The chief danger associated with the appearance of sexual perversions lies in the fact that the child thus affected, whether boy or girl, endeavours again and ever again to revive these pleasurably-toned sensations; and above all in the fact that as soon as the genital organs are sufficiently mature, the boy or girl obtains sexual gratification by masturbating simultaneously with the imaginative contemplation of perverse ideas. Such perverse psychical onanism, accompanied or unaccompanied by physical masturbatory acts, is eminently adapted to favour the development of the perversion. Obviously, the actual performance of the corresponding perverse sexual act will be just as dangerous as is perversely associated masturbation. Thus, a boy who is homosexually inclined may masturbate while allowing his imagination to run riot upon homosexual ideas; or he may take to homosexual acts with one or more other male persons. Every sort of gratification that is associated with perverse images, is dangerous; and no less dangerous is the spontaneous cultivation of such perverse sexual images. A very real and serious danger to children is to be found in my opinion in the risk of the progressive cultivation of homosexuality, if they become victims of a paedophile. The adult homosexual will sometimes conceal a perverse inclination directed towards children under the cloak of friendship or of an educational interest. I have previously referred to the danger that the child, at a time of life when its own sexual impulse is still undifferentiated, may sometimes reciprocate such a feeling. When I recall the light-heartedness with which homosexual males have acknowledged to me their experiences of sexual intercourse with apprentice-boys, and with pupils attending the higher forms of our secondary schools, and when I think of the readiness with which homosexual women seek opportunities of sexual intercourse with immature or partially mature girls, it seems to me that there are good grounds for the utterance of an urgent warning. My experiences in this department further lead me to believe that if Section 175 of the German Imperial Criminal Code is to be repealed, a further alteration in the Code will also be indispensable, namely, that the Age of Protection (_Schutzalter_--equivalent to the _Age of Consent_ in the English Criminal Law Amendment Act) should be raised to the completion of the eighteenth year, and that the protection should apply, not merely to the actions now specified in Section 175 as "unnatural vice," but to all acts of sexual impropriety in the widest sense of the term. Recently this proposal has been approved by a resolution of the Reichstag.[151]