Now this state of affairs is really desperate. There is no need to be puritanical, or to look upon the lapses of boyhood as unpardonable sins; indeed, it may be allowed, as far as that goes, that a little frivolity is better than hardness and self-righteousness; yet every one feels, and must feel, who knows anything about the matter, that the state of our schools is bad. And it is so because, after all, purity (in the sense of continence) _is_ of the first importance to boyhood. To prolong the period of continence in a boy’s life is to prolong the period of _growth_. This is a simple physiological law, and a very obvious one; and whatever other things may be said in favour of purity, it remains perhaps the most weighty. To introduce sensual and sexual habits--and one of the worst of these is self-abuse--at an early age, is to arrest growth, both physical and mental. And what is even more, it means to arrest the capacity for affection. I believe affection, attachment--whether to the one sex or the other--springs up normally in the youthful mind in a quite diffused, ideal, emotional form--a kind of longing and amazement as at something divine--with no definite thought or distinct consciousness of sex in it. The sentiment expands and fills, as it were like a rising tide, every cranny of the emotional and moral nature; and the longer (of course within reasonable limits) its definite outlet towards sex is deferred, the longer does this period of emotional growth and development continue, and the greater is the refinement and breadth and strength of character resulting. All experience shows that a too early outlet towards sex cheapens and weakens affectional capacity. Yet this early outlet it is which is the great trouble of our public schools. And it really does not seem unlikely that the peculiar character of the middle-class man of to-day, his undeveloped affectional nature and something of brutishness and woodenness, is largely due to the prevalent condition of the places of his education. The Greeks, with their wonderful instinct of fitness, seem to have perceived the right path in all this matter; and, while encouraging friendship, as we have seen, made a great point of modesty in early life--the guardians and teachers of every well-born boy being especially called upon to watch over the sobriety of his habits and manners.[54]