(An individual case of early sexual development in a girl of five has been completely described and figured in the _Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_, 1896, Heft 4, p.

262.) Precocious sexual impulses are generally vague, occasional, and more or less innocent.

A case of rare and pronounced character, in which a child, a boy, from the age of two had been sexually attracted to girls and women, and directed all his thoughts and actions to sexual attempts on them, has been described by Herbert Rich, of Detroit (_Alienist and Neurologist_, Nov., 1905).
General evidence from the literature of the subject as to sexual precocity, its frequency and significance, has been brought together by L.M.Terman ("A Study in Precocity," _American Journal Psychology_, April, 1905).
The erections that are liable to occur in male infants have usually no sexual significance, though, as Moll remarks, they may acquire it by attracting the child's attention; they are merely reflex.

It is believed by some, however, and notably by Freud, that certain manifestations of infant activity, especially thumb-sucking, are of sexual causation, and that the sexual impulse constantly manifests itself at a very early age.

The belief that the sexual instinct is absent in childhood, Freud regards as a serious error, so easy to correct by observation that he wonders how it can have arisen.