n who do not know the facts indicating that the sexual
instincts young men are characteristically active, aggressive,
spontaneous, and automatic, while those of women _as a rule_ are
passive and subject to awakening by external stimuli, especially in
connection with affection. Such forgetful men and uninformed women are
prone to regard the lack of control of many young men as simply due to
"original sin," "innate viciousness," "bad companions," or
"irresistible temptations"; and they overlook the great fact that
maintaining perfect sexual control in his pre-marital years is for the
average healthy young man a problem compared with which all others,
including the alcoholic temptation, are of little significance. Such
being the truth about young men, nothing is to be gained and much is to
be lost if older people fail to take an understanding and sympathetic
attitude. I question whether any young man has ever been helped through
his adolescent crises by such oft-repeated assertions as that "there is
no more reason that a young man should go astray than that his sister
should," or, in other words, that "continence is as easy for a young
man as for a girl of similar age." An observing young man will doubt
such statements, and if he has had access to scientific information, he
will feel sure that there has been an attempt to influence him by the
kind of exaggeration commonly adopted by specialists in moral
preachments. The plain truth is that there is a physiological "reason"
or explanation, although not a justification for failure of
self-control. Even if we accept the improbable statement of some
writers that boys and girls are in early adolescence potentially equal
in sexual instincts and assuming that they may be protected equally
against vicious habits, we must not forget that every normal boy passes
in early puberty through peculiar physiological changes that arouse his
deepest instincts. I refer especially to the frequent occurrence of
involuntary sexual tumescence and to the occasional nocturnal
emissions, which processes leave the boy in no doubt whatever as to the
nature, source, and desirability of sexual pleasure. Especially is this
true of the automatic emissions that usually follow continence of
healthy young men, for in connection with such relief of seminal
pressure every nerve center of the sexual mechanism seems to be
involved in the culminating nerve storm of which the awakening
individual is often quite ple