generally fourteen,
for, as he rightly insists, the line of division is between the
ripe and the unripe personality, and while the latter should be
strictly preserved from the sphere of sexuality, only voluntary,
not compulsory, influence should be brought to bear on the
former. _Sexual-Probleme_, Ap., 1909.)

If we take into our view the wider considerations of psychology,
morality, and law, we shall find ample justification for this
point of view. We have to remember that a girl, during all the
years of ordinary school life, is always more advanced, both
physically and psychically, than a boy of the same age, and we
have to recognize that this precocity covers her sexual
development; for even though it is true, on the average, that
active sexual desire is not usually aroused in women until a
somewhat later age, there is also truth in the observation of Mr.
Thomas Hardy (_New Review_, June, 1894): "It has never struck me
that the spider is invariably male and the fly invariably
female." Even, therefore, when sexual intercourse takes place
between a girl and a youth somewhat older than herself, she is
likely to be the more mature, the more self-possessed, and the
more responsible of the two, and often the one who has taken the
more active part in initiating the act. (This point has been
discussed in "The Sexual Impulse in Women" in vol. iii of these
_Studies_.) It must also be remembered that when a girl has once
reached the age of puberty, and put on all the manner and habits
as well as the physical development of a woman, it is no longer
possible for a man always to estimate her age. It is easy to see
that a girl has not yet reached the age of puberty; it is
impossible to tell whether a mature woman is under or over
eighteen; it is therefore, to say the least, unjust to make her
male partner's fate for life depend on the recognition of a
distinction which has no basis in nature. Such considerations
are, indeed, so obvious that there is no chance of carrying out
thoroughly in practice the doctrine that a man should be
imprisoned for life for having intercourse with a girl who is
over the age of sixteen. It is better, from the legal point of
view, to cast the net less widely and to be quite sure that it is
adapted to catch the real and conscious offender, who may be
p