onologically prior to the normal period of development. In the
cases showing the love of the adult for a child are revealed facts
bearing upon some forms of sexual perversion. In these cases the
child is used as a means of escape for suppressed love. Love that
normally should go out to an adult, is through some real or supposed
necessity suppressed until it finally seeks quiescence through
discharge upon a child or pet animal. This is not infrequent among
women whose relatively passive role decreed by nature in love affairs
has been exaggerated by society. The observations concerning love
between children of opposite sex and about the same age aid us in
determining the phase of the emotion's development that normally
belongs to any given period of life; _i. e._, there are many
observations upon children who are five years old, or six, seven,
eight, nine, etc., respectively, and these reveal the nature of the
emotion that normally belongs to those years. The various kinds of
observations extend over the entire periods of infancy, childhood,
and into adolescence, and are very well distributed in number among
the years of these periods, although more cases were reported for the
years 4 to 8, and 12 to 15, both inclusive, than for the years of the
period between 8 and 12. The reason for this becomes clearly apparent
later.

Analysis of the data contained in all of this material reveals the
fact that the emotion of sex-love may appear in the life of the child
as early as the middle of the third year. From its appearance at this
early age it can be traced in its development through five more or
less well marked stages whose time limits are as follows: the first
stage extending, as a rule, from the age of three years to the age of
eight years; the second from eight to fourteen; the third from
fourteen to maturity at about twenty-two in women and twenty-six in
men; the fourth from maturity to senescence, whose limits vary
widely; the fifth extending through senescence. Not every individual
passes through all five stages. Individual differences also keep the
time limits of the stages from being exact.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FIRST STAGE.

The presence of the emotion in children between three and eight years
of age is shown by such action as the following: hugging, kissing,
lifting each other, scuffling, sitting close to each other;
confessions to each other and to others, talking about each other
when apart; seeking each o