imaginative activity in cases of masturbation. The
resemblances, on the one hand, and the differences, on the other,
between masturbation and normal sexual intercourse, will be apparent to
those who carefully consider the facts just stated; and it will also
become apparent in what circumstances masturbation must be regarded as
injurious. This is all I have to say concerning masturbation in adults.

The idea that masturbation is, generally speaking, dangerous, is by many
restricted to the practice during childhood and youth, the belief in its
danger at this stage of life being based upon the view that the organs
are at this time insufficiently developed. But even this contention
cannot be regarded as fully established. I will, in the first place,
consider those cases only in which masturbation is practised after the
formation of semen has begun, but when the processes by which bodily
maturity is attained are not yet fully completed. To the theoretical
assumption that masturbation is especially hurtful in cases in which the
organs are not yet adequately developed, we may oppose the consideration
that the completer development of organs is favoured by exercise. We
cannot further discuss such theoretical speculations, which lack the
firm foundation of experience. On the whole, I agree with the estimate
of the consequences of masturbation expressed by Aschaffenburg,[88] a
man to whom we are indebted for the refutation of many extravagant
views. Experience teaches that almost all men, healthy and unhealthy,
moral and immoral, have masturbated for some years, once or several
times a week, towards the end of the second and during the beginning of
the third period of childhood. In view of this experience, what right
have we to maintain seriously that masturbation is, generally speaking,
dangerous to health. It is, of course, possible to contend that these
persons would have developed better if they had not masturbated. But
there is equal ground for asserting the opposite. We possess no evidence
whatever to show that those young persons who never masturbate are in
after life stronger and healthier than the others. I know some persons
who have never masturbated. In the case of some of these, it was because
the impulse to masturbate was lacking; others, notwithstanding the
existence of a strong impulse, refrained from masturbation under the
influence of religious or ethical motives. In both of these groups, I
have seen persons exhi