festations of sexual
maturity appeared in very early childhood. Now we find an account of a
girl menstruating at four years of age, now an account of a
three-year-old boy who exhibited many of the external signs of sexual
maturity. Even in the older, purely psychological works we find
occasional references to the sexual life of the child--a fact that will
surprise no one who is acquainted with the high development of the
empirical psychology (_Erfahrungspsychologie_) of that day (1800). The
_Venus Urania_ of Ramdohr, for instance, a work on the psychology of
love, emphasises the frequency of amatory sentiments in children.

In works dealing with the history of civilisation, we also encounter
occasional references to our subject. Take, for instance, the knightly
_Code of Love_ (_Liebeskodex_), a work highly esteemed in the days of
chivalry, and legendarily supposed to have originated in King Arthur's
Court. Paragraph 6 of this _Code_ runs: "A man shall not practise love
until he is fully grown." According to Rudeck,[5] from whom I quote this
instance, the aim of the admonition was to protect the youth of the
nobility from unwholesome consequences. Obviously, the love affairs of
immature persons must have been the determining cause of any allusion to
the matter. We may also draw attention in this connexion to many
marriage laws, which show that the subject has come under consideration,
either because they expressly sanction the marriages of children, or,
conversely, because they forbid such unions. At the present day, among
many peoples (as, for instance, the Hindus), child-marriages are
frequent; and in many countries in which such marriages are now illegal,
they were sanctioned in former ages. Many works on prostitution also
touch on our chosen subject. Parent-Duchatelet, in his great book,
refers to girls who had become prostitutes at the ages of twelve or even
ten years. I shall show later that in individual instances such early
prostitution is directly dependent upon the sexuality of the children
concerned. Many ethnological works also contribute to our knowledge of
the sexual life of the child, describing, as they do, in certain races,
the early awakening of sexual activity.

Remarkably little material do we find, however, in many works in which
we might have expected to find a great deal. I refer to works on
education and on the psychology of the child. In exceptional instances,
indeed, as I have already indicated