144 SEX 



to work with before the sex-impulses become 

 naturally assertive in adolescence. 



As to the acquired anomalies in the sexual 

 life, it is the view of Freud and others that 

 many of these must be traced back to per- 

 versions in early infancy, when through some 

 hereditary deficiency, or through some igno- 

 rance, carelessness, or vice of nurture, habits 

 are established which take a very prejudicial 

 grip of the constitution and often lead to 

 neurasthenia, obsessions, and other health- 

 shattering maladies. 



Let us briefly refer to some of the common 

 pathological expressions of sex. There may 

 be a disharmonious atavism what looks like 

 a harking back to an ancestral state of affairs. 

 Most cases of this in mankind seem to be 

 due to an arrest of development, which may 

 be the result of defective nutrition during the 

 ante-natal life. 



Whether through arrested development, or 

 by a more literal atavism, or as the result of 

 acquired neurosis, it does happen in our midst, 

 often to our consternation, that there is a 

 breaking down of what we regard as the 

 normal relations of the sexes in a civilised 

 community. In the weak-minded, in the 

 criminal, or even in the old man, there may 

 be an exhibition of violence or of coarseness, 

 which is often described as below the human 

 level, but is really a corruption of it. 



Some of the vagaries of the sexual instinct 

 may be ranked as due to a disturbance of the 

 rhythm of life : thus there may be precocious 

 expression of sexuality in young children, or 

 a premature disappearance of it in adults, or 



