character of youthful perversion is a product of quite
+recent years, the assumptions on which this system has been based are
+unreasonable and incapable of proof.
+
+Since conclusive evidence of the prevalence of impurity among boys is
+available, I will not at present invite the reader to examine the
+assumptions which lead most people to a contrary belief. When I do
+so, I shall hope to demonstrate that we might reasonably expect to
+find things precisely as they are. In the first and second chapters we
+shall see to what conclusions teachers who have actual experience in
+the matter have been led.
+
+There are several teachers whose authority in most matters stands so
+very much above my own that it might seem presumptuous to begin by
+laying my own experiences before the reader; but I venture to take
+this course because no other teacher, as far as I know, has published
+quite such definite evidence as I have done; and I think that the more
+general statements of such eminent men as Canon Lyttelton, Mr. A.C.
+Benson, and Dr. Clement Dukes will appeal to the reader more
+powerfully when he has some idea of the manner in which conclusions on
+this subject may be reached. I have some reason, also, for the belief
+that the paper I read in 1908 at the London University before the
+International Congress on Moral Education has been considered of great
+significance by very competent judges. By a special decision of the
+Executive of the Congress it--alone of all sectional papers--was
+printed _in extenso_ in the official report. Later on, it came under
+the notice of Sir R. Baden-Powell, at whose request it was republished
+in the _Headquarters Gazette_--the official organ of the Boy Scout
+movement.
+
+It certainly did require some courage at the time to put my results
+before the public, for I was not then aware that men of great eminence
+in the educational world had already made equally sweeping, if less
+definite, statements. Emboldened by this fact and by the commendations
+above referred to, I venture to quote the greater part of this short
+paper.
+
+"The opinions I am about to put forward are based almost entirely on
+my own twenty years' experience as a housemaster. My house contains
+forty-eight boys, who vary in age from ten to nineteen and come from
+comfortable middle-class homes.
+
+"Private interviews with individual boys in my study have been the
+chief vehicle of my teaching and the chief source of my information.
+My objects in these interviews have been to warn boys against the
+evils of private impurity, to supply them with a certain amount of
+knowledge on sexual subjects in order to prevent a prurient curiosity,
+and to induce them to confide to me the history of their own knowledge
+and difficulties. In my early days I interviewed those only who
+appeared to me to be obviously suffering from the effects of impurity,
+and, of late years, the extreme pressure of my work has forced me very
+reluctantly to recur to this plan.
+
+"For several years, however, I was accustomed to interview every boy
+under my care during his first term with me. Very rarely have I failed
+in these interviews so to secure a boy's confidence as to learn the
+salient facts of the history of his inner life. Sunday afternoon
+addresses to the Sixth Form on the sexual dangers of late youth and
+early manhood have resulted at times in elder boys themselves seeking
+an interview with me. Such spontaneous confidences have naturally
+been fuller, and therefore more instructive, than the confidences I
+have invited.
+
+"Many people are inclined to look upon the instruction of boys in
+relation to adolescence as needless and harmful; needless because few
+boys, they imagine, awake to the consciousness and problems of sex
+until manhood; harmful because the pristine innocence of the mind is,
+they think, destroyed, and evils are suggested of which a boy might
+otherwise remain unconscious. To one who knows what boys really are
+such ideas are nothing less than ludicrous.
+
+"Boys come to our school from many different classes of preparatory
+and secondary schools. Almost every such school seems to possess a few
+boys who delight to initiate younger boys into sexual knowledge, and
+usually into knowledge of solitary vice. The very few boys who have
+come to me quite ignorant of these matters have come either straight
+from home at ten or eleven, or from a school in which a few young boys
+are educated with girls. Of boys who have come under my care as late
+as twelve I have known but two who even professed total ignorance on
+sexual subjects, and in one of these cases I am quite sure that no
+such ignorance existed.
+
+"In a large majority of cases solitary vice has been learned and
+practised before a boy has got into his teens. The lack of insight
+parents display in relation to these questions is quite phenomenal.
+The few who mention the subject to me are always quite satisfied of
+the complete 'innocence' of their boys. Some of the most precocious
+and unclean boys I have known have been thus confidently commended to
+me. Boys are wholly unsuspicious of the extent to which their inner
+life lies open to the practised eye, and they feel secure that nothing
+can betray their secrets if they themselves do not.
+
+"In no department of our life are George Eliot's words truer than in
+this department: 'Our daily familiar life is but a hiding of ourselves
+from each other behind a screen of trivial words and deeds, and those
+who sit with us at the same hearth are often the farthest off from the
+deep human soul within us--full of unspoken evil and unacted good.' We
+cannot prevent a boy's obtaining information on sexual questions. Our
+choice lies between leaving him to pick it up from unclean and vulgar
+minds, which will make it guilty and impure, and giving it ourselves
+in such a way as to invest it from the first with a sacred character.
+
+"Another idea which my experience proves to be an entire delusion is
+the idea that a boy's natural refinement is a sufficient protection
+against defilement. Some of the most refined boys I have had the
+pleasure of caring for have been pronounced victims of solitary sin.
+That it is a sin at all, that it has, indeed, any significance, either
+ethical or spiritual, has not so much as occurred to most of them. On
+what great moral question dare we leave the young to find their own
+way absolutely without guidance? In this most difficult and dangerous
+of all questions we leave the young soul, stirred by novel and blind
+impulses, to grope in the darkness. Is it any wonder if it fails to
+see things in their true relations?
+
+"Again, it is sometimes thought that the consequences of secret sin
+are so patent as to deter a boy from the sin itself. So far is this
+from being the case that I have never yet found a single boy (even
+among those who have, through it, made almost complete wrecks
+physically and mentally) who has of himself connected these
+consequences with the sin itself. I have, on the other hand, known
+many sad cases in which, through the weakening of will power, which
+this habit causes, boys of high ideals have fallen again and again
+after their eyes have been fully opened. This sin is rarely a
+conscious moral transgression. The boy is a victim to be sympathised
+with and helped, not an offender to be reproved and punished."
+
+I desire to call the attention of the reader to two points in the
+foregoing extract. I was particular in giving my credentials to state
+the character and limitations of my experience. Everywhere in life one
+finds confident and sweeping generalisations made by men who have
+little or no experience to appeal to. This is specially the case in
+the educational world, and perhaps most of all in discussions on this
+very subject. Some men, at least, are willing to instruct the public
+with nothing better to guide them than the light of Nature. It would
+greatly assist the quest of truth if everyone who ventures to address
+the public on this question would first present his credentials.
+
+There is danger lest the reader should discount the significance of
+the statements I make in the foregoing paper by falling into the error
+of supposing that the facts stated apply, after all, to one school
+only. This is not by any means so. The facts have been collected _at_
+one school; but those which refer to the prevalence of sex knowledge
+and of masturbation have reference solely to the condition of boys
+when they first entered, and are significant of the conditions which
+obtain at some scores of schools and in many homes. I venture here to
+quote and to warmly endorse Canon Lyttelton's opinion: "It is,
+however, so easy to be misunderstood in this matter that I must insert
+a caution against an inference which may be drawn from these words,
+viz. that school life is the _origin_ of immorality among boys. The
+real origin is to be found in the common predisposition to vicious
+conceptions, which is the result of neglect. Nature provides in almost
+every case an active curiosity on this subject; and that curiosity
+must be somehow allayed; and if it were not allayed at school, false
+and depraved ideas would be picked up at home.... So readily does an
+ignorant mind at an early age take in teaching about these subjects
+that there are no conceivable conditions of modern social life not
+fraught with grave peril to a young boy, if once he has been allowed
+to face them quite unprepared, either by instruction or by warning.
+And this manifestly applies to life at home, or in a day-school, or
+in a boarding-school to an almost equal degree."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Training of the Young in Relation to Sex, p. 1 et
+seq_.]
+
+One of the facts which I always tried to elicit from boys was the
+source of their information, or rather the character of that source,
+for I was naturally anxious not to ask a boy to incriminate any
+individual known to me. In many cases, information came first to the
+boy at _home_ from a brother, or cousin, or casual acquaintance, or
+domestic servant. In one of the worst cases I have known the
+information was given to a boy by another boy--an entire stranger to
+him--whom he happened to meet on a country road when cycling. Since
+boys meet one another very much more at school than elsewhere and
+spend three-fourths of their lives there, of course information is
+more often obtained at school than at home. My own experience leads me
+to think that in this respect the day-school--probably on account of
+its mixed social conditions--is worse than the boarding-school.
+
+Before passing from matters of personal experience, it may interest
+the reader if I give particulars of a few typical cases to illustrate
+some points on which I have insisted.
+
+_Case A._--The father and mother of a boy close on thirteen came to
+see me before entering the lad. They had no idea that I was specially
+interested in purity-teaching; but they were anxious to ascertain what
+precautions we took against the corruption of small boys. They struck
+me as very good parents. I was specially pleased that they were alive
+to the dangers of impurity, and that the mother could advert openly to
+the matter without embarrassment. I advised them to give the boy
+explicit warning; but they said that they were anxious to preserve his
+innocence as long as possible. He was at present absolutely simple,
+and they hoped that he would long remain so. It was a comfort to them
+that I was interested in the subject, and they would leave the boy
+with confidence in my care. As soon as I saw the boy, I found it
+difficult to believe in his innocence; and I soon discovered that he
+was thoroughly corrupt. Not merely did he begin almost at once to
+corrupt other boys, but he actually gave them his views on brothels!
