gives his estimate of the
prevalence of masturbation, and quotes the opinion of other
authorities whose credentials he has verified; In this work, on page
150, he writes of masturbation: "I believe that the reason why it is
so widespread an evil--amounting, I gather, although from the nature
of the case no complete evidence can ever be accurately obtained, to
somewhere _about 90 to 95 per cent. of all boys at boarding-schools_--is
because the boy leaves his home in the first instance without one word
of warning from his parents ... and thus falls into evil ways from his
innocence and ignorance alone.... This immorality is estimated by some
at 80 per cent., by others at 90 per cent. Another says that not 10
per cent. are innocent. Another that it has always begun at from eight
to twelve years of age. Others that it is always worst amongst the
elder boys. Others that 'it is universal.'" Professor Stanley Hall,
in his great work on _Adolescence_, after a similar and exhaustive
review of the numerous works on this subject in different languages,
concludes: "The whole literature on the subject attests that whenever
careful researches have been undertaken the results are appalling as
to prevalence." And yet there are people who deprecate purity-teaching
for boys because they feel that a boy's natural modesty is quite a
sufficient protection, and that there is danger of destroying a boy's
innocence by putting ideas into his head! To hear such people talk,
and to listen to the way in which they speak of self-abuse as though
it implied monstrous moral perversion, one would think that the
condition of morals when they were young was wholly different. The
great novelist Thackeray gives little countenance to this opinion when
he writes in _Pendennis_: "And, by the way, ye tender mothers and
sober fathers of Christian families, a prodigious thing that theory of
life is as orally learned at a great public school. Why if you could
hear those boys of fourteen who blush before mothers and sneak off in
silence in the presence of their daughters, talking among each
other--it would be the woman's turn to blush then. Before he was
twelve years old little Pen had heard talk enough to make him quite
awfully wise upon certain points--and so, madam, has your pretty
rosy-cheeked son, who is coming home from school for the ensuing
holidays. I don't say that the boy is lost, or that the innocence has
left him which he had from 'Heaven, which is ou