II
Attraction towards young children is frequently, perhaps almost entirely, sexual. A symptom of this temperament is that romantic attachments are formed towards either sex, because, before puberty, the child is bisexual or sexless. This must essentially be a cult; it is a clean and noble cult, but the penalty of its high standard is that here all physical sex expression must be denied except in the lesser form of embrace.
Here, indeed, the prosecution of the law against sex-acts is justified. For, not only is the child incapable of giving valid consent, but the commission of the sex-act is physically and morally injurious. It is physically injurious beyond all doubt at a young age, and it is morally injurious, because it introduces sex to an age of development when the consciousness of sex should not have appeared above the horizon. The inevitable result is that if sex-acts take place the child eventually ages rapidly, as can be seen among the child-mothers of India. Maturity is induced far before its time.
The sex consciousness, as distinct from the unconsciousness, can be awakened in the earliest years of childhood. The young boy or girl often shows an extraordinarily intuitive perception that there is a sexual design behind even the apparently harmless overtures. And this is why this cult is particularly dangerous. The lover, in fact, must not only entirely eliminate the morally criminal sex inclinations, but he must take care not to become so sentimental and romantic as really to suggest sex to the child’s unconsciousness. It is difficult to draw the line as to what is a lawful and what is an unlawful expression of this sex-temperament. One can only say that the remedy is not to concentrate love on one child, but on children generally. The child must not be treated as an adult; there must be no manifestations of jealousy, or insistence on a return of love expression. The embrace of children must be natural but not too ardent. In fact, the lover must diffuse his love and romp with children as a class rather than allow himself to appear emotional over one individual.
Many unthinking people will at once regard this temperament as impure when they have been convinced that scientifically it is sexual. But this is only because they cannot understand that sex is a clean thing and that the physical side of it is an occasional and by no means an inevitable incident. The cult of child-love is in fact one of the purest and noblest of sex-expressions. But it is a difficult path, and he who treads it must beware of many pitfalls.
Again, I quite deny that it is due to thwarted paternal instinct. I believe it to be as natural a variety as any other of the sex-temperaments. We have suffered too long from the superstition that sex is a uniformity of type.
III
Then there is that strange form of sex-expression known as bestiality.
To most of us the connexion between man and beast in sex is so revolting that there is a great danger of our prejudice running away with us.