CAUSES OF THE PREVALENCE OF IMPURITY AMONG BOYS.
The evidence I have adduced in the previous chapters will convince
most of my readers that few boys retain their innocence after they are
of school age. There may, however, be a few who find it impossible to
reconcile this conclusion with their ideas of boy nature. I will
therefore now examine current conceptions on this subject and expose
their fundamental inaccuracy.
There are some people who imagine that a boy's innate modesty is quite
sufficient protection against defilement. Does experience really
warrant any such conclusion? Those who know much of children will
recognise the fact that even the cardinal virtues of truthfulness and
honesty have often to be learned, and that ideas of personal
cleanliness, of self-restraint in relation to food, and of
consideration for others have usually to be implanted and fostered.
Among people of refinement these virtues are often so early learned
that there is danger lest we should consider them innate. The
susceptibility of some children to suggestions conveyed to them by the
example and precept of their elders is almost unlimited. Hence a
child may, at two, have given up the trick of clearing its nostrils
with the finger-nail, and may, before five, have learned most of the
manners and virtues of refined people. The majority, however, take
longer to learn these things, so that a jolly little chap of ten or
twelve is often by no means scrupulously clean in hands, nails, ears,
and teeth, is often distinctly greedy, and sometimes far from
truthful.
That cleanliness and virtue are acquired and not innate is obvious
enough from the fact that children who grow up among dirty and
unprincipled people are rarely clean and virtuous. Were it possible
for the child of refined parents to grow up without example or precept
in relation to table manners and morals, except the example and advice
of vulgar people, who would expect refinement and consideration from
him? Is there anyone who has such faith in innate refinement that he
would be content to let a child of his own, grow up without a hint on
these matters, and with such example only as was supplied by
association with vulgar people? Yet this is precisely what we do in
relation to the subject of personal purity. The child has no good
example to guide him. The extent to which temptation comes to those
whom he respects, the manner in which they comport themselves when
tempted, the character of their sex relations are entirely hidden from
him. He is not only without example, he is without precept. No ideals
are set before him, no advice is given to him: the very existence of
anything in which ideals and advice are needful is ignored.
If in conditions like these we should expect a boy to grow up greedy,
we may be certain that he will grow up impure. At puberty there awakes
within him by far the strongest appetite that human nature can
experience--an appetite against which some of the noblest of mankind
have striven in vain. The appetite is given abnormal strength by the
artificial and stimulating conditions under which he lives. The act
which satisfies this appetite is also one of keen pleasure. He has
long been accustomed to caress his private parts, and the pleasure
with which he does this is greatly enhanced. He does not suspect that
indulgence is harmful. This pleasure, unlike that of eating, costs him
nothing, and is ever available. His powers of self-control are as yet
undeveloped. He can indulge himself without incurring the least
suspicion. He probably knows that most boys, of his age and above,
indulge themselves. The result is inevitable. He finds that sexual
thoughts are keenly pleasurable, and that they produce bodily
exaltation. He has much yet to learn on the subject of sex, and he
enjoys the quest. Wherever he turns he finds it now--in his Bible, in
animal life, in his classics, in the encyclopædia, in his companions,
and in the newspaper. Day and night the subject is ever with him. It
is inevitable. And at this juncture comes along the theorist who is
aghast at our destroying the lad's "innocence," and at our "suggesting
evils to him which otherwise he would never have thought of." "The
boy's innate modesty is quite a sufficient protection"!
To me the wonderful thing is the earnestness with which a boy sets
about the task of cleansing his life when once he has been made to
realise the real character of the thoughts and acts with which he has
been playing. Boys, as I find them, rarely err in this matter, or in
any other, from moral perversity, but merely from ignorance and
thoughtlessness. Severe rebukes and punishments are rarely either just
or useful. The disposition which obliges the teacher to use them in
the last resort, and the rebellion against authority which is said to
follow puberty, arise almost invariably from injudicious training in
the home or at school. Boys who have received a fair home training,
and who find themselves in a healthy atmosphere at school, are almost
invariably delightful to deal with; and even those who have been less
fortunate in their early surroundings adapt themselves in most cases
to the standards which a healthy public opinion in the school demands.
It may be thought that the mere reticence of adults about reproduction
and the reproductive organs would impress the child's mind with the
idea that it is unclean to play with his private parts or to talk
about their functions with his companions. This is a psychological
error. For some years past adults have avoided any allusion to the
subject of excretion, and the child assumes that _public_ attention to
bodily needs and _public_ reference to these needs are alike
indelicate. He does not, however, conclude that excretion in private
is an indelicate act, nor does any sense of delicacy oblige him to
maintain, with regard to companions of his own sex and age, the
reticence which has become habitual to him in his relations with
adults. Why should the child think it "dirty" to fondle and excite his
private parts or to talk about them with his boy friends? The
knowledge which makes us feel as we do is as yet hidden from him.
The same thing is certainly true of conversation about the facts of
reproduction when those who converse are uncorrupted. Another element,
however, at once appears when these facts are divulged by a corrupt
boy, because his manner is irresistibly suggestive of uncleanness as
well as of secrecy. Similarly when self-abuse is fallen into
spontaneously by a boy who is otherwise clean, no sense of indecency
attaches itself to the act. When, however, it is taught by an unclean
boy, there is a feeling of defilement from the first. In boys under
the age of puberty this feeling may overpower the temptation; in boys
above that age it is, as a rule, totally inadequate as a safeguard.
Many people imagine that a boy who is impure must betray himself, and
that if no overt acts of indecency are observed the innocence of a
boy's mind may be safely inferred. Knowledge on these subjects has,
however, been almost invariably gained under conditions of the utmost
secrecy, and the behaviour of adults has effectively fostered the idea
of concealment. Hence we might expect that the secret would be
jealously guarded and that any overt act of impurity would be avoided
in the presence of adults with even greater circumspection than the
public performance of an excretory act. The habit of self-abuse,
moreover, is practised usually under the double cover of darkness and
the bed-clothes. The temptation occurs far less by day than by night,
and a boy who yields to it in the day invariably chooses a closet or
other private place in which he feels secure from detection.
To many people it is inconceivable that a lad can harbour impure
feelings and habits without obvious deterioration; but even if a
child's lapses into these things were associated with conscious guilt,
does our knowledge of human nature justify us in supposing that evil
in the heart is certain to betray itself in a visible degradation of
the outer life? If we believe the language of the devout, we must
admit that the most spiritual of men hide in their heart thoughts of
which they are heartily ashamed. It is not into the mouth of the
reprobate but into the mouth of her devoted members as they enter upon
their sacramental service that the Church puts the significant prayer,
"Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and
from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts in our hearts by
the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit." Inconsistency in adults is far
too well recognised to need proof. In children it is even more
obvious, and for this reason that, looked at aright, it is the faculty
of maintaining the general health of the soul, spite of local morbid
conditions--a faculty which is strongest in the simpler and more
adaptable mind of the child.
Impurity as a disease has a long incubation period. When he contracts
the disease, its victim is often wholly unconscious of his danger;
and, both because the disease is an internal one and is slow in
development, it is a very long time before obvious symptoms appear.
Meanwhile a corruption may have set in which will ultimately ruin the
whole life.