{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_32588/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_32588","id":"gutenberg_32588","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32588","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Gender & Sexuality Studies","Category: Law & Criminology","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Psychiatry/Psychology","Homosexuality"],"text":"Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was\nproduced from scanned images of public domain material\nfrom the Google Print project.)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA PROBLEM IN MODERN ETHICS\n\n_Of this work only 100 copies have been printed._\n\n_No._\n\n\n\n\nA\n\nPROBLEM IN MODERN ETHICS\n\nBEING\n\n_AN INQUIRY INTO THE PHENOMENON\nOF SEXUAL INVERSION_\n\nADDRESSED ESPECIALLY TO MEDICAL PSYCHOLOGISTS\nAND JURISTS\n\nBY\n\nJOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS\n\nLONDON\n\n1896\n\n\n\n\nTABLE OF CONTENTS.\n\n\nCHAPTER                                                 PAGE\n\nLIST OF BOOKS CONSULTED                                  vii\n\nINTRODUCTION                                               1\n\nI. CHRISTIAN OPINION FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN             5\n\nII. VULGAR ERRORS                                          9\n\nIII. LITERATURE: PORNOGRAPHIC AND DESCRIPTIVE:\nCarlier, _Les deux Prostitutions_                         16\n\nIV. LITERATURE: MEDICO-FORENSIC: _Tardieu_                21\n\nV. LITERATURE: MEDICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL: Moreau, Tarnowsky,\nKrafft-Ebing, Lombroso                                    29\n\nVI. LITERATURE: HISTORICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL:\nMeier, \"A Problem in Greek Ethics\"; Rosenbaum,\nBastian, Herbert Spencer, Sir Richard Burton,\nMantegazza                                                75\n\nVII. LITERATURE: POLEMICAL: Karl Heinrich Ulrichs         84\n\nVIII. LITERATURE: IDEALISTIC: Walt Whitman               115\n\nIX. EPILOGUE                                             126\n\nX. SUGGESTIONS UPON LEGISLATION                          131\n\n\n\n\nBOOKS CONSULTED.\n\n\nGIBBON'S =History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.= Chapter\nXLIV.\n\nF. CARLIER. =Les deux Prostitutions.= Paris, Dentu, 1889.\n\nA. TARDIEU. =Attentats aux Moeurs.= Paris, Billi\u00e8re, 1878.\n\nJ. L. CASPER and CARL LIMAN. =Handbuch der Gerichtlichen Medicin.= Berlin,\nHirschwald, 1889.\n\nJ. L. CASPER. =Klinische Novellen.= Berlin, Hirschwald, 1863.\n\nP. MORRAU. =Des Aberrations du Sens G\u00e9n\u00e9tique.= Paris, Asselin et Houzeau,\n1887.\n\nB. TARNOWSKY. =Die krankhaften Erscheinungen des Geschlechtssinnes.=\nBerlin, Hirschwald, 1886.\n\nLEVY-M\u00dcNCHEN. =Die M\u00e4nnliche Sterilit\u00e4t.= Berlin, Henser, 1889.\n\nR. VON KRAFFT-EBING. =Psychopathia Sexualis.= Stuttgart, Enke, 1889.\n\nCESARE LOMBROSO. =Der Verbrecher in Anthropologischer, Aerztlicher und\nJuristischer Beziehung.= Hamburg, Richter, 1887.\n\nM. H. F. MEIER. =P\u00e6derastie.= Ersch und Gruber's Allgemeine Encyclop\u00e4die.\nLeipzig, Brockhaus, 1837.\n\n=A Problem in Greek Ethics.= No name or date. \"Ten Copies printed for the\nAuthor's Use.\"\n\nJ. ROSENBAUM. =Geschichte der Lustseuche im Alterthume.= Halle a. S., H.\nW. Schmidt, 1882.\n\nBASTIAN. =Der Mensch in der Geschichte.= Leipzig, Wigand, 1860.\n\nHERBERT SPENCER. =Sociological Tables.=\n\nP. DUFOUR. =Histoire de la Prostitution.= Eight vols. Bruxelles, Rozey,\n1861.\n\nSir R. F. BURTON. =Arabian Nights.= Vol. 10. Benares, 1885.\n\nP. MANTEGAZZA. =Gli Amori degli Uomini.= Milano, 1886.\n\nNUMA NUMANTIUS (K. H. ULRICHS). =Inclusa.= Anthropologische Studien \u00fcber\nmannm\u00e4nnliche Geschlechtsliebe. Leipzig, 1864.\n\nNUMA NUMANTIUS. =Formatrix.= Anthrop. Studien \u00fcber urnische Liebe.\nLeipzig, 1865.\n\nNUMA NUMANTIUS. =Vindex.= Social-juristische Studien \u00fcber mannm\u00e4nnliche\nGeschlechtsliebe. Leipzig, 1864.\n\nNUMA NUMANTIUS. =Vindicta.= Kampf f\u00fcr Freiheit u.s.w. Leipzig, 1865.\n\nNUMA NUMANTIUS. =Ara Spei.= Moralphil. und Socialphil. Studien \u00fcber\nurnische Liebe. Leipzig, 1865.\n\nK. H. ULRICHS. =Gladius Furens.= Das Naturr\u00e4thsel der Urningsliebe.\nKassel, W\u00fcrttenberger, 1868.\n\nK. H. ULRICHS. =Memnon.= Die Geschlechtsnatur des mannliebenden Urnings.\nSchleiz, H. Heyn, 1868.\n\nK. H. ULRICHS. =Incubus.= Urningsliebe und Blutgier. Leipzig, A. Serbe,\n1869.\n\nK. H. ULRICHS. =Argonauticus.= Zastrow und die Urninge. Leipzig, A. Serbe,\n1869.\n\nK. H. ULRICHS. =Prometheus.= Beit\u00e4rge zur Erforschung des Naturr\u00e4thsels\ndes Uranismus. Leipzig, Serbe, 1870.\n\nK. H. ULRICHS. =Araxes.= Ruf nach Befreiung der Urningsnatur vom\nStrafgesetz. Schleiz, Heyn, 1870.\n\nWALT WHITMAN. =Leaves of Grass,= in \"Complete Poems and Prose.\" 1889-1890.\n\nWALT WHITMAN. =Democratic Vistas.=\n\n=Nuova Codice Penale per il Regno d'Italia.=\n\nA. COFFIGNON. =La Corruption \u00e0 Paris.= Paris, La Librairie Illustr\u00e9e. 7th\nedition. No date.\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION.\n\n\nThere is a passion, or a perversion of appetite, which, like all human\npassions, has played a considerable part in the world's history for good\nor evil; but which has hardly yet received the philosophical attention\nand the scientific investigation it deserves. The reason of this may be\nthat in all Christian societies the passion under consideration has been\ncondemned to pariahdom; consequently, philosophy and science have not\ndeigned to make it the subject of special enquiry. Only one great race\nin past ages, the Greek race, to whom we owe the inheritance of our\nideas, succeeded in raising it to the level of chivalrous enthusiasm.\nNevertheless, we find it present everywhere and in all periods of\nhistory. We cannot take up the religious books, the legal codes, the\nannals, the descriptions of the manners of any nation, whether large or\nsmall, powerful or feeble, civilised or savage, without meeting with\nthis passion in one form or other. Sometimes it assumes the calm and\ndignified attitude of conscious merit, as in Sparta, Athens, Thebes.\nSometimes it skulks in holes and corners, hiding an abashed head and\nshrinking from the light of day, as in the capitals of modern Europe.\nIt confronts us on the steppes of Asia, where hordes of nomads drink\nthe milk of mares; in the bivouac of Keltish warriors, lying wrapped in\nwolves' skins round their camp-fires; upon the sands of Arabia, where\nthe Bedaween raise desert dust in flying squadrons. We discern it among\nthe palm-groves of the South Sea Islands, in the card-houses and\ntemple-gardens of Japan, under Esquimaux snow-huts, beneath the sultry\nvegetation of Peru, beside the streams of Shiraz and the waters of the\nGanges, in the cold clear air of Scandinavian winters. It throbs in our\nhuge cities. The pulse of it can be felt in London, Paris, Berlin,\nVienna, no less than in Constantinople, Naples, Teheran, and Moscow. It\nfinds a home in Alpine valleys, Albanian ravines, Californian canyons,\nand gorges of Caucasian mountains. It once sat, clothed in Imperial\npurple, on the throne of the Roman Caesars, crowned with the tiara on\nthe chair of St. Peter. It has flaunted, emblazoned with the heraldries\nof France and England, in coronation ceremonies at Rheims and\nWestminster. The royal palaces of Madrid and Aranjuez tell their tales\nof it. So do the ruined courtyards of Granada and the castle-keep of\nAvignon. It shone with clear radiance in the gymnasium of Hellas, and\nnerved the dying heroes of Greek freedom for their last forlorn hope\nupon the plains of Ch\u00e6ronea. Endowed with inextinguishable life, in\nspite of all that has been done to suppress it, this passion survives at\nlarge in modern states and towns, penetrates society, makes itself felt\nin every quarter of the globe where men are brought into communion with\nmen.\n\nYet no one dares to speak of it; or if they do, they bate their breath,\nand preface their remarks with maledictions.\n\nThose who read these lines will hardly doubt what passion it is that I\nam hinting at. _Quod semper ubique et ab omnibus_--surely it deserves a\nname. Yet I can hardly find a name which will not seem to soil this\npaper. The accomplished languages of Europe in the nineteenth century\nsupply no term for this persistent feature of human psychology, without\nimporting some implication of disgust, disgrace, vituperation. Science,\nhowever, has recently--within the last twenty years in fact--invented a\nconvenient phrase, which does not prejudice the matter under\nconsideration. She speaks of the \"inverted sexual instinct\"; and with\nthis neutral nomenclature the investigator has good reason to be\nsatisfied.\n\nInverted sexuality, the sexual instinct diverted from its normal\nchannel, directed (in the case of males) to males, forms the topic of\nthe following discourse. The study will be confined to modern times, and\nto those nations which regard the phenomenon with religious detestation.\nThis renders the enquiry peculiarly difficult, and exposes the enquirer,\nunless he be a professed expert in diseases of the mind and nervous\ncentres, to almost certain misconstruction. Still, there is no valid\nreason why the task of statement and analysis should not be undertaken.\nIndeed, one might rather wonder why candid and curious observers of\nhumanity have not attempted to fathom a problem which faces them at\nevery turn in their historical researches and in daily life. Doubtless\ntheir neglect is due to natural or acquired repugnance, to feelings of\ndisgust and hatred, derived from immemorial tradition, and destructive\nof the sympathies which animate a really zealous pioneer. Nevertheless,\nwhat is human is alien to no human being. What the law punishes, but\nwhat, in spite of law, persists and energises, ought to arrest\nattention. We are all of us responsible to some extent for the\nmaintenance and enforcement of our laws. We are all of us, as\nevolutionary science surely teaches, interested in the facts of\nanthropology, however repellant some of these may be to our own\nfeelings. We cannot evade the conditions of _atavism_ and _heredity_.\nEvery family runs the risk of producing a boy or a girl whose life will\nbe embittered by inverted sexuality, but who in all other respects will\nbe no worse or better than the normal members of the home. Surely, then,\nit is our duty and our interest to learn what we can about its nature,\nand to arrive through comprehension at some rational method of dealing\nwith it.\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\nCHRISTIAN OPINION.\n\n\nSince this enquiry is limited to actual conditions of contemporary life,\nwe need not discuss the various ways in which the phenomenon of sexual\ninversion has been practically treated by races with whose habits and\nreligions we have no affinity.\n\nOn the other hand, it is of the highest importance to obtain a correct\nconception of the steps whereby the Christian nations, separating\nthemselves from ancient paganism, introduced a new and stringent\nmorality into their opinion on this topic, and enforced their ethical\nviews by legal prohibitions of a very formidable kind.\n\nWithout prejudging or prejudicing this new morality, now almost\nuniversally regarded as a great advance upon the ethics of the earlier\npagan world, we must observe that it arose when science was\nnon-existent, when the study of humanity had not emerged from the\ncradle, and when theology was in the ascendant. We have therefore to\nexpect from it no delicate distinctions, no anthropological\ninvestigations, no psychological analysis, and no spirit of toleration.\nIt simply decreed that what had hitherto been viewed as immorality at\nworst should henceforth be classed among crimes against God, nature,\nhumanity, the state.\n\nOpening the Bible, we find severe penalties attached to sexual inversion\nby the Mosaic law, in the interests of population and in harmony with\nthe Jewish theory of abominations. The lesson is driven home by the\nlegend of two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, overwhelmed with fire because\nof their addiction to abnormal sexual indulgences. Here the _vindices\nflamm\u00e6_ of the Roman code appear for the first time--the stake and the\nflames, which medi\u00e6val legislation appointed for offenders of this sort.\n\nSt. Paul, penetrated with Hebrew ethics, denounced the corruption of the\nGentiles in these words: \"For this cause God gave them up into vile\naffections: for even their women did change the natural use into that\nwhich is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural\nuse of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men\nworking that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that\nrecompence of their error which was meet.\"\n\nChrist uttered no opinion upon what we now call sexual inversion.\nNeither light nor leading comes from Him, except such as may be\nindirectly derived from his treatment of the woman taken in adultery.\n\nWhen the Empire adopted Christianity, it had therefore the traditions of\nthe Mosaic law and the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans to\nguide its legislators on this topic. The Emperors felt obscurely that\nthe main pulses of human energy were slackening; population all tended\nto dwindle; the territory of the empire shrank slowly year by year\nbefore their eyes. As the depositaries of a higher religion and a\nnobler morality, they felt it their duty to stamp out pagan customs, and\nto unfurl the banner of social purity. The corruption of the Roman\ncities had become abominable. The laziness and cowardice of Roman\ncitizens threatened the commonwealth with ruin. To repress sexual\nappetites was not the ruler's object. It was only too apparent that\nthese natural desires no longer prompted the people to sufficient\nprocreation or fertility. The brood begotten upon Roman soil was\ninadequate to cope with the inrushing tide of barbarians. Wisdom lay in\nattempting to rehabilitate marriage, the family domestic life. Meanwhile\na certain vice ran riot through society, a vice for which Jehovah had\nrained fire and brimstone upon Sodom, a vice which the Mosaic code\npunished with death, a vice threatened by St. Paul with \"that recompence\nof their error which was meet.\"\n\nJustinian, in 538 A.D., seems to have been terrified by famines,\nearthquakes and pestilences. He saw, or professed to see, in these\nvisitations the avenging hand of Jehovah, the \"recompence which was\nmeet\" mysteriously prophesied by St. Paul. Thereupon he fulminated his\nedict against unnatural sinners, whereby they were condemned to torments\nand the supreme penalty of death. The preamble to his famous Novella 77\nsets forth the principles on which it has been framed: \"Lest as the\nresult of these impious acts whole cities should perish together with\ntheir inhabitants; for we are taught by Holy Scripture, to wit that\nthrough these acts cities have perished with the men in them.... It is\non account of such crimes that famines and earthquakes take place, and\nalso pestilences.\"\n\nBefore Justinian, both Constantine and Theodosius passed laws against\nsexual inversion, committing the offenders to \"avenging flames.\" But\nthese statutes were not rigidly enforced, and modern opinion on the\nsubject may be said to flow from Justinian's legislation. Opinion, in\nmatters of custom and manners, always follows law. Though Imperial\nedicts could not eradicate a passion which is inherent in human nature,\nthey had the effect of stereotyping extreme punishments in all the codes\nof Christian nations, and of creating a permanent social antipathy.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\nVULGAR ERRORS.\n\n\nGibbon's remarks upon the legislation of Constantine, Theodosius, and\nJustinian supply a fair example of the way in which men of learning and\nopen mind have hitherto regarded what, after all, is a phenomenon worthy\nof cold and calm consideration. \"I touch,\" he says, \"with reluctance,\nand despatch with impatience, a more odious vice, of which modesty\nrejects the name, and nature abominates the idea.\" After briefly\nalluding to the morals of Etruria, Greece, and Rome, he proceeds to the\nenactments of Constantine: \"Adultery was first declared to be a capital\noffence ... the same penalties were inflicted on the passive and active\nguilt of p\u00e6derasty; and all criminals, of free or servile condition,\nwere either drowned, or beheaded, or cast alive into the avenging\nflames.\"[1] Then, without further comment, he observes: \"The adulterers\nwere spared by the common sympathy of mankind; but the lovers of their\nown sex were pursued by general and pious indignation.\" \"Justinian\nrelaxed the punishment at least of female infidelity: the guilty spouse\nwas only condemned to solitude and penance, and at the end of two years\nshe might be recalled to the arms of a forgiving husband. But the same\nEmperor declared himself the implacable enemy of unmanly lust, and the\ncruelty of his persecution can scarcely be excused by the purity of his\nmotives. In defiance of every principle of justice he stretched to past\nas well as future offences the operations of his edicts, with the\nprevious allowance of a short respite for confession and pardon. A\npainful death was inflicted by the amputation of the sinful instrument,\nor the insertion of sharp reeds into the pores and tubes of most\nexquisite sensibility.\" One consequence of such legislation may be\neasily foreseen. \"A sentence of death and infamy was often founded on\nthe slight and suspicious evidence of a child or a servant: the guilt of\nthe green faction, of the rich, and of the enemies of Theodora, was\npresumed by the judges, and p\u00e6derasty became the crime of those to whom\nno crime could be imputed.\"\n\nThis state of things has prevailed wherever the edicts of Justinian have\nbeen adopted into the laws of nations. The Cathari, the Paterini, the\nheretics of Provence, the Templars, the Fraticelli, were all accused of\nunnatural crimes, tortured into confession, and put to death. Where\nnothing else could be adduced against an unpopular sect, a political\nantagonist, a wealthy corporation, a rival in literature, a powerful\nparty-leader, unnatural crime was insinuated, and a cry of \"Down with\nthe pests of society\" prepared the populace for a crusade.