Page:Psychopathia Sexualis (tr. Chaddock, 1892).djvu/420

 must be proved that there was an irresistible impulse, which, either owing to the strength of the impulse itself, or to the existence of mental weakness, made control of the punishable, perverse impulsion impossible. Such crimes and the peculiar manner in which they are performed,—in which they differ very much from common robbery and theft,—always demand a medico-legal examination. But that the act per se does not, by any means, necessarily arise from psycho-pathological conditions is shown by the infrequent cases of hair-despoiling simply for the purpose of gain.

By violation of sexually immature individuals, the jurist understands all the possible immoral acts with persons under fourteen years of age that are not comprehended in the term rape. The term violation, in the legal sense of the word, comprehends the most horrible perversions and acts, which are possible only to a man who is controlled by lust and morally weak, and, as is usually the case, lacking in sexual power.

A common feature of these crimes, committed on persons that are more or less children, is that they are unmanly, childish, and often silly. It is a fact that such acts, with exceptions in pathological cases, like those of imbeciles, paretics, and senile dements, are almost exclusively committed by young men who lack courage or have no faith in their virility; or by roués who have, to some extent, lost their virility. It is psychologically incomprehensible that an adult of full virility, and mentally sound, should indulge in sexual abuses with children.

The imagination of debauchees, in actively or passively picturing the immoral acts, is exceedingly lively; and that the following enumeration of the sexual acts of this kind known to law exhausts all the possibilities is questionable. Most frequently the abuse consists of sexual handling (under some