is one of the most infectious as well as the most terrible of diseases.  The ideal state in a school is not reached until periodical addresses on purity can be given to all with the certainty that by all they will be listened to and treated reverently and respectfully.  Such addresses cannot well be made the vehicle of sex information, but they can be so constructed as to guide those to whom individual instruction has not yet been given, and to strengthen those who, spite of full instruction, periodically need a helping hand.

What results may we reasonably expect from adequate and timely instruction?  I have so rarely met a case in which this has been given at home that I can only infer what these results might be from the cases in which my own instruction has been given in time.  In almost every instance I feel sure that the results have been beneficial, that the temptation to impurity has been little felt, and that a healthy and chaste boyhood has resulted.  Canon Lyttelton writes:  “The influences of school life have been found to be impotent to deprave the tone of a boy who has been fortified by the right kind of instruction from his parents.”  This I can well believe, for, if the schoolmaster can do much, there can be no limit to a power which has been cradled in the sanctity of home and cherished by a mother’s love.  This appears to be the emphatic opinion also of Dr. Dukes.  Of a boy thus favoured, Canon Lyttelton writes:  “He will feel that any rude handling of such a theme, even of only its outer fringe, is like the profaning of the Holy of Holies in his heart, and he will no more suffer it than he would suffer a stranger to defile the innermost shrine of his feelings by taking his mother’s or his sister’s name in vain.  All the goading curiosity which drives other boys to pry greedily into nature’s laws, in blank ignorance of their mighty import, their unspeakable depth, and spiritual unearthly harmonies, has been for him forestalled, enlightened, and purified.”

It is a sad step down from such a boy to the lad who has been given warning after corruption has begun.  Most boys feel such shame in confessing to failure that one has to accept with reserve the statements made by even the most truthful of those who are treading the upward path.  After making due allowance for this source of error, my experience enables me to say confidently that, if a boy has not been long or badly corrupted, a radical change of attitude may be expected in him at once, and the habit of self-abuse will be instantly or rapidly relinquished.  Very different is the case of a lad who has long practised masturbation, or who has practised it for some time after the advent of puberty, or who has associated sexual imaginations with the practice.  Few such boys conquer the habit at once, however much they desire to, and, if the above conditions co-exist, a boy’s progress is very slow, and years may pass without anything approaching cure.  If in addition