\n\nIt is the common belief that all subjects of sexual inversion have\noriginally loved women, but that, through monstrous debauchery and\nsuperfluity of naughtiness, tiring of normal pleasure, they have\nwilfully turned their appetites into other channels. This is true about\na certain number. But the sequel of this Essay will prove that it does\nnot meet by far the larger proportion of cases, in whom such instincts\nare inborn, and a considerable percentage in whom they are also\ninconvertible. Medical jurists and physicians have recently agreed to\naccept this as a fact.\n\nIt is the common belief that a male who loves his own sex must be\ndespicable, degraded, depraved, vicious, and incapable of humane or\ngenerous sentiments. If Greek history did not contradict this\nsupposition, a little patient enquiry into contemporary manners would\nsuffice to remove it. But people will not take this trouble about a\nmatter, which, like Gibbon, they \"touch with reluctance and despatch\nwith impatience.\" Those who are obliged to do so find to their surprise\nthat \"among the men who are subject to this deplorable vice there are\neven quite intelligent, talented, and highly-placed persons, of\nexcellent and even noble character.\"[2] The vulgar expect to discover\nthe objects of their outraged animosity in the scum of humanity. But\nthese may be met with every day in drawing-rooms, law-courts, banks,\nuniversities, mess-rooms; on the bench, the throne, the chair of the\nprofessor; under the blouse of the workman, the cassock of the priest,\nthe epaulettes of the officer, the smock-frock of the ploughman, the wig\nof the barrister, the mantle of the peer, the costume of the actor, the\ntights of the athlete, the gown of the academician.\n\nIt is the common belief that one, and only one, unmentionable act is\nwhat the lovers seek as the source of their unnatural gratification, and\nthat this produces spinal disease, epilepsy, consumption, dropsy, and\nthe like.[3] Nothing can be more mistaken, as the scientifically\nreported cases of avowed and adult sinners amply demonstrate. Neither do\nthey invariably or even usually prefer the _aversa Venus_; nor, when\nthis happens, do they exhibit peculiar signs of suffering in health.[4]\nExcess in any venereal pleasure will produce diseases of nervous\nexhaustion and imperfect nutrition. But the indulgence of inverted\nsexual instincts within due limits, cannot be proved to be especially\npernicious. Were it so, the Dorians and Athenians, including Sophocles,\nPindar, \u00c6schines, Epaminondas, all the Spartan kings and generals, the\nTheban legion, Pheidias, Plato, would have been one nation of rickety,\nphthisical, dropsical paralytics. The grain of truth contained in this\nvulgar error is that, under the prevalent laws and hostilities of modern\nsociety, the inverted passion has to be indulged furtively,\nspasmodically, hysterically; that the repression of it through fear and\nshame frequently leads to habits of self-abuse; and that its\nunconquerable solicitations sometimes convert it from a healthy outlet\nof the sexual nature into a morbid monomania.[5] It is also true that\nprofessional male prostitutes, like their female counterparts, suffer\nfrom local and constitutional disorders, as is only natural.[6]\n\nIt is the common belief that boys under age are specially liable to\ncorruption. This error need not be confuted here. Anyone who chooses to\nread the cases recorded by Casper-Liman, Casper in his Novellen,\nKrafft-Ebing, and Ulrichs, or to follow the developments of the present\ntreatise, or to watch the manners of London after dark, will be\nconvicted of its absurdity. Young boys are less exposed to dangers from\nabnormal than young girls from normal voluptuaries.\n\nIt is the common belief that all subjects from inverted instinct carry\ntheir lusts written in their faces; that they are pale, languid,\nscented, effeminate, painted, timid, oblique in expression. This vulgar\nerror rests upon imperfect observation. A certain class of such people\nare undoubtedly feminine. From their earliest youth they have shown\nmarked inclination for the habits and the dress of women; and when they\nare adult, they do everything in their power to obliterate their\nmanhood. It is equally true that such unsexed males possess a strong\nattraction for some abnormal individuals. But it is a gross mistake to\nsuppose that all the tribe betray these attributes. The majority differ\nin no detail of their outward appearance, their physique, or their dress\nfrom normal men. They are athletic, masculine in habits, frank in\nmanner, passing through society year after year without arousing a\nsuspicion of their inner temperament. Were it not so, society would long\nago have had its eyes opened to the amount of perverted sexuality it\nharbours.\n\nThe upshot of this discourse on vulgar errors is that popular opinion is\nmade up of a number of contradictory misconceptions and confusions.\nMoreover, it has been taken for granted that \"to investigate the\ndepraved instincts of humanity is unprofitable and disgusting.\"\nConsequently the subject has been imperfectly studied; and individuals\nbelonging to radically different species are confounded in one vague\nsentiment of reprobation. Assuming that they are all abominable, society\nis content to punish them indiscriminately. The depraved debauchee who\nabuses boys receives the same treatment as the young man who loves a\ncomrade. The male prostitute who earns his money by extortion is\nscarcely more contemned than a man of birth and breeding who has been\nseen walking with soldiers.\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\nLITERATURE--DESCRIPTIVE.\n\n\nSexual inversion can boast a voluminous modern literature, little known\nto general readers. A considerable part of this is pornographic, and\nneed not arrest our attention.[7] A good deal is descriptive,\nscientific, historical, anthropological, apologetical and polemical.\nWith a few books in each of these kinds I propose to deal now.\n\nThe first which falls under my hand is written by a French official, who\nwas formerly Chief of the Police Department for Morals in Paris.[8] M.\nCarlier, during ten years, had excellent opportunities for studying the\nhabits of professional male prostitutes and their frequenters. He had\ncondensed the results of his experience in seven very disagreeable\nchapters, which offer a revolting picture of vice and systematised\nextortion in the great metropolis.\n\n\"In the numerous books,\" says M. Carlier, \"which treat of prostitution,\nthe antiphysical passions have hitherto been always deliberately\nomitted. Officially, public opinion does not recognise them, the\nlegislature will take no notice of them. The police are left alone to\nreact against them; and the unequal combat may some day cease, since it\nis supported by no text of the code and no regulation of the state. When\nthat happens, p\u00e6derasty will become a calamity far more dangerous, more\nscandalous, than female prostitution, the organisation of which it\nshares in full. A magistrate once declared that 'in Paris it is the\nschool where the cleverest and boldest criminals are formed; and as a\nmatter of fact, it produces associations of special scoundrels, who use\nit as the means of theft and _chantage_, not stopping short of murder in\nthe execution of their plots.'\"\n\nIt will be seen from this exordium that M. Carlier regards the subject\nwholly from the point of view of prostitution. He has proved abundantly\nthat male prostitution is organised in Paris upon the same system as its\nfemale counterpart, and he has demonstrated that this system is attended\nwith the same dangers to society.\n\nA violent animus against antiphysical passions makes him exaggerate\nthese dangers, for it is clear that normal vice is no less free from\nsordid demoralisation and crimes of violence than its abnormal\ntwin-brother. Both are fornication; and everywhere, in Corinth as in\nSodom, the prostitute goes hand in hand with the bully, the robber, and\nthe cut-throat.\n\nWith reference to the legal position of these passions in France, he\nsays: \"P\u00e6derasty is not punished by our laws. It can only come within\nthe reach of the code by virtue of circumstances under which it may be\npractised. If the facts take place in the presence of witnesses, or in a\nplace open to public observation, there will be an outrage to decency.\nIf minors are seduced, there may be proof of the habitual incitement of\nminors to debauch, corruption, or even rape. But the passion itself is\nnot subject to penalty; it is only a vice arising from one of the seven\ndeadly sins. We have no intention of analysing this perverted instinct.\nSince the law does not regard it, we will do like the law. We will pass\nin silence all its private details, occupying ourselves only with what\nmeets the eye, with what may be called a veritable prostitution.\"\n\nM. Carlier proceeds to describe the two main classes, which in France\nare known as _tantes_ and _amateurs_. The former are subdivided into\nminor branches, under the names of _j\u00e9sus_, _petits j\u00e9sus_, _corvettes_\n(naval), soldiers. The latter, called also _rivettes_, are distinguished\nby their tastes for different sorts of _tantes_.\n\nThose who are interested in such matters may turn to M. Carlier's pages\nfor minute information regarding the habits, coteries, houses of\ndebauch, bullies, earnings, methods of extortion, dwellings, balls,\nbanquets, and even wedding-parties of these people. A peculiar world of\nclandestine vice in a great city is revealed; and the authentic\ndocuments, abundantly presented, render the picture vivid in its\ndetails. From the official papers which passed through M. Carlier's\nbureau during ten years (1860-70), he compiles a list of 6,342 p\u00e6derasts\nwho came within the cognisance of the police: 2,049 Parisians, 3,709\nprovincials, 484 foreigners. Of these 3,532, or more than the half,\ncould not be convicted of illegal acts.\n\nWhile devoting most of his attention to professionals who dress like\nwomen, and have become exactly similar to the effeminated youth\ndescribed in _Monsieur V\u00e9nus_,[9] Carlier gives some curious details\nabout the French army. Soldiers are no less sought after in France than\nin England or in Germany, and special houses exist for military\nprostitution both in Paris and the garrison towns.[10] Upon this point\nit should be remarked that Carlier expresses a very strong opinion\nregarding the contagiousness of antiphysical passion. And certainly many\nfacts known about the French army go to prove that these habits have\nbeen contracted in Algeria, and have spread to a formidable extent\nthrough whole regiments.[11]\n\nIn conclusion, M. Carlier, though he so strongly deplores the impunity\nextended by French law to sexual inversion, admits that this has not\naugmented the evil. Speaking about England, where legal penalties are\nheavy enough, he says; \"Though they call it the _nameless crime_ there,\nit has in England at least as many votaries as in France, and they are\nquite as depraved.\"[12]\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\nLITERATURE--MEDICO-FORENSIC.\n\n\nCarlier's book deals with the external aspects of inverted sexuality, as\nthis exists in Paris under the special form of prostitution. The author\nprofesses to know nothing more about the subject than what came beneath\nhis notice in the daily practice of his trade as a policeman. He writes\nwith excusable animosity. We see at once that he is neither a\nphilosopher by nature, nor a man of science, but only a citizen, endowed\nwith the normal citizen's antipathy for passions alien to his own.\nPlaced at the head of the Bureau of Morals, Carlier was brought into\ncollision with a tribe of people whom he could not legally arrest, but\nwhom he cordially hated. They were patently vicious; and (what was\npeculiarly odious to the normal man) these degraded beings were all\nmales. He saw that the public intolerance of \"antiphysical passions,\"\nwhich he warmly shared, encouraged an organised system of _chantage_.\nWithout entertaining the question whether public opinion might be\nmodified, he denounced the noxious gang as pests of society. The fact\nthat England, with her legal prohibitions, suffered to the same extent\nas France from the curse of \"p\u00e6derasty,\" did not make him pause.\nConsequently, the light which he has thrown upon the subject of this\ntreatise only illuminates the dark dens of male vice in a big city. He\nleaves us where we were about the psychological and ethical problem. He\nshows what deep roots the passion strikes in the centres of modern\ncivilisation, and how it thrives under conditions at once painful to its\nvictims and embarrassing to an agent of police.\n\nWriters on forensic medicine take the next place in the row of literary\nwitnesses. It is not their business to investigate the psychological\ncondition of persons submitted to the action of the laws. They are\nconcerned with the law itself, and with those physical circumstances\nwhich may bring the accused within its operation, or may dismiss him\nfree from punishment.\n\nYet their function, by importing the quality of the physician into the\nsphere of jurisprudence, renders them more apprehensive of the\nunderlying problem than a mere agent of police. We expect impartial\nscientific scrutiny in such authorities, and to some extent we find it.\n\nThe leading writers on forensic medicine at the present time in Europe\nare Casper (edited by Liman) for Germany, Tardieu for France, and Taylor\nfor England. Taylor is so reticent upon the subject of unnatural crime\nthat his handbook on \"The Principles and Practice of Medical\nJurisprudence\" does not demand minute examination. It may, however, be\nremarked that he believes false accusations to be even commoner in this\nmatter than in the case of rape, since they are only too frequently made\nthe means of blackmailing. For this reason he leaves the investigation\nof such crimes to the lawyers.\n\nBoth Casper and Tardieu discuss the topic of sexual inversion with\nantipathy. But there are notable points of difference in the method and\nin the conclusions of the two authors. Tardieu, perhaps because he is a\nFrenchman, educated in the school of Paris, which we have learned to\nknow from Carlier, assumes that all subjects of the passion are criminal\nor vicious. He draws no psychological distinction between p\u00e6derast and\np\u00e6derast. He finds no other name for them, and looks upon the whole\nclass as voluntarily degraded beings who, for the gratification of\nmonstrous desires, have unsexed themselves. A large part of his work is\ndevoted to describing what he believes to be the signs of active and\npassive immorality in the bodies of persons addicted to these\nhabits.[13] It is evident that imagination has acted powerfully in the\nformation of his theories. But this is not the place to discuss their\ndetails.[14]\n\nCasper and Liman approach the subject with almost equal disgust, but\nwith more regard for scientific truth than Tardieu. They point out that\nthe term p\u00e6derast is wholly inadequate to describe the several classes\nof male persons afflicted with sexual inversion. They clearly expect, in\ncourse of time, a general mitigation of the penalties in force against\nsuch individuals. According to them, the penal laws of North Germany, on\nthe occasion of their last revision, would probably have been altered,\nhad not the jurists felt that the popular belief in the criminality of\np\u00e6derasts ought to be considered.[15] Consequently, a large number of\nirresponsible persons, in the opinion of experts like Casper and Liman,\nare still exposed to punishment by laws enacted under the influence of\nvulgar errors.\n\nThese writers are not concerned with the framing of codes, nor again\nwith the psychological diagnosis of accused persons. It is their\nbusiness to lay down rules whereby a medical authority, consulted in a\ndoubtful case, may form his own view as to the guilt or innocence of the\naccused. Their attention is therefore mainly directed to the detection\nof signs upon the bodies of incriminated individuals.\n\nThis question of physical diagnosis leads them into a severe critique of\nTardieu. Their polemic attacks each of the points which he attempted to\nestablish. I must content myself by referring to the passage of their\nwork which deals with the important topic.[16] Suffice it here to say\nthat they reject all signs as worse than doubtful, except a certain\ndeformation of one part of the body, which may possibly be taken as the\nproof of habitual prostitution, when it occurs in quite young persons.\nOf course they admit that wounds, violent abrasions of the skin, in\ncertain places, and some syphilitic affections strongly favour the\npresumption of a criminal act. Finally, after insisting on the\ninsecurity of Tardieu's alleged signs, and pointing out the\nresponsibility assumed by physicians who base a judgment on them, the\ntwo Germans sum up their conclusions in the following words (p. 178):\n\"It is extremely remarkable that while Tardieu mentions 206 cases, and\ncommunicates a select list of 19, which appear to him to exhibit these\npeculiar conformations of the organs, he can only produce one single\ninstance where the formation seemed indubitable. Let anyone peruse his\n19 cases, and he will be horrified at the unhesitating condemnations\npronounced by Tardieu.\" The two notes of exclamation which close this\nsentence in the original are fully justified. It is indeed horrifying to\nthink that a person, implicated in some foul accusation, may have his\ndoom fixed by a doctrinaire like Tardieu. Antipathy and ignorance in\njudges and the public, combined with erroneous canons of evidence in the\nexpert, cannot fail to lead in such cases to some serious miscarriage of\njustice.