+In a private interview with me he admitted all this, and told me that
+he was corrupted at ten years of age, when he was sent, after
+convalescence from scarlet fever, to a country village for three
+months. There he seems to have associated with a group of street boys,
+who gave him such information as they had, and initiated him into
+self-abuse. Since then he had been greedily seeking further
+information and passing it on.
+
+_Case B._--A delicate, gentle boy of eleven, an only son, was sent to
+me by an intellectual father, who had been his constant companion. The
+lad was very amiable and well-intentioned. A year later he gave me
+particulars of his corruption by a cousin, who was three years older
+than he. Since that time--particularly of late--he had practised
+masturbation. He had not the least idea that it was hurtful or even
+unrefined, and thought that it was peculiar to himself and his
+cousin. He knew from his cousin the chief facts of maternity and
+paternity, but had not spoken to other boys about them. He was
+intensely anxious to cleanse himself entirely, and promised to let me
+know of any lapse, should it occur. In the following vacation he
+developed pneumonia. For some days his life hung in the balance, and
+then flickered out. His father wrote me a letter of noble resignation.
+Terribly as he felt his loss, he was greatly consoled, he said, by the
+knowledge that his boy had died while his mind was innocent and before
+he could know even what temptation was. It is needless to add that I
+never hinted the real facts to the father; and--without altering any
+material detail--I am disguising the case lest it should possibly be
+recognised by him. I have often wondered whether, when the lad's life
+hung in the balance, it might not have been saved if Death's scale had
+not been weighted by the child's lowered vitality.
+
+_Case C._--A boy of fourteen came to me. He was a miserable specimen
+in every way--pale, lethargic, stupid almost beyond belief. He had no
+mother; and the father, though a man of leisure, evidently found it
+difficult to make the lad much of a companion. I felt certain from the
+first that the boy was an exceptionally bad victim of self-abuse; And
+this I told his father, advising him to investigate the matter. He was
+horrified at my diagnosis, and committed the great indiscretion of
+taxing the boy with self-abuse as though it were a conscious and
+grave fault. The father wrote during the vacation saying that he
+found I was entirely mistaken: not, content with the lad's assurance,
+he had watched him with the utmost care. As soon as the boy returned
+to school I interviewed him. He admitted readily that he had long
+masturbated himself daily--sometimes oftener. He had first--as far as
+he could remember, at about six--had his private parts excited by his
+nurse, who apparently did this to put an irritable child into a good
+temper! My warning had little effect upon him, as he had become a
+hopeless victim. He was too delicate a boy for us to desire to keep;
+and after a brief stay at school, during which we nursed him through a
+critical illness, he left to finish his education under private
+tuition at home.
+
+_Case D._--This boy came to me at thirteen. He was always a
+conscientious and amiable boy, but was nervous and dull. By fifteen
+his dullness had increased, and he complained of brain-strain and
+poorness of memory. Finally he began to develop St. Vitus's dance. I
+sent him to our school doctor, who returned him with a note saying
+that his condition was serious--that he must stop all work, &c. &c. I
+was in my study when the lad came back, and I at once told him what
+was the matter. He frankly admitted frequent self-abuse, which he had
+learned from an elder brother. He had not the least suspicion that the
+habit was injurious; but was very apprehensive about his future until
+I reassured him. He wanted me to write at once and warn a younger
+brother who had fallen into the habit. By great effort he got himself
+rapidly under control. His nervous twitchings disappeared, his
+vitality improved, the brain-fag gradually ceased; and when he left,
+eighteen months later, he was fairly normal. His improvement continued
+afterwards, and he is now a successful man of business and a married
+man.
+
+_Case E._--This boy entered at twelve. He was very weak physically and
+highly nervous--owing, his people thought, to severe bullying at a
+previous school. He was an able boy, of literary and artistic tastes,
+and almost painfully conscientious. He was very shy; always thought
+that he was despised by other boys; and was a duffer at games, which
+he avoided to the utmost. With my present experience I should have
+known him to be a victim of self-abuse. Then, I did not suspect him;
+and it was not until he was leaving at eighteen for the University
+that we talked the matter over, on his initiative. Then I found that
+he had been bullied into impurity at eleven, and was now a helpless
+victim. After two years at the University he wrote me that, though the
+temptation now came less frequently, he seemed absolutely powerless
+when it did come; that he despised himself so much that the impulse to
+suicide often haunted him; but that the cowardice which had kept him
+from games at school would probably prevent his taking his life. With
+the assistance of an intense and devoted religious life he gradually
+began to gain self-mastery. It is some years now since he has
+mentioned the subject to me.
+
+These are merely specimen cases. Cases A, B, and C illustrate my
+assertions that parents are wonderfully blind; Cases B and E, that
+quite exceptional refinement in a boy gives no protection from
+temptation to impurity; Case D, that a boy, even in an extreme case,
+does not know that the habit is injurious. In respect of their
+severity, C, D, and E are not normal but extreme cases. The reader
+must not imagine that boys ordinarily suffer as much as these did.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+PREVALENCE OF IMPURITY AMONG BOYS: THE OPINIONS OF CANON LYTTELTON,
+DR. DUKES, AND OTHERS.
+
+
+I propose now to make clear to the reader the fact that the
+conclusions I have reached as to the existence of sexual knowledge
+among boys, and as to the prevalence of self-abuse, are entirely borne
+out by the opinion of the most distinguished teachers and medical men.
+
+Canon Lyttelton writes with an authority which no one will question.
+Educated at Eton, he was for two years an assistant master at
+Wellington College; then, for fifteen years, headmaster of Haileybury
+College, and has now been headmaster of Eton for over six years. He
+has intimate knowledge of boys, derived, as regards the question of
+purity, from confidential talks with them. The quotations which follow
+are from his work _Training of the Young in Laws of Sex_. Canon
+Lyttelton does not think it needful to make statements as to the
+prevalence of impurity among boys. He rather assumes that this
+prevalence is obvious and, under present conditions, inevitable. I
+have already quoted one passage which involves this assumption, and
+now invite the reader to consider two others. "In the school life of
+boys, in spite of very great improvements, it is _impossible_ that
+sexual subjects should be wholly avoided in common talk.... Though, in
+preparatory schools of little boys under fourteen, the increasing
+vigilance of masters, and constant supervision, combined with constant
+employment, reduce the evil of prurient talk to a minimum, yet these
+subjects _will_ crop up.... It should be remembered that the boys who
+are talkative about such subjects are just those whose ideas are most
+distorted and vicious. In the public school, owing not only to freer
+talk and more mixed company but to the boy's own wider range of
+vision, sexual questions, and also those connected with the structure
+of the body, come to the fore and begin to occupy more or less of the
+thoughts of all but a peculiarly constituted minority of the whole
+number.
+
+"Men, as I have shown, have been severely dealt with by Nature in this
+respect: she has forced them, at a time of life when their minds are
+ill compacted, their ideas chaotic, and their wills untrained, to face
+an ordeal which demands above all things reverence based on knowledge
+and resolution sustained by high affections. An _enormously large
+proportion_ flounder blindly into the mire before they know what it
+is, not necessarily, but very often into the defilement of evil habit,
+but, still more often, into the tainted air of diseased opinion, and
+after a few years _some of them_ emerge saved, but so as by fire."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: Pages 4 _et seq._: the italics are mine.]
+
+The following are quotations from the _Upton Letters_, written by Mr.
+A.C. Benson. Mr. Benson is one of the most distinguished of modern
+teachers: he has had long experience of public-school life both as a
+boy and as a master: he has that insight into the heart of boyhood
+which can come only to one who has affectionate sympathy with boys and
+has been the recipient of their confidences. It will be abundantly
+evident from the passages which follow that in Mr. Benson's opinion no
+boy is likely to preserve his "innocence" in passing through a public
+school.
+
+"The subject is so unpleasant that many masters dare not speak of it
+at all, and excuse themselves by saying that they don't want to put
+ideas into boys' heads. I cannot conscientiously believe that a man
+who has been through a big public school himself can honestly be
+afraid of that." "The standard of purity is low: a vicious boy does
+not find his vicious tendencies by any means a bar to social success."
+This, of course, assumes that the vicious tendencies are a matter of
+notoriety. A similar implication is involved in the following: "I do
+not mean to say that there are not many boys who are both pure-minded
+and honest; but they treat such virtues as a secret preference of
+their own, and do not consider that it is in the least necessary to
+interfere with the practice of others or even to disapprove of it." He
+further gives it as his opinion that "The deadly and insidious
+temptation of impurity has, as far as one can learn, increased," and
+tells us "An innocent-minded boy whose natural inclination to purity
+gave way before perpetual temptation and even compulsion might be
+thought to have erred, but would have scanty, if any, expression of
+either sympathy or pity from other boys; while if he breathed the
+least hint of his miserable position to a master and the fact came
+out, he would be universally scouted.... One hears of simply
+heart-rending cases where a boy dare not even tell his parents of what
+he endures." It would thus appear that in some of the premier schools
+of the world impurity is a matter of notoriety, sometimes of
+compulsion; and that, to a boy's own strong inclination to
+concealment, is superadded, by the public opinion of the school, an
+imperious command that this concealment shall, even in heart-rending
+cases, be maintained.
