e is not concentrated especially on the sexual act, as with an
adult who is already experienced in these matters; it is more
generalized and vague, although sensual.

For a long time, these repeated aspirations, impulses and desires,
remain unsatisfied. In different individuals the imagination
associates the most diverse images with such manifestations of the
sexual appetite. The objects of the latter appear in dreams and
provoke nocturnal erections. The boy soon remarks a sensory
localization of his appetites in his sexual organs, especially in the
glans penis, but also in the surrounding parts, and the known or only
vaguely defined image of the female sexual organs, which is hardly
present at the first appearance of his desires, begin to excite him
more and more.

In natural or savage man, as well as in animals, the boy then makes
attempts at coitus and soon attains his object, for, in the state of
nature, man marries as soon as puberty is attained.

=Nocturnal Emissions.=--In civilized man such difficulties are opposed
to marriage, that he replaces it by prostitution, or by more or less
unnatural means, as soon as his sexual appetite becomes strong. In
those who abstain, the images produced by sexual excitation, combined
with erections, act more strongly during sleep than waking and
produce ejaculations of semen called nocturnal emissions or
pollutions. These generally occur during erotic dreams, and as the
dreams produce the illusion of real perception, in quality as well as
in intensity, it is not surprising that they are followed by an orgasm
and ejaculation of semen.

=Masturbation.=--In the waking state the unsatisfied sexual appetite
may produce such excitation that the boy applies friction to the glans
penis, which cause voluptuous sensations. As soon as he has made this
discovery he repeats the act and provokes ejaculation of semen
artificially. Thus arises the bad habit of masturbation or onanism, a
habit which is both depressing and exhausting, which takes an
increasing hold on those who practice it. Although from the purely
mechanical point of view masturbation causes a more normal ejaculation
than nocturnal emissions, which are often interrupted by awakening and
the vanishing of the dream which produced them, it has a much more
harmful effect, by its frequency and especially by its depressing
action on sentiment and will. We shall return to this subject in
Chapter VIII.

The accumulation of semen i