\n\nPassing from the problem of diagnosis and the polemic against Tardieu,\nit must be remarked that Casper was the first writer of this class to\nlay down the distinction between inborn and acquired perversion of the\nsexual instinct. The law does not recognise this distinction. If a\ncriminal act be proved, the psychological condition of the agent is\nlegally indifferent--unless it can be shown that he was clearly mad and\nirresponsible, in which case he may be consigned to a lunatic asylum\ninstead of a jail. But Casper and Liman, having studied the question of\nsexual maladies in general, and given due weight to the works of\nUlrichs, call attention to the broad differences which exist between\npersons in whom abnormal appetites are innate and those in whom they are\nacquired. Their companion sketches of the two types deserve to be\ntranslated and presented in a somewhat condensed form.[17]\n\n\"In the majority of persons who are subject to this vice, it is\ncongenital; or at any rate the sexual inclination can be followed back\ninto the years of childhood, like a kind of physical hermaphroditism.\nSexual contact with a woman inspires them with real disgust. Their\nimagination delights in handsome young men, and statues or pictures of\nthe same. In the case of this numerous class of p\u00e6derasts there is\ntherefore no depraved fancy at work, no demoralisation through satiety\nof natural sexual appetite,[18] Their congenital impulse explains the\nfact, moreover, that very many p\u00e6derasts are addicted to what may be\ntermed a Platonic voluptuousness, and feel themselves drawn towards the\nobjects of their desire with a warmth of passion more fervent than is\ncommon in the relations of the opposed sexes; that, in other cases\nagain, they are satisfied with embracements, from which they derive a\nmutual pleasure. Westphal maintains that this anomalous direction of the\nsexual appetite is more often the symptom of a psychopathical,\nneuropathical condition than people commonly suppose.\"[19]\n\n\"In the case of another class of men, upon the contrary, the taste for\nthis vice has been acquired in life, and is the result of over-satiety\nwith natural pleasures. People of this stamp sometimes indulge their\ngross appetites alternately with either sex. I once observed a man,\nafter contracting a venereal disease with women, adopt p\u00e6derasty out of\nfear of another infection; but he was, it must be admitted, a\nweak-minded individual. In all the great towns of Europe the vice goes\ncreeping around, unobserved by the uninitiated. It appears that there is\nno inhabited spot of the globe where it may not be discovered. I said,\nunobserved by the uninitiated, advisedly. In antiquity the members of\nthe sect had their own means of mutual recognition. And at the present\ntime, these men know each other at first sight; moreover, they are found\neverywhere, in every station of society, without a single exception. 'We\nrecognise each other at once,' says the writer of a report which I shall\ncommunicate below: 'A mere glance of the eye suffices; and I have never\nbeen deceived. On the Rigi, at Palermo, in the Louvre, in the Highlands\nof Scotland, in Petersburg, on disembarking at the port of Barcelona, I\nhave found people, never seen by me before, and whom I discriminated in\na second.' Several men of this sort whom I have known (continues Casper)\nare certainly accustomed to dress and adorn themselves in a rather\nfeminine way. Nevertheless, there are indisputable p\u00e6derasts, who\npresent an entirely different aspect, some of them elderly and negligent\nin their attire, and people of the lower classes, distinguished by\nabsolutely nothing in their exterior from other persons of the same\nrank.\"\n\nMedico-juristic science made a considerable step when Casper adopted\nthis distinction of two types of sexual inversion. But, as is always the\ncase in the analysis of hitherto neglected phenomena, his classification\nfalls far short of the necessities of the problem. While treating of\nacquired sexual inversion, he only thinks of debauchees. He does not\nseem to have considered a deeper question--deeper in its bearing upon\nthe way in which society will have to deal with the whole problem--the\nquestion of how far these instincts are capable of being communicated by\ncontagion to persons in their fullest exercise of sexual vigour. Taste,\nfashion, preference, as factors in the dissemination of anomalous\npassions, he has left out of his account. It is also, but this is a\nminor matter, singular that he should have restricted his observations\non the freemasonry among p\u00e6derasts to those in whom the instinct is\nacquired. That exists quite as much or even more among those in whom it\nis congenital.\n\nThe upshot of the whole matter, however, is that the best book on\nmedical jurisprudence now extant repudiates the enormities of Tardieu's\nmethod, and lays it down for proved that \"the majority of persons who\nare subject\" to sexual inversion come into the world, or issue from the\ncradle, with their inclination clearly marked.\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\nLITERATURE--MEDICINE.\n\n\nMedical writers upon this subject are comparatively numerous in French\nand German literature, and they have been multiplying rapidly of late\nyears. The phenomenon of sexual inversion is usually regarded in these\nbooks from the point of view of psychopathic or neuropathic derangement,\ninherited from morbid ancestors, and developed in the patient by early\nhabits of self-abuse.\n\nWhat is the exact distinction between \"psychopathic\" and \"neuropathic\" I\ndo not know. The former term seems intelligible in the theologian's\nmouth, the latter in a physician's. But I cannot understand both being\nused together to indicate different kinds of pathological diathesis.\nWhat is the soul, what are the nerves? We have probably to take the two\nterms as indicating two ways of considering the same phenomenon; the one\nsubjective, the other objective; \"psychopathic\" pointing to the\nderangement as observed in the mind emotions of its subject;\n\"neuropathic\" to the derangement as observed in anomalies of the nervous\nsystem.\n\nIt would be impossible, in an essay of this kind, to review the whole\nmass of medical observation, inference and speculation which we have at\nour command. Nor is a layman, perhaps, well qualified for the task of\ncriticism and comparison in a matter of delicacy where doctors differ as\nto details. I shall therefore content myself with giving an account of\nfour of the most recent, most authoritative, and, as it seems to me,\nupon the whole most sensible studies. Moreau, Tarnowsky, Krafft-Ebing\nand Lombroso take very nearly similar views of the phenomenon; and\nbetween them they are gradually forming a theory which is likely to\nbecome widely accepted.\n\n\n_Des Aberrations du Sens G\u00e9n\u00e9sique, par le Dr. Paul Moreau_, 4th\nedition, 1887.\n\nMoreau starts with the proposition that there is a sixth sense, \"le sens\ng\u00e9nital,\" which, like other senses, can be injured psychically and\nphysically without the mental functions, whether affective or\nintellectual, suffering thereby. His book is therefore a treatise on the\ndiseases of the sexual sense. These diseases are by no means of recent\norigin, he says. They have always and everywhere existed.\n\nHe begins with a historical survey, which, so far as antiquity is\nconcerned, is very defective. Having quoted with approval the following\npassage about Greek society:--\n\n\"La sodomie se r\u00e9pand dans toute la Gr\u00e8ce; les \u00e9coles des philosophes\ndeviennent des maisons de d\u00e9bauche, et les grands exemples d'amiti\u00e9\nl\u00e9gu\u00e9s par le paganisme ne sont, pour la plupart, qu'une inf\u00e2me\nturpitude voil\u00e9e par une sainte apparence\": having quoted these words\nof Dr. Descuret, Moreau leaves Greece alone, and goes on to Rome. The\nstate of morals in Rome under the empire he describes as \"une\nd\u00e9pravation maladive, devenue par la force des choses h\u00e9r\u00e9ditaire,\nend\u00e9mique, \u00e9pid\u00e9mique.\" Then follows a short account of the emperors and\ntheir female relatives. \"Cet \u00e9r\u00e9thisme g\u00e9n\u00e9sique qui, pendant pr\u00e8s de\ndeux si\u00e8cles, r\u00e9gna a l'\u00e9tat \u00e9pid\u00e9mique dans Rome\" he ascribes mainly to\nheredity. Of Julia, the daughter of Augustus, he says, \"Peut-on lutter\ncontre un \u00e9tat morbide h\u00e9r\u00e9ditaire?\" The union of unrestrained\ndebauchery and ferocity with great mental gifts strikes him as a note of\ndisease; and he winds up with this sentence: \"Parmi les causes les plus\nfr\u00e9quentes des aberrations du sens g\u00e9nital, l'h\u00e9r\u00e9dit\u00e9 tient la premi\u00e8re\nplace.\"\n\nThen he passes to the middle ages, and dwells upon the popular belief in\n_incubi_ and _succubi_. It is curious to find him placing Leo X.,\nFran\u00e7ois I., Henri IV., Louis XIV., among the neuropathics. When it\ncomes to this, everybody with strong sexual instincts, and the\nopportunity of indulging them, is a nervous invalid. Modern times are\nillustrated by the debaucheries of the Regency, the reign of Louis XV.,\nRussian ladies, the Marquis de Sade. The House of Orleans seems in truth\nto have been tainted with hereditary impudicity of a morbid kind. But if\nit was so at the end of the last century, it has since the Revolution\nremarkably recovered health--by what miracle?\n\nMoreau now formulates the thesis he wishes to prove: \"L'aberration\npathologique des sentiments g\u00e9n\u00e9siques doit \u00eatre assimil\u00e9e compl\u00e8tement\n\u00e0 une n\u00e9vrose, et, comme telle, son existence est compatible avec les\nplus hautes intelligences.\" He discovers hereditary taint universally\npresent in these cases. \"H\u00e9r\u00e9dit\u00e9 directe, h\u00e9r\u00e9dit\u00e9 indirecte, h\u00e9r\u00e9dit\u00e9\ntransform\u00e9e, se trouve chez les g\u00e9n\u00e9siaques.\"\n\nPassing to etiology, he rests mainly upon an organism predisposed by\nancestry, and placed in a milieu favourable to its morbid development.\nProvocative causes are not sufficient to awake the aberration in healthy\norganisms, but the least thing will set a predisposed organism on the\ntrack. This, I may observe, seems to preclude simple imitation, upon\nwhich Moreau afterwards lays considerable stress; for if none but the\nalready tainted can be influenced by their milieu, none but the tainted\nwill imitate.\n\nWhat he calls \"General Physical Causes\" are (1) Extreme Poverty, (2)\nAge, (3) Constitution, (4) Temperament, (5) Seasons of the Year, (6)\nClimate, (7) Food.\n\nExtreme poverty leads to indiscriminate vice, incest, sodomy, &c. That\nis true, and we know that our city poor and the peasants of some\ncountries are habitually immoral. Yet Moreau proves too much here. For,\naccording to his principles, hereditary neurosis ought by this time to\nhave become chronic, epidemic, endemic, in all the city poor and in all\nthe peasants of all countries; which is notably not the fact. Puberty\nand the approach of senility are pointed out as times when genesiac\nsymptoms manifest themselves. His observations upon the other points are\ncommonplace enough; and he repeats the current notion that inhabitants\nof hot climates are more lascivious than those of the North.\n\nAmong \"Individual Physical Causes,\" Moreau treats of malformation of the\nsexual organs, diseases of those organs, injuries to the organism by\nwounds, blows, poisons, masturbation, excessive indulgence in venery,\nand exaggerated continence.\n\nWhen we come to \"General Moral Causes,\" heredity plays the first part.\nThis may be direct, i.e., the son of a genesiac will have the same\ntastes as his father, or transformed; what is phthisis in one generation\nassuming the form of sexual aberration in another. Bad education and\nexposure to bad examples, together with imitation, are insisted on more\nvaguely.\n\nThe \"Individual Moral Causes\" include impressions received in early\nyouth, on which I think perhaps Moreau does not lay sufficient stress,\nand certain tendencies to subjective preoccupations with ideal ideas,\ncertain abnormal physical conditions which disturb the whole moral\nsensibility.\n\nPassing to Pathological Anatomy, Moreau declares that it is as yet\nimpossible to localise the sexual sense. The brain, the cerebellum, the\nspinal marrow? We do not know. He seems to incline toward the\ncerebellum.\n\nIt is not necessary to follow Moreau in his otherwise interesting\naccount of the various manifestations of sexual disease. The greater\npart of these have no relation to the subject of my work. But what he\nsays in passing about \"p\u00e6derasts, sodomites, saphists,\" has to be\nresumed. He reckons them among \"A class of individuals who cannot and\nought not to be confounded either with men enjoying the fulness of their\nintellectual faculties, or yet with madmen properly so called. They form\nan intermediate class, a mixed class, constituting a real link of union\nbetween reason and madness, the nature and existence of which can most\nfrequently be explained only by one word: Heredity\" (p. 159). It is\nsurprising, after this announcement, to discover that what he has to say\nabout sexual inversion is limited to Europe and its moral system,\n\"having nothing to do with the morals of other countries where p\u00e6derasty\nis accepted and admitted\" (p. 172, note). Literally, then, he regards\nsexual inversion in modern Christian Europe as a form of hereditary\nneuropathy, a link between reason and madness; but in ancient Greece, in\nmodern Persia and Turkey, he regards the same psychological anomaly from\nthe point of view, not of disease, but of custom. In other words, an\nEnglishman or a Frenchman who loves the male sex must be diagnosed as\ntainted with disease; while Sophocles, Pindar, Pheidias, Epaminondas,\nPlato, are credited with yielding to an instinct which was healthy in\ntheir times because society accepted it. The inefficiency of this\ndistinction in a treatise of analytical science ought to be indicated.\nThe bare fact that ancient Greece tolerated, and that modern Europe\nrefuses to tolerate sexual inversion, can have nothing to do with the\netiology, the pathology, the psychological definition of the phenomenon\nin its essence. What has to be faced is that a certain type of passion\nflourished under the light of day and bore good fruits for society in\nHellas; that the same type of passion flourishes in the shade and is the\nsource of misery and shame in Europe. The passion has not altered; but\nthe way of regarding it morally and legally is changed. A scientific\ninvestigator ought not to take changes of public opinion into account\nwhen he is analysing a psychological peculiarity.\n\nThis point on which I am insisting--namely, that it is illogical to\ntreat sexual inversion among the modern European races as a malady, when\nyou refer its prevalence among Oriental peoples and the ancient Hellenes\nto custom--is so important that I shall illustrate it by a passage from\none of Dr. W. R. Huggard's Essays.[20] \"It may be said that the\ndifference between the delusion of the overpowering impulse in the\nFijian and in the insane Englishman is that, in the savage, the mental\ncharacters are due to education and surroundings; while, in the lunatic\nthey are due to disease. In a twofold manner, however, would this\nexplanation fail. On the one hand, even if in the Fijian there were\ndisease, the question of insanity could not arise in regard to a matter\nconsidered by his society to be one of indifference. It would be absurd\nto talk of homicidal mania, of nymphomania, and of kleptomania, as forms\nof insanity, where murder, promiscuous intercourse, and stealing are not\ncondemned. On the other hand, the assumption that insanity is always due\nto disease is not merely an unproved, but an improbable supposition.\nThere must, of course, be some defect of organism; but there is every\nreason to think that, in many cases, the defect is of the nature of a\ncongenital lack of balance between structures themselves healthy; and\nthat many cases of insanity might properly be regarded as a kind of\n'throwback' to a type of organisation now common among the lower races\nof mankind.\" Substitute any term to indicate sexual inversion for\n\"nymphomania\" in this paragraph, and the reasoning precisely suits my\nargument. It is interesting, by the way, to find this writer agreeing\nwith Ulrichs in his suggestion of a \"congenital lack of balance between\nstructures themselves healthy,\" and with Lombroso in his supposition of\natavistic reversion to savagery. Lombroso, we shall see, ultimately\nidentifies congenital criminality (one form of which is sexual\naberration in this theory) with moral insanity; and here Dr. Huggard is,\nunconsciously perhaps, in agreement with him; for he defines insanity to\nbe \"any mental defect that renders a person unable (and not capable of\nbeing made able by punishment) to conform to the requirements of\nsociety\"--a definition which is no less applicable to the born criminal\nthan to the madman.\n\nHow little Dr. Moreau has weighed the importance of ancient Greece in\nhis discussion of this topic, appears from the omission of all facts\nsupplied by Greek literature and history in the introduction to his\nEssay. He dilates upon the legends recorded by the Roman Emperors,\nbecause these seem to support his theory of hereditary malady. He uses\nJuvenal, Tacitus, Suetonius, and the Augustan Histories to support his\nposition, although they form part of the annals of a people among whom\n\"p\u00e6derasty was accepted and admitted.\" He ignores the biographies of the\nSpartan kings, the institutions of Crete, the Theban Sacred Band, the\ndialogues of Plato, the anecdotes related about Pheidias, Sophocles,\nPindar, Demosthenes, Alcibiades, and so forth. Does he perhaps do so\nbecause they cannot in any way be made to square with his theory of\nmorbidity? The truth is that ancient Greece offers insuperable\ndifficulties to theorists who treat sexual inversion exclusively from\nthe points of view of neuropathy, tainted heredity, and masturbation.