11
The disintegration of the prevalent forms of religious belief, the rapid multiplication of sects, the increase in the ranks of intellectual skeptics, the fashionable detractions from, and perversions of, the Holy Scriptures, acting with the influences already mentioned, may well cause alarm.
The boy of the present generation has more practical knowledge of sexual instinct at the age of fifteen than, under proper training, he should be entitled to at the time of his marriage; and the boy of eleven or twelve boastfully announces to his companions the evidences of his approaching virility. Nourished by languishing glances and fanned by more intimate association on the journey to and from school, fed by stolen interviews and openly arranged festivities, stimulated by the prurient gossip of the news-paper and the flash novel, the gallant of twelve years is the libertine of fourteen. That this picture is not overdrawn every experienced physician will bear witness. Revelations are rare; instances of detection are extremely infrequent; so liberal are the opportunities afforded, and so blind are those whose duty it should be to guard. We boldly proclaim that the roues among boys outnumber the onanists by thousands, and that, destructive and revolting as is the latter vice, it is even more tolerable to contemplate than the other. The one, if persevered in, must reveal itself; the other keeps secret its hidden transactions. The one wrecks body and mind; the other grows and fattens to invest the subtlest of demons. The writer could engage to select the onanists of a school by a walk among the pupils; he could not promise so much for the young Lotharios. Indeed, if he could, and it were to be made a cause of expulsion, he fears there would be but a slender attendance in any school thus vised. Onanism, though called the solitary vice, is essentially gregarious in its
