[689] Friedrich Albert Lange, “History of Materialism,” vol. iii., p. 302, English edition.
[690] “My dear young men,” thus wrote Ernst Moritz Arndt, at the age of eighty-nine, to the Burschenschaft (Students’ Association) of Jena, “I can wish nothing better for you than that you should arrange your course of life in Jena, and pass through it, as I heretofore passed through it, making a courageous, vigorous, and earnest fight against the lusty, overbearing impulses of youth, which in the best case are so easily carried to excess.... In these your most valuable years, between eighteen and twenty, you must, with redoubled manliness, courage, and chastity, strive to deserve the praise given by Caius Julius Cæsar to the young men of Germany.”
[691] Cf., in this connexion, the remarks of A. Herzen, “Science and Morality,” pp. 11, 12 (Berlin, 1901). The same age for human maturity was fixed on also by J. C. G. Ackermann (“The Diseases of the Learned,” p. 268; Nürnberg, 1777).
[692] I need mention only Seved Ribbing, Acton, Rubner, Paget, Hegar, Beale, Herzen, A. Eulenburg, V. Cnyrim, and Fürbringer.
[693] Wilhelm Erb, “Remarks on the Consequences of Sexual Abstinence,” published in the Journal for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1903, vol. ii., No. I., pp. 1-18.
[694] Theodor Mundt, in his “Madonna” (pp. 240, 241; Leipzig, 1835), has very vividly described the beneficial and refreshing influence of coitus upon women.
[695] L. Löwenfeld, “The Sexual Life and Nervous Troubles,” pp. 62-69, fourth edition.
CHAPTER XXVI
SEXUAL EDUCATION
“Better a year too early than an hour too late.”—Oker Blom.