children to-day.[19] The occasional reappearance of this bygone impulse
and the stability which it may acquire are thus conditioned by the
sensitive reaction of an abnormally nervous and usually precocious
organism to influences which, among the average and ordinary population of
Europe to-day, are either never felt, or quickly outgrown, or very
strictly subordinated in the highly complex crystallizations which the
course of love and the process of tumescence create within us.

It may be added that this is by no means true of foot-fetichism
only. In some other fetichisms a seemingly congenital
predisposition is even more marked. This is not only the case as
regards hair-fetichism and fur-fetichism (see, e.g.,
Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia Sexualis_, English translation of
tenth edition, pp. 233, 255, 262). In many cases of fetichisms of
all kinds not only is there no record of any commencement in a
definite episode (an absence which may be accounted for by the
supposition that the original incident has been forgotten), but
it would seem in some cases that the fetichism developed very
slowly.

In this sense, it will be seen, although it is hazardous to speak of
foot-fetichism as strictly an atavism, it may certainly be said to arise
on a congenital basis. It represents the rare development of an inborn
germ, usually latent among ourselves, which in earlier stages of
civilization frequently reached a normal and general fruition.

It is of interest to emphasize this congenital element of foot symbolism,
because more than any other forms of sexual perversion the fetichisms are
those which are most vaguely conditioned by inborn states of the organism
and most definitely aroused by seemingly accidental associations or shocks