depravity. Whereas, in ancient Greek times, the mystery was holy, and
with a pious mind men worshipped the Force of Nature without exaggerated
prudery and without shamelessness, such conditions are impossible in a
society where for a thousand years Nature herself has been depreciated
by Religion, associated with sin and the Devil, stamped as unmentionable
and in preference denied, in which, for that very reason, brutality
takes so much more terrible a satisfaction and revenge. As grown-up
people never spoke of the forces of Nature in a pure and simple manner,
it became to the children a concealed thing. Individual children, in
whom the sexual impulse had awakened early, were taught its nature by
bestial dispositions, and the knowledge was interpreted by them with
childish shamelessness. These children then filled the ears of their
comrades with filth.

In my case, the nastiness hit, and rebounded, without making any
impression. I was only infected by the tone of the other scholars in so
far as I learnt from them that it was manly to use certain ugly words.
When I was twelve years old, my mother surprised me one day, when I was
standing alone on the stairs, shouting these words out. I was reproved
for it, and did not do it again.


XIV.

I hardly ever met little girls except at children's balls, and in my
early childhood I did not think further of any of them. But when I was
twelve years old I caught my first strong glimpse of one of the
fundamental forces of existence, whose votary I was destined to be for
life--namely, Beauty.