"When I was about 28 I thought I might perhaps leave off the habit of regular relief I had got into. (It was not regular as regards time, being anything from one day to six weeks.) The change was probably made easier by a severe illness I had had. I gave this abstinence a fair trial for several years (until I was about 34), but my nocturnal manifestations certainly gathered strength, especially when I got much better in health, and, finally, as at puberty, began to worry my waking life. I reasoned that by my attempt at abstinence I had only exchanged control for uncontrol, and reverted to my old habits of relief, with the same good results as before. The whole trouble subsided and I got better at once. (The orgasm during sleep continued, and occurs about once a fortnight; it is increased by change of air, especially at the seaside, when it may occur on two or three nights running.) I decided that, for the proper control of my single life, relief was normal and right. It would be very difficult for anyone to demonstrate the contrary to me. My aim has always been to keep myself in the best condition of physical and mental balance that a single person is capable of." There is some interest in briefly reviewing the remarkable transformations in the attitude toward masturbation from Greek times down to our own day. The Greeks treated masturbation with little opprobrium. At the worst they regarded it as unmanly, and Aristophanes, in various passages, connects the practice with women, children, slaves, and feeble old men. Æschines seems to have publicly brought it as a charge against Demosthenes that he had practiced masturbation, though, on the other hand, Plutarch tells us that Diogenes--described by Zeller, the historian of Greek philosophy, as "the most typical figure of ancient Greece"--was praised by Chrysippus, the famous philosopher, for masturbating in the market-place. The more strenuous Romans, at all events as exemplified by Juvenal and Martial, condemned masturbation more vigorously.[347] Aretæus, without alluding to masturbation, dwells on the tonic effects of retaining the semen; but, on the other hand, Galen regarded the retention of semen as injurious, and advocated its frequent expulsion, a point of view which tended to justify masturbation. In classical days, doubtless, masturbation and all other forms of the auto-erotic impulse were comparatively rare. So much scope was allowed in early adult age for homosexual and later for heterosexual relationships that any excessive or morbid development of solitary self-indulgence could seldom occur. The case was altered when Christian ideals became prominent. Christian morality strongly proscribed sexual relationships except under certain specified conditions. It is true that Christianity discouraged all sexual manifestations, and that therefore its