as the abnormal modifications to which it is subject, either congenitally or in consequence of profligate habits.  I was 15, I think, when I first came to know that girls can masturbate as well as boys.

“Long after I had realized why the terms male and female are so distinguished, my imagination was occupied with the possible postures in which the act of copulation may be accomplished by a man and woman; from Horace, Lucretius, Martial, Aristophanes, and, above all, from Ovid’s Ars Amatoria I obtained much, but not always very clear, information while still a schoolboy.  This was supplemented later by photographic pictures from Pompeiian brothels and photographs from life, purchased at Florence and gloated over one night, with twice-repeated masturbation, and afterward destroyed in a revulsion of shame.

“But while continuing to practise self-abuse (with a certain degree of restraint indeed, but seldom less often than once or even twice a week), after I had been made fully aware of its perils by Dr. Adam Clarke’s alarming comments on Genesis xxxviii, 9, when I was about 12 or 13, I never had connection with a woman until I married somewhat late in life.  This abstinence was not due to any frigidity of disposition, but from prudential and religious motives, and, to some extent perhaps, from the imperfect but genuine satisfaction afforded by solitary indulgence.  My imagination, like that of young J.J.  Rousseau, as set forth in his Confessions, was allowed free scope for its exercise, but in practice I confined myself to what seemed to me comparatively innocent as compared with fornication.  I was never an unreserved ‘exhibitionist’ like Rousseau, but I have on more than one occasion turned toward a hedge and pretended to make water, when a girl had just passed me on the road, showing a turgens cauda if she should chance out of curiosity to look back, as once, at any rate, happened.

“I watched with interest the first indications of puberty in my own person.  I had, of course, seen the pubic hair on many of my own sex, but I was 17 when I first saw a naked woman.  She was standing at the door of her machine, wringing out her bathing-dress, as I swam past, and her face was hidden by the awning then used, so that she could not see me.  A slight effusion of limpid mucus began to characterize the orgasm, at the age of 12 or 13 (before any ejaculation of semen was experienced), such as exuded later from the urethra when salacious excitement reached a certain pitch, even though the final climax might be postponed or prevented altogether.  I found it a refinement of luxury to prolong the period of tumescence as far as possible, by frequently checking a too rapid progress toward the goal.  By this practice of repeated arrest when the orgasm was imminent, and the mental debauchery which was its habitual accompaniment, I believe I did my nervous system more damage than by anything