go into a field and pretend we were doctors and had to examine
one another, and then we used to pull up one another's clothes
and feel each other."

These games do not necessarily involve the coöperation of the
sexual impulse, and still less have they any element of love. But
emotions of love, scarcely if at all distinguishable from adult
sexual love, frequently appear at equally early ages. They are of
the nature of play, in so far as play is a preparation for the
activities of later life, though, unlike the games, they are not
felt as play. Ramdohr, more than a century ago (_Venus Urania_,
1798), referred to the frequent love of little boys for women.
More usually the love is felt towards individuals of the opposite
or the same sex who are not widely different in age, though
usually older. The most comprehensive study of the matter has
been made by Sanford Bell in America on a basis of as many as
2,300 cases (S. Bell, "A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love
Between the Sexes," _American Journal Psychology_, July, 1902).
Bell finds that the presence of the emotion between three and
eight years of age is shown by such actions as 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 other and excluding the rest, grief at
separation, giving gifts, showing special courtesies to each
other, making sacrifices for each other, exhibiting jealousy. The
girls are, on the whole, more aggressive than the boys, and less
anxious to keep the matter secret. After the age of eight, the
girls increase in modesty and the boys become still more
secretive. The physical sensations are not usually located in the
sexual organs; erection of the penis and hyperæmia of the female