rossing a
subject and one which took me off better things, I put it out of
my mind. Later, another boy gave me a fuller description of the
matter, and I began to have a great desire to know more and to be
old enough to practice it. I also discovered that boys
masturbated, and about a year after tried the experiment for
myself. This vice was largely indulged in by my school-fellows.
It never occurred to me that it was sinful, until I was nearly
16, when I came across a passage in Kenns's _Manual of
Schoolboys_, in which it was hinted such things were wrong
morally and spiritually. Previously I had felt it was an
indelicate and shameful thing, and bad for health. This last idea
was held as a solemn fact by all my boy friends. Gradually
religion began to exert an influence over my sexual nature,
obtaining as years passed a greater and greater restraining
power. It is simply impossible for me to write a history of my
sexual development without also describing the action which
Christianity has had in determining its growth. The two have been
so intimately bound together that my life history would not be a
faithful record of facts if I left religion out of it.

At school I took part, with great keenness, in cricket and
foot-ball, and was very ambitious to excel in everything in which
I took an interest, but I always had other tastes as well, which
were more precious to me, for example, the love for science,
history, and poetry. Until I was past 16 years my desire was
simply for coitus, girls and women attracted me only as affording
the means of gratifying this desire; but when I was nearly 17 I
began to regard girls as beautiful objects, apart from this, and
to desire their love and companionship. At the same time it
dawned upon me that life held much of joy in the love of women
and in domestic life--so henceforth I regarded them in a higher
and purer light, and apart from sexual gratification. In fact,
from this period till I was over 20, this idea so dominated my
whole being that the lower side of my nature was entirely held in
subjection and abeyance by it. It was rather repulsive to think
of girls as objects of lust. This state of mind was not brought
about by any romantic attachment or through any acquaintance or
through circumstances. I was living in great seclusion and had