HISTORY XIII.--Artist, aged 34. "The earliest sex impression that
I am conscious of," he writes, "is at the age of 9 or 10 falling
in love with a handsome boy who must have been about two years my
senior. I do not recollect ever having spoken to him, but my
desire, so far as I can recall, was that he should seize hold of
and handle me. I have a distinct impression yet of how
pleasurable even physical pain or cruelty would have been at his
hands. (I have noticed that in young children it is often
difficult to differentiate the sexual emotions from what in the
grown up would be definite cruelty.)
"It must have been at about this time that I discovered--entirely
by myself--the act of masturbation. The process grew up quite
naturally, though I cannot but think that the cooped-up life in a
London street and a London school, with want of physical
exercise, as well as want of landscape, color, and beautiful
form, had much to do with it. The tone of the school I was at was
singularly clean, but I question whether the vaunted cleanliness
of tone of day-schools can compensate for the open life and large
discipline of an English public school.
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