Additional wider influences of the sexual life of the child cannot here be fully discussed. But when we see that in great poets and other artists much of their creative work may be effected in childhood, and when, on the other hand, we observe the connexion of many artistic productions with the psychosexual sphere, we cannot fail to admit the possibility that the sexual life of the child is to some extent related to art. Thus, we sometimes see children endeavouring, however imperfectly, to express their feelings in verse; and in cases in which nothing of the kind occurs, the erotic feelings of childhood may still exercise influence later in life. As examples from world-literature, I may mention: Heine, who was still a boy when he was so greatly attracted by his Sefchen, the executioner's niece, whose personality made a definite impression on the poet's maturer work;[107] Goethe, whose friendship with the sister of the little Derones, likewise had certain artistic results; Dante, who first met his Beatrice at the age of nine years, and ever thenceforward remained under her spell. If in such cases we inquire as to the impressions of childhood, we unquestionably find, in poets and artists, traces, sometimes of direct, but more frequently of indirect influences.
Mantegazza[108] goes so far as to regard the premature development of psychosexual sentiments as a peculiarity of richly endowed and talented natures. An obscure, shamefaced feeling, by which the boy is drawn to the girl, is, he thinks, manifest in such natures, even before sex has made its profound impression upon the developing organism, and before the reproductive organs have assumed their adult forms. He compares such feelings with the rosy tint which appears on the horizon before the sunrise, and he considers that in men of a lower type or less highly gifted by nature, the new sentiments known by the name of love do not appear until after the adult development of the reproductive organs. I do not believe that this generalisation is well founded; although, as previously mentioned, I consider that the alarm which is often caused in elders by the appearance in the child of such early psychosexual manifestations is not warranted, as a rule, by the facts of the case.
The question as to the quality of the offspring resulting from the sexual intercourse of children, either of two children who are both sexually mature, or of a sexually mature child with a grown person, has not, in Europe, any great or immediate practical interest. With us, procreation is rarely possible on the part of those who are still children, for the boy is hardly competent for procreation before the completion of the second period of childhood, and in the case of girls such competence is rarely met with till towards the very end of the second period of childhood. But if we put the question in a somewhat more general form, and study the quality of the offspring of youthful persons in whom bodily development is not yet fully completed, the matter becomes one of greater practical interest. But for a decision even on this point, data are insufficient, notwithstanding the fact that, according to Pauline Tarnowsky,[109] among the Russians a young girl frequently marries while still sexually immature, at the age of sixteen or seventeen, when, in that country, menstruation has often not yet begun. But there is a country from which data bearing on this problem can be obtained—data of considerable, and, as some think, of decisive importance—viz. India. In India, child-marriages occur with extraordinary frequency, and, according to Hans Fehlinger,[110] their number continues to increase. Originally almost confined to the Hindus, these marriages have spread to the Mohammedans, the Buddhists, and the Animists, notwithstanding the fact that religious reasons for such marriages exist only in the case of the Hindus. In the year 1881, for every 1000 persons under 10 years of age, 99 were married, of these 24 being boys, and 75 girls. In the year 1901, the number of married persons under 10 years of age was 158 per 1000, of whom 20 were children under 5 years old. This is an enormous percentage: and although Fehlinger himself draws attention to the fact that marriage in childhood is not always tantamount to the beginning of sexual intercourse, since in many cases years will intervene between marriage and the commencement of cohabitation, yet in many other instances no such interval exists. E. Rüdin[111] also deals with the question of child-marriages in India, discussing it from the point of view of racial degeneration. He states that, with one exception, modern writers are agreed that the consequences of the Indian custom of child-marriage are altogether bad—that not a single point can be urged in favour of the practice. The solitary writer to urge anything in favour of the custom of child-marriage is Sir Denzil Ibbetsson, who asserts that in the Western Punjab, where child-marriages are exceptional, immorality and assaults upon women are commoner than in the Eastern Punjab, where child-marriages are the rule. Those who strongly disapprove of child-marriages, point more particularly to the fact that when a girl-child is married to an adult man, she often receives mechanical injuries in the act of intercourse; and they contend, in addition, that child-marriage is injurious to the offspring. For, by child-marriage, we obviate any possibility of sexual selection within the limits of a particular caste, inasmuch as persons are bound together in marriage whose defective constitution and inferior mental endowments may not become apparent until long after marriage, and yet the couple, tied to one another for life, will continue to procreate an inferior stock. But, in this connexion, it must not be forgotten that in India puberty is attained far earlier in life than it is in Western Europe.
