a single boy (even
among those who have, through it, made almost complete wrecks
physically and mentally) who has of himself connected these
consequences with the sin itself. I have, on the other hand, known
many sad cases in which, through the weakening of will power, which
this habit causes, boys of high ideals have fallen again and again
after their eyes have been fully opened. This sin is rarely a
conscious moral transgression. The boy is a victim to be sympathised
with and helped, not an offender to be reproved and punished."

I desire to call the attention of the reader to two points in the
foregoing extract. I was particular in giving my credentials to state
the character and limitations of my experience. Everywhere in life one
finds confident and sweeping generalisations made by men who have
little or no experience to appeal to. This is specially the case in
the educational world, and perhaps most of all in discussions on this
very subject. Some men, at least, are willing to instruct the public
with nothing better to guide them than the light of Nature. It would
greatly assist the quest of truth if everyone who ventures to address
the public on this question would first present his credentials.

There is danger lest the reader should discount the significance of
the statements I make in the foregoing paper by falling into the error
of supposing that the facts stated apply, after all, to one school
only. This is not by any means so. The facts have been collected _at_
one school; but those which refer to the prevalence of sex knowledge
and of masturbation have reference solely to the condition of boys
when they first entered, and are significant of the conditions which
obtain at some scores of schools and in many homes. I venture here to
quote and to warmly endorse Canon Lyttelton's opinion: "It is,
however, so easy to be misunderstood in this matter that I must insert
a caution against an inference which may be drawn from these words,
viz. that school life is the _origin_ of immorality among boys. The
real origin is to be found in the common predisposition to vicious
conceptions, which is the result of neglect. Nature provides in almost
every case an active curiosity on this subject; and that curiosity
must be somehow allayed; and if it were not allayed at school, false
and depraved ideas would be picked up at home.... So readily does an
ignorant mind at an early age take in teaching about these subjects
that t