Youth and Sex, Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly [best novels to read .txt] 📗

rigorous, can save a boy from impurity if he gets into the habit of exchanging glances with girls who are socially inferior, if he reads suggestive books, looks at stimulating pictures and sights, and falls into the hopeless folly of entertaining sexual thoughts even momentarily. He who has not the strength to tread out a spark is little likely to subdue a conflagration.

The best and most timely teaching will never make carelessness in these matters justifiable, and a boy who has once been corrupted and desires to master his lower nature has no chance of self-conquest unless he gives them his constant and careful attention.

It is very important to fill a boy's leisure with congenial occupation. Idleness and dullness make a boy specially susceptible to temptation. On the other hand, the fond parent who satisfies a boy's every whim and encourages the lad to think that his own enjoyment is the chief thing in life does his utmost to destroy the lad's chance of purity - or, indeed, of any virtue whatever.

Can anything be done for boys and young men who have become the slaves of self-abuse to such an extent that they groan in the words of St. Paul: "The good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do.... I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Can anything be done for the lad who has become so defiled by lustful thoughts that his utmost efforts fail to carry him forward, and even leave him to sink deeper in the mire. There are many, many such cases, alas! for as Dr. Acton says, "The youth is a dreamer who will open the floodgates of an ocean, and then attempt to prescribe at will a limit to the inundation."

Yes there is a remedy - I believe a specific - which can rapidly and, I think, finally restore strength to the enfeebled will and order the unclean spirit to come out of the man. It is hypnotic suggestion. Let not the reader, however, think that the matter is a simple one. In all ages any great advance in the art of healing has, by the ignorant, been attributed to the powers of darkness. The Divine Healer Himself did not escape from the charge of casting out devils by the prince of the devils, and, while hypnotic suggestion has long been used for therapeutic purposes on the Continent and is now practised in Government institutions there, the doctor or clergyman or teacher who uses it in England runs great risks; for in this subject, as in all others, it is those who are entirely without experience who are most dogmatic.

In the case of the schoolmaster, its use in this connection is practically excluded. If he applies to a parent for permission to use it he probably runs his head against a blank wall of ignorance; for hypnotism, to most people, means a dangerous power by which an unscrupulous, strong-willed Svengali dominates an abnormally weak-willed Trilby whose will continues to grow weaker until the subject becomes a mere automaton; and most of us would rightly prefer that a boy should be his own master - even if he were rushing to headlong ruin - than that he should be the mere puppet of the most saintly man living. The human will is sacred and inviolable, and we do unwisely if we seek to control it or to remove those obstacles from its way by which alone it can gain divine strength. Meanwhile the stimulus by which the mind acquires self-mastery usually comes from without in the form of spiritual inspiration; and to remove from a boy's path an obstacle which blocks it and is entirely beyond his own strength is equally desirable both in the physical and in the spiritual realm. Those who think that without this obstacle a boy's power of self-control is likely to receive insufficient exercise will, of course, object to the instruction advocated in this book. If it is unwise to remove this obstacle from a boy's path it is equally unwise so to instruct him as to prevent the obstacle from arising. In
trustworthy hands hypnotic suggestion is a beneficent power which has no dangers and no drawbacks, and to decline to use it is to accept a very serious responsibility.

For the teacher a further difficulty - not to mention that of time - is that, without betraying a boy's confidence or inducing him to allow his admissions to be passed on to his father, it is impossible to give his parents an idea of the urgency of the case.

Altogether the time for hypnotic suggestion in education is not yet, but the day must come when its use is recognised not only in physical cases such as nocturnal emissions and constipation, but in all cases in which the will-power is practically in abeyance, as it is in bad cases of impurity.

For intelligent parents the difficulties are far less, and if any such care to pursue the subject farther, I would refer them to the volume on Hypnotism in the People's Books series or to one of the larger medical works on the subject, such as Hypnotism and Suggestion , by Dr. Bernard Hollander.

To those who know boys well and love them much, there is something intensely interesting and pathetic about the spiritual struggle through which they have to pass. The path of self-indulgence seems so obviously the path to happiness; self-denial is so hard and self-control so difficult. "The struggle of the instinct that enjoys and the more noble instinct that aspires" is ever there. The young soul reaches out after good, but its grasp is weak. It needs much enlightenment, much encouragement, much inspiration, much patient tolerance of its faults, much hopeful sympathy with its strivings, if it is ever to attain the good it seeks. In the past it has met, without light or aid, unwarned and unprepared, the deadliest foe which can assail the soul. An appetite which has in all ages debased the weak, wrestled fiercely with the strong, and vanquished at times even the noble, is let loose upon an unwarned, unarmed, defenceless child. Oh, the utter, the utter folly of it!

For life after death the writer has no longing. Immortality, if vouchsafed, appears to him to be a gift to be accepted trustfully and humbly, not to be yearned after with a sort of transcendental egoism. But to him the wish to -

"Join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence"

grows ever stronger as the inevitable end draws nearer.

To save young lives from the needless struggles and failures of my own, to secure healthy motherhood or maiden life to some whom lust might otherwise destroy, to add, for some at least, new sanctity to human passion - these have been my hopes in penning the foregoing pages. It has been my privilege and joy, in my own quiet sphere, to preserve boys from corruption and to restore the impure to cleanness of heart. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity these pages afford of extending this delightful work. When the hand which writes these lines has long been cold in death, may the message which it speeds this day breathe peace and strength into many an eager heart.


NOTE TO CORRESPONDENTS.

TO BOYS.


I warmly invite any boy who has read these pages to write to me if he feels inclined to do so. Since this book was first published I have received hundreds of letters from boys who have, without any definite invitation, understood that it would please me much to hear from them. Many boys feel all the better for frankly confessing their difficulties to a man who fully understands and sympathises with them. Some desire advice about their own case. Anyone who accepts this invitation will do wisely to give me a full and frank history of his difficulties. His confidences will, of course, be strictly respected. He will also, I hope, remember that I am an extremely busy man with many and urgent claims on my time, and that I cannot always reply as quickly and as fully as I should like to do.


TO YOUNG MEN.

Before a young man marries he should always seek advice from a trustworthy source with regard to his conduct as a husband. No satisfactory book is, or perhaps could be, published on this subject; and even if a young man can make up his mind to consult a doctor, it is by no means every doctor who has the needful knowledge on this subject or the best moral outlook. It has been my privilege to help several in this matter, and I am always happy to do this.


TO BOYS AND YOUNG MEN.

I earnestly warn you against those who, by advertisement in the papers, offer to cure young men who are suffering from weakness of the private parts and other ills which impurity entails. Many such advertisers are little better than rogues, who are out to make money by trading on the fears of their victims; their "treatment" - quite apart from a far greater cost than at first appears - often does more harm than good. In every case in which disease or weakness exists, or is suspected, a reliable medical man should be at once consulted. If this is done, a cure may generally be looked for. Do not write to me; this is a doctor's business, not mine.
Imprint

Publication Date: 05-21-2008

All Rights Reserved