only had an unfortunate influence on medical opinion in these matters, but has been productive of incalculable harm to ignorant youth and tender consciences.  During the past forty years the efforts of many distinguished physicians—­a few of whose opinions I have already quoted—­have gradually dragged the bogy down from its pedestal, and now, as I have ventured to suggest, there is a tendency for the reaction to be excessive.  There is even a tendency to-day to regard masturbation, with various qualifications, as normal.  Remy de Gourmont, for instance, considers that masturbation is natural because it is the method by which fishes procreate:  “All things considered, it must be accepted that masturbation is part of the doings of Nature.  A different conclusion might be agreeable, but in every ocean and under the reeds of every river, myriads of beings would protest."[349] Tillier remarks that since masturbation appears to be universal among the higher animals we are not entitled to regard it as a vice; it has only been so considered because studied exclusively by physicians under abnormal conditions.[350] Hirth, while asserting that masturbation must be strongly repressed in the young, regards it as a desirable method of relief for adults, and especially, under some circumstances, for women.[351] Venturi, a well-known Italian alienist, on the other hand, regards masturbation as strictly physiological in youth; it is the normal and natural passage toward the generous and healthy passion of early manhood; it only becomes abnormal and vicious, he holds, when continued into adult life.

The appearance of masturbation at puberty, Venturi considers, “is a moment in the course of the development of the function of that organ which is the necessary instrument of sexuality.”  It finds its motive in the satisfaction of an organic need having much analogy with that which arises from the tickling of a very sensitive cutaneous surface.  In this masturbation of early adolescence lies, according to Venturi, the germ of what will later be love:  a pleasure of the body and of the spirit, following the relief of a satisfied need.  “As the youth develops, onanism becomes a sexual act comparable to coitus as a dream is comparable to reality, imagery forming in correspondence with the desires.  In its fully developed form in adolescence,” Venturi continues, “masturbation has an almost hallucinatory character; onanism at this period psychically approximates to the true sexual act, and passes insensibly into it.  If, however, continued on into adult age, it becomes morbid, passing into erotic fetichism; what in the inexperienced youth is the natural auxiliary and stimulus to imagination, in the degenerate onanist of adult age is a sign of arrested development.  Thus, onanism,” the author concludes, “is not always a vice such as is fiercely combated by educators and moralists.  It is the natural transition by which we reach the warm and generous love of youth, and, in natural succession to this,