accounts, which we find in the works of writers of previous centuries, are not likely to sustain the conviction that rural morals were formerly distinguished by exceptional purity. But if this claim must be disputed as regards rural life in former times, it is still more certain that we must deny that to-day a higher moral level obtains in the country than in the towns, and this is true above all as regards children. It is certain that sexual activity in children does not begin later in the country. My views as to present conditions in the country are derived mainly from information directly communicated to myself. From a number of grown-up persons, now residing in the metropolis, but born and bred in the country, I have received details of their own early sexual experiences. I have in addition had opportunities for direct personal inquiries in rural districts and in the smaller country towns. Lastly, I have received reports voluntarily furnished to me by persons still residing in the country. Combining all these sources of information, I am justified in asserting that in the country sexual practices among children are of exceedingly common occurrence. Just as the recent increasing development of large towns has been regarded as responsible for immorality and for premature sexual activities in children, so also has modern civilisation in general been blamed for the same results. There has always existed a tendency to depreciate the morals of contemporary periods, and to exalt in comparison the morals of an earlier day. In books of earlier generations, in those, for instance, which appeared between the middle of the eighteenth century and the middle of the nineteenth century, we find, just as we find in the writings of our own day, lamentations upon existing corruption, especially as regards the morals of children, and panegyrics upon the morality of an earlier time. But when we examine the documents of the past, we find adequate proof of the fact that morals stood at no higher level in former times than to-day, and, more particularly, we learn that the sexual morals of children were no better then than now. If this were otherwise, how could we explain the fact that, in the year 1527, for instance, the Town Council of Ulm issued an order to the brothel-keepers of that town that they were no longer to admit to the brothels boys of from twelve to fourteen years of age, but rather were to drive them away with birch-rods. This fact, with many others, is recorded by Hans Boesch;[73] and collectively they suffice to prove, not merely that the children of former times were no whit more moral than those of our own day, but also that the awakening of sexual activity occurred just as early then as now.