asis of reason in such beliefs,
though in an unqualified form they cannot be accepted, for they take no
account of the complexity of the factors involved, of the difficulty and
often impossibility of effecting any complete transformation, either in a
desirable or undesirable direction, and of the serious conflict which the
process often involves. The psycho-analysts have helped us here. Whether
or not we accept their elaborate and often shifting conceptions, they have
emphasised and developed a psychological conception of sexual energy and
its transformations, before only vaguely apprehended, which is now seen to
harmonise with the modern physiological view.

The old notion that sexual activity is merely a matter of the voluntary
exercise, or abstinence from exercise, of the reproductive functions of
adult persons has too long obstructed any clear vision of the fact that
sexuality, in the wide and deep sense, is independent of the developments
of puberty. This has long been accepted as an occasional and therefore
abnormal fact, but we have to recognise that it is true, almost or quite
normally, even of early childhood. No doubt we must here extend the word
"sexuality"[6]--in what may well be considered an illegitimate way--to
cover manifestations which in the usual sense are not sexual or are at
most called "sexual perversions." But this extension has a certain
justification in view of the fact that these manifestations can be seen to
be definitely related to the ordinary adult forms of sexuality. However
we define it, we have to recognise that the child takes the same kind of
pleasure in those functions which are natural to his age as the adult is
capable of taking in localised sexual functions, that he may weave ideas
around such functions, sometimes cultivate their exercise from love of
luxury, make them the basis of day-dreams which at puberty, when the
ideals of adult life are ready to capture his sexual energy, he begins to
grow ashamed of.

[6] Perhaps, as applied to the period below puberty, it would be more
exact to say "pseudo-sexuality." Matsumato has lately pointed out the
significance of the fact that the interstitial testicular tissue,
essential to the hormonic function of the testes, only becomes active at
puberty.

At this stage, indeed, we reach a crucial point, though it has usually
been overlooked, in the lives of boys and girls, more especially those
whose heredity may have been a little tainted or