\nAnd how incompetent Dr. Moreau is to deal with Greek matters may be seen\nin the grotesque synonym he has invented for p\u00e6derasty-_philopodie_ (p.\n173). Properly the word is compounded of [Greek: philein] and [Greek:\npous]; but I suppose it is meant to suggest [Greek: philein] and\n_podex_.\n\nIn a chapter on Legal Medicine, Moreau starts by observing that \"The\nfacts are so monstrous, so tainted with aberration, and yet their agents\noffer so strong an appearance of sound reason, occupy such respectable\npositions in the world, are reputed to enjoy such probity, such\nhonourable sentiments, &c., that one hesitates to utter an opinion.\"\nProceeding further, he considers it sufficiently established that: \"Not\nunfrequently, under the influence of some vice of organism, generally of\nheredity, the moral faculties may undergo alterations, which, if they do\nnot actually destroy the social relations of the individual, as happens\nin cases of declared insanity, yet modify them to a remarkable degree,\nand certainly demand to be taken into account, when we have to estimate\nthe morality of these acts\" (p. 301). His conclusion, therefore, is that\nthe aberrations of the sexual sense, including its inversion, are\nmatters for the physician rather than the judge, for therapeutics rather\nthan punishment, and that representatives of the medical faculty ought\nto sit upon the bench as advisers or assessors when persons accused of\noutrages against decency come to trial. \"While we blame and stigmatise\nthese crimes with reason, the horrified intellect seeks an explanation\nand a moral excuse (nothing more) for such odious acts. It insists on\nasking what can have brought a man honourably known in society,\nenjoying (apparently at least) the fulness of his mental faculties, to\nthese base and shameful self-indulgences. We answer: Such men for the\nmost part are abnormal intelligences, veritable candidates for lunacy,\nand, what is more, they are the subjects of hereditary maladies. But let\nus cast a veil over a subject so humiliating to the honour of humanity!\"\n(p. 177).\n\nAs the final result of this analysis, Moreau classifies sexual inversion\nwith erotomania, nymphomania, satyriasis, bestiality, rape, profanation\nof corpses, &c., as the symptom of a grave lesion of the procreative\nsense. He seeks to save its victims from the prison by delivering them\nover to the asylum. His moral sentiments are so revolted that he does\nnot even entertain the question whether their instincts are natural and\nhealthy though abnormal. Lastly, he refuses to face the aspects of this\npsychological anomaly which are forced upon the student of ancient\nHellas. He does not even take into account the fact, patent to\nexperienced observers, that simple folk not unfrequently display no\ngreater disgust for the abnormalities of sexual appetite than they do\nfor its normal manifestations.[21]\n\n\n_Die krankhaften Erscheinungen des Geschlechtssinnes. B. Tarnowsky.\nBerlin, Hirschwald_, 1886.\n\nThis is avowedly an attempt to distinguish the morbid kinds of sexual\nperversion from the merely vicious, and to enforce the necessity of\ntreating the former not as criminal but as pathological. \"The forensic\nphysician discerns corruption, oversatiated sensuality, deep-rooted\nvice, perverse will, &c., where the clinical observer recognises with\ncertainty a morbid condition of the patient marked by typical steps of\ndevelopment and termination. Where the one wishes to punish immorality,\nthe other pleads for the necessity of methodical therapeutic treatment.\"\n\nThe author is a Russian, whose practice in St. Petersburg has brought\nhim into close professional relations with the male prostitutes and\nhabitual p\u00e6derasts of that capital.\n\nHe is able therefore to speak with authority, on the ground of a quite\nexceptional knowledge of the moral and physical disturbances connected\nwith sodomy. I cannot but think that the very peculiarities of his\nexperience have led him to form incomplete theories. He is too familiar\nwith venal pathics, p\u00e6dicators, and effeminates who prostitute their\nbodies in the grossest way, to be able to appreciate the subtler\nbearings of the problem.\n\nTarnowsky makes two broad divisions of sexual inversion. The first kind\nis inborn, dependent upon hereditary taint and neuropathic diathesis. He\ndistinguishes three sorts of inborn perversity. In the most marked of\nits forms it is chronic and persistent, appearing with the earliest\ndawn of puberty, unmodified by education, attaining to its maximum of\nintensity in manhood, manifesting, in fact, all the signs of ordinary\nsexual inclination. In a second form it is not chronic and persistent,\nbut periodical. The patient is subject to occasional disturbances of the\nnervous centres, which express themselves in violent and irresistible\nattacks of the perverted instinct. The third form is epileptical.\n\nWith regard to acquired sexual inversion, he dwells upon the influence\nof bad example, the power of imitation, fashion, corrupt literature,\ncuriosity in persons jaded with normal excesses. Extraordinary details\nare given concerning the state of schools in Russia (pp. 63-65); and a\nparticular case is mentioned, in which Tarnowsky himself identified\ntwenty-nine passive p\u00e6derasts, between the ages of nine and fifteen, in\na single school. He had been called in to pronounce upon the causes of\nan outbreak of syphilis among the pupils. Interesting information is\nalso communicated regarding the prevalence of abnormal vice in St.\nPetersburg, where it appears that bath-men, cab-drivers, care-takers of\nhouses, and artisans are particularly in request (pp. 98-101). The\nRussian people show no repugnance for what they call \"gentlemen's\ntricks.\" Tarnowsky calls attention to ships, garrisons, prisons, as\nmilieux well calculated for the development of this vice, when it had\nonce been introduced by some one tainted with it. His view about nations\nlike the Greeks, the Persians, and the Afghans is that, through\nimitation, fashion, and social toleration, it has become endemic. But\nall the sorts of abnormality included under the title of acquired\nTarnowsky regards as criminal. The individual ought, he thinks, to be\npunished by the law. He naturally includes under this category of\nacquired perversion the vices of old debauchees. At this point, however,\nhis classification becomes confused; for he shows how senile tendencies\nto sodomitic passion are frequently the symptom of approaching brain\ndisease, to which the reason and the constitution of the patient will\nsuccumb. French physicians call this \"la p\u00e9d\u00e9rastie des ramollis.\"\n\nReturning to what Tarnowsky says about the inborn species of sexual\ninversion, I may call attention to an admirable description of the type\nin general (pp. 11-15) I think, however, that he lays too great stress\nupon the passivity of the emotions in these persons, their effeminacy of\npress, habits, inclinations. He is clearly speaking from large\nexperience. So it must be supposed that he has not come across frequent\ninstances of men who feel, look, and act like men, the only difference\nbetween them and normal males being that they love their own sex. In\ndescribing a second degree of the aberration (pp. 16, 17), he still\naccentuates effeminacy in dress and habits beyond the point which\ngeneral observation would justify. Careful study of the cases adduced in\nKrafft-Ebing's \"Psychopathia\" supplies a just measure for the criticism\nof Tarnowsky upon this head. From them we learn that effeminacy of\nphysique and habit is by no means a distinctive mark of the born\np\u00e6derast. Next it may be noticed that Tarnowsky believes even innate and\nhereditary tendencies can be modified and overcome by proper moral, and\nphysique discipline in youth, and that the subjects of them will even be\nbrought to marry in some cases (pp. 17, 18).\n\nIt would not serve any purpose of utility here to follow Tarnowsky into\nfurther details regarding the particular forms assumed by perverted\nappetite. But attention must be directed to his definition of hereditary\npredisposition (pp. 33-35). This is extraordinarily wide. He regards\nevery disturbance of the nervous system in an ancestor as sufficient;\nepilepsy, brain disease, hysteria, insanity. He includes alcoholism,\nsyphilitic affections, pneumonia, typhus, physical exhaustion, excessive\nan\u00e6mia, debauchery, \"anything in short which is sufficient to enfeeble\nthe nervous system and the sexual potency of the parent.\" At this point\nhe remarks that long residence at high altitudes tends to weaken the\nsexual activity and to develop perversity, adducing an old belief of the\nPersians that p\u00e6derastia originated in the high plateau of Armenia (p.\n35). It need hardly, I think, be said that these theories are\ncontradicted to the fullest extent by the experience of those who have\nlived with the mountaineers of Central Europe. They are indeed capable\nof continence to a remarkable degree, but they are also vigorously\nprocreative and remarkably free from sexual inversion.\n\nFinally, it must be observed that Tarnowsky discusses the physical signs\nof active and passive sodomy at some length (108-135). His opportunities\nof physical observation in medical practice as the trusted physician of\nthe St. Petersburg p\u00e6derasts gives him the right to speak with\nauthority. The most decisive thing he says is that Casper, through want\nof familiarity with the phenomena, is too contemptuous toward one point\nin Tardieu's theory. In short, Tarnowsky feels sure that a habitual\npassive p\u00e6derast will show something like the sign in question, if\nexamined by an expert in the proper position. But that is the only\ndeformation of the body on which he relies.\n\n\n_Psychopathia Sexualis, mit besonderer Ber\u00fccksichtigung der Contr\u00e4ren\nSexualempfindung. Von Dr. R. v. Krafft-Ebing. Stuttgart, Enke, 1889._\n\nKrafft-Ebing took the problem of sexual inversion up when it had been\nalready investigated by a number of pioneers and predecessors. They\nmapped the ground out, and established a kind of psychical chart. We\nhave seen the medical system growing in the works of Moreau and\nTarnowsky. If anything, Krafft-Ebing's treatment suffers from too much\nsubdivision and parade of classification. It is only, however, by\nfollowing the author in his differentiation of the several species that\nwe can form a conception of his general theory, and of the extent of the\nobservations upon which this is based. He starts with (A) Sexual\nInversion as an acquired morbid phenomenon. Then he reviews (B) Sexual\nInversion as an inborn morbid phenomenon.\n\n(A) \"Sexual feeling and sexual instinct,\" he begins, \"remain latent,\nexcept in obscure foreshadowings and impulses, until the time when the\norgans of procreation come to be developed. During the period of\nlatency, when sex has not arrived at consciousness, is only potentially\nexistent, and has no powerful organic bias, influences may operate,\ninjurious to its normal and natural evolution. In that case the\ngerminating sexual sensibility runs a risk of being both qualitatively\nand quantitatively impaired, and under certain circumstances may even\nbe perverted into a false channel. Tarnowsky has already published this\nexperience. I can thoroughly confirm it, and am prepared to define the\nconditions of this acquired, or, in other words, this cultivated\nperversion of the sexual instinct in the following terms. The\nfundamental or ground predisposition is a neuropathic hereditary bias.\nThe exciting or efficient cause is sexual abuse, and more particularly\nonanism. The etiological centre of gravity has to be sought in\nhereditary disease; _and I think it is questionable whether an untainted\nindividual is capable of homosexual feelings at all_.\"[22]\n\nKrafft-Ebing's theory seems then to be that all cases of acquired sexual\ninversion may be ascribed in the first place to morbid predispositions\ninherited by the patient (_Belastung_), and in the second place to\nonanism as the exciting cause of the latent neuropathic ailment.\n\nHe excludes the hypothesis of a physiological and healthy deflection\nfrom the normal rule of sex. \"I think it questionable,\" he says,\n\"whether the untainted individual (_das unbelastete Individuum_) is\ncapable of homosexual feelings at all.\" The importance of this sentence\nwill be apparent when we come to deal with Krafft-Ebing's account of\ncongenital sexual inversion, which he establishes upon a large induction\nof cases observed in his own practice.\n\nFor the present we have the right to assume that Krafft-Ebing regards\nsexual inversion, whether \"acquired\" or \"congenital,\" as a form of\ninherited neuropathy (_Belastung_). In cases where it seems to be\n\"acquired,\" he lays stress upon the habit of self-pollution.\n\nThis is how he states his theory of onanism as an exciting cause of\ninherited neuropathy, resulting in sexual inversion. The habit of\nself-abuse prepares the patient for abnormal appetites by weakening his\nnervous force, degrading his sexual imagination, and inducing\nhyper-sensibility in his sexual apparatus. Partial impotence is not\nunfrequently exhibited. In consequence of this sophistication of his\nnature, the victim of inherited neuropathy and onanism feels shy with\nwomen, and finds it convenient to frequent persons of his own sex. In\nother words, it is supposed to be easier for an individual thus broken\ndown at the centres of his life to defy the law and to demand sexual\ngratification from men than to consort with venal women in a brothel.\n\nKrafft-Ebing assumes that males who have been born with neuropathic\nailments of an indefinite kind will masturbate, destroy their virility,\nand then embark upon a course of vice which offers incalculable dangers,\ninconceivable difficulties, and inexpressible repugnances. That is the\ntheory. But whence, if not from some overwhelming appetite, do the\ndemoralised victims of self-abuse derive courage for facing the\nobstacles which a career of sexual inversion carries with it in our\ncivilisation? One would have thought that such people, if they could not\napproach a prostitute in a brothel, would have been unable to solicit a\nhealthy man upon the streets. The theory seems to be constructed in\norder to elude the fact that the persons designated are driven by a\nnatural impulse into paths far more beset with difficulties than those\nof normal libertines.\n\nKrafft-Ebing gives the details of five cases of \"acquired\" sexual\ninversion. Three of these were the children of afflicted parents. One\nhad no morbid strain in his ancestry, except pulmonary consumption. The\nfifth sprang from a strong father and a healthy mother. Masturbation\nentered into the history of all.\n\nIt must be observed, in criticising Krafft-Ebing's theory, that it is so\nconstructed as to render controversy almost impossible. If we point out\nthat a large percentage of males who practise onanism in their\nadolescence do not acquire sexual inversion, he will answer that these\nwere not tainted with hereditary disease. The autobiographies of\nonanists and passionate woman-lovers (J. J. Rousseau, for example, who\nevinced a perfect horror of homosexual indulgence, and J. J. Bouchard,\nwhose disgusting excentricities were directed toward females even in the\nperiod of his total impotence) will be dismissed with the remark that\nthe ancestors of these writers must have shown a clean record.\n\nIt is difficult to square Krafft-Ebing's theory with the phenomena\npresented by schools, both public and private, in all parts of Europe.\nIn these institutions not only is masturbation practised to a formidable\nextent, but it is also everywhere connected with some form of sexual\ninversion, either passionately Platonic or grossly sensual.\nNevertheless, we know that few of the boys addicted to these practices\nremain abnormal after they have begun to frequent women. The same may be\nsaid about convict establishments, military prisons, and the like.[23]\nWith such a body of facts staring us in the face, it cannot be contended\nthat \"only tainted individuals are capable of homosexual feelings.\"\nWhere females are absent or forbidden, males turn for sexual\ngratification to males. And in certain conditions of society sexual\ninversion may become permanently established, recognised, all but\nuniversal. It would be absurd to maintain that all the boy-lovers of\nancient Greece owed their instincts to hereditary neuropathy complicated\nwith onanism.\n\nThe invocation of heredity in problems of this kind is always hazardous.\nWe only throw the difficulty of explanation further back. At what point\nof the world's history was the morbid taste acquired? If none but\ntainted individuals are capable of homosexual feelings, how did these\nfeelings first come into existence? On the supposition that neuropathy\nforms a necessary condition of abnormal instinct, is it generic\nneuropathy or a specific type of that disorder? If generic, can valid\nreasons be adduced for regarding nervous malady in any of its aspects\n(hysteria is the mother, insanity is the father) as the cause of so\npeculiarly differentiated an affection of the sexual appetite? If\nspecific, that is, if the ancestors of the patient must have been\nafflicted with sexual inversion, in what way did they acquire it,\nsupposing all untainted individuals to be incapable of the feeling?\n\nAt this moment of history there is probably no individual in Europe who\nhas not inherited some portion of a neuropathic stain. If that be\ngranted, everybody is liable to sexual inversion, and the principle of\nheredity becomes purely theoretical.\n\nThat sexual inversion may be and actually is transmitted, like any other\nquality, appears to be proved by the history of well-known families both\nin England and in Germany. That it is not unfrequently exhibited by\npersons who have a bad ancestral record, may be taken for demonstrated.