normally adapted sex, appear to the observer as a collective number of
perhaps otherwise normal individuals, the persons who choose for their
sexual object the sexually immature (children) are apparently from the
first sporadic aberrations. Only exceptionally are children the
exclusive sexual objects. They are mostly drawn into this rôle by a
faint-hearted and impotent individual who makes use of such substitutes,
or when an impulsive urgent desire cannot at the time secure the proper
object. Still it throws some light on the nature of the sexual impulse,
that it should suffer such great variation and depreciation of its
object, a thing which hunger, adhering more energetically to its object,
would allow only in the most extreme cases. The same may be said of
sexual relations with animals--a thing not at all rare among
farmers--where the sexual attraction goes beyond the limits of the
species.

For esthetic reasons one would fain attribute this and other excessive
aberrations of the sexual impulse to the insane, but this cannot be
done. Experience teaches that among the latter no disturbances of the
sexual impulse can be found other than those observed among the sane, or
among whole races and classes. Thus we find with gruesome frequency
sexual abuse of children by teachers and servants merely because they
have the best opportunities for it. The insane present the aforesaid
aberration only in a somewhat intensified form; or what is of special
significance is the fact that the aberration becomes exclusive and takes
the place of the normal sexual gratification.

This very remarkable relation of sexual variations ranging from the
normal to the insane gives material for reflection. It seems to me that
the fact to be explained would show that the impulses of the sexual life
belong to those which even normally are most poorly controlled by the