+
+No one, I think, will maintain that private schools _as a class_ are
+in the least degree lees corrupt than public schools; while there are,
+I am sure, at least a few schools in which public opinion condemns
+_open_ impurity, and will not tolerate impure talk. And while I am
+confident that it is possible, not merely to attain this condition in
+a school, but also to reduce private impurity to a negligible
+quantity, impurity--in one form or another--is, in general, so widely
+spread in boys' schools of every type, that it is difficult to
+understand how anyone familiar with school life can doubt its
+prevalence.
+
+Let us now consider the opinion of Dr. Clement Dukes, the medical
+officer of Rugby School and the greatest English authority on school
+hygiene. In the preface to the fourth edition of his well-known work
+_Health at School_, Dr. Dukes writes: "I have studied children in all
+their phases and stages for many years--two years at the Hospital for
+Sick Children in 61 Ormond Street, London, followed by thirty-three
+years at Rugby School--a professional history which has provided me
+with an almost unique experience in all that relates to the Health and
+Disease of Childhood and Youth, and has compelled constant and steady
+thought upon every aspect of this problem." In an earlier work, _The
+Preservation of Health_, Dr. Dukes gives his estimate of the
+prevalence of masturbation, and quotes the opinion of other
+authorities whose credentials he has verified; In this work, on page
+150, he writes of masturbation: "I believe that the reason why it is
+so widespread an evil--amounting, I gather, although from the nature
+of the case no complete evidence can ever be accurately obtained, to
+somewhere _about 90 to 95 per cent. of all boys at boarding-schools_--is
+because the boy leaves his home in the first instance without one word
+of warning from his parents ... and thus falls into evil ways from his
+innocence and ignorance alone.... This immorality is estimated by some
+at 80 per cent., by others at 90 per cent. Another says that not 10
+per cent. are innocent. Another that it has always begun at from eight
+to twelve years of age. Others that it is always worst amongst the
+elder boys. Others that 'it is universal.'" Professor Stanley Hall,
+in his great work on _Adolescence_, after a similar and exhaustive
+review of the numerous works on this subject in different languages,
+concludes: "The whole literature on the subject attests that whenever
+careful researches have been undertaken the results are appalling as
+to prevalence." And yet there are people who deprecate purity-teaching
+for boys because they feel that a boy's natural modesty is quite a
+sufficient protection, and that there is danger of destroying a boy's
+innocence by putting ideas into his head! To hear such people talk,
+and to listen to the way in which they speak of self-abuse as though
+it implied monstrous moral perversion, one would think that the
+condition of morals when they were young was wholly different. The
+great novelist Thackeray gives little countenance to this opinion when
+he writes in _Pendennis_: "And, by the way, ye tender mothers and
+sober fathers of Christian families, a prodigious thing that theory of
+life is as orally learned at a great public school. Why if you could
+hear those boys of fourteen who blush before mothers and sneak off in
+silence in the presence of their daughters, talking among each
+other--it would be the woman's turn to blush then. Before he was
+twelve years old little Pen had heard talk enough to make him quite
+awfully wise upon certain points--and so, madam, has your pretty
+rosy-cheeked son, who is coming home from school for the ensuing
+holidays. I don't say that the boy is lost, or that the innocence has
+left him which he had from 'Heaven, which is our home,' but that the
+shades of the prison-house are closing fast over him, and that we are
+helping as much as possible to corrupt him."
+
+Before concluding this chapter I would caution the reader against the
+error of supposing that the opinions expressed by Canon Lyttelton and
+Dr. Dukes are indicative merely of the conditions they have met at
+Haileybury, Eton, and Rugby. They are equally significant of the
+conditions which obtain in the innumerable schools from which
+Haileybury, Eton, and Rugby are recruited; and as there is no reason
+why other preparatory schools should differ from these, they are
+significant of the almost universal condition of boys' schools.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+CAUSES OF THE PREVALENCE OF IMPURITY AMONG BOYS.
+
+
+The evidence I have adduced in the previous chapters will convince
+most of my readers that few boys retain their innocence after they are
+of school age. There may, however, be a few who find it impossible to
+reconcile this conclusion with their ideas of boy nature. I will
+therefore now examine current conceptions on this subject and expose
+their fundamental inaccuracy.
+
+There are some people who imagine that a boy's innate modesty is quite
+sufficient protection against defilement. Does experience really
+warrant any such conclusion? Those who know much of children will
+recognise the fact that even the cardinal virtues of truthfulness and
+honesty have often to be learned, and that ideas of personal
+cleanliness, of self-restraint in relation to food, and of
+consideration for others have usually to be implanted and fostered.
+Among people of refinement these virtues are often so early learned
+that there is danger lest we should consider them innate. The
+susceptibility of some children to suggestions conveyed to them by the
+example and precept of their elders is almost unlimited. Hence a
+child may, at two, have given up the trick of clearing its nostrils
+with the finger-nail, and may, before five, have learned most of the
+manners and virtues of refined people. The majority, however, take
+longer to learn these things, so that a jolly little chap of ten or
+twelve is often by no means scrupulously clean in hands, nails, ears,
+and teeth, is often distinctly greedy, and sometimes far from
+truthful.
+
+That cleanliness and virtue are acquired and not innate is obvious
+enough from the fact that children who grow up among dirty and
+unprincipled people are rarely clean and virtuous. Were it possible
+for the child of refined parents to grow up without example or precept
+in relation to table manners and morals, except the example and advice
+of vulgar people, who would expect refinement and consideration from
+him? Is there anyone who has such faith in innate refinement that he
+would be content to let a child of his own, grow up without a hint on
+these matters, and with such example only as was supplied by
+association with vulgar people? Yet this is precisely what we do in
+relation to the subject of personal purity. The child has no good
+example to guide him. The extent to which temptation comes to those
+whom he respects, the manner in which they comport themselves when
+tempted, the character of their sex relations are entirely hidden from
+him. He is not only without example, he is without precept. No ideals
+are set before him, no advice is given to him: the very existence of
+anything in which ideals and advice are needful is ignored.
+
+If in conditions like these we should expect a boy to grow up greedy,
+we may be certain that he will grow up impure. At puberty there awakes
+within him by far the strongest appetite that human nature can
+experience--an appetite against which some of the noblest of mankind
+have striven in vain. The appetite is given abnormal strength by the
+artificial and stimulating conditions under which he lives. The act
+which satisfies this appetite is also one of keen pleasure. He has
+long been accustomed to caress his private parts, and the pleasure
+with which he does this is greatly enhanced. He does not suspect that
+indulgence is harmful. This pleasure, unlike that of eating, costs him
+nothing, and is ever available. His powers of self-control are as yet
+undeveloped. He can indulge himself without incurring the least
+suspicion. He probably knows that most boys, of his age and above,
+indulge themselves. The result is inevitable. He finds that sexual
+thoughts are keenly pleasurable, and that they produce bodily
+exaltation. He has much yet to learn on the subject of sex, and he
+enjoys the quest. Wherever he turns he finds it now--in his Bible, in
+animal life, in his classics, in the encyclopædia, in his companions,
+and in the newspaper. Day and night the subject is ever with him. It
+is inevitable. And at this juncture comes along the theorist who is
+aghast at our destroying the lad's "innocence," and at our "suggesting
+evils to him which otherwise he would never have thought of." "The
+boy's innate modesty is quite a sufficient protection"!
+
+To me the wonderful thing is the earnestness with which a boy sets
+about the task of cleansing his life when once he has been made to
+realise the real character of the thoughts and acts with which he has
+been playing. Boys, as I find them, rarely err in this matter, or in
+any other, from moral perversity, but merely from ignorance and
+thoughtlessness. Severe rebukes and punishments are rarely either just
+or useful. The disposition which obliges the teacher to use them in
+the last resort, and the rebellion against authority which is said to
+follow puberty, arise almost invariably from injudicious training in
+the home or at school. Boys who have received a fair home training,
+and who find themselves in a healthy atmosphere at school, are almost
+invariably delightful to deal with; and even those who have been less
+fortunate in their early surroundings adapt themselves in most cases
+to the standards which a healthy public opinion in the school demands.
+
+It may be thought that the mere reticence of adults about reproduction
+and the reproductive organs would impress the child's mind with the
+idea that it is unclean to play with his private parts or to talk
+about their functions with his companions. This is a psychological
+error. For some years past adults have avoided any allusion to the
+subject of excretion, and the child assumes that _public_ attention to
+bodily needs and _public_ reference to these needs are alike
+indelicate. He does not, however, conclude that excretion in private
+is an indelicate act, nor does any sense of delicacy oblige him to
+maintain, with regard to companions of his own sex and age, the
+reticence which has become habitual to him in his relations with
+adults. Why should the child think it "dirty" to fondle and excite his
+private parts or to talk about them with his boy friends? The
+knowledge which makes us feel as we do is as yet hidden from him.
+
+The same thing is certainly true of conversation about the facts of
+reproduction when those who converse are uncorrupted. Another element,
+however, at once appears when these facts are divulged by a corrupt
+boy, because his manner is irresistibly suggestive of uncleanness as
+well as of secrecy. Similarly when self-abuse is fallen into
+spontaneously by a boy who is otherwise clean, no sense of indecency
+attaches itself to the act. When, however, it is taught by an unclean
+boy, there is a feeling of defilement from the first. In boys under
+the age of puberty this feeling may overpower the temptation; in boys
+above that age it is, as a rule, totally inadequate as a safeguard.