\nIn certain cases we are justified, then, in regarding it as the sign or\nconcomitant of nervous maladies. But the evidence of ancient Greece or\nRome, of what Burton calls the \"sotadic races\" at the present time, of\nEuropean schools and prisons, ought to make us hesitate before we commit\nourselves to Krafft-Ebing's theory that hereditary affliction is a\nnecessary predisposing cause.[24]\n\nIn like manner, masturbation may be credited with certain cases of\nacquired homosexual feeling. Undoubtedly the instinct is occasionally\nevoked in some obscure way by the depraved habit of inordinate\nself-abuse. Yet the autobiographies of avowed Urnings do not corroborate\nthe view that they were originally more addicted to onanism than normal\nmales. Ulrichs has successfully combated the theory advanced by\nTarnowsky, Prager, and Krafft-Ebing, if considered as a complete\nexplanation of the problem.[25] On the other hand, common experience\nshows beyond all doubt, that young men between 16 and 20 give\nthemselves up to daily self-abuse without weakening their appetite for\nwomen. They love boys and practice mutual self-abuse with persons of\ntheir own sex; yet they crave all the while for women. Of the many who\nlive thus during the years of adolescence, some have undoubtedly as bad\na family record as the worst of Krafft-Ebing's cases show. Finally, as\nregards the onanism which is a marked characteristic of some adult\nUrnings, this must be ascribed in most cases to the repression of their\nabnormal instincts. They adopt the habit, as Krafft-Ebing himself says,\n_faute de mieux_.[26]\n\nIn justice to the theory I am criticising, it ought to be remarked that\nKrafft-Ebing does not contend that wherever hereditary taint and onanism\nconcur, the result will be sexual inversion; but rather that wherever we\nhave diagnosed an acquired form of sexual inversion, we shall discover\nhereditary taint and onanism. Considering the frequency of both\nhereditary taint and onanism in our civilisation, this is not risking\nmuch. Those factors are discoverable in a large percentage of male\npersons. What seems unwarranted by facts is the suggestion that\ninherited neuropathy is an indispensable condition and the fundamental\ncause of homosexual instincts. The evidence of ancient Greece, schools,\nprisons, and sotadic races, compels us to believe that normally healthy\npeople are often born with these instincts or else acquire them by the\nway of custom. Again, his insinuation that onanism, regarded as the main\nexciting cause, is more frequent among young people of abnormal\ninclinations than among their normal brethren, will not bear the test of\ncommon observation and of facts communicated in the autobiographies of\nprofessed onanists and confessed Urnings.\n\nThe problem is too delicate, too complicated, also too natural and\nsimple, to be solved by hereditary disease and self-abuse. When we shift\nthe ground of argument from acquired to inborn sexual inversion, its\npuzzling character will become still more apparent. We shall hardly be\nable to resist the conclusion that theories of disease are incompetent\nto explain the phenomenon in modern Europe. Medical writers abandon the\nphenomenon in savage races, in classical antiquity, and in the sotadic\nzone. They strive to isolate it as an abnormal and specifically morbid\nexception in our civilisation. But facts tend to show that it is a\nrecurring impulse of humanity, natural to some people, adopted by\nothers, and in the majority of cases compatible with an otherwise normal\nand healthy temperament.\n\nKrafft-Ebing calls attention to the phenomenon of permanent\n_effeminatio_, in males unsexed by constant riding and the exhaustion of\ntheir virility by friction of the genitals--a phenomenon observed by\nHerodotus among Scythians, and prevalent among some nomadic races of the\nCaucasus at the present day.[27] He claims this in support of his theory\nof masturbation; and within due limits, he has the right to do so. The\ndestruction of the male apparatus for reproduction, whether it be by\ncastration after puberty, or by an accident to the parts, or by a lesion\nof the spine, or by excessive equitation, as appears proved from the\nhistory of nomad tribes, causes men to approximate physically to the\nfemale type, and to affect feminine occupations and habits. In\nproportion as the masculine functions are interfered with, masculine\ncharacteristics tend to disappear; and it is curious to notice that the\nsame result is reached upon so many divers ways.\n\nNext he discusses a few cases in which it seems that sexual inversion\ndisplays itself episodically under the conditions of a psychopathical\ndisturbance.[28] That is to say, three persons, two women and one man,\nhave been observed by him, under conditions approaching mental\nalienation, to exchange their normal sexual inclination for abnormal\nappetite. In the analysis of the problem these cases cannot be regarded\nas wholly insignificant. The details show that the subjects were clearly\nmorbid. Therefore they have their value for the building up of a theory\nof sexual inversion upon the basis of inherited and active disease.\n\n(B) Ultimately, Krafft-Ebing attacks the problem of what he calls \"the\ninnate morbid phenomenon\" of sexual inversion.[29] While giving a\ngeneral description of the subjects of this class, he remarks that the\nmales display a pronounced sexual antipathy for women, and a strongly\naccentuated sympathy for men. Their reproductive organs are perfectly\ndifferentiated on the masculine type; but they desire men instinctively,\nand are inclined to express their bias by assuming characters of\nfemininity. Women infected by a like inversion, exhibit corresponding\nanomalies.\n\nCasper, continues Krafft-Ebing, thoroughly diagnosed the phenomenon.\nGriesinger referred it to hereditary affliction. Westphal defined it as\n\"a congenital inversion of the sexual feeling, together with a\nconsciousness of its morbidity.\" Ulrichs explained it by the presence of\na feminine soul in a male body, and gave the name _Urning_[30] to its\nsubjects. Gley suggested that a female brain was combined with\nmasculine glands of sex. Magnan hypothesised a woman's brain in a man's\nbody.\n\nKrafft-Ebing asserts that hardly any of these Urnings are conscious of\nmorbidity. They look upon themselves as unfortunate mainly because law\nand social prejudices stand in the way of their natural indulgence.[31]\nHe also takes for proved, together with all the authorities he cites,\nthat the abnormal sexual appetite is constitutional and inborn.\n\nKrafft-Ebing, as might have been expected, refers the phenomenon to\nfunctional degeneration, dependent upon neuropathical conditions in the\npatient, which are mainly derived from hereditary affliction.\n\nHe confirms the account reported above from Casper as to the platonic or\nsemi-platonic relations of the Urning with the men he likes, his\nabhorrence of coition, and his sexual gratification through acts of\nmutual embracement. The number of Urnings in the world, he says, is far\ngreater than we can form the least conception of from present means of\ncalculation.\n\nAt this point he begins to subdivide the subjects of congenital\ninversion. The first class he constitutes are called by him \"Psychical\nHermaphrodites.\" Born with a predominant inclination towards persons of\ntheir own sex, they possess rudimentary feelings of a semi-sexual nature\nfor the opposite. These people not unfrequently marry; and Krafft-Ebing\nsupposes that many cases of frigidity in matrimony, unhappy unions, and\nso forth, are attributable to the peculiar diathesis of the male--or it\nmay be, of the female--in these marriages. They are distinguished from\nhis previous class of \"acquired\" inversion by the fact that the latter\nstart with instincts for the other sex, which are gradually obliterated;\nwhereas the psychical hermaphrodites commence life with an attraction\ntowards their own sex, which they attempt to overcome by making demands\nupon their rudimentary normal instincts. Five cases are given of such\npersons.[32]\n\nIn the next place he comes to true homosexual individuals, or Urnings in\nthe strict sense of that phrase. With them there is no rudimentary\nappetite for the other sex apparent. They present a \"grotesque\" parallel\nto normal men and women, inverting or caricaturing natural appetites.\nThe male of this class shrinks from the female, and the female from the\nmale.[33] Each is vehemently attracted from earliest childhood to\npersons of the same sex. But they, in their turn, have to be subdivided\ninto two sub-species. In the first of these, the sexual life alone is\nimplicate; the persons who compose it do not differ in any marked or\nexternal characteristics from the type of their own sex; their habits\nand outward appearance remain unchanged. With the second sub-species the\ncase is different. Here the character, the mental constitution, the\nhabits, and the occupations of the subject have been altered by his or\nher predominant sexual inversion; so that a male addicts himself to a\nwoman's work, assumes female clothes, acquires a shriller key of voice,\nand expresses the inversion of his sexual instinct in every act and\ngesture of his daily life.\n\nIt appears from Krafft-Ebing's recorded cases that the first of these\nsub-species yields nearly the largest number of individuals. He\npresents eleven detailed autobiographies of male Urnings, in whom the\n_vita sexualis_ alone is abnormal, and who are differentiated to common\nobservation from normal men by nothing but the nature of their amorous\nproclivities. The class includes powerfully developed masculine beings,\nwho are unsexed in no particular except that they possess an inordinate\nappetite for males, and will not look at females.\n\nAs regards the family history of the eleven selected cases, five could\nshow a clear bill of health, some were decidedly bad, a small minority\nwere uncertain.\n\nOne of these Urnings, a physician, informed Krafft-Ebing that he had\nconsorted with at least six hundred men of his own stamp; many of them\nin high positions of respectability. In none had he observed an abnormal\nformation of the sexual organs; but frequently some approximation to the\nfeminine type of body--hair sparingly distributed[34], tender\ncomplexion, and high tone of voice. About ten per cent. eventually\nadopted love for women. Not ten per cent. exhibited any sign of the\n_habitus muliebris_ in their occupations, dress, and so forth. A large\nmajority felt like men in their relations to men, and were even inclined\ntoward active p\u00e6derasty. From the unmentionable act they were deterred\nby \u00e6sthetical repulsion and fear of the law.\n\nThe second of these sub-species embraces the individuals with whom the\nreader of Carlier is familiar, and whom Ulrichs calls Weiblinge. In\ntheir boyhood they exhibited a marked disinclination for the games of\ntheir school-fellows, and preferred to consort with girls. They helped\ntheir mothers in the household, learned to sew and knit, caught at every\nopportunity of dressing up in female clothes. Later on, they began to\ncall themselves by names of women, avoided the society of normal\ncomrades, hated sport and physical exercise, were averse to smoking and\ndrinking, could not whistle. Whether they refrained from swearing is not\nrecorded. Many of them developed a taste for music, and prided\nthemselves upon their culture. Eventually, when they became unclassed,\nthey occupied themselves with toilette, scandal, tea, and talk about\ntheir lovers--dressed as far as possible in female clothes, painted,\nperfumed and curled their hair--addressed each other in the feminine\ngender, adopted pseudonyms of Countess or of Princess, and lived the\nlife of women of a dubious demi-monde.[35]\n\nYet they remained in their physical configuration males. Unlike the\npreceding sub-species, they did not feel as men feel towards their\nsweethearts, but on the contrary like women. They had no impulse toward\nactive p\u00e6derasty, no inclination for blooming adolescents. What they\nwanted was a robust adult; and to him they submitted themselves with\nself-abandonment. Like all Urnings, they shrank from the act of coition\nfor the most part, and preferred embracements which produced a brief\nand pleasurable orgasm. But some developed a peculiar liking for the\npassive act of sodomy or the anomalous act of fellatio.\n\nIn this characterisation I have overpassed the limits of the fifteen\ncases presented by Krafft-Ebing. In order to constitute the type, I have\ndrawn upon one reliable, because sympathetic, source in Ulrichs, and on\nanother reliable, because antipathetic, source in Carlier.\n\nSexual inversion, in persons of the third main species, has reached its\nfinal development. Descending, if we follow Krafft-Ebing's categories,\nfrom acquired to innate inversion, dividing the latter into psychopathic\nhermaphrodites and Urnings, subdividing Urnings into those who retain\ntheir masculine habit and those who develop a habit analogous to that of\nfemales, we come in this last class to the most striking phenomenon of\ninverted sex. Here the soul which is doomed to love a man, and is\nnevertheless imprisoned in a male body, strives to convert that body to\nfeminine uses so entirely that the marks of sex, except in the\ndetermined organs of sex, shall be obliterated. And sometimes it appears\nthat the singular operation of nature, with which we are occupied in\nthis Essay, goes even further. The inverted bias given to the sexual\nappetite, as part of the spiritual nature of the man, can never quite\ntransmute male organs into female organs of procreation. But it modifies\nthe bony structure of the body, the form of the face, the fleshly and\nmuscular integuments to such an obvious extent that Krafft-Ebing thinks\nhimself justified in placing a separate class of androgynous beings\n(with their gynandrous correspondents) at the end of the extraordinary\nprocess.\n\nAt this point it will be well to present a scheme of his analysis under\nthe form of a table.\n\n                                { Persistent.\n                     { Acquired {\n                     {          { Episodical.\n                     {\n    Sexual Inversion {            { Psychopathic Hemaphrodites.\n                     {            {\n                     {            {         { Male Habitus\n                     {            {         { (Mannlinge).\n                     { Congenital { Urnings {\n                                  {         { Female Habitus\n                                  {         { (Weiblinge).\n                                  {\n                                  { Androgyni.\n\nWhat is the rational explanation of the facts presented to us by the\nanalysis which I have formulated in this table cannot as yet be\nthoroughly determined. We do not know enough about the law of sex in\nhuman beings to advance a theory. Krafft-Ebing and writers of his school\nare at present inclined to refer them all to diseases of the nervous\ncentres, inherited, congenital, excited by early habits of self-abuse.\nThe inadequacy of this method I have already attempted to set forth; and\nI have also called attention to the fact that it does not sufficiently\naccount for phenomena known to us through history and through every-day\nexperience.\n\nPresently we shall be introduced to a theory (that of Ulrichs) which is\nbased upon a somewhat grotesque and metaphysical conception of nature,\nand which dispenses with the hypothesis of hereditary disease. I am not\nsure whether this theory, unsound as it may seem to medical specialists,\ndoes not square better with ascertained facts than that of inherited\ndisorder in the nervous centres.\n\nHowever that may be, the physicians, as represented by Krafft-Ebing,\nabsolve all subjects of inverted sexuality from crime. They represent\nthem to us as the subjects of ancestral malady. And this alters their\nposition face to face with vulgar error, theological rancour, and the\nstringent indifference of legislators. A strong claim has been advanced\nfor their treatment henceforth, not as delinquents, but as subjects of\ncongenital depravity in the brain centres, over which they have no\nadequate control.\n\nThe fourth medical author, with whom we are about to be occupied,\nincludes sexual inversion in his general survey of human crime, and\nconnects it less with anomalies of the nervous centres than with\natavistic reversion to the state of nature and savagery. In the end, it\nwill be seen, he accepts a concordat with the hypothesis of \"moral\ninsanity.\"\n\n\n_Cesare Lombroso._ \"_Der Verbrecher in Anthropologischer, Aerztlicher\nund Juristischer Beziehung._\"\n\nThis famous book, which has contributed no little to a revolution of\nopinion regarding crime and its punishment in Italy, contains a\nsearching inquiry into the psychological nature, physical peculiarities,\nhabits, and previous history of criminals.[36] It is, in fact, a study\nof the criminal temperament. Lombroso deals in the main, as is natural,\nwith murder, theft, rape, cruelty, and their allied species. But he\nincludes sexual inversion in the category of crimes, and regards the\nabnormal appetites as signs of that morbid condition into which he\neventually revolves the criminal impulse.\n\nWishing to base his doctrine on a sound foundation, Lombroso begins with\nwhat may be termed the embryology of crime. He finds unnatural vices\nfrequent among horses, donkeys, cattle, insects, fowls, dogs, ants. The\nphenomenon, he says, is usually observable in cases where the male\nanimal has been excluded from intercourse with females. Having\nestablished his general position that what we call crimes of violence,\nrobbery, murder, cruelty, blood-thirst, cannibalism, unnatural lust, and\nso forth, exist among the brutes--in fact, that most of these crimes\nform the rule and not the exception in their lives--he passes on to the\nconsideration of the savage man. In following his analysis, I shall\nconfine myself to what he says about abnormal sexual passion.