Several allusions have been made in passing to the subject of sexual perversions. A detailed consideration of these manifestations is now necessary, owing to the fact that perversions exhibit peculiar relationships to the sexual life of the child, such relationships being of two distinct kinds. In the first place, perverse modes of sexual sensibility are very common during childhood; and since erroneous views on the subject are widely prevalent, the true significance of such perversions demands very careful study. In the second place, it is maintained that certain influences affecting the sexual life during childhood are competent to give rise to permanent sexual perversions. We will discuss these two questions in the order here stated. Adult sexual perverts frequently declare that their first experience of perverse sexual sensibility dates from the eighth year, or even earlier. Thus, by homosexuals we are told that the homosexual inclination was felt in very early childhood, in one case directed towards a school-fellow, in another towards some near relative, or towards a resident tutor--- or in the case of female homosexuals, towards a girl-companion or a governess. Moreover, homosexuals often assure us that the homosexual inclination has been persistent, and that it has never been interrupted by any manifestation of heterosexual desire. The assumption that in homosexuals the sexual impulse becomes active earlier in life than is normal, was one of several considerations by which von Krafft-Ebing was led to regard homosexuality as a degenerative phenomenon, consequent upon neuropathic or psychopathic hereditary taint; and this author held the same view regarding other sexual perversions--sadism, for instance. In opposition to this opinion, attention may be drawn to the fact, which was fully considered in the last chapter, that very commonly indeed the activity of the normal sexual life can also be traced back into the early days of childhood. This fact has hitherto to a large extent been overlooked simply for the reason that recent investigations dealing with the sexual impulse have in most cases dealt exclusively with morbid manifestations; whilst the psychologists by profession, whose province it was to study the normal sexual life, have with few exceptions (Max Dessoir, Binet, Jodl, and Ribot) completely ignored this field of inquiry. For this reason many phenomena, _e.g._, early activity of the sexual impulse, and hyperaesthesia of that impulse, have been assumed to be characteristic of the perverse modes of sexual sensibility, whereas the like phenomena may readily be observed in association with a qualitatively normal mode of sexual sensibility.