his development.  He read Plato.  A new world opened, and he felt that his own nature had been revealed.  Next year he formed a passionate, but pure, friendship with a boy of 15.  Personal contact with the boy caused erection, extreme agitation, and aching pleasure, but not ejaculation.  Through four years he never saw the boy naked or touched him pruriently.  Only twice he kissed him.  He says that these two kisses were the most perfect joys he ever felt.

His father now became seriously anxious both about his health and his reputation.  He warned him of the social and legal dangers attending his temperament.  But he did not encourage him to try coitus with women.  He himself thinks that his own sense of danger might have made this method successful, or that, at all events, the habit of intercourse with women might have lessened neurosis and diverted his mind to some extent from homosexual thoughts.

A period of great pain and anxiety now opened for him.  But his neurasthenia increased; he suffered from insomnia, obscure cerebral discomfort, stammering, chronic conjunctivitis, inability to concentrate his attention, and dejection.  Meanwhile his homosexual emotions strengthened, and assumed a more sensual character.  He abstained from indulging them, as also from onanism, but he was often forced, with shame and reluctance, to frequent places—­baths, urinaries, and so forth—­where there were opportunities of seeing naked men.

Having no passion for women, it was easy to avoid them.  Yet they inspired him with no exact horror.  He used to dream of finding an exit from his painful situation by cohabitation with some coarse, boyish girl of the people; but his dread of syphilis stood in the way.  He felt, however, that he must conquer himself by efforts of will, and by a persistent direction of his thoughts to heterosexual images.  He sought the society of distinguished women.  Once he coaxed up a romantic affection for a young girl of 15, which came to nothing, probably because the girl felt the want of absolute passion in his wooing.  She excited his imagination, and he really loved her; but she did not, even in the closest contact, stimulate his sexual appetite.  Once, when he kissed her just after she had risen from bed in the morning, a curious physical repugnance came over him, attended with a sad feeling of disappointment.

He was strongly advised to marry by physicians.  At last he did so.  He found that he was potent, and begot several children, but he also found, to his disappointment, that the tyranny of the male genital organs on his fancy increased.  Owing to this cause his physical, mental, and moral discomfort became acute.  His health gave way.

At about the age of 30, unable to endure his position any longer, he at last yielded to his sexual inclinations.  As he began to do this, he also began to regain calm and comparative health.