+
+Many people imagine that a boy who is impure must betray himself, and
+that if no overt acts of indecency are observed the innocence of a
+boy's mind may be safely inferred. Knowledge on these subjects has,
+however, been almost invariably gained under conditions of the utmost
+secrecy, and the behaviour of adults has effectively fostered the idea
+of concealment. Hence we might expect that the secret would be
+jealously guarded and that any overt act of impurity would be avoided
+in the presence of adults with even greater circumspection than the
+public performance of an excretory act. The habit of self-abuse,
+moreover, is practised usually under the double cover of darkness and
+the bed-clothes. The temptation occurs far less by day than by night,
+and a boy who yields to it in the day invariably chooses a closet or
+other private place in which he feels secure from detection.
+
+To many people it is inconceivable that a lad can harbour impure
+feelings and habits without obvious deterioration; but even if a
+child's lapses into these things were associated with conscious guilt,
+does our knowledge of human nature justify us in supposing that evil
+in the heart is certain to betray itself in a visible degradation of
+the outer life? If we believe the language of the devout, we must
+admit that the most spiritual of men hide in their heart thoughts of
+which they are heartily ashamed. It is not into the mouth of the
+reprobate but into the mouth of her devoted members as they enter upon
+their sacramental service that the Church puts the significant prayer,
+"Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and
+from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts in our hearts by
+the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit." Inconsistency in adults is far
+too well recognised to need proof. In children it is even more
+obvious, and for this reason that, looked at aright, it is the faculty
+of maintaining the general health of the soul, spite of local morbid
+conditions--a faculty which is strongest in the simpler and more
+adaptable mind of the child.
+
+Impurity as a disease has a long incubation period. When he contracts
+the disease, its victim is often wholly unconscious of his danger;
+and, both because the disease is an internal one and is slow in
+development, it is a very long time before obvious symptoms appear.
+Meanwhile a corruption may have set in which will ultimately ruin the
+whole life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+RESULTS OF YOUTHFUL IMPURITY.
+
+
+It is difficult to exaggerate the evils which result from the present
+system under which boys grow to manhood without any adult guidance in
+relation to the laws of sex.
+
+It has already been stated that the immediate physical results of
+self-abuse are small evils indeed compared with the corruption of mind
+which comes from perverted sex ideas. They are, however, by no means
+negligible; and are, in some cases, very serious. The great prevalence
+of self-abuse among boys, combined with the inevitable uncertainty as
+to the degree of a boy's freedom from, or indulgence in, this vice,
+makes it very difficult to institute a reliable comparison between
+those who are chaste and those who are unchaste. Greater significance
+attaches, I think, to a comparison in individual cases of a boy's
+condition during a period of indulgence in masturbation and his
+condition after its total, or almost total, relinquishment. I have no
+hesitation in saying that the difference in a boy's vitality and
+spiritual tone after relinquishing this habit is very marked. The
+case _D_ quoted in Chapter I. is, in this respect, typical.
+
+In my pamphlet, _Private Knowledge for Boys_, I have quoted a striking
+passage from Acton on the Reproductive Organs, in which he contrasts
+the continent and the incontinent boy. But in the case of men like Dr.
+Acton--specialists in the diseases of the male reproductive organs--it
+must be remembered that it is mostly the abnormal and extreme cases
+which come under their notice: a fact which is liable to affect their
+whole estimate. The book can be recommended to adults who wish to see
+the whole subject of sex diseases dealt with by a specialist who
+writes with a high moral purpose.
+
+My own estimate is given in the pamphlet already referred to. After
+quoting Dr. Acton's opinion, I add:--
+
+"You will notice that Dr. Acton is here describing an extreme case. I
+want to tell you what are the results in a case which is not extreme.
+My difficulty is that these results are so various. The injury to the
+nerves and brain which is caused by sexual excitement and by the loss
+of semen leaves nothing in the body, mind or character uninjured. The
+_extent_ of the injury varies greatly with the strength of a boy's
+constitution and with the frequency of his sin. The _character_ of the
+injury varies with the boy's own special weaknesses and tendencies. If
+he is naturally shy and timid, it makes him shyer and more timid. If
+he is stupid and lazy, it makes him more stupid and lazy. If he is
+inclined to consumption or other disease, it destroys his power of
+resisting such disease. In extreme cases only does it actually change
+an able boy into a stupid one, an athletic boy into a weak one, and a
+happy boy into a discontented one; but in all cases it _weakens_ every
+power a boy possesses. Its most prominent results are these: loss of
+will-power and self-reliance, shyness, nervousness and irritability,
+failure of the reasoning powers and memory, laziness of body and mind,
+a diseased fondness for girls, deceitfulness. Of these results, the
+loss of will-power leaves the boy a prey not only to the temptations
+of impurity, but to every other form of temptation: the deceitfulness
+destroys his self-respect and turns his life into a sham."
+
+Of incomparably greater importance than Acton's wide but abnormal
+experience and my own narrow but normal experience is the experience
+of Dr. Clement Dukes, which is very wide and perfectly normal. No man
+has probably been in so good a position for forming an estimate as he
+has been. Dr. Dukes thus sums up his opinion: "The harm which results
+is moral, intellectual, and physical. _Physically_ it is a frequent
+drain at a critical time of life when nature is providing for growth
+and development, and is ill able to bear it; it is a powerful nervous
+shock to the system ill-prepared to meet it.... It also causes
+muscular and mental debility, loss of spirit and manliness, and
+occasional insanity, suicide and homicide. Moreover it leads to
+further uncontrollable passions in early manhood.... Further, this
+vice enfeebles the _intellectual_ powers, inducing lethargy and
+obtuseness, and incapacity for hard mental work. And last, and most of
+all, it is an _immorality_ which stains the whole character and
+undermines the life."
+
+In this passage Dr. Dukes refers to the intellectual and moral harm of
+self-abuse as well as to its physical consequences. Intimately
+connected as these are with one another, I am here attempting to give
+them separate treatment. It is, however, impossible to treat perverted
+sex-knowledge and self-abuse separately; for though in young boys they
+are found independently of one another, and sometimes co-exist in
+elder boys without any intimate conscious association, their results
+are identical. In the following pages, therefore, I shall refer to
+them jointly as impurity.
+
+The earliest evil which springs from impurity is the destruction of
+the intimacy which has hitherto existed between the boy and his
+parents. Closely associated with this is that duplicity of life which
+results from secrets which may be shared with the coarse but must be
+jealously concealed from everyone who is respected. Untold harm
+follows these changes in a lad. Hitherto he has had nothing to conceal
+from his mother--unless, indeed, his parents have been foolish enough
+to drive him into deception by undue severity over childish mistakes,
+and accidents, and moral lapses. Every matter which has occupied his
+thoughts he has freely shared with those who can best lead him into
+the path of moral health.
+
+Henceforth all is changed. The lad has his own inner life which he
+must completely screen from the kind eyes which have hitherto been his
+spiritual lights. Concealment is soon found to be an easy thing. Acts
+and words are things of which others may take cognisance; the inner
+life no one can ever know. A world is opened to the lad in which the
+restraints of adult opinion are not felt at all and the guidance and
+inspiration of a father's or mother's love never come. How completely
+this is the case in regard to impurity the reader will hardly doubt if
+he remembers that all parents believe their boys to be innocent, and
+that some 90 per cent. of them are hopelessly hoodwinked. But this
+double life is not long confined to the subject of purity. The
+concealment which serves one purpose excellently can be made to serve
+another; and henceforth parents and adult friends need never know
+anything but what they are told. It is a sad day for the mother when
+first she realises that the old frankness has gone; it is a very, very
+much sadder day for the boy. There is no fibre of his moral being but
+is, or will be, injured by this divorce of home influences and by this
+ever-accumulating burden of guilty memories. "His mother may not know
+why this is so," writes Canon Lyttelton; "the only thing she may be
+perfectly certain of is that the loss will never be quite made up as
+long as life shall last."
+
+Another injury done by impurity to the growing mind of the lad is
+that, in all matters relating to sex, he learns to look merely for
+personal enjoyment. In every other department of life he is moved by
+a variety of motives: by the desire to please, the desire to excel, by
+devotion to duty, by the love of truth, and by many other desires.
+Even in gratifying the appetite most nearly on the same plane as the
+sexual appetite--namely, that of hunger--he has more or less regard
+for his own well-being, more or less consideration for the wishes of
+others, and a constant desire to attain the standard expected of him.
+Meanwhile, as regards the sexual appetite--the racial importance of
+which is great; and the regulation of which is of infinite importance
+for himself, for those who may otherwise become its victims, for the
+wife he may one day wed, and for the children, legitimate or
+illegitimate, that he may beget--his one idea is personal enjoyment.
+One deplorable result of this idea will be adverted to in the next
+chapter.