Having dealt with the premature development of the sexual life, a few words must now be allotted to the consideration of an abnormally late awakening of sexuality. This latter phenomenon must, unquestionably, be regarded as a morbid manifestation. In the course of my experience, I have seen quite a number of people in whom the sexual impulse made its first appearance very late; in childhood, and also later, some of these were regarded by their associates as models of chastity. They had no intercourse with prostitutes, because even at the age of twenty they had not yet experienced any definite sexual impulse. They despised other young men who practised irregular sexual intercourse, and they themselves had no difficulty in refraining from such intercourse. But many such persons are the subjects of a remarkable self-deception; for a long time they really believe themselves to be exceptionally moral, and succeed in convincing themselves that their abstinence from sexual intercourse is dependent upon ethical motives, whereas often the real reason has merely been the lack of inclination and of capacity for sexual intercourse. In most cases the real nature of the case subsequently becomes clear to them, and they come to understand that their previous sexual abstinence was not determined by ethical motives. When we analyse such cases more accurately, we often find that we have to do with abnormal individualities; abnormal not merely in respect of the retarded development of the sexual life, but also as regards other phenomena. Not infrequently we have to do with neuropathic and psychopathic natures, and the reality of this is quite unaffected by the fact that the superficial observer is convinced that such persons are exceptionally moral. I possess a considerable number of autobiographical case-histories of this kind, and it is quite usual to find that they state that their associates have wrongly accredited them with peculiar virtue, whereas in reality their apparently irreproachable conduct depended simply upon abnormality of development, and the strict morality was an illusive appearance. Many of them also produce an altogether unmanly, effeminate, bashful, and timid impression. Although I have always honoured, and continue to hold in honour, those young men who avoid illegitimate sexual intercourse on genuinely moral grounds, the persons exhibiting the peculiarities just explained must be regarded as pathological subjects. If our moralists hold up to us as exemplary specimens such young men as these, we have to answer that in that case sexual abstinence, and also chastity and morality, may depend upon a pathological inheritance. Just as we are unable to regard eunuchs as exceptionally virtuous individuals, so also must we be cautious in our assignment of moral motives for the sexual abstinence of young men of this nature.[112]
In the female sex, also, there are persons in whom the sexual life, and especially the sexual impulse, awakens very late. This may happen notwithstanding the fact that menstruation has begun at the normal age. Both the peripheral phenomena of detumescence, and also the phenomena of contrectation, may be thus retarded; and the former especially may permanently fail to appear. We see girls who appear remarkably virtuous, because, while other girls are rejoicing at having found an admirer, they pass coldly along, in the streets and elsewhere, their eyes directed forwards, and rigidly avoid exchanging glances with any male person. Although this delayed sexual development does not arouse in us the same unsympathetic feelings in the case of young women as it does in the case of young men, it is none the less necessary to recognise the phenomenon in the female sex as well, and this not on medical grounds merely, but also on educational, ethical, and social grounds. In fine, in such cases, we have to do with something very different from cases in which from a true sense of shame or on moral grounds a girl maintains her mental and bodily chastity; different, also, from the cases in which we have to do with women whose bodily development is normal, but who in other respects resemble rather the type of those in whom the reproductive glands have been removed.
I may take this opportunity of insisting upon the fact that the unduly retarded awakening of the sexual life, or the complete failure of the sexual impulse to appear, is not especially to be desired, and entails dangers and disadvantages just as does a premature development of sexuality. I may recall, in this connexion, certain earlier experiences. At one time it was assumed that there was a mental disorder known as pyromania; the pyromaniac was one with an irresistible impulse to light incendiary fires. To-day, we no longer admit the existence of any such disease, and the impulse to light incendiary fires, when such a morbid impulse manifests itself, is regarded as a symptom of imbecility, of cerebral degeneration, &c. But we may take this opportunity of reminding the reader that Henke,[113] an earlier investigator, regarded pyromania as due chiefly to arrest or disturbance of the physical and psychical phenomena of puberty. Esquirol himself appears to have shared this opinion; and although modern psychiatry takes quite a different view of pyromania, we have none the less to insist that unduly retarded development may, just as much as premature development, give rise to undesirable consequences.