We must not overlook the fact that the intellectual side of development may be influenced by an early awakening of the sexual life, the child inclining, in this case, to occupy its mind with sexual thoughts, to the neglect of educational opportunities. I have seen cases which were regarded as instances of aprosexia,[105] the lack of the power of concentration being attributed to adenoid vegetations, but in which the defect might, with at least as much reason, have been referred to the play of sexual ideas. To the teacher, his pupil's inattentiveness is often an insoluble riddle, merely because he ignores in the child the play of erotic imagination, and, in fact, ignores the child's inner life in general. And yet, in such cases, the child's failure to attend to the work of the class sometimes depends upon nothing more than occupation with thoughts about a beloved person. In other instances, the inattention is due, not to sexual ideas, but to sexual acts. As a patient of my own put the matter: in boyhood, while in the Latin class he was supposed to be learning his _amo, amas, amat_, he and his school-fellows were studying the subject practically beneath the table. Naturally, the stronger the child's sexual impulse, the more will the attention wander; and although in most cases, in children, the impulse is comparatively weak, in isolated instances it may from the first be abnormally powerful, entailing dangers to the intellectual development as serious as those other dangers previously enumerated. According to Sanford Bell, unfavourable consequences to intellectual development cannot, as a general rule, be attributed to the early amatory inclinations of childhood. All that is likely to be noticed is that on days when the child loved by another is away from school, the latter child will be less attentive than usual. But the circumstances are somewhat different when the object of affection is not a school-fellow. Bell speaks only of cases in which the child-lovers are members of the same class, and he refers to heterosexual inclinations only. In such cases, the results of early amatory inclinations may even be good. Hebbel relates of himself, how zealously as a little boy he attended school, simply in order to meet in the class the girl he loved. The presence of the loved one may, in fact, powerfully stimulate ambition and the desire to work. A little girl who has fallen in love with her schoolmistress or governess, will strive to please the latter by hard work and attention; and, similarly, a boy who loves a boy or a girl classmate, very often attempts to make an impression on the feelings of the loved one by his performances at school. Whilst we recognise the dangers attendant on the development of sexuality in the child, we must not overlook the fact that this development may have its good side.