but, though he often saw the act in process, it only inspired him with a sense of indecency.  In his fifteenth year puberty commenced with nocturnal emissions, and, at the same time, he began to masturbate, and continued to do so about once a week, or once a fortnight, during a period of eight months; always with a feeling that that was a poor satisfaction and repulsive.  His thoughts were not directed either to males or females while masturbating.  He spoke to his father about these signs of puberty, and by his father’s advice he entirely abandoned onanism; he only resumed the practice, to some extent, after the age of 30, when he was without male comradeship.

The nocturnal emissions, after he had abandoned self-abuse, became very frequent and exhausting.  They were medically treated by tonics such as quinine and strychnine.  He thinks this treatment exaggerated his neurosis.

All this time, no kind of sexual feeling for girls made itself felt.  He could not understand what his schoolfellows found in women, or the stories they told about wantonness and delight of coitus.

His old dreams about the sailors had disappeared.  But now he enjoyed visions of beautiful young men and exquisite statues; he often shed tears when he thought of them.  These dreams persisted for years.  But another kind gradually usurped their place to some extent.  These second visions took the form of the large, erect organs of naked young grooms or peasants.  These gross visions offended his taste and hurt him, though, at the same time, they evoked a strong, active desire for possession; he took a strange, poetic pleasure in the ideal form.  But the seminal losses which accompanied both kinds of dreams were a perpetual source of misery to him.

There is no doubt that at this time—­that is, between the fifteenth and seventeenth years—­a homosexual diathesis had become established.  He never frequented loose women, though he sometimes thought that would be the best way of combating his growing inclination for males.  And he thinks that he might have brought himself to indulge freely in purely sexual pleasure with women if he made their first acquaintance in a male costume, as debardeuses, Cherubino, court-pages, young halberdiers, as it is only when so clothed that women on the stage or in the ball-room have excited him.

His ideal of morality and fear of venereal infection, more than physical incapacity, kept him what is called chaste.  He never dreamed of women, never sought their society, never felt the slightest sexual excitement in their presence, never idealized them.  Esthetically, he thought them far less beautiful than men.  Statues and pictures of naked women had no attraction for him, while all objects of art which represented handsome males deeply stirred him.

It was in his eighteenth year that an event occurred which he regards as decisive in