Apart from these considerations, the fact that some external process, such as the killing of a fowl, has important relationships with the content of a subsequent perversion, does not prove that this perversion is an acquired one. We may rather suppose that in the case of one endowed with a congenital predisposition to the excitement of the sexual impulse by the sight of cruelty, the particular cruel act which will prove the determinant in a particular case, must depend upon the chance circumstances of the individual's life. On this view, if, in the case under consideration, the fowl-killing had not happened, at the appropriate time, to awaken the sexual impulse, it must be assumed that some other but similar process would have been competent to effect this. In any case, the association theory alone will not suffice to account for these cases; and the possibility cannot be excluded that in cases of sadism there is a specific abnormal disposition of the sexual impulse, and that the experiences during childhood influence the matter only in so far as they may determine the special manner in which the sadistic tendency will subsequently manifest itself. It is, in fact, very remarkable how often some particular act of cruelty will, in a certain individual, exercise throughout life a sexually exciting influence: in one person the desire to strike may be associated with sexual excitement; in another it may be the desire to stab or to cut; in one individual sexual excitement results from the sight of a fowl being killed; in another, when the victim is a fish, and so on. Although we encounter some in whom the particular cruel act associated with sexual excitement changes many times during life; yet, on the other hand, we find that there are many persons in whom sexual excitement is aroused by some special sadistic practice, and by that alone; and on careful inquiry we ascertain that even in childhood such an act was associated with voluptuous excitement. I will take this opportunity of explaining very briefly that there is still another possible way of explaining these enduring associations as being based upon impressions received during childhood, without the supposition that these impressions of childhood are the exclusive determinants; this is the assumption that there exists a congenital weakness of the rudiment of the normal sexual impulse, and that it is owing to this primary defect that the paths of nervous conduction involved in the activity of the normal sexual impulse so readily become impassable.