The considerations put forward in this chapter show us how necessary it was to explain the conception of puberty at the very outset of this work. If the period of the puberal development be understood to correspond to the development and ripening of the sexual life, we see that this development begins much earlier than is commonly assumed in books on the subject. Writers have been too ready to identify with this developmental period the appearance of certain _external_ manifestations, more especially the growth of the pubic hair in both sexes, the development of the breasts in the female, and the breaking of the voice in the male; and the appearance of certain definite outward signs--in the girl, the first menstruation, and in the boy, the first ejaculation--has usually been regarded as marking a turning-point in this development. But neither in the boy is the occurrence of the first ejaculation a proof of capacity for reproduction, or a proof that the period of the puberal development is completed; nor in the girl is the occurrence of the first menstruation, which may long precede the establishment of the far more important function of ovulation, characteristic in either of these respects. Observations made on children, accounts given by children and memories of childhood, and the results of castration (and oophorectomy),[52] all combine to prove the occurrence of sexual processes during childhood, at least as early as the beginning of the second period of childhood. At this time of life, the psychosexual in especial often plays a great part. If, notwithstanding all these facts, anyone desires to associate the beginning or the end of the puberal development, as was formerly done, with the appearance of "the external signs of puberty," no one can prevent this usage. But the scientific investigator, the physician, the schoolmaster, and the parents, should all alike fully understand that such external processes comprise but a small part of all that constitutes pubescence. A straining of terminology may at times be permissible; but on no account must we allow currency to so disastrous an error as the belief that the sexual life of the child either begins or is completed with the appearance of these external signs. The sexual life of the child begins long before, and the puberal development is not completed till many years after, the appearance of these external signs, which by most people are erroneously regarded as typical of pubescence.