been completely described and figured in the _Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie_, 1896, Heft 4, p. 262.)

Precocious sexual impulses are generally vague, occasional, and
more or less innocent. A case of rare and pronounced character,
in which a child, a boy, from the age of two had been sexually
attracted to girls and women, and directed all his thoughts and
actions to sexual attempts on them, has been described by Herbert
Rich, of Detroit (_Alienist and Neurologist_, Nov., 1905).
General evidence from the literature of the subject as to sexual
precocity, its frequency and significance, has been brought
together by L.M. Terman ("A Study in Precocity," _American
Journal Psychology_, April, 1905).

The erections that are liable to occur in male infants have
usually no sexual significance, though, as Moll remarks, they may
acquire it by attracting the child's attention; they are merely
reflex. It is believed by some, however, and notably by Freud,
that certain manifestations of infant activity, especially
thumb-sucking, are of sexual causation, and that the sexual
impulse constantly manifests itself at a very early age. The
belief that the sexual instinct is absent in childhood, Freud
regards as a serious error, so easy to correct by observation
that he wonders how it can have arisen. "In reality," he remarks,
"the new-born infant brings sexuality with it into the world,
sexual sensations accompany it through the days of lactation and
childhood, and very few children can fail to experience sexual
activities and feelings before the period of puberty" (Freud,
"Zur Sexuellen Aufklärung der Kinder," _Soziale Medizin und
Hygiene_, Bd. ii, 1907; cf., for details, the same author's _Drei