We have now to consider a matter which bears but indirectly on the sexual life of the child, and yet may be of the greatest importance in relation to that life; we have to consider cases in which the child is the object of sexual practices by others. I have previously referred to instances in which one child loves another. But the child may also be an object of sexual desire to adults; for in certain men and women, sexual inclination is directed towards children. By von Krafft-Ebing this state is termed _paedophilia erotica_. Not all the cases in which sexual acts are performed on children belong to the province of paedophilia. It is well known that in certain countries--Germany is one of them--a superstition prevails among certain strata of the population to the effect that venereal diseases may be cured by means of sexual intercourse with children. Where this is the motive of the sexual act, the case does not belong to the class of paedophilia; and many other sexual acts in which children play a part must also be excepted from this class. It sometimes happens that debauchees, after having practised all kinds of venereal excesses, finally take to misusing children; nursemaids, again, and other servants, will carry out all sorts of sexual acts on the children entrusted to their care, sometimes merely in order to quiet the children, sometimes "for fun." Von Krafft-Ebing refers to a special group of young men who do not feel sufficient confidence in their sexual potency to attempt intercourse with grown women, also to masturbators affected with psychical impotence; such persons are apt to seek an equivalent for coitus in improper contacts with little girls. One very large group of cases belongs to the sphere of psychiatry. In quite a number of congenital and acquired states of mental defect or disorder, sexual acts performed on children appear as symptoms of moral and intellectual degeneration. In this connexion may be mentioned, congenital imbecility, progressive paralysis (paralytic dementia), senile dementia, chronic alcoholism, cerebral syphilis, and post-epileptic dementia; with or without these conditions, epileptic disturbances of consciousness may lead to sexual offences against children. None of these cases have anything to do with poedophilia erotica. And there are yet other cases which it is desirable to distinguish from this class, especially those cases in which a marked hyperaesthesia was the determining cause of the sexual act. In such a case, it is to the person thus affected almost a matter of indifference with whom the sexual act is performed. Anything warm and alive will do, and inasmuch as a child is often most readily available, a child often serves as victim, whilst in other cases an animal is utilised.