ountry. It is even believed by some
that there are differences between the Catholic and Protestant
inhabitants of the rural districts. How extensive may be the differences
even within a comparatively small area, is shown by an example, which I
will quote, from C. Wagner.[74] One of the districts studied by him was
the Province of Jagst in Wuertemberg, and he reports that there is a
striking difference between the Alt-Wuertemberg and the Franconian
districts. The report states that in the former district the greater
number of parents appear to recognise it as their sacred duty to bring
up their children properly and to watch over their development. Moral
depravity could not be said to be general among the children of this
region. Very different was it in the Franconian districts, in which not
only were the children cared for much less perfectly, but in which also
"the children saw and heard much too early things which impair or
destroy the innocence and purity of the heart." We are told that
shamelessness in the satisfaction of natural needs was general; some
cases of self-abuse were reported; and obscene and lascivious
conversation was common. The causes assigned for this in the report are:
overcrowding in the dwellings, there being in some cases but a single
bed for children of school age of different sexes; also that children
had been present when cattle were performing the sexual act. Often in
the country we are told that children have been corrupted by grown
persons, through sleeping in the same bed with the latter.

What has just been said bears upon the influences which at the opening
of this chapter I classed with the second group of the influences
affecting the sexual life of the child, namely, those that come into
play only after birth. But whatever degree of importance we may
attribute to these, it cannot be doubted that congenital predisposition
plays a very important part in inducing an early awakening of the sexual
life. What we see in this case is similar to what happens in respect of
other qualities than the sexual. Some persons are congenitally
predisposed to a one-sided development; and in some persons there occurs
a phenomenally early development of certain particular talents. It will
suffice to remind the reader of children who while still quite young can
perform extraordinary arithmetical operations, and of those who at six
or seven years of age can play beautifully on the piano or some other
instrum