+
+When boyish impurity involves a coarse way of looking at sexual
+relations, as it always must when these are matters of common talk and
+jest, the boy suffers a loss which prejudicially affects the whole
+tone of his mind and every department of his conduct--I mean the loss
+of reverence. It is those things alone which are sacred to us, those
+things about which we can talk only with friends, and about which we
+can jest with no one, that have inspiration in them, that can give us
+power to follow our ideals and to lay a restraining hand on the brute
+within us. Fortunately the self-control which manifests itself in
+heroism, in good form, and in the sportsmanlike spirit is sacred to
+almost all. To most, a mother's love is sacred. To many, all that is
+implied in the word religion. To a few, sexual passion and the great
+manifestations of human genius in poetry, music, painting, sculpture,
+and architecture. Exactly in proportion as these things are profaned
+by jest and mockery, is the light of the soul quenched and man
+degraded to the level of the beast. Considering how large a part the
+sex-passion plays in the lives of most men and women; considering how
+it permeates the literature and art of the World and is--as the basis
+of the home--the most potent factor in social life, its profanation is
+a terrible loss, and the habit of mind which such profanation
+engenders cannot fail to weaken the whole spirit of reverence. I must
+confess that the man who jests over sex relations is to me
+incomparably lower than the man who sustains clean but wholly
+illegitimate sex relations; and while I am conscious of a strong
+movement of friendship towards a lad who has admitted impurity in his
+life but retains reverence for purity, it is hard to feel anything but
+repulsion towards one who profanes the subject of sex with coarse and
+ribald talk.
+
+As a result of the two evils of which I have now spoken, together with
+the physical effects of masturbation, young men become powerless to
+face the sexual temptations of manhood; and many, who in all other
+relations of life are admirable, sink in this matter into the mire of
+prostitution or the less demoralising, but far crueller, sin of
+seduction.
+
+Thrown on the streets, usually through no fault of her own, often
+merely from an over-trustful love, the prostitute sinks to the lowest
+depths of degradation and despair. It is not merely that she sells to
+every comer, clean or bestial, without even the excuse of appetite or
+of passion, what should be yielded alone to love; but it is also that
+to do this she poisons body and mind with spirit-drinking, leads a
+life of demoralising indolence and self-indulgence, is cut off from
+all decent associations, and sinks, under the combined influence of
+these things and of fell disease, into a loathsome creature whom not
+the lowest wants; sinks into destitution, misery, suicide, or the
+outcast's early grave. Writing of the young man who is familiar with
+London, the Headmaster of Eton says: "He cannot fail to see around him
+a whole world of ruined life--a ghastly varnish of gaiety spread over
+immeasurable tracts of death and corruption; a state of things so
+heart-rending and so hopeless that on calm consideration of it the
+brain reels, and sober-minded people who, from motives of pity, have
+looked the hideous evil in the face, have asserted that nothing in
+their experience has seemed to threaten them so nearly with a loss of
+reason."
+
+Into the contamination of this inferno, into active support of this
+cruel infamy, many and many a young man is led by the impurity of his
+boyhood. Such at least is the conclusion of some who know boys best.
+Thus Dr. Dukes writes:
+
+"This evil, of which I have spoken so long and so freely, is, I
+believe, _the root of the evil of prostitution_ and similar vices; and
+if this latter evil is to be mitigated, it can only be, to my mind,
+by making the life of the schoolboy purer.
+
+"How is it possible to put a stop to this terrible social evil? How is
+it possible to _elevate women_ while the demand for them for base
+purposes is so great? We must go to the other end of the scale and
+make men better; we must train young boys more in purity of life and
+chastity BEFORE their passions become uncontrollable.
+
+"Whereas the cry of every moralist and philanthropist is, 'Let us put
+a stop to this prostitution, open and clandestine.' This cannot be
+effected at present, much as it is to be desired; the demand for it is
+too great, even possibly greater than the supply. If we wish to
+eradicate it, we must go to the fountainhead and make those who create
+the demand purer, so that, the demand falling off, the supply will be
+curtailed."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _The Preservation of Health_, p. 161.]
+
+To this I venture to add that by teaching chastity we not merely
+decrease the demand for prostitutes, but we greatly diminish the
+supply. Few girls, if any, take to the streets until they have been
+seduced; and the antecedents of seduction are the morbid exaggeration
+of the sexual appetite, the lack of self-control, and the selfish
+hedonism which youthful impurity engenders.
+
+The selfishness, and consequent blindness to cruelty, of which I
+write, manifests itself quite early. A boy of chivalrous feeling,
+whose blood would boil at any other form of outrage on a girl, will
+read a newspaper account of rape or indecent assault with a pleasure
+so intense that indignation and disgust are quite crowded out of his
+mind.
+
+If, repelled by the coarseness of the streets, the young man allows
+lust or passion to lead him into seduction, he commits a crime the
+consequences of which are usually cruel in the extreme; for in most
+cases the seduced girl sinks of necessity into prostitution. So blind,
+so callous does impurity make even the refined and generous, that many
+a young man who can be a good son, a good brother, a noble friend, a
+patriotic citizen, will doom a girl whose only fault is that she is
+physically attractive--and possibly too affectionate and trusting--to
+torturing anxiety, to illness, to the horrible suffering of undesired
+travail, to disgrace, and in nineteen cases out of twenty to ostracism
+and the infamy of the streets. Murder is a small thing compared with
+this. Who would not rather that his daughter were killed in her
+innocence than that she should be doomed to such a fate?
+
+Many young men are ignorant of the fact that sexual relations with
+prostitutes frequently result in the foulest and most terrible of
+diseases. Venereal diseases, as these are called, commence in the
+private parts themselves, but the poison which they engender soon
+attacks other parts of the body and often wrecks the general health.
+It gives rise to loathsome skin disease, to degeneration of the
+nervous system and paralysis, to local disease in the heart, lungs,
+and digestive organs, and to such lowering of vitality as renders the
+body an easy prey to disease generally. No one is justified in looking
+upon this risk as a matter of merely private concern. Health is of
+supreme importance not merely to the personal happiness and success of
+the man himself, but also to the services he can render to his
+friends, to his nation, and to humanity. Even if a young man is
+foolish enough to risk his happiness and success for the sake of
+animal enjoyment, he cannot without base selfishness and disloyalty
+disregard the duties he owes to others. Further, the man who suffers
+from venereal disease is certain to pass its poison on to his wife and
+children--cursing thus with unspeakable misery those whom of all
+others it is his duty to protect and bless.
+
+One cannot help feeling at times that the blessings of home--and of
+the monogamy which makes home possible--are terribly discounted by a
+condition of things which offer a young man no other alternatives to
+chastity than these terrible evils. Now that year by year the rising
+standard of living and the increased exactions which the State makes
+on the industrious and provident cause marriage to be a luxury too
+expensive for many, and delayed unduly for most, the problem of social
+purity becomes ever greater and more urgent. The instruction of the
+young in relation to sex provides the only solution, and is, I venture
+to think, incomparably the most important social reform now needed.
+
+I am confident that a boy who receives wise training and sex guidance
+from his early days will never find lust the foul and uncontrollable
+element which it is to-day in the lives of most men; that in a few
+generations our nation could be freed from the seething corruption
+which poisons its life; and that, while freer scope could be given to
+the ineffable joys of pure sexual love, very much could be done to
+diminish the awful misery and degradation engendered by lust.
+
+If children had from their infancy an instinctive and growing desire
+for alcohol, with secret and unrestrained means of gratifying it; if
+by its indulgence this desire grew into an overmastering craving; if
+throughout childhood they received no word of warning or guidance from
+the good, but were tempted and corrupted by the evil, we should have a
+nation in which most men and women were drunkards, ready to break all
+laws--human and divine--which stood in the way of an imperious need; a
+nation in which, among those who declined to yield to iniquity, the
+craving for drink caused unceasing and life-long struggle.
+
+On the young man of to-day we lay a burden which no ordinary man was
+ever yet able to bear. His boyhood and youth become, through
+ignorance, the prey of lust; his passions become tyrannous; his will
+is enslaved. Even if he contracts marriage, his troubles are not at an
+end, for man, _as an animal_, is neither monogamous nor wholly
+constant. His neglected sex-education makes him far more susceptible
+to physical attractions than to those qualities which make a wife a
+good companion, a good housekeeper, and a good mother; and but too
+often, as a result, the beneficent influence of marriage is transient;
+the domestic atmosphere ceases to be congenial; both husband and wife
+become susceptible to other attachments, and the old struggle begins
+all over again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+SEX KNOWLEDGE IS COMPATIBLE WITH PERFECT REFINEMENT AND INNOCENCE.
+
+
+The reader who has followed me through the preceding chapters will, I
+hope, feel that, whatever objections there may be to giving explicit
+instruction on sex matters to the young, such instruction is immensely
+to be preferred to the almost inevitable perversion which follows
+ignorance. If we had to choose between a state of "innocence" and a
+state of reverent knowledge, many people would doubtless incline to
+the former. No such option exists. Our choice lies between leaving a
+lad to pick up information from vulgar and unclean minds, and giving
+it ourselves in such a manner as to invest it from the first with
+sacredness and dignity.
+
+Even if the reader is still inclined to think that sex-knowledge is,
+at best, an unholy secret, he will hardly doubt that it can be
+divulged with less injury by an adult who is earnestly anxious for the
+child's welfare than by coarse and irreverent lips.
