and imbeciles premature awakening of the sexual life
is also of common occurrence. In cases such as were formerly described
as moral insanity, but which in Germany to-day are classed with
imbecility, sexual assaults on others are very common at an early age.
This is true also of other forms of idiocy and imbecility. In asylums
for such patients, feeble-minded children not infrequently make sexual
attempts on nurses and on other inmates. In this connexion, we have to
consider both components of the sexual impulse, the phenomena of
contrectation as well as those of detumescence. In the case of low-grade
idiots, we often see the phenomena of pure detumescence, without the
accompaniment of any sexual inclination directed towards another person;
this is simply physical masturbation, performed under the promptings of
an organic impulse. But not only in imbeciles and idiots, and in persons
of genius, but also in those with perfectly normal mental endowments,
the sexual impulse, and more especially the phenomena of contrectation,
may appear at a very early age. Persons with artistic tendencies develop
in this way with comparative frequency. We must, for these reasons,
guard against the misconception that the early awakening of sexuality is
_per se_ pathological. The fact that the study of the sexual life has
been undertaken chiefly by medical men, and above all by neurologists
and alienists, has inevitably introduced a certain bias into the results
of the investigation. Opportunities for the study of the sexual life of
normal persons have been comparatively rare; for those in whom the early
awakening of sexuality has been recorded have for the most part sought
medical advice and treatment for some other reason, and the physician
has taken the opportunity to make inquiries into the patient's sexual
history. The boundary-line between what is pathological and what is
normal can be determined only by an extended study of the sexual life in
normal persons. By very numerous inquiries I have done my best to effect
this; and a careful examination of the accumulated material leads to the
above-mentioned conclusion, that an early awakening of the sexual life
is commoner in those with an abnormal nervous system than it is in
healthy persons: but it also appears that an abnormal sensitiveness of a
non-pathological character, such as is exhibited by persons with the
artistic temperament, and likewise a disposition excitable to a degree
which