\n\nHe points out that in New Caledonia the male savages meet together at\nnight in huts for the purpose of promiscuous intercourse (p. 42). The\nsame occurs in Tahiti, where the practice is placed under the protection\nof a god. Next he alludes to the ancient Mexicans; and then proceeds to\nHellas and Rome, where this phase of savage immorality survived and\nbecame a recognised factor in social life (p. 43). At Rome, he says, the\nVenus of the sodomites received the title of Castina (p. 38).\n\nLombroso's treatment of sexual inversion regarded as a survival from\nprehistoric times is by no means exhaustive. It might be supplemented\nand confirmed by what we know about the manners of the Kelts, as\nreported by Aristotle (Pol. ii. 6. 5.)--Tartars, Persians, Afghans,\nNorth American Indians, &c. Diodorus Siculus, writing upon the morals of\nthe Gauls, deserves attention in this respect.[37] It is also singular\nto find that the Norman marauders of the tenth century carried unnatural\nvices wherever they appeared in Europe.[38] The Abbot of Clairvaux, as\nquoted by Lombroso (p. 43), accused them of spreading their brutal\nhabits through society. People accustomed to look upon these vices as a\nform of corruption in great cities will perhaps be surprised to find\nthem prevalent among nomadic and warlike tribes. But, in addition to\nsurvival from half-savage periods of social life, the necessities of\nwarriors thrown together with an insufficiency of women must be\nconsidered. I have already suggested that Greek love grew into a custom\nduring the Dorian migration and the conquest of Crete and Peloponnesus\nby bands of soldiers.\n\nCannibalism, Lombroso points out (p. 68), originated in necessity,\nbecame consecrated by religion, and finally remained as custom and a\nform of gluttony. The same process of reasoning, when applied to sexual\naberrations, helps us to understand how a non-ethical habit, based on\nscarcity of women, survived as a social and chivalrous institution among\nthe civilised Hellenes.\n\nLombroso traces the growth of justice in criminal affairs, and the\nestablishment of pains and penalties, up to the instinct of revenge and\nthe despotic selfishness of chiefs in whom the whole property of savage\ntribes, including women, was vested. This section of his work concludes\nwith the following remarkable sentence (p. 96): \"The universal diffusion\nof crime which we have demonstrated at a certain remote epoch, and its\ngradual disappearance as a consequence of new crimes springing up,\ntraces of which are still discoverable in our penal codes [he means\nrevenge, the egotism of princes, and ecclesiastical rapacity], are\ncalculated even more than the criminality of brutes to make us doubt of\nwhat metaphysicians call eternal justice, and indicate the real cause of\nthe perpetual reappearance of crime among civilised races, namely\natavism.\"\n\nHaving established this principle, Lombroso proceeds to trace the\natavism of criminality in children. He shows that just as the human\nembryo passes through all forms of lower lives, so men and women in\ntheir infancy exactly reproduce the moral type of savages. Ungovernable\nrage, revengeful instincts, jealousy, envy, lying, stealing, cruelty,\nlaziness, vanity, sexual proclivities, imperfect family affections, a\ngeneral bluntness of the ethical sense, are common qualities of\nchildren, which the parent and the teacher strive to control or to\neradicate by training. \"The child, considered as a human being devoid of\nmoral sense, presents a perfect picture of what doctors call moral\ninsanity, and I prefer to classify as inborn crime\" (p. 97). \"All\nspecies of anomalous sexual appetite, with the exception of those\ndependent upon senile decadence, make their appearance in childhood,\ntogether with the other criminal tendencies\" (p. 117).\n\nLombroso arrives, then, at the conclusion that what civilised humanity\ncalls crime and punishes, is the law of nature in brutes, persists as a\nnormal condition among savages, and displays itself in the habits and\ninstincts of children. The moral instinct is therefore slowly elaborated\nout of crime in the course of generations by whole races, and in the\ncourse of infancy and adolescence in the individual. The habitual\ncriminal, who remains a criminal in his maturity, in whom crime is\ninborn and ineradicable, who cannot develop a moral sense, he explains\nat first by atavism. A large section of his volume (pp. 124-136,\n137-253) is devoted to anthropometrical observations upon the physical\nstructure, the cranial and cerebral development, and the physiognomy of\nsuch criminals. Into this part of his work we need not enter. Nor is it\nnecessary to follow his interesting researches in the biology and\npsychology of \"born criminals\"--chapters on tattooing, ways of thinking\nand feeling, passions, tendencies to suicide, religious sentiment,\nintelligence and culture, capacity of self-control, liability to\nrelapse, and so forth. Many curious facts relating to sexual inversion\nare treated in the course of these enquiries; and one passage describing\nthe general characteristics of p\u00e6derasts (p. 376) ought to be alluded\nto. Considering this subject solely as a phase of crime, Lombroso\nreveals a superficial conception of its perplexity.\n\nIt is more important to reflect upon his theory of crime in general.\nHaving started with the hypothesis of atavism, and adopted the term\n\"born criminal,\" he later on identifies \"innate crime\" with \"moral\ninsanity,\" and illustrates both by the phenomena of epilepsy.[39] This\nintroduces a certain confusion and incoherence into his speculative\nsystem; for he frankly admits that he has only gradually and tardily\nbeen led to recognise the identity of what is called crime and what is\ncalled moral insanity. Criminal atavism might be defined as the sporadic\nreversion to savagery in certain individuals. It has nothing logically\nto connect it with distortion or disease--unless we assume that all our\nsavage ancestors were malformed or diseased, and that the Greeks, in\nwhom one form of Lombroso's criminal atavism became established, were as\na nation morally insane. The appearance of structural defects in\nhabitual criminals points less to atavistic reversion than to radical\ndivergence from the normal type of humanity. In like manner the\ninvocation of heredity as a principle (p. 135) involves a similar\nconfusion. Hereditary taint is a thing different not in degree but in\nkind from savage atavism prolonged from childhood into manhood.\n\nBe this as it may, whether we regard offenders against law and ethic as\n\"born criminals,\" or as \"morally insane,\" or whether we transcend the\ndistinction implied in these two terms, Lombroso maintains that there is\nno good in trying to deal with them by punishment. They ought to be\ntreated with life-long sequestration in asylums (p. 135), and rigidly\nforbidden to perpetuate the species. That is the conclusion to which the\nwhole of his long argument is carried. He contends that the prevalent\njuristic conception of crime rests upon ignorance of nature, brute-life,\nsavagery, and the gradual emergence of morality. So radical a revolution\nin ideas, which gives new meaning to the words sin and conscience,\nwhich removes moral responsibility, and which substitutes the\nanthropologist and the physician for the judge and jury, cannot be\ncarried out, even by its fervent apostle, without some want of severe\nlogic. Thus we find Lombroso frequently drawing distinctions between\n\"habitual\" or \"born\" criminals and what he calls \"occasional\" criminals,\nwithout explaining the phenomenon of \"occasional crime,\" and saying how\nhe thinks this ought to be regarded by society. Moreover, he almost\nwholly ignores the possibility of correcting criminal tendencies by\nappeal to reason, by establishing habits of self-restraint, and by the\nemployment of such means as hypnotic suggestion.[40] Yet experience and\nthe common practice of the world prove that these remedies are not\nwholly inefficacious; and indeed the passage from childish savagery to\nmoralised manhood, on which he lays so great a stress, is daily effected\nby the employment of such measures in combination with the fear of\npunishment and the desire to win esteem.\n\nThe final word upon Lombroso's book is this: Having started with the\nnatural history of crime, as a prime constituent in nature and humanity,\nwhich only becomes crime through the development of social morality, and\nwhich survives atavistically in persons ill adapted to their civilised\nenvironment, he suddenly turns round and identifies the crime thus\nanalysed with morbid nerve-conditions, malformations and moral insanity.\nLogically, it is impossible to effect this coalition of two radically\ndifferent conceptions. If crime was not crime but nature in the earlier\nstages, and only appeared as crime under the conditions of advancing\nculture, its manifestation as a survival in certain individuals ought to\nbe referred to nature, and cannot be relegated to the category of\nphysical or mental disease. Savages are savages, but not lunatics or\nepileptics.\n\n\nNOTE TO THE FOREGOING SECTION.\n\nAt the close of this enquiry into medical theories of sexual inversion,\nall of which assume that the phenomenon is morbid, it may not be\nsuperfluous to append the protest of an Urning against that solution of\nthe problem. I translate it from the original document published by\nKrafft-Ebing (pp. 216-219). He says that the writer is \"a man of high\nposition in London\"; but whether the communication was made in German or\nin English, does not appear.\n\n\"You have no conception what sustained and difficult struggles we all of\nus (the thoughtful and refined among us most of all) have to carry on,\nand how terribly we are forced to suffer under the false opinions which\nstill prevail regarding us and our so-called immorality.\n\n\"Your view that, in most cases, the phenomenon in question has to be\nascribed to congenital morbidity, offers perhaps the easiest way of\novercoming popular prejudices, and awakening sympathy instead of horror\nand contempt for us poor 'afflicted' creatures.\n\n\"Still, while I believe that this view is the most favourable for us in\nthe present state of things, I am unable in the interest of science to\naccept the term _morbid_ without qualification, and venture to suggest\nsome further distinctions bearing on the central difficulties of the\nproblem.\n\n\"The phenomenon is certainly anomalous; but the term _morbid_ carries a\nmeaning which seems to me inapplicable to the subject, or at all events\nto very many cases which have come under my cognisance. I will concede\n_\u00e0 priori_ that a far larger proportion of mental disturbance, nervous\nhyper-sensibility, &c., can be proved in Urnings than in normal men. But\nought this excess of nervous erethism to be referred necessarily to the\npeculiar nature of the Urning? Is not this the true explanation, in a\nvast majority of cases, that the Urning, owing to present laws and\nsocial prejudices, cannot like other men obtain a simple and easy\nsatisfaction of his inborn sexual desires?\n\n\"To begin with the years of boyhood: an Urning, when he first becomes\naware of sexual stirrings in his nature, and innocently speaks about\nthem to his comrades, soon finds that he is unintelligible. So he wraps\nhimself within his own thoughts. Or should he attempt to tell a teacher\nor his parents about these feelings, the inclination, which for him is\nas natural as swimming to a fish, will be treated by them as corrupt and\nsinful; he is exhorted at any cost to overcome and trample on it. Then\nthere begins in him a hidden conflict, a forcible suppression of the\nsexual impulse; and in proportion as the natural satisfaction of his\ncraving is denied, fancy works with still more lively efforts, conjuring\nup those seductive pictures which he would fain expel from his\nimagination. The more energetic is the youth who has to fight this\ninner battle, the more seriously must his whole nervous system suffer\nfrom it. It is this forcible suppression of an instinct so deeply rooted\nin our nature, it is this, in my humble opinion, which first originates\nthe morbid symptoms, that may often be observed in Urnings. But such\nconsequences have nothing in themselves to do with the sexual inversion\nproper to the Urning.\n\n\"Well then; some persons prolong this never-ending inner conflict, and\nruin their constitutions in course of time; others arrive eventually at\nthe conviction that an inborn impulse, which exists in them so\npowerfully, cannot possibly be sinful--so they abandon the impossible\ntask of suppressing it. But just at this point begins in real earnest\nthe Iliad of their sufferings and constant nervous excitations. The\nnormal man, if he looks for means to satisfy his sexual inclinations,\nknows always where to find that without trouble. Not so the Urning. He\nsees the men who attract him; he dares not utter, nay, dares not even\nlet it be perceived, what stirs him. He imagines that he alone of all\nthe people in the world is the subject of emotions so eccentric.\nNaturally, he cultivates the society of young men, but does not venture\nto confide in them. So at last he is driven to seek some relief in\nhimself, some makeshift for the satisfaction he cannot obtain. This\nresults in masturbation, probably excessive, with its usual pernicious\nconsequences to health. When, after the lapse of a certain time, his\nnervous system is gravely compromised, this morbid phenomenon ought not\nto be ascribed to sexual inversion in itself; far rather we have to\nregard it as the logical issue of the Urning's position, driven as he is\nby dominant opinion to forego the gratification which _for him_ is\nnatural and normal, and to betake himself to onanism.\n\n\"But let us now suppose that the Urning has enjoyed the exceptional\ngood-fortune of finding upon his path in life a soul who feels the same\nas he does, or else that he has been early introduced by some initiated\nfriend into the circles of the Urning-world. In this case, it is\npossible that he will have escaped many painful conflicts; yet a long\nseries of exciting cares and anxieties attend on every step he takes. He\nknows indeed now that he is by no means the only individual in the world\nwho harbours these abnormal emotions; he opens his eyes, and marvels to\ndiscover how numerous are his comrades in all social spheres and every\nclass of industry; he also soon perceives that Urnings, no less than\nnormal men and women, have developed prostitution, and that male\nstrumpets can be bought for money just as easily as females.\nAccordingly, there is no longer any difficulty for him in gratifying his\nsexual impulse. But how differently do things develop themselves in his\ncase! How far less fortunate is he than normal man!\n\n\"Let us assume the luckiest case that can befall him. The sympathetic\nfriend, for whom he has been sighing all his life, is found. Yet he\ncannot openly give himself up to this connection, as a young fellow does\nwith the girl he loves. Both of the comrades are continually forced to\nhide their _liaison_; their anxiety on this point is incessant; anything\nlike an excessive intimacy, which could arouse suspicion (especially\nwhen they are not of the same age, or do not belong to the same class\nin society), has to be concealed from the external world. In this way,\nthe very commencement of the relation sets a whole chain of exciting\nincidents in motion: and the dread lest the secret should be betrayed or\ndivined, prevents the unfortunate lover from ever arriving at a simple\nhappiness. Trifling circumstances, which would have no importance for\nanother sort of man, make him tremble: lest suspicion should awake, his\nsecret be discovered, and he become a social outcast, lose his official\nappointment, be excluded from his profession. Is it conceivable that\nthis incessant anxiety and care should pass over him without a trace,\nand not react upon his nervous system?\n\n\"Another individual, less lucky, has not found a sympathetic comrade,\nbut has fallen into the hands of some pretty fellow, who at the outset\nreadily responded to his wishes, till he drew the very deepest secret of\nhis nature forth. At that point the subtlest methods of blackmailing\nbegin to be employed. The miserable persecuted wretch, placed between\nthe alternative of paying money down or of becoming socially impossible,\nlosing a valued position, seeing dishonour bursting upon himself and\nfamily, pays, and still the more he pays, the greedier becomes the\nvampire who sucks his life-blood, until at last there lies nothing else\nbefore him except total financial ruin or disgrace. Who will be\nastonished if the nerves of an individual in this position are not equal\nto the horrid strain?\n\n\"In some cases the nerves give way altogether: mental alienation sets\nin; at last the wretch finds in a madhouse that repose which life would\nnot afford him. Others terminate their unendurable situation by the\ndesperate act of suicide. How many unexplained cases of suicide in young\nmen ought to be ascribed to this cause!\n\n\"I do not think I am far wrong when I maintain that at least half of the\nsuicides of young men are due to this one circumstance. Even in cases\nwhere no merciless blackmailer persecutes the Urning, but a connection\nhas existed which lasted satisfactorily on both sides, still in these\ncases even discovery, or the dread of discovery, leads only too often to\nsuicide. How many officers, who have had connection with their\nsubordinates, how many soldiers, who have lived in such relation with a\ncomrade, when they thought they were about to be discovered, have put a\nbullet through their brains to avoid the coming disgrace! And the same\nthing might be said about all the other callings in life.