+
+I am not content to leave the reader in this dilemma. I am confident
+that the following words of Canon Lyttelton spring from the truest
+spiritual insight: "To a lover of nature, no less than to a convinced
+Christian, the subject ought to wear an aspect not only negatively
+innocent, but positively beautiful. It is a recurrent miracle, and yet
+the very type and embodiment of law; and it may be confidently
+affirmed that, in spite of the blundering of many generations, there
+is nothing in a normally-constituted child's mind which refuses to
+take in the subject from this point of view, provided that the right
+presentation of it is the first."
+
+Nothing more forcibly convicts the present system of the evil which
+lies at its door than the current beliefs on this subject. At present,
+sexual knowledge is picked up from the gutter and the cesspool; and no
+purification can free it entirely in many minds from its original
+uncleanness.
+
+    "Love's a virtue for heroes!--as white as the snow on high hills,
+    And immortal as every great soul is that struggles, endures,
+            and fulfils."
+
+This is the prophet's belief, and yet, putting on one side those who
+actually delight in uncleanness, there appear to be many people who
+look upon the marriage certificate as a licence to impurity, and upon
+sexual union as a form of animal indulgence to which we are so
+strongly impelled that even the most refined are tempted by it into an
+act of conscious indelicacy and sin. Such people read literally the
+psalmist's words: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my
+mother conceive me." It is surely some such feeling as this which
+makes parents shrink from referring to the subject, which underlies
+the constant use of the word "innocence" as the aptest description of
+a state of mind which precedes the acquisition of sexual knowledge.
+
+That individuals, at least, have risen to a loftier conception than
+this is certain; and the only possible explanations of the prevalence
+of the current idea are that sex-knowledge has almost always been
+obtained from a tainted source; and that, while the coarse have not
+merely whispered their views in the ear in the closet, but have, in
+all ages, proclaimed them from the house-tops, the refined have hardly
+whispered their ideas, much less discussed them publicly. Children
+growing up with perverted views have listened to the loud assertions
+of disputants on the one side, have witnessed the demoralisation which
+so often attends the sexual passion, but have received no hint of what
+may be said on the other side of the question.
+
+An instructed public opinion would be horrified at our sovereign's
+taking shares in a slave-trading expedition as Queen Elizabeth did. We
+are aghast at the days when crowds went forth to enjoy the torture at
+the stake of those from whom they differed merely on some metaphysical
+point. We have even begun to be restless under man's cruel domination
+over the animal creation. But we have made far less advance in our
+conceptions on sexual matters; and we are content here with ideas
+which were current in Elizabethan days. But for this, no passion for
+conservatism, no reverence for a liturgy endeared by centuries of use,
+could induce us to tell every bride as she stands before God's altar
+that it is one of her functions to provide an outlet for her
+husband's passion and a safeguard against fornication. Lust is at
+least as degrading in married life as it is outside it. No legal
+contract, no religious ceremony, can purify, much less sanctify, what
+is essentially impure.
+
+Those who desire to assist in the uplifting of humanity cannot afford
+to be silent and to allow judgment to go against them by default.
+Courage they will need; for a charge of indecency is sure to be
+levelled against them by the indecent, and they may be misjudged even
+by the pure.
+
+This is not the place in which so delicate a matter can be fully
+discussed, nor does space permit; but if the movement towards sex
+instruction is not to be stultified by the very ideas which evidence
+the need for it, the subject cannot be wholly ignored here, and I
+venture to throw out a few suggestions.
+
+Are we indeed to believe that the noblest and most spiritual of men
+will compromise themselves in the eyes of the woman they love best,
+and whose respect they most desire, by committing in her presence and
+making her the instrument of an indelicate act? A great poet, who
+remained an ardent lover and a devoted companion until his wife died
+in his arms--blissfully happy that she might die so--has written:
+
+    "Let us not always say,
+    'Spite of the flesh to-day
+    I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole.'
+    As the bird wings and sings,
+    Let us cry, 'All good things
+    Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul.'"
+
+Again: are we, who believe in a Divine government of the world, able
+to imagine that God has made the perpetuation of the race dependent
+upon acts of sin or of indelicacy? Did He who graced with His presence
+the marriage at Cana in Galilee really countenance a ceremony which
+was a prelude to sin? Did He who took the little children in His arms
+and blessed them know, as He said "for of such is the kingdom of
+heaven," that not one of them could have existed without indelicacy,
+and that they were but living proof of their fathers' lapses and their
+mothers' humiliation? Is He whom we address daily as "Our Father"
+willing to be described by a name with which impurity is of necessity
+connected? And has He implanted in us as the strongest of our
+instincts that which cannot elevate and must debase?
+
+Again: it needs no wide experience of life, nor any very indulgent
+view of it, to feel some truth at least in the words Tennyson puts
+into the mouth of his ideal man:
+
+                        "Indeed I knew
+    Of no more subtle master under heaven
+    Than is the maiden passion for a maid
+    Not only to keep down _the base in man_,
+    But teach high thought, and amiable words,
+    And courtliness, and the desire for fame,
+    And love of truth, and all that makes a man."
+
+And yet this passion is indisputably sexual passion, and the chastest
+of lovers has bodily proof that the most spiritual of his kisses is
+allied to the supreme embrace of love. Our body is the instrument by
+which all our emotions are expressed. The most obvious way of
+expressing affection is by bodily contact. The mother fondles her
+child, kisses its lips and its limbs, and presses it to her breast.
+Young children hold hands, put their arms round one another and kiss;
+and, although later we become less demonstrative, we still take our
+friend's arm, press his hand with ours, and lay a hand upon his
+shoulder; we pat our horse or dog and stroke our cat. The lover
+returns to the spontaneous and unrestrained caresses of his childhood.
+These become more and more intimate until they find their consummation
+in the most intimate and most sacred of all embraces. From first to
+last these caresses--however deep the pleasure they bestow--are sought
+by the mother or the lover, not _for the sake of_ that pleasure, but
+as a means of expressing emotion. He only who realises this fact and
+conforms to it can enter on married life with any certainty of
+happiness. The happiness of very many marriages is irretrievably
+shattered at the outset through the craving for sexual excitement
+which, in the absence of wise guidance, grows up in every normal boy's
+heart, and by the contemplation of sexual intercourse as an act of
+physical pleasure.
+
+And once again: It is the experience of those who have given
+instruction in sex questions to the young that by those whose minds
+have never been defiled the instruction is received with instant
+reverence, as something sacred; not with shame, as something foul. I
+venture once more to quote Canon Lyttelton, who sets forth his
+experience and my own in language the beauty of which I cannot
+imitate:
+
+"There is something awe-inspiring in the innocent readiness of little
+children to learn the explanation of by far the greatest fact within
+the horizon of their minds. The way they receive it, with native
+reverence, truthfulness of understanding, and guileless delicacy, is
+nothing short of a revelation of the never-ceasing bounty of Nature,
+who endows successive generations of children with this instinctive
+ear for the deep harmonies of her laws. People sometimes speak of the
+indescribable beauty of children's innocence, and insist that there is
+nothing which calls for more constant thanksgiving than that influence
+on mankind. But I will venture to say that no one quite knows what it
+is who has foregone the privilege of being the first to set before
+them the true meaning of life and birth and the mystery of their own
+being."
+
+To the arguments thus briefly indicated it is no answer to say that
+sexual union is essentially physical, and that to regard it in any
+other way is transcendental. Among primitive men eating and drinking
+were merely animal. We have made them, in our meals, an accompaniment
+to social pleasures, and in our religious life we have raised them to
+a sacramental level.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH PURITY TEACHING IS BEST GIVEN: REMEDIAL AND
+CURATIVE MEASURES.
+
+
+We have now seen that impurity is almost universal among boys who have
+been left without warning and instruction; that, under these
+conditions, it is practically inevitable; that its direct results are
+lowered vitality and serious injury to character, its indirect results
+an appalling amount of degradation and misery; finally, that there is
+nothing in sex knowledge, when rightly presented, which can in the
+least defile a child's mind. All that now remains is for us to
+consider by whom and under what circumstances instruction on this
+subject should be given, and what assistance can be rendered to boys
+who desire to lead chaste lives.
+
+Without doubt, instruction should be given to a boy by his parents in
+the home. When young children ask questions with regard to
+reproduction, parents should neither ignore these question nor give
+the usual silly answers. If the occasion on which the question is
+asked is not one in which an answer can appropriately be given, the
+child should be gently warned that the question raised is one about
+which people do not openly talk, and the promise of an answer
+hereafter should be made. Then, at the first convenient hour, the
+child can either be given the information he seeks or told that he
+shall hear all about the matter at some future specified time, as for
+example, his sixth or eighth birthday.
+
+In the absence of questions from a child, the ideal thing would be for
+the child, at the age of six, seven, or eight, to learn orally from
+his mother the facts of maternity and to receive warning against
+playing with his private parts. Whether at this time it is best to
+teach him the facts of paternity is, I think, doubtful. Canon
+Lyttelton is strongly of opinion that the father's share in the
+child's existence should be explained when the mother's share is
+explained, and there is much weight in what he says. If the question
+of paternity is reserved, it should not be on the ground that there is
+anything embarrassing or indelicate about the matter, and, when the
+facts are revealed, the child should clearly understand that they have
+been withheld merely until his mind was sufficiently developed to
+understand them. The only safe guide in such matters is experience,
+and of this as yet we have unfortunately little.
