This is true, also, of other perversions--of sadism, for instance. The tendency to cruelty appears in early childhood, and it is only subsequently that this tendency becomes definitely associated with the sexual life. But even though this association (of cruelty with the sexual life) is demonstrable in so many instances, we are not for this reason justified in regarding every brutal act, all deliberate cruelty, as manifestations of sadism; and this reservation applies no less to adults than to children. Thus, delight in the sufferings of others, though it may be regarded as analogous with sadism, has no necessary connexion with the sexual impulse. Just as little can we assume that the deliberate ill-treatment of animals, whether on the part of children or on that of adults, is necessarily the outcome of sadism. Felix Platter relates in his autobiography that when as a boy verging on maturity he had already chosen his future profession as a medical man, he came to the conclusion that he ought to accustom himself to the sight of disagreeable things; with this end in view, to habituate himself to see without emotion the heart and other viscera, he frequented the slaughter-house. Subsequently he experimented on a little bird, to ascertain if it had blood-vessels, and if it could be "bled"; he opened a vein with a penknife, and the little bird died. He did the same thing with various insects--stag-beetles, cock-chafers, and the like. Actions of this kind performed by children have, of course, no connexion with the sexual life. When a child tears off the feet of an insect, or mutilates any other animal, the motive is often simply that with which the same child will pull a watch to pieces. The same act may result from various motives; and for this reason we must guard against the misconception which might lead us, from every cruel act performed by a child, to diagnose the existence of sadism, or the certainty of a subsequent sadistic development. In a case of rose-fetichism, which I have published elsewhere, the subject was a philologist, thirty years of age, who had never masturbated during his school days, and until he was nineteen or twenty had remained sexually neutral, experiencing sexual inclination neither towards females nor towards members of his own sex. But he had from an early age exhibited a very great interest in flowers, and while still a child used to kiss them. He is unable, however, to recall the existence in this connexion of any sexual excitement. When about twenty-one years old he was introduced to a young lady who at the time was wearing a large rose fastened into the front of her jacket. Henceforward, in his sexual sensibility, the rose assumed extraordinary importance. Whenever he was able, he bought roses, kissed them, and took them to bed with him. The act of kissing a rose induced an erection of the penis. In his seminal dreams, the image of the rose always played a leading part.