fluences.

Mantegazza[108] goes so far as to regard the premature development of
psychosexual sentiments as a peculiarity of richly endowed and talented
natures. An obscure, shamefaced feeling, by which the boy is drawn to
the girl, is, he thinks, manifest in such natures, even before sex has
made its profound impression upon the developing organism, and before
the reproductive organs have assumed their adult forms. He compares such
feelings with the rosy tint which appears on the horizon before the
sunrise, and he considers that in men of a lower type or less highly
gifted by nature, the new sentiments known by the name of love do not
appear until after the adult development of the reproductive organs. I
do not believe that this generalisation is well founded; although, as
previously mentioned, I consider that the alarm which is often caused in
elders by the appearance in the child of such early psychosexual
manifestations is not warranted, as a rule, by the facts of the case.

The question as to the quality of the offspring resulting from the
sexual intercourse of children, either of two children who are both
sexually mature, or of a sexually mature child with a grown person, has
not, in Europe, any great or immediate practical interest. With us,
procreation is rarely possible on the part of those who are still
children, for the boy is hardly competent for procreation before the
completion of the second period of childhood, and in the case of girls
such competence is rarely met with till towards the very end of the
second period of childhood. But if we put the question in a somewhat
more general form, and study the quality of the offspring of youthful
persons in whom bodily development is not yet fully completed, the
matter becomes one of greater practical interest. But for a decision
even on this point, data are insufficient, notwithstanding the fact
that, according to Pauline Tarnowsky,[109] among the Russians a young
girl frequently marries while still sexually immature, at the age of
sixteen or seventeen, when, in that country, menstruation has often not
yet begun. But there is a country from which data bearing on this
problem can be obtained--data of considerable, and, as some think, of
decisive importance--viz. India. In India, child-marriages occur with
extraordinary frequency, and, according to Hans Fehlinger,[110] their
number continues to increase. Originally almost confined to the Hindus,
these marriages h