+
+The question next arises: should it be the mother or the father who
+gives this instruction? As regards the earlier part of the instruction
+a confident reply can be made to this question. The information should
+be given by the parent whose relations with the child are the more
+intimate and tender, and whose influence over him is the greater.
+This will, of course, usually be the mother. The subject of paternity
+may, if reserved for future treatment, be appropriately given by the
+father, provided that he and his son are on really intimate terms. If
+timely warning is given to a child about playing with his private
+parts, no reference need be made to self-abuse until a boy leaves home
+for school, or until he is nearing the age of puberty.
+
+There are many mothers whose insight and tact will enable them to
+approach these questions in the best possible way and to say exactly
+the right thing. There are others--a large majority, I think--who
+would be glad of guidance, and there are not a few who would certainly
+leave the matter alone unless thus guided. It was mainly to assist
+parents in this work that I published last year a pamphlet entitled
+_Private Knowledge for Boys_.[D] This embodies just what, in my
+opinion, should be said to an intelligent child, and it has, in my own
+hands, proved effective for many years past. In the case of _young_
+children the teaching should certainly be oral, _provided_ that the
+mother knows clearly what to say, has sufficient powers of expression
+to say it well, and can talk without any feeling of embarrassment.
+Unless these conditions co-exist I recommend the use of a pamphlet. As
+I have found that children often do not know what one means by the
+"private parts," I make this clear at the outset.
+
+[Footnote D: To be obtained post free for nine stamps from Mr. M.
+Whiley, Stonehouse, Glos.]
+
+Some into whose hands this book may come and who have boys of twelve
+and upwards to whom they have never given instruction, may possibly be
+glad of advice as to the manner in which the subject can best be dealt
+with in their case. For boys of this age, I am strongly of opinion
+that it is better in most cases to make use of a pamphlet than to
+attempt oral instruction. Probably they already have some knowledge on
+the subject; possibly some sense of guilt. If so, it will be found
+very difficult to treat the matter orally without embarrassment--a
+thing to be avoided at all costs. I was interested to find that on
+receipt of my pamphlet Professor Geddes--one of the greatest experts
+on sex--placed it at once in the hands of his own boy, a fact from
+which his opinion on the relative merits of oral and printed
+instruction can easily be inferred.
+
+Many of my readers who have boys of fourteen and upwards to whom they
+have hitherto given no instruction will, I hope, feel that they must
+now do this. I venture, therefore, to give a detailed account of the
+manner in which I should myself act in similar circumstances. I should
+arrange to be with the lad when there was no danger of interruption,
+and in such circumstances as would put him at his ease. I should tell
+him that I was conscious of unwisdom in not speaking to him before
+about a subject of supreme importance to him; that I took upon myself
+all blame for anything he might, in ignorance, have said or done; that
+through ignorance I had myself fallen and suffered, and that I should
+like him now to sit down and read through this pamphlet slowly and
+carefully. When he finished I should try by every possible means to
+make him sensible of my affection for him. I should associate myself
+in a few words with the sentiments of the writer, and should invite
+the lad to tell me whether he had fallen into temptation, and if so to
+what extent. A confidence of this kind assists a boy greatly and
+establishes a delightful intimacy.
+
+There are several points with regard to purity-teaching which need to
+be emphasised.
+
+Such teaching can hardly be too explicit. "Beating about the bush" is
+always indicative of the absence of self-possession. The embarrassment
+manifested is quickly perceived even by a young child, and is certain
+to communicate itself to the recipient. It is of paramount importance
+that the child should, from the first, feel that the knowledge
+imparted is pure; anything which suggests that it is indelicate should
+be studiously avoided. The introduction of a few science terms is
+advantageous in several ways: amongst others it relieves the tension
+which the spiritual aspect of the question may engender, it gives a
+lad a terminology which is free from filthy contamination.
+
+It is important that the information given should be full, otherwise
+the boy lives in a chronic state of curiosity, which, to his great
+detriment, he is ever trying to satisfy. If the reader feels that the
+information is dangerous, and aims, therefore, at imparting as little
+as possible, he is not fitted to do the work at all.
+
+No greater mistake can be made than that of taxing a boy with impurity
+as though it were a conscious and egregious fault. I have already
+expressed my strong opinion that, in almost every instance, the boy is
+a victim to be sympathised with, not a culprit to be punished. This
+opinion is shared, I believe, by everyone who has investigated the
+subject. It is certainly the opinion of Canon Lyttelton and Dr. Dukes.
+It is, indeed, easy to exaggerate the conscious guilt even of boys who
+have initiated others into masturbation. Apart from the injustice to
+the boy of an attitude of severity, it is certain to shut the boy's
+heart up with a snap.
+
+If a pamphlet is used it should, without fail, be taken from a boy
+when he has read it. Much harm may, I fear, result from supplying boys
+with the cheap pamphlets which well-meaning but inexperienced persons
+are producing.
+
+Should the time ever come when parents give timely warning and
+instruction to boys, a very difficult problem will be solved for the
+schoolmaster. But in the meantime what ought the schoolmaster to do?
+The following plan commends itself to some eminent teachers. As soon
+as a boy is about to enter the school a letter is sent to his parents
+advising them to give the boy instruction, and a pamphlet is enclosed
+for this purpose. This plan has the decided advantage of shifting the
+responsibility on to the shoulders of those who ought to take it. The
+weakness of the plan arises from the fact that most parents do not
+believe in the prevalence of impurity among boys, and are quite
+confident that their own boys need no warning. Hence they may do
+nothing at all, or merely content themselves with some vague and quite
+useless statement.
+
+The traditions of most boys' schools make it impossible for those
+intimate and respectful relations to exist between masters and boys
+without which confidential teaching of this kind may be even worse
+than useless. Where masters are invariably referred to disrespectfully
+if not contemptuously, where a teacher's most earnest address is a
+"jaw" which the recipient is expected to betray and mock at with his
+companions; where to shield profanity, indecency, and bullying from
+detection is the imperative duty of every boy below the Sixth; where
+failure to avert from a moral leper the kindly treatment which might
+restore him to health and prevent the wholesale infection of others is
+the one unpardonable sin, only one or two teachers of a generation can
+hope to do much, and the risk of failure is immense. I can hardly
+believe that the present race of teachers will long tolerate the
+system I here advert to. Public opinion _can_ be organised and
+enlisted as strongly on the side of Right as it is now, but too often,
+on the side of Evil. Mr. A.C. Benson is very moderate when he writes:
+"To take no steps to arrive at such an organisation, and to leave it
+severely alone, is a very dark responsibility."
+
+Even in such a school, some good is, I know, done by tactful public
+references to the existence of masturbation and to its deplorable
+consequences.
+
+The question is not free from difficulty even when the general
+atmosphere of the school is healthy and helpful. If one dared to leave
+this instruction until the age of puberty, the lad would be capable of
+a much deeper impression than he is at an earlier age, and the
+impression would be fresh just at the time at which it is most needed.
+In the case of boys who have come to me at nine or ten I have
+sometimes ventured to defer my interview for four or five years, and
+have found them quite uncorrupted. On the other hand, within an hour
+of penning these lines I have been talking to a little boy of eleven
+who commenced masturbation two years ago while he was under excellent
+home influence. One such boy may, without guilt, corrupt a whole set,
+for impurity is one of the most infectious as well as the most
+terrible of diseases. The ideal state in a school is not reached until
+periodical addresses on purity can be given to all with the certainty
+that by all they will be listened to and treated reverently and
+respectfully. Such addresses cannot well be made the vehicle of sex
+information, but they can be so constructed as to guide those to whom
+individual instruction has not yet been given, and to strengthen those
+who, spite of full instruction, periodically need a helping hand.
+
+What results may we reasonably expect from adequate and timely
+instruction? I have so rarely met a case in which this has been given
+at home that I can only infer what these results might be from the
+cases in which my own instruction has been given in time. In almost
+every instance I feel sure that the results have been beneficial,
+that the temptation to impurity has been little felt, and that a
+healthy and chaste boyhood has resulted. Canon Lyttelton writes: "The
+influences of school life have been found to be impotent to deprave
+the tone of a boy who has been fortified by the right kind of
+instruction from his parents." This I can well believe, for, if the
+schoolmaster can do much, there can be no limit to a power which has
+been cradled in the sanctity of home and cherished by a mother's love.
+This appears to be the emphatic opinion also of Dr. Dukes. Of a boy
+thus favoured, Canon Lyttelton writes: "He will feel that any rude
+handling of such a theme, even of only its outer fringe, is like the
+profaning of the Holy of Holies in his heart, and he will no more
+suffer it than he would suffer a stranger to defile the innermost
+shrine of his feelings by taking his mother's or his sister's name in
+vain. All the goading curiosity which drives other boys to pry
+greedily into nature's laws, in blank ignorance of their mighty
+import, their unspeakable depth, and spiritual unearthly harmonies,
+has been for him forestalled, enlightened, and purified."
