Note 481 — Chapter III

Those who commit these acts come from the strata of society in which, in consequence of their living conditions, the sexual life is considered from a purely animal point of view. What is the environment in which the children of the lowest classes grow up, and what is the sexual morality that they derive from it? The simple truth is that there is no sexual morality for them. In consequence of the detestable housing conditions (compare what was said upon this subject in connection with prostitution) and of the bad society with which they are thrown, the children are thoroughly conversant with the sexual life in its most bestial manifestations. Their attention is fixed upon the sexual life at an age at which it is still a closed book to children brought up in a wholesome environment. As Dr. Lux says in his excellent study upon sexual crimes, “Need, misery, and vice are the natural surroundings of the children of the proletariat, and especially of the lower proletariat; they form the environment out of which the child draws his first and most lasting impressions; they are the school from which they derive the lessons of a system of ethics which is in marked contrast with the ethics of progressive humanity. Conceptions of moral restraints can hardly be awakened in the offspring of the lowest ranks of the proletariat; on the contrary, so far as the sexual sphere is concerned, they are suppressed by the undisguised sexual intercourse of parents, other adults, and prostitutes, with whom the children are continually coming into contact.…”481