orn in their
blood.[386]

The extensive inquiries of Sanford Bell (loc. cit.) show that the
emotions of sex-love may appear as early as the third year. It
must also be remembered that, both physically and psychically,
girls are more precocious, more mature, than boys (see, e.g.,
Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_, fourth edition, pp. 34 _et
seq._, 200, etc.). Thus, by the time she has reached the age of
puberty a girl has had time to become an accomplished mistress of
the minor arts of love. That the age of puberty is for girls the
age of love seems to be widely recognized by the popular mind.
Thus in a popular song of Bresse a girl sings:--

"J'ai calcule mon age,
J'ai quatorze a quinze ans.
Ne suis-je pas dans l'age
D'y avoir un amant?"

This matter of the sexual precocity of girls has an important
bearing on the question of the "age of consent," or the age at
which it should be legal for a girl to consent to sexual
intercourse. Until within the last twenty-five years there has
been a tendency to set a very low age (even as low as ten) as the
age above which a man commits no offence in having sexual
intercourse with a girl. In recent years there has been a
tendency to run to the opposite and equally unfortunate extreme
of raising it to a very late age. In England, by the Criminal Law
Amendment Act of 1885, the age of consent was raised to sixteen
(this clause of the bill being carried in the House of Commons by
a majority of 108). This seems to be the reasonable age at which
the limit should be set and its extreme high limit in temperate
climates. It is the age recognized by the Italian Criminal Code,
and in many other parts of the civilized world. Gladstone,
however, was in favor of raising it to eighteen, and Howard, in
discussing this question as regards the United States
(_Matrimonial Institutions_, vol. iii, pp. 195-203), thinks it
ought everywhere to be raised to twenty-one, so coinciding with
the age of legal majority at which a woman can enter into
business or political relations. There has been, during recent
years, a wide limit of variation in the legislation of the
different American States on this point, the differences of the
two limits being as much as eight years, and in some important
States the act of intercourse with a girl