"Age 10. Present at a discussion in the playground about the best way of intercourse, which I heard of for the first time. This was followed by enlightenment on the source of children. Concluded it must be very painful to both parties. 'Just the other way,' I was told. But the idea of pain to the genitals was 'interesting' to me. Pain felt by the other sex was 'interesting.' Pained looks captivated me—I liked to imagine some mysterious trouble; and, as I learned more, 'female complaints' interested me greatly in their subjects. I got a 'grateful pang' at the pit of the stomach at the thought, but neither erection nor the opposite. This hypogastric feeling has continued to associate itself with certain sexual impressions. The thought of a woman mortifying herself later on excited me sexually. Once, pulling a stay-string for fun (my wife never laced) gave me a powerful and quite unexpected erection.
"Age 12. A girl visitor of the same age got me talking about the genitals, and at bedtime came and proposed coitus. We failed to manage it. The vulva stripped back the foreskin, which was a voluptuous feeling; then we were alarmed by something and separated. I never saw her again. She too liked to 'punish' her vulva. She put whole pepper in it, and advised me to use the same. I continued greatly excited when she had gone; the hand flew to the phallus and worried it, and orgasm came on at once—the childish orgasm consisting of well-spaced spasms of the ejaculators, without the poignant preliminary nisus of the adult orgasm. There was no reaction or depression, except that the phallus—which did not subside at once—was painful to touch. A week or so later I tried again, but failed. A month later, being more excited, I succeeded. I found that I could only compass it about once in three weeks. There were no emissions. I used to have a spontaneous mental image of a small Grecian temple in a sunny park, which charmed me, and I had no scruples.
"Age 12-13. Masturbated once or twice a month.
"Age 13-14. Was sent to a small public school, where it happened that a very good tone prevailed. I learned that masturbation was bad form and unmanly. The proper thing was to save one's self up for women—at about 18. I dropped the practice easily, in spite of indulging my imagination about coitus. I thought of the initiation with prostitutes at 18, with the mixed feelings that even the most combative soldier must regard the fray. The hypogastric feeling above referred to would come on—which I liked and disliked at the same time. The first occasion on which I remember this feeling was when I got my first braces. Anything that harped on my sex produced it. Every time I received the sacrament, which I was forced to do very young, I repented of my intention of whoring at 18—as a man 'must' do—and afterward I relapsed to the expectation. Religion was a great reality to me, but it did not produce the radical effect that the development of the romantic sentiment did later on. (Both my wife and I became free-thinkers at about 30.)
"Age 15-17. Read poetry and romance. Conceived a high ideal of faithfulness and constancy. What a mockery all this loyalty is, I said to myself, if a man has stultified it beforehand. That was no mere castle-building. I had not understood what I was about in expecting to whore. The critical feelings were now awakening, and what they produced was revulsion against the abuse of sex, which got stronger every year. It became plain that there would be no whoring or the like for me; I was far too proud and fastidious. I neglected my tasks, which were uncongenial, and read a great deal of anatomy and physiology, which stood me in good stead later. As I rose in the school I was surprised to find the tone worse, but quite at the top it was better again, and with my latest companions sex was never even mentioned. At 14 I had a friend who importuned me to come into his bed, but I never would get under his bedclothes, for the male sex repels me powerfully in personal contact; he began to talk of masturbation, and now I can understand what he was aiming at. But my day-dreams of nymphs and dryads kept me in a state of perpetual tension, and erection was very frequent. The early morbid admiration of delicate women became replaced by admiration of health and strength combined with grace.
"Age 17-18. I was given a cubicle in which my neighbor on the right masturbated noisily two or three times a week, and the one on the left every night, using intermittent friction to drag it out longer. One night, kneeling at my bedside, saying prayers, my attention was divided between these and the occupation of my neighbor, when, after not having masturbated for four years,—the critical years of development,—the hand flew to the phallus and
"'pulses pounding through palms and trembling encircling fingers'
"procured, in Walt Whitman's language,
"'the wholesome relief,—repose, content.'
"I slept well and had a sense of elation at the proof of manhood, for we boys were anxious about whether we secreted semen or not. The sexual obsession was tempered, and about three weeks later I had my first 'pollution'—the 'angel of the night,' as Mantegazza with better sense calls it. From that time on I had pollutions every two or three weeks, with dreams sometimes of masturbation or of nymphs, or quite irrelevant matters. For a time these gave me perfect relief; then my 'dilectatio morosa' began to grow again, and the phallus would become so sensitive that working about on the belly would liberate the orgasm.