ading of all vices with prostitutes on
the street. They will defile the atmosphere of social life with filthy
talk and ribald jest. Even a clean and ennobling passion can do little
to redeem them. The pure stream of human love is made turbid with
lust. After a temporary uplifting in marriage the soul is again
dragged down, marriage vows are broken and the blessings of home life
are turned into wormwood and gall.

That a system so destructive of physical and of spiritual health
should have lasted almost intact until now will, I believe, shortly
become a matter for general amazement; for while evidence of the
widespread character of youthful perversion is a product of quite
recent years, the assumptions on which this system has been based are
unreasonable and incapable of proof.

Since conclusive evidence of the prevalence of impurity among boys is
available, I will not at present invite the reader to examine the
assumptions which lead most people to a contrary belief. When I do
so, I shall hope to demonstrate that we might reasonably expect to
find things precisely as they are. In the first and second chapters we
shall see to what conclusions teachers who have actual experience in
the matter have been led.

There are several teachers whose authority in most matters stands so
very much above my own that it might seem presumptuous to begin by
laying my own experiences before the reader; but I venture to take
this course because no other teacher, as far as I know, has published
quite such definite evidence as I have done; and I think that the more
general statements of such eminent men as Canon Lyttelton, Mr. A.C.
Benson, and Dr. Clement Dukes will appeal to the reader more
powerfully when he has some idea of the manner in which conclusions on
this subject may be reached. I have some reason, also, for the belief
that the paper I read in 1908 at the London University before the
International Congress on Moral Education has been considered of great
significance by very competent judges. By a special decision of the
Executive of the Congress it--alone of all sectional papers--was
printed _in extenso_ in the official report. Later on, it came under
the notice of Sir R. Baden-Powell, at whose request it was republished
in the _Headquarters Gazette_--the official organ of the Boy Scout
movement.

It certainly did require some courage at the time to put my results
before the public, for I was not then aware that men of great