periences. In addition to this, we have also to take into account the
question whether the child incited to the offence, under the influence
of the spontaneous activity of its own sexual impulse. All these
considerations will make it clear that from many points of view the
sexual life of the child is a matter of forensic importance.

We must not forget that the child itself may be threatened with legal
dangers as a result of the activity of its own sexual impulse. The
German legal code decrees different degrees of penal responsibility at
different ages. Children not yet twelve years of age are not liable to
criminal prosecution. A child over twelve, but under eighteen years of
age, must be exonerated if when the offence was committed the child did
not possess the knowledge enabling him or her to understand its
culpability. By the third paragraph of section 176 of the German
criminal code, any one who has improper sexual relations with a person
under fourteen years of age, or who induces such a person to practise or
suffer such relations, is liable to severe punishment.

If, therefore, two children of eleven engage in mutual misconduct, they
incur no liability to legal punishment. But two boys of thirteen are
liable to prosecution for the practice of mutual masturbation. Each of
them has performed an improper act with a child under fourteen years of
age, and the liability to punishment in each case depends upon the
answer to the question whether the offender possessed sufficient
knowledge to enable him to understand his culpability. This knowledge is
not identical with the knowledge that the offence was legally
punishable; that is to say, either boy would be liable to punishment,
even though he had no idea whatever that improper sexual relations with
children under fourteen constituted an offence against the law. All that
is necessary is that he should possess a sufficient degree of
intelligence to understand his culpability, which is quite another thing
from his possessing knowledge of his legal liability to punishment.
Generally speaking, however, the public prosecutor is disinclined to
initiate proceedings in such cases, for the most part because it is
held that the necessary understanding of culpability is commonly
lacking. But such prosecutions have more than once occurred. In the year
1899, in a little town in the Mark of Brandenburg, proceedings were
taken against eighteen school-children, boys and girls, and five