under eighteen is
declared to be "rape," and punishable with imprisonment for life.

Such enactments as these, however, it must be recognized, are
arbitrary, artificial, and unnatural. They do not rest on a sound
biological basis, and cannot be enforced by the common sense of
the community. There is no proper analogy between the age of
legal majority which is fixed, approximately, with reference to
the ability to comprehend abstract matters of intelligence, and
the age of sexual maturity which occurs much earlier, both
physically and psychically, and is determined in women by a very
precise biological event: the completion of puberty in the onset
of menstruation. Among peoples living under natural conditions in
all parts of the world it is recognized that a girl becomes
sexually a woman at puberty; at that epoch she receives her
initiation into adult life and becomes a wife and a mother. To
declare that the act of intercourse with a woman who, by the
natural instinct of mankind generally, is regarded as old enough
for all the duties of womanhood, is a criminal act of rape,
punishable by imprisonment for life, can only be considered an
abuse of language, and, what is worse, an abuse of law, even if
we leave all psychological and moral considerations out of the
question, for it deprives the conception of rape of all that
renders it naturally and properly revolting.

The sound view in this question is clearly the view that it is
the girl's puberty which constitutes the criterion of the man's
criminality in sexually approaching her. In the temperate regions
of Europe and North America the average age of the appearance of
menstruation, the critical moment in the establishment of
complete puberty, is fifteen (see, e.g., Havelock Ellis, _Man and
Woman_, Ch. XI; the facts are set forth at length in Kisch's
_Sexual Life of Woman_, 1909). Therefore it is reasonable that
the act of an adult man in having sexual connection with a girl
under sixteen, with or without her consent, should properly be a
criminal act, severely punishable. In those lands where the
average age of puberty is higher or lower, the age of consent
should be raised or lowered accordingly. (Bruno Meyer, arguing
against any attempt to raise the age of consent above sixteen,
considers that the proper age of consent is