\n\n\"In consequence of all this, it seems clear that if, as a matter of\nfact, mental abnormalities and real disturbances of the intellect are\ncommoner with Urnings than in the case of other men, this does not\nestablish an inevitable connection between the mental eccentricity and\nthe Urning's specific temperament, or prove that the latter causes the\nformer. According to my firm conviction, mental disturbances and morbid\nsymptoms which may be observed in Urnings ought in the large majority of\ninstances not to be referred to their sexual anomaly; the real fact is\nthat they are educed in them by the prevalent false theory of sexual\ninversion, together with the legislation in force against Urnings and\nthe reigning tone of public opinion. It is only one who has some\napproximate notion of the mental and moral sufferings, of the anxieties\nand perturbations, to which an Urning is exposed, who knows the\nnever-ending hypocrisies and concealments he must practise in order to\ncloak his indwelling inclination, who comprehends the infinite\ndifficulties which oppose the natural satisfaction of his sexual\ndesire--it is only such a one, I say, who is able properly to wonder at\nthe comparative rarity of mental aberrations and nervous ailments in the\nclass of Urnings. The larger proportion of these morbid circumstances\nwould certainly not be developed if the Urning, like the normal man,\ncould obtain a simple and facile gratification of his sexual appetite,\nand if he were not everlastingly exposed to the torturing anxieties I\nhave attempted to describe.\"\n\nThis is powerfully and temperately written. It confirms what I have\nattempted to establish while criticising the medical hypothesis; and\nraises the further question whether the phenomenon of sexual inversion\nought not to be approached from the point of view of embryology rather\nthan of psychical pathology. In other words, is not the true Urning to\nbe regarded as a person born with sexual instincts improperly correlated\nto his sexual organs? This he can be without any inherited or latent\nmorbidity; and the nervous anomalies discovered in him when he falls at\nlast beneath the observation of physicians, may be not the evidence of\nan originally tainted constitution, but the consequence of unnatural\nconditions to which he has been exposed from the age of puberty.\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\nLITERATURE--HISTORICAL, ANTHROPOLOGICAL.\n\n\nNo one has yet attempted a complete history of inverted sexuality in all\nages and in all races. This would be well worth doing. Materials, though\nnot extremely plentiful, lie to hand in the religious books and codes of\nancient nations, in mythology and poetry and literature, in narratives\nof travel, and the reports of observant explorers.\n\nGibbon once suggested that: \"A curious dissertation might be formed on\nthe introduction of p\u00e6derasty after the time of Homer, its progress\namong the Greeks of Asia and Europe, the vehemence of their passions,\nand the thin device of virtue and friendship which amused the\nphilosophers of Athens. But,\" adds the prurient prude, \"Scelera ostendi\noportet dum puniunter, abscondi flagitia.\"\n\nTwo scholars responded to this call. The result is that the chapter on\nGreek love has been very fairly written by equally impartial, equally\nlearned, and independent authors, who approached the subject from\nsomewhat different points of view, but who arrived in the main at\nsimilar conclusions.\n\nThe first of these histories is M. H. E. Meier's article on\n_P\u00e6derastie_ in Ersch and Gruber's \"Allgemeine Encyklop\u00e4die:\" Leipzig,\nBrockhaus, 1837.\n\nThe second is a treatise entitled \"A Problem in Greek Ethics,\" composed\nby an Englishman in English. The anonymous author was not acquainted\nwith Meier's article before he wrote, and only came across it long after\nhe had printed his own essay. This work is extremely rare, ten copies\nonly having been impressed for private use.\n\nEnquirers into the psychology and morality of sexual inversion should\nnot fail to study one or other of these treatises. It will surprise many\na well-read scholar, when he sees the whole list of Greek authorities\nand passages collected and co-ordinated, to find how thoroughly the\nmanners and the literature of that great people were penetrated with\np\u00e6derastia. The myths and heroic legends of prehistoric Hellas, the\neducational institutions of the Dorian state, the dialogues of Plato,\nthe history of the Theban army, the biographies of innumerable eminent\ncitizens--lawgivers and thinkers, governors and generals, founders of\ncolonies and philosophers, poets and sculptors--render it impossible to\nmaintain that this passion was either a degraded vice or a form of\ninherited neuropathy in the race to whom we owe so much of our\nintellectual heritage. Having surveyed the picture, we may turn aside to\nwonder whether modern European nations, imbued with the opinions I have\ndescribed above in the section on Vulgar Errors, are wise in making\nGreek literature a staple of the higher education. Their motto is\n_\u00c9rasez l'inf\u00e2me!_ Here the infamous thing clothes itself like an angel\nof light, and raises its forehead unabashed to heaven among the marble\nperistyles and olive-groves of an unrivalled civilization.\n\nAnother book, written from a medical point of view, is valuable upon the\npathology of sexual inversion and cognate aberrations among the nations\nof antiquity. It bears the title \"Geschichte der Lustseuche im\nAlterthume,\" and is composed by Dr. Julius Rosenbaum.[41] Rosenbaum\nattempts to solve the problem of the existence of syphilis and other\nvenereal diseases in the remote past. This enquiry leads him to\ninvestigate the whole of Greek and Latin literature in its bearing upon\nsexual vice. Students will therefore expect from his pages no profound\npsychological speculations and no idealistic presentation of an\neminently repulsive subject. One of the most interesting chapters of his\nwork is devoted to what Herodotus called [Greek: Nousos ph\u00ealeia] among\nthe Scythians, a wide-spread effemination prevailing in a wild warlike\nand nomadic race. We have already alluded to Krafft-Ebing's remarks on\nthis disease, which has curious points of resemblance with some of the\nfacts of male prostitution in modern cities.[42]\n\nProfessed anthropologists have dealt with the subject, collecting\nevidence from many quarters, and in some cases attempting to draw\ngeneral conclusions. Bastian's \"Der Mensch der Geschichte\"[43] and\nHerbert Spencer's Tables deserve special mention for their encyclop\u00e6dic\nfulness of information regarding the distribution of abnormal sexuality\nand the customs of savage tribes.\n\nIn England an Essay appended to the last volume of Sir Richard Burton's\n\"Arabian Nights\" made a considerable stir upon its first appearance.[44]\nThe author endeavoured to co-ordinate a large amount of miscellaneous\nmatter, and to frame a general theory regarding the origin and\nprevalence of homosexual passions. His erudition, however, is\nincomplete; and though he possesses a copious store of anthropological\ndetails, he is not at the proper point of view for discussing the topic\nphilosophically.[45] For example, he takes for granted that \"Pederasty,\"\nas he calls it, is everywhere and always what the vulgar think it. He\nseems to have no notion of the complicated psychology of Urnings,\nrevealed to us by their recently published confessions in French and\nGerman medical and legal works. Still his views deserve consideration.\n\nBurton regards the phenomenon as \"geographical and climatic, not\nracial.\" He summarises the result of his investigations in the following\nfive conclusions.[46]\n\n\"(1) There exists what I shall call a 'Sotadic Zone,' bounded westwards\nby the northern shores of the Mediterranean (N. lat. 43\u00b0) and by the\nsouthern (N. lat. 30\u00b0). Thus the depth would be 780 to 800 miles,\nincluding meridional France, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and Greece,\nwith the coast-regions of Africa from Morocco to Egypt.\n\n\"(2) Running eastward the Sotadic Zone narrows, embracing Asia Minor,\nMesopotamia and Chald\u00e6a, Afghanistan, Sind, the Punjab, and Kashmir.\n\n\"(3) In Indo-China the belt begins to broaden, enfolding China, Japan,\nand Turkistan.\n\n\"(4) It then embraces the South Sea Islands and the New World, where, at\nthe time of its discovery, Sotadic love was, with some exceptions, an\nestablished racial institution.\n\n\"(5) Within the Sotadic Zone the vice is popular and endemic, held at\nthe worst to be a mere peccadillo, whilst the races to the North and\nSouth of the limits here defined practise it only sporadically, amid the\nopprobrium of their fellows, who, as a rule, are physically incapable of\nperforming the operation, and look upon it with the liveliest disgust.\"\n\nThis is a curious and interesting generalisation, though it does not\naccount for what history has transmitted regarding the customs of the\nKelts, Scythians, Bulgars, Tartars, Normans, and for the acknowledged\nleniency of modern Slavs to this form of vice.\n\nBurton advances an explanation of its origin. \"The only physical cause\nfor the practice which suggests itself to me, and that must be owned to\nbe purely conjectural, is that within the Sotadic Zone there is a\nblending of the masculine and feminine temperament, a crasis which\nelsewhere occurs only sporadically.\"[47] So far as it goes, this\nsuggestion rests upon ground admitted to be empirically sound by the\nmedical writers we have already examined, and vehemently declared to be\nindisputable as a fact of physiology by Ulrichs, whom I shall presently\nintroduce to my readers. But Burton makes no effort to account for the\noccurrence of this crasis of masculine and feminine temperaments in the\nSotadic Zone at large, and for its sporadic appearance in other regions.\nWould it not be more philosophical to conjecture that the crasis, if\nthat exists at all, takes place universally; but that the consequences\nare only tolerated in certain parts of the globe, which he defines as\nthe Sotadic Zone? Ancient Greece and Rome permitted them. Modern Greece\nand Italy have excluded them to the same extent as Northern European\nnations. North and South America, before the Conquest, saw no harm in\nthem. Since its colonisation by Europeans they have been\ndiscountenanced. The phenomenon cannot therefore be regarded as\nspecifically geographical and climatic. Besides, there is one fact\nmentioned by Burton which ought to make him doubt his geographical\ntheory. He says that, after the conquest of Algiers, the French troops\nwere infected to an enormous extent by the habits they had acquired\nthere, and from them it spread so far and wide into civilian society\nthat \"the vice may be said to have been democratised in cities and large\ntowns.\"[48] This surely proves that north of the Sotadic Zone males are\nneither physically incapable of the acts involved in abnormal passion,\nnor gifted with an insuperable disgust for them. Law, and the public\nopinion generated by law and religious teaching, have been deterrent\ncauses in those regions. The problem is therefore not geographical and\nclimatic, but social. Again, may it not be suggested that the absence of\n\"the Vice\" among the negroes and negroid races of South Africa, noticed\nby Burton,[49] is due to their excellent customs of sexual initiation\nand education at the age of puberty--customs which it is the shame of\nmodern civilisation to have left unimitated?\n\nHowever this may be, Burton regards the instinct as natural, not _contre\nnature_, and says that its patients \"deserve, not prosecution but the\npitiful care of the physician and the study of the psychologist.\"[50]\n\nAnother distinguished anthropologist, Paolo Mantegazza, has devoted\nspecial attention to the physiology and psychology of what he calls \"I\npervertimenti dell'amore.\"[51] Starting with the vulgar error that all\nsexual inversion implies the unmentionable act of coition (for which, by\nthe way, he is severely rebuked by Krafft-Ebing, Psy. Sex., p. 92), he\nexplains anomalous passions by supposing that the nerves of pleasurable\nsensation, which ought to be carried to the genital organs, are in some\ncases carried to the rectum.[52] This malformation makes its subject\ndesire _coitum per anum_. That an intimate connection exists between the\nnerves of the reproductive organs and the nerves of the rectum is known\nto anatomists and is felt by everybody. Probably some _cin\u00e6di_ are\nexcited voluptuously in the mode suggested. Seneca, in his Epistles,\nrecords such cases; and it is difficult in any other way to account for\nthe transports felt by male prostitutes of the Weibling type. Finally,\nwriters upon female prostitution mention women who are incapable of\nderiving pleasure from any sexual act except _aversa venus_.\n\nMantegazza's observation deserves to be remembered, and ought to be\ntested by investigation. But, it is obvious, he pushes the corollary he\ndraws from it, as to the prevalence of sexual inversion, too far.\n\nHe distinguishes three classes of sodomy: (1) Perpheric or anatomical,\ncaused by an unusual distribution of the nerves passing from the spine\nto the reproductive organs and the rectum; (2) psychical, which he\ndescribes as \"specific to intelligent men, cultivated, and frequently\nneurotic,\" but which he does not attempt to elucidate, though he calls\nit \"not a vice, but a passion\"; (3) luxurious or lustful, when the\n_aversa venus_ is deliberately chosen on account of what Mantegazza\nterms \"la desolante larghezza\" of the female.[53]\n\nMantegazza winds up, like Burton, by observing that \"sodomy, studied\nwith the pitying and indulgent eye of the physician and the\nphysiologist, is consequently a disease which claims to be cured, and\ncan in many cases be cured.\"[54]\n\nAfter perusing what physicians, historians, and anthropologists have to\nsay about sexual inversion, there is good reason for us to feel uneasy\nas to the present condition of our laws. And yet it might be argued\nthat anomalous desires are not always maladies, not always congenital,\nnot always psychical passions. In some cases they must surely be vices\ndeliberately adopted out of lustfulness, wanton curiosity, and seeking\nafter sensual refinements. The difficult question still remains\nthen--how to repress vice, without acting unjustly toward the naturally\nabnormal, the unfortunate, and the irresponsible.\n\nI pass now to the polemical writings of a man who maintains that\nhomosexual passions, even in their vicious aspects, ought not to be\npunished except in the same degree and under the same conditions as the\nnormal passions of the majority.\n\n\n\n\nVII.\n\nLITERATURE--POLEMICAL.\n\n\nIt can hardly be said that inverted sexuality received a serious and\nsympathetic treatment until a German jurist, named Karl Heinrich\nUlrichs, began his long warfare against what he considered to be\nprejudice and ignorance upon a topic of the greatest moment to himself.\nA native of Hanover, and writing at first under the assumed name of Numa\nNumantius, he kept pouring out a series of polemical, analytical,\ntheoretical, and apologetical pamphlets between the years 1864 and 1870.\nThe most important of these works is a lengthy and comprehensive Essay\nentitled \"Memnon. Die Geschlechtsnatur des mannliebenden Urnings. Eine\nnaturwissenschaftliche Darstellung. Schleiz, 1868.\" Memnon may be used\nas the text-book of its author's theories; but it is also necessary to\nstudy earlier and later treatises--Inclusa, Formatrix, Vindex, Ara Spei,\nGladius Furens, Incubus, Argonauticus, Prometheus, Araxes, Kritische\nPfeile--in order to obtain a complete knowledge of his opinions, and to\nmaster the whole mass of information he has brought together.\n\nThe object of Ulrichs in these miscellaneous writings is twofold. He\nseeks to establish a theory of sexual inversion upon the basis of\nnatural science, proving that abnormal instincts are inborn and healthy\nin a considerable percentage of human beings; that they do not owe their\norigin to bad habits of any kind, to hereditary disease, or to wilful\ndepravity; that they are incapable in the majority of cases of being\nextirpated or converted into normal channels; and that the men subject\nto them are neither physically, intellectually, nor morally inferior to\nnormally constituted individuals. Having demonstrated these points to\nhis own satisfaction, and supported his views with a large induction of\ninstances and a respectable show of erudition, he proceeds to argue that\nthe present state of the law in many states of Europe is flagrantly\nunjust to a class of innocent persons, who may indeed be regarded as\nunfortunate and inconvenient, but who are guilty of nothing which\ndeserves reprobation and punishment. In this second and polemical branch\nof his exposition, Ulrichs assumes, for his juristic starting-point,\nthat each human being is born with natural rights which legislation\nought not to infringe but protect. He does not attempt to confute the\nutilitarian theory of jurisprudence, which regards laws as regulations\nmade by the majority in the supposed interests of society. Yet a large\namount of his reasoning is designed to invalidate utilitarian arguments\nin favour of repression, by showing that no social evil ensues in those\ncountries which have placed abnormal sexuality upon the same footing as\nthe normal, and that the toleration of inverted passion threatens no\ndanger to the well-being of nations.\n\nAfter this prelude, an abstract of Ulrichs' theory and his pleading may\nbe given, deduced from the comparative study of his numerous essays.\n\nThe right key to the solution of the problem is to be found in\nphysiology, in that obscure department of natural science which deals\nwith the evolution of sex. The embryo, as we are now aware, contains an\nundetermined element of sex during the first months of pregnancy. This\nis gradually worked up into male and female organs of procreation; and\nthese, when the age of puberty arrives, are generally accompanied by\ncorresponding male and female appetites. That is to say, the man in an\nimmense majority of cases desires the woman, and the woman desires the\nman. Nature, so to speak, aims at differentiating the undecided foetus\ninto a human being of one or the other sex, the propagation of the\nspecies being the main object of life. Still, as Aristotle puts it, and\nas we observe in many of her operations, \"Nature wishes, but has not\nalways the power\": [Greek: h\u00ea physis bouletai men all' ou dynatai].