It is the fashion nowadays to demand open discussion of all subjects; there must be no secrets. Parents are told that they are guilty of criminal negligence if they do not instruct their sons and daughters in the physiology of sex. And, no doubt, it will be maintained that at this point the father should have written his son a long letter explaining to him the nature of the temptation to which he would be exposed. That is the fashion nowadays. No doubt the Victorians suffered from an excessive reserve. We have gone to the other extreme. We are trying to reduce love to an exact science. On the whole, I suppose that the instruction of children by parents depends entirely on the individual case. But at such a time it would be very easy for the parents to become embarrassed and lose the boy's sympathy. The number of boys who learn from their parents more than a vague idea of motherhood is probably small. And at a Public School it is the physiology of fatherhood that occupies the boy's attention. We are given to understand that in the first place a boy must be corrupted by another boy. But this is not generally the case. A boy usually manages to corrupt himself. He has overheard the conversation of older boys, he has discussed different problems with his companions; the atmosphere of school life with its continual references to immorality in sermons and addresses, have made him precociously curious. He evolves for himself the practice of private immorality. A boy's knowledge of sex necessarily is very fragmentary, and on many points he is actually misinformed. He has a preposterous idea, for instance, of the effects that this habit will have upon his health. Syphilis is not more dangerous. His hair will drop out, he will go blind, his brain will soften. Probably he will go mad. Numerical considerations mean nothing to him: once a thief always a thief. The idea of restrained disorder does not occur to him. He suffers from the misery of an incommunicable grief. He is apart from his fellows. If he told them his secret, he thinks that they would despise him. He becomes morbidly introspective. He makes vows to break himself of the habit, fails, and despises himself. He begins to search for the symptoms of his approaching physical and intellectual collapse. If he makes a duck at cricket, misses a catch in a house game, or fails badly in his repetition, he tells himself that the process has begun. There are times when he wants to steal away by himself like an animal that is sick. There are others in which he wishes at all costs to mix with his companions, to take part in any rag that is afoot; to this cause can be invariably attributed the mingled rowdyism and moodiness of certain boys. The idea that such practices are physically injurious is encouraged by the master. It appears to him the most sure preventative. There are, indeed, occasions when masters are so misinformed that they actually believe in these terrible vengeances of the body. For