[137] Versuch einer Charakteristik des weiblichen Geschlechtes (Attempt at a Characterization of the Female Sex), Hanover, 1797, vol. i. p. 95.
[138] Pougin, Dictionnaire du Théâtre, Paris, 1885, p. 715.
[139] The description of such a mental state will be found in a diary, shown to Nyström by a young friend of his, and published by the former in his work on The Sexual Life and its Laws (Das Geschlechtsleben und seine Gesetze), Berlin, 1904, p. 129.
[140] Moll, Aerztliche Ethik, Stuttgart, 1902, pp. 220-31.
[141] Theologians are not agreed as to when the "age of reason" is attained. Gousset, in his Moraltheologie zum Gebrauch der Pfarrer und Beichtväter (German translation of the seventh edition of a French work, Moral Theology for the Use of Priests and Father-Confessors), Aix, 1852, vol. ii. p. 244, demands that children should go to confession as soon as they are seven years of age; other authorities consider that the "age of reason" begins only in the last years of childhood.
[142] L'Amour, 5th ed., Paris, 1861, p. 72.
[143] From what has been said before, it will have become evident that the question has different aspects in different strata of the population. I have attempted merely to formulate general principles, not to furnish an answer for every possible concrete question. Differences between town and country, between richer and poorer, between cultured and uncultured, must be given due consideration. In the case of those belonging to the less cultured and the poorer strata of society, a special use in this connexion may be found for those social institutions which have of late come into being in various localities as the fruit of voluntary effort corresponding to our Children's Care Committees, &c., in England—Translator, and conducted by women of the cultured and well-to-do classes. These institutions may be utilised for imparting the sexual enlightenment, at any rate in so far as they permit of an individual study of the child-psyche.
[144] Sexuelle Belehrung der aus der Volksschule entlassenen Mädchen (The Sexual Instruction of Girls Leaving the Elementary School), Leipzig, 1907.
[145] Among others by K. Höller: "Die Aufgabe der Volksschule" ("The Task of the Elementary School"), Proceedings of the Third Congress of the German Society for the Suppression of the Venereal Diseases, at Mannheim, in the Year 1907. In these Proceedings, which were published as the seventh volume of the Zeitschrift zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten (Journal for the Suppression of the Venereal Diseases), the reader will find a vast amount of material bearing upon this question.
[146] Briefe über die wichtigsten Gegenstände der Menschheit (Letters Concerning Matters of the Utmost Importance to Mankind), written by R., and published by S. I. Teil, Leipzig, 1794, p. 100 et seq. To all who are interested in the subject under discussion, I strongly recommend the perusal of this book, which seems to-day to have been entirely forgotten.