+
+It is a sad step down from such a boy to the lad who has been given
+warning after corruption has begun. Most boys feel such shame in
+confessing to failure that one has to accept with reserve the
+statements made by even the most truthful of those who are treading
+the upward path. After making due allowance for this source of error,
+my experience enables me to say confidently that, if a boy has not
+been long or badly corrupted, a radical change of attitude may be
+expected in him at once, and the habit of self-abuse will be instantly
+or rapidly relinquished. Very different is the case of a lad who has
+long practised masturbation, or who has practised it for some time
+after the advent of puberty, or who has associated sexual imaginations
+with the practice. Few such boys conquer the habit at once, however
+much they desire to, and, if the above conditions co-exist, a boy's
+progress is very slow, and years may pass without anything approaching
+cure. If in addition to the temptations from within he has foes also
+without in the form of companions who sneer at his desire for
+improvement, controvert the statements made to him, and throw
+temptation in his way, his chance of cure must be enormously
+decreased. Of such cases I know nothing; for my experience lies solely
+among boys who have, outside their own hearts, little to hinder and
+very much to help. As I have dealt elsewhere with the question of aids
+to chastity, I will make only a brief reference to it here.
+
+The mind is so much influenced by the body that purity is impossible
+when the body is unduly indulged. No man exists who could inhale the
+vapour of chloroform without an irresistible desire to sleep. Under
+these conditions the strongest will would not avail even if the victim
+knew that by surrender he was sacrificing everything he reverenced and
+held dear. The lad past the age of puberty who has much stimulating
+food, who drinks alcohol, who sleeps in a warm and luxurious bed and
+occupies it for some time before or after sleep, is certain, even if
+he takes much exercise, to be tempted irresistibly. Dr. Dukes
+considers that a heavy meat meal with alcohol shortly before bedtime
+is in itself sufficient to ensure a lad's fall.
+
+Meanwhile, no abstinence which it not unduly rigorous, can save a boy
+from impurity if he gets into the habit of exchanging glances with
+girls who are socially inferior, if he reads suggestive books, looks
+at stimulating pictures and sights, and falls into the hopeless folly
+of entertaining sexual thoughts even momentarily. He who has not the
+strength to tread out a spark is little likely to subdue a
+conflagration.
+
+The best and most timely teaching will never make carelessness in
+these matters justifiable, and a boy who has once been corrupted and
+desires to master his lower nature has no chance of self-conquest
+unless he gives them his constant and careful attention.
+
+It is very important to fill a boy's leisure with congenial
+occupation. Idleness and dullness make a boy specially susceptible to
+temptation. On the other hand, the fond parent who satisfies a boy's
+every whim and encourages the lad to think that his own enjoyment is
+the chief thing in life does his utmost to destroy the lad's chance of
+purity--or, indeed, of any virtue whatever.
+
+Can anything be done for boys and young men who have become the slaves
+of self-abuse to such an extent that they groan in the words of St.
+Paul: "The good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not,
+that I do.... I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I
+see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and
+bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O
+wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this
+death?" Can anything be done for the lad who has become so defiled by
+lustful thoughts that his utmost efforts fail to carry him forward,
+and even leave him to sink deeper in the mire. There are many, many
+such cases, alas! for as Dr. Acton says, "The youth is a dreamer who
+will open the floodgates of an ocean, and then attempt to prescribe at
+will a limit to the inundation."
+
+Yes there is a remedy--I believe a specific--which can rapidly and, I
+think, finally restore strength to the enfeebled will and order the
+unclean spirit to come out of the man. It is hypnotic suggestion. Let
+not the reader, however, think that the matter is a simple one. In all
+ages any great advance in the art of healing has, by the ignorant,
+been attributed to the powers of darkness. The Divine Healer Himself
+did not escape from the charge of casting out devils by the prince of
+the devils, and, while hypnotic suggestion has long been used for
+therapeutic purposes on the Continent and is now practised in
+Government institutions there, the doctor or clergyman or teacher who
+uses it in England runs great risks; for in this subject, as in all
+others, it is those who are entirely without experience who are most
+dogmatic.
+
+In the case of the schoolmaster, its use in this connection is
+practically excluded. If he applies to a parent for permission to use
+it he probably runs his head against a blank wall of ignorance; for
+hypnotism, to most people, means a dangerous power by which an
+unscrupulous, strong-willed Svengali dominates an abnormally
+weak-willed Trilby whose will continues to grow weaker until the
+subject becomes a mere automaton; and most of us would rightly prefer
+that a boy should be his own master--even if he were rushing to
+headlong ruin--than that he should be the mere puppet of the most
+saintly man living. The human will is sacred and inviolable, and we do
+unwisely if we seek to control it or to remove those obstacles from
+its way by which alone it can gain divine strength. Meanwhile the
+stimulus by which the mind acquires self-mastery usually comes from
+without in the form of spiritual inspiration; and to remove from a
+boy's path an obstacle which blocks it and is entirely beyond his own
+strength is equally desirable both in the physical and in the
+spiritual realm. Those who think that without this obstacle a boy's
+power of self-control is likely to receive insufficient exercise will,
+of course, object to the instruction advocated in this book. If it is
+unwise to remove this obstacle from a boy's path it is equally unwise
+so to instruct him as to prevent the obstacle from arising. In
+_trustworthy_ hands hypnotic suggestion is a beneficent power which
+has no dangers and no drawbacks, and to decline to use it is to accept
+a very serious responsibility.
+
+For the teacher a further difficulty--not to mention that of time--is
+that, without betraying a boy's confidence or inducing him to allow
+his admissions to be passed on to his father, it is impossible to give
+his parents an idea of the urgency of the case.
+
+Altogether the time for hypnotic suggestion in education is not yet,
+but the day must come when its use is recognised not only in physical
+cases such as nocturnal emissions and constipation, but in all cases
+in which the will-power is practically in abeyance, as it is in bad
+cases of impurity.
+
+For intelligent parents the difficulties are far less, and if any such
+care to pursue the subject farther, I would refer them to the volume
+on _Hypnotism_ in the People's Books series or to one of the larger
+medical works on the subject, such as _Hypnotism and Suggestion_, by
+Dr. Bernard Hollander.
+
+To those who know boys well and love them much, there is something
+intensely interesting and pathetic about the spiritual struggle
+through which they have to pass. The path of self-indulgence seems so
+obviously the path to happiness; self-denial is so hard and
+self-control so difficult. "The struggle of the instinct that enjoys
+and the more noble instinct that aspires" is ever there. The young
+soul reaches out after good, but its grasp is weak. It needs much
+enlightenment, much encouragement, much inspiration, much patient
+tolerance of its faults, much hopeful sympathy with its strivings, if
+it is ever to attain the good it seeks. In the past it has met,
+without light or aid, unwarned and unprepared, the deadliest foe which
+can assail the soul. An appetite which has in all ages debased the
+weak, wrestled fiercely with the strong, and vanquished at times even
+the noble, is let loose upon an unwarned, unarmed, defenceless child.
+Oh, the utter, the utter folly of it!
+
+For life after death the writer has no longing. Immortality, if
+vouchsafed, appears to him to be a gift to be accepted trustfully and
+humbly, not to be yearned after with a sort of transcendental egoism.
+But to him the wish to--
+
+                "Join the choir invisible
+    Of those immortal dead who live again
+    In minds made better by their presence"
+
+grows ever stronger as the inevitable end draws nearer.
+
+To save young lives from the needless struggles and failures of my
+own, to secure healthy motherhood or maiden life to some whom lust
+might otherwise destroy, to add, for some at least, new sanctity to
+human passion--these have been my hopes in penning the foregoing
+pages. It has been my privilege and joy, in my own quiet sphere, to
+preserve boys from corruption and to restore the impure to cleanness
+of heart. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity these pages afford
+of extending this delightful work. When the hand which writes these
+lines has long been cold in death, may the message which it speeds
+this day breathe peace and strength into many an eager heart.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE TO CORRESPONDENTS.
+
+TO BOYS.
+
+
+I warmly invite any boy who has read these pages to write to me if he
+feels inclined to do so. Since this book was first published I have
+received hundreds of letters from boys who have, without any definite
+invitation, understood that it would please me much to hear from them.
+Many boys feel all the better for frankly confessing their
+difficulties to a man who fully understands and sympathises with them.
+Some desire advice about their own case. Anyone who accepts this
+invitation will do wisely to give me a full and frank history of his
+difficulties. His confidences will, of course, be strictly respected.
+He will also, I hope, remember that I am an extremely busy man with
+many and urgent claims on my time, and that I cannot always reply as
+quickly and as fully as I should like to do.
+
+
+TO YOUNG MEN.
+
+Before a young man marries he should always seek advice from a
+trustworthy source with regard to his conduct as a husband. No
+satisfactory book is, or perhaps could be, published on this subject;
+and even if a young man can make up his mind to consult a doctor, it
+is by no means every doctor who has the needful knowledge on this
+subject or the best moral outlook. It has been my privilege to help
+several in this matter, and I am always happy to do this.
+
+
+TO BOYS AND YOUNG MEN.
+
+I earnestly warn you against those who, by advertisement in the
+papers, offer to cure young men who are suffering from weakness of the
+private parts and other ills which impurity entails. Many such
+advertisers are little better than rogues, who are out to make money
+by trading on the fears of their victims; their "treatment"--quite
+apart from a far greater cost than at first appears--often does more
+harm than good. In every case in which disease or weakness exists, or
+is suspected, a reliable medical man should be at once consulted. If
+this is done, a cure may generally be looked for. Do not write to me;
+this is a doctor's business, not mine.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13722 ***