\nConsequently in respect of physical structure, there come to light\nimperfect individuals, so-called hermaphrodites, whose sexual apparatus\nis so far undetermined that many a real male has passed a portion of his\nlife under a mistake, has worn female clothes, and has cohabited by\npreference with men. Likewise, in respect of spiritual nature, there\nappear males who, notwithstanding their marked masculine organisation,\nfeel from the earliest childhood a sexual proclivity toward men, with a\ncorresponding indifference for women. In some of these abnormal, but\nnatural, beings, the appetite for men resembles the normal appetite of\nmen for women; in others it resembles the normal appetite of women for\nmen. That is to say, some prefer effeminate males, dressed in feminine\nclothes and addicted to female occupations. Others prefer powerful\nadults of an ultra-masculine stamp. A third class manifest their\npredilection for healthy young men in the bloom of adolescence, between\nnineteen and twenty. The attitude of such persons towards women also\nvaries. In genuine cases of inborn sexual inversion a positive horror is\nfelt when the woman has to be carnally known; and this horror is of the\nsame sort as that which normal men experience when they think of\ncohabitation with a male.[55] In others the disinclination does not\namount to repugnance; but the abnormal man finds considerable difficulty\nin stimulating himself to the sexual act with females, and derives a\nvery imperfect satisfaction from the same. A certain type of man, in the\nlast place, seems to be indifferent, desiring males at one time and\nfemales at another.\n\nIn order to gain clearness in his exposition, Ulrichs has invented names\nfor these several species. The so-called hermaphrodite he dismisses with\nthe German designation of _Zwitter_. Imperfect individuals of this type\nare not to be considered, because it is well known that the male or\nfemale organs are never developed in one and the same body. It is also,\nas we shall presently discover, an essential part of his theory to\nregard the problem of inversion psychologically.\n\nThe normal man he calls _Dioning_, the abnormal man _Urning_. Among\nUrnings, those who prefer effeminate males are christened by the name of\n_Mannling_; those who prefer powerful and masculine adults receive the\nname of _Weibling_; the Urning who cares for adolescents is styled a\n_Zwischen-Urning_. Men who seemed to be indifferently attracted by both\nsexes, he calls _Uranodioninge_. A genuine Dioning, who, from lack of\nwomen, or under the influence of special circumstances, consorts with\npersons of his own sex, is denominated _Uraniaster_. A genuine Urning,\nwho has put restraint upon his inborn impulse, who has forced himself to\ncohabit with women, or has perhaps contracted marriage, is said to be\n_Virilisirt_--a virilised Urning.\n\nThese outlandish names, though seemingly pedantic and superfluous, have\ntheir technical value, and are necessary to the understanding of\nUlrichs' system. He is dealing exclusively with individuals classified\nby common parlance as males without distinction. Ulrichs believes that\nhe can establish a real natural division between men proper, whom he\ncalls _Dioninge_, and males of an anomalous sexual development, whom he\ncalls _Urninge_. Having proceeded so far, he finds the necessity of\ndistinguishing three broad types of the Urning, and of making out the\ncrosses between Urning and Dioning, of which he also find three species.\nIt will appear in the sequel that whatever may be thought about his\npsychological hypothesis, the nomenclature he has adopted is useful in\ndiscussion, and corresponds to well-defined phenomena, of which we have\nabundant information. The following table will make his analysis\nsufficiently plain:--\n\n          { (1) Man or Dioning ... Uraniaster, when\n          {                        he has acquired the\n          {                        tastes of the Urning.\n          {\n     The  {            { Mannling.\n    Human { (2) Urning { Weibling.\n     Male {            { Zwischen-Urning.\n          {            { Virilised Urning.\n          {\n          { (3) Uranodioning.\n          { (4) Hermaphrodite.\n\nBroadly speaking, the male includes two main species: Dioning and\nUrning, men with normal and men with abnormal instincts. What, then,\nconstitutes the distinction between them? How are we justified in\nregarding them as radically divergent?\n\nUlrichs replies that the phenomenon of sexual inversion is to be\nexplained by physiology, and particularly by the evolution of the\nembryo.[56] Nature fails to complete her work regularly and in every\ninstance. Having succeeded in differentiating a male with full-formed\nsexual organs from the undecided foetus, she does not always effect the\nproper differentiation of that portion of the psychical being in which\nresides the sexual appetite. There remains a female soul in a male body.\n_Anima muliebris virili corpore inclusa_, is the formula adopted by\nUlrichs; and he quotes a passage from the \"Vestiges of Creation,\" which\nsuggests that a male is a more advanced product of sexual evolution than\nthe female. The male instinct of sex is a more advanced product than the\nfemale instinct. Consequently men appear whose body has been\ndifferentiated as masculine, but whose sexual instinct has not\nprogressed beyond the feminine stage.\n\nUlrichs' own words ought to be cited upon this fundamental part of his\nhypothesis, since he does not adopt the opinion that the Urning is a\nDioning arrested at a certain point of development; but rather that\nthere is an element of uncertainty attending the simultaneous evolution\nof physical and psychical factors from the indeterminate ground-stuff.\n\"Sex,\" says he, \"is only an affair of development. Up to a certain stage\nof embryonic existence all living mammals are hermaphroditic. A certain\nnumber of them advance to the condition of what I call man (Doining),\nothers to what I call woman (Dioningin), a third class become what I\ncall _Urning_ (including _Urningin_). It ensues therefrom that between\nthese three sexes there are no primary, but only secondary differences.\nAnd yet true differences, constituting sexual species, exist as\nfacts.\"[57] Man, Woman, and Urning--the third being either a male or a\nfemale in whom we observe a real and inborn, not an acquired or a\nspurious, inversion of appetite--are consequently regarded by him as the\nthree main divisions of humanity viewed from the point of view of sex.\nThe embryonic ground-stuff in the case of each was homologous; but while\nthe two former, Man and Woman, have been normally differentiated, the\nUrning's sexual instinct, owing to some imperfection in the process of\ndevelopment, does not correspond to his or her sexual organs.\n\nThe line of division between the sexes, even in adult life, is a subtle\none; and the physical structure of men and women yields indubitable\nsigns of their emergence from a common ground-stuff. Perfect men have\nrudimentary breasts. Perfect women carry a rudimentary penis in their\nclitoris. The raph\u00e9 of the scrotum shows where the aperture, common at\nfirst to masculine and feminine beings, but afterwards only retained in\nthe female vulva, was closed up to form a male. Other anatomical details\nof the same sort might be adduced. But these will suffice to make\nthinking persons reflect upon the mysterious dubiety of what we call\nsex. That gradual development, which ends in normal differentiation,\ngoes on very slowly. It is only at the age of puberty that a boy\ndistinguishes himself abruptly from a girl, by changing his voice and\ngrowing hair on parts of the body where it is not usually found in\nwomen. This being so, it is surely not surprising that the sexual\nappetite should sometimes fail to be normally determined, or in other\nwords should be inverted.\n\nUlrichs maintains that the body of an Urning is masculine, his soul\nfeminine, so far as sex is concerned. Accordingly, though physically\nunfitted for coition with men, he is imperatively drawn towards them by\na natural impulse. Opponents meet him with this objection: \"Your\nposition is untenable. Body and soul constitute one inseparable entity.\"\nSo they do, replies Ulrichs; but the way in which these factors of the\nperson are combined in human beings differs extremely, as I can prove by\nindisputable facts. The body of a male is visible to the eyes, is\nmensurable and ponderable, is clearly marked in its specific organs. But\nwhat we call his soul--his passions, inclinations, sensibilities,\nemotional characteristics, sexual desires--eludes the observation of the\nsenses. This second factor, like the first, existed in the undetermined\nstages of the foetus. And when I find that the soul, this element of\ninstinct and emotion and desire existing in a male, had been directed\nin its sexual appetite from earliest boyhood towards persons of the male\nsex, I have the right to qualify it with the attribute of femininity.\nYou assume that soul-sex is indissolubly connected and inevitably\nderived from body-sex. The facts contradict you, as I can prove by\nreferring to the veracious autobiographies of Urnings and to known\nphenomena regarding them.\n\nSuch is the theory of Ulrichs; and though we may not incline to his\npeculiar mode of explaining the want of harmony between sexual organs\nand sexual appetite in Urnings, there can be no doubt that in some way\nor other their eccentric diathesis must be referred to the obscure\nprocess of sexual differentiation.[58] Perhaps he antedates the moment\nat which the aberration sometimes takes its origin, not accounting\nsufficiently for imperative impressions made on the imagination or the\nsenses of boys during the years which precede puberty.\n\nHowever this may be, the tendency to such inversion is certainly inborn\nin an extremely large percentage of cases. That can be demonstrated from\nthe reports of persons whose instincts were directed to the male before\nthey knew what sex meant. It is worth extracting passages from these\nconfessions.[59] (1) \"As a schoolboy of eight years, I sat near a\ncomrade rather older than myself; and how happy was I, when he touched\nme. That was the first indefinite perception of an inclination which\nremained a secret for me till my nineteenth year.\" (2) \"Going back to my\nseventh year, I had a lively feeling for a schoolfellow, two years older\nthan myself; I was happy when I could be as close as possible to him,\nand in our games could place my head near to his private parts.\" (3) \"At\nten years of age he had a romantic attachment for a comrade; and the\npassion for people of his own sex became always more and more marked.\"\n(4) Another confessed that \"already at the age of four he used to dream\nof handsome grooms.\" (5) A fifth said: \"My passion for people of my own\nsex awoke at the age of eight. I used to enjoy my brother's nakedness;\nwhile bathing with other children, I took no interest at all in girls,\nbut felt the liveliest attraction toward boys.\" (6) A sixth dates his\nexperience from his sixth or seventh year. (7) A seventh remembers that\n\"while yet a boy, before the age of puberty, sleeping in the company of\na male agitated him to such an extent that he lay for hours awake.\" (8)\nAn eighth relates that \"while three years old, I got possession of a\nfashion book, cut out the pictures of men, and kissed them to tatters.\nThe pictures of women I did not care to look at.\" (9) A ninth goes back\nto his thirteenth year, and a school friendship. (10) A tenth records\nthe same about his seventh year. (11) An eleventh says that his inverted\ninstincts awoke in early childhood, and that from his ninth year onward\nhe fell over and over again in love with adult men. (12) A twelfth spoke\nas follows: \"So far back as I can remember, I was always subject to\nthis passion. Quite as a child, young men made deeper impression on me\nthan women or girls. The earliest sensual perturbation of which I have\nany recollection was excited by a tutor, when I was nine or ten, and my\ngreatest pleasure was to be allowed to ride astride upon his leg.\" (13)\nA thirteenth: \"From the earliest childhood I have been haunted by\nvisions of men, and only of men; never has a woman exercised the least\ninfluence over me. At school I kept these instincts to myself, and lived\nquite retired.\" (14) A fourteenth can recollect \"receiving a distinctly\nsensual impression at the age of four, when the man-servants caressed\nhim.\" (15) A fifteenth says that at the age of thirteen, together with\npuberty, the inversion of appetite awoke in him. (16) A sixteenth\nconfesses that he felt an unconquerable desire for soldiers in his\nthirteenth year. (17) A seventeenth remembers having always dreamed only\nof men; and at school, he says, \"when my comrades looked at pretty girls\nand criticised them during our daily promenades, I could not comprehend\nhow they found anything to admire in such creatures.\" On the other hand,\nthe sight and touch of soldiers and strong fellows excited him\nenormously. (18) An eighteenth dates the awakening of passion in him at\nthe age of eleven, when he saw a handsome man in church; and from that\ntime forward his instinct never altered. (19) A nineteenth fell in love\nwith an officer at the age of thirteen, and since then always desired\nvigorous adult males. (20) A twentieth confessed to have begun to love\nboys of his own age, sensually, while only eight years of age. (21) A\ntwenty-first records that, when he was eight, he began to crave after\nthe sight of naked men.\n\nIn addition to these cases a great many might be culled from the\nwritings of Ulrichs, who has published a full account from his own early\nexperience.[60] \"I was fifteen years and ten and a half months old,\" he\nsays, \"when the first erotic dream announced the arrival of puberty.\nNever before that period had I known sexual gratification of any kind\nwhatever. The occurrence was therefore wholly normal. From a much\nearlier time, however, I had been subject to emotions, partly romantic,\npartly sensual, without any definite desire, and never for one and the\nsame young man. These aimless yearnings of the senses plagued me in my\nsolitary hours, and I could not overcome them. During my fifteenth year,\nwhile at school at Detmold, the vague longing took a twofold shape.\nFirst, I came across Norman's 'S\u00e4ulenordnungen,' and there I was\nvehemently attracted by the figure of a Greek god or hero, standing in\nnaked beauty. Secondly, while studying in my little room, or before\ngoing to sleep, the thought used suddenly and irresistibly to rise up in\nmy mind--If only a soldier would clamber through the window and come\ninto my room! I then painted in my fancy the picture of a splendid\nsoldier of twenty to twenty-two years old. And yet I had no definite\nidea of why I wanted him; nor had I ever come in contact with soldiers.\nAbout two years after this, I happened to sit next a soldier in a\npost-carriage. The contact with his thigh excited me to the highest\ndegree.\" Ulrichs also relates that in his tenth year he conceived an\nenthusiastic and romantic friendship for a boy two years his senior.\n\nThat experiences of the kind are very common, every one who has at all\nconversed with Urnings knows well. From private sources of\nunquestionable veracity, these may be added. _A_ relates that, before\neight years old, reverie occurred to him during the day, and dreams at\nnight, of naked sailors. When he began to study Latin and Greek, he\ndreamed of young gods, and at the age of fourteen, became deeply\nenamoured of the photograph of the Praxitelian Er\u00f4s in the Vatican. He\nhad a great dislike for physical contact with girls; and with boys was\nshy and reserved, indulging in no acts of sense. _B_ says that during\nhis tenderest boyhood, long before the age of puberty, he fell in love\nwith a young shepherd on one of his father's farms, for whom he was so\nenthusiastic that the man had to be sent to a distant moor. _C_ at the\nsame early age, conceived a violent affection for a footman; _D_ for an\nofficer, who came to stay at his home; _E_ for the bridegroom of his\neldest sister.\n\nIn nearly all the cases here cited, the inverted sexual instinct sprang\nup spontaneously. Only a few of the autobiographies record seduction by\nan elder man as the origin of the affection. In none of them was it ever\nwholly overcome. Only five out of the twenty-seven men married. Twenty\ndeclare that, tortured by the sense of their dissimilarity to other\nmales, haunted by shame and fear, they forced themselves to frequent\npublic women soon after the age of puberty. Some found themselves\nimpotent. Others succeeded in accomplishing their object with\ndifficulty, or by means of evoking the images of men on whom their\naffections were set. All, except one, concur in emphatically asserting\nthe superior attraction which men have always exercised for them over\nwomen. Women leave them, if not altogether disgusted, yet cold and\nindifferent. Men rouse their strongest sympathies and instincts. The one\nexception just alluded to is what Ulrichs would call an Uranodioning.\nThe others are capable of friendship with women, some even of \u00e6sthetic\nadmiration, and the tenderest regard for them, but not of genuine sexual\ndesire. Their case is literally an inversion of the ordinary.\n\nSome observations may be made on Ulrichs' theory. It is now recognised\nby the leading authorities, medical and medico-juristic, in Germany, by\nwriters like Casper-Liman and Krafft-Ebing, that sexual inversion is\nmore often than not innate. So far, without discussing the physiological\nor metaphysical explanations of this phenomenon, without considering\nwhether Ulrichs is right in his theory of _anima muliebris inclusa in\ncorpore virili_, or whether heredity, insanity, and similar general\nconditions are to be held responsible for the fact, it may be taken as\nadmitted on all sides that the sexual diathesis in question is in a very\nlarge number of instances congenital. But Ulrichs seems to claim too