leven, and was now a helpless
victim. After two years at the University he wrote me that, though the
temptation now came less frequently, he seemed absolutely powerless
when it did come; that he despised himself so much that the impulse to
suicide often haunted him; but that the cowardice which had kept him
from games at school would probably prevent his taking his life. With
the assistance of an intense and devoted religious life he gradually
began to gain self-mastery. It is some years now since he has
mentioned the subject to me.

These are merely specimen cases. Cases A, B, and C illustrate my
assertions that parents are wonderfully blind; Cases B and E, that
quite exceptional refinement in a boy gives no protection from
temptation to impurity; Case D, that a boy, even in an extreme case,
does not know that the habit is injurious. In respect of their
severity, C, D, and E are not normal but extreme cases. The reader
must not imagine that boys ordinarily suffer as much as these did.

CHAPTER II.

PREVALENCE OF IMPURITY AMONG BOYS: THE OPINIONS OF CANON LYTTELTON,
DR. DUKES, AND OTHERS.

I propose now to make clear to the reader the fact that the
conclusions I have reached as to the existence of sexual knowledge
among boys, and as to the prevalence of self-abuse, are entirely borne
out by the opinion of the most distinguished teachers and medical men.

Canon Lyttelton writes with an authority which no one will question.
Educated at Eton, he was for two years an assistant master at
Wellington College; then, for fifteen years, headmaster of Haileybury
College, and has now been headmaster of Eton for over six years. He
has intimate knowledge of boys, derived, as regards the question of
purity, from confidential talks with them. The quotations which follow
are from his work _Training of the Young in Laws of Sex_. Canon
Lyttelton does not think it needful to make statements as to the
prevalence of impurity among boys. He rather assumes that this
prevalence is obvious and, under present conditions, inevitable. I
have already quoted one passage which involves this assumption, and
now invite the reader to consider two others. "In the school life of
boys, in spite of very great improvements, it is _impossible_ that
sexual subjects should be wholly avoided in common talk.... Though, in
preparatory schools of little boys under fourteen, the increasing
vigilance of masters, and constant supervision, combined with co