in the thought that they have been given him for
his own joy and that of humanity. Then when temptation comes to him,
and he remembers how its indulgence has left him slack and bored, it
will seem to him like a candle-flame in the sun of his happiness, a
wretched little mean and unworthy thing breaking in on and threatening
to ruin the peace and harmony of his life. And so he will not give it
a second thought, and soon all danger will be over. This may seem
preposterously difficult. It is: but it is also the only way. The
master cannot do it for the boy, but he can perhaps give the boys some
help towards doing it for themselves.

What we want is that every house should become a small community of
boys carrying on together absorbingly interesting and romantic
activities--a kind of club in which they may forgather and undertake in
common the intellectual and spiritual adventure which thus become a
part of their individual daily lives.

In this way there will be none of that boredom, that feeling of "having
nothing on earth to do or think about," the presence of which is the
chief cause impelling a boy to turn to the one thing which at least can
provide him at any moment with a temporary excitement. Rather will his
whole nature develop harmoniously, and sex, about which we have become
too self-conscious, take its proper place as the (normally) unconscious
inspirer of many of our most vital activities and happiest emotions.
And once morbidity has been put away, and with it the constant
preoccupation of boys and masters with this one topic, and all that
suspicion and suggestiveness which we know so well, then the graver
problem which has to do with the relationship of boy to boy will be
found to have been solved at the same time. No one who knows a public
school is likely to deny that sexual emotion is nearly always an
element in the intensest schoolboy friendships; but that makes them
neither the less lovely nor the less desirable. Indeed, the value of
such friendships at their finest cannot be overestimated. For when a
boy "falls in love," he learns for the first time something of the real
splendour of living: he comes into his birthright of beauty and
ecstacy, and understands how the greatest happiness is to be found in
doing everything for the service of another. There is something very
loathsome about the spying, and secretiveness, the jokes and unclean
hintings which, in the majority of schools, make such a