ngled with the detumescence impulse,
readily take to sexual practices with others. Examples of this
constantly occur in boarding-schools, and in all other kinds of
educational institutions; even in day-schools, where the children live
apart from one another, we may observe that occasionally they begin
sexual practices very early in life (mutual masturbation, and intimate
physical contact, especially contact involving the genital organs). We
must always bear in mind the possibility that coeducation may lead to
the more frequent occurrence of such practices between boys and girls.
But we must avoid over-estimating this danger. In the first place, there
are many institutions, higher schools and others, attended only by
pupils of one sex, in which mutual sexual practices never take place,
and in which neither boys nor girls, even though sexual inclinations
arise in them, ever effect sexual intimacies with other children.
Although mutual masturbation is fairly common in schools, it cannot be
regarded as the general rule. Further, it may be pointed out that when
boys and girls are educated in common, the girls' natural instincts of
self-defence will in many cases lead them to repel improper sexual
advances. This is proved by the actual experience of coeducation.
Finck[134] gives reports regarding coeducation in the schools of the
western states of the American Union, and informs us that there every
girl has her beau of fourteen to seventeen years of age. Notwithstanding
the fact that these are boys of a fair age, undesirable consequences
have not been observed. This view is substantiated by the reports made
to me personally by American men and women, in whose truthfulness and
judgment I have complete confidence. During a lengthy American tour, and
on other occasions, I have elaborately questioned American physicians,
ministers of religion, school-teachers, and fathers and mothers of
families, regarding this matter. Their universal opinion was that no
such undesirable results of coeducation were ever observed. Indeed, I
received numerous assurances regarding the customary sexual abstinence
of American young men who had been educated in common with American
girls. In many of these circles, a young man known to indulge in sexual
intercourse, whether with a prostitute or in a so-called "intimacy," was
immediately ostracised; and this shows that as far as the question of
sexual chastity is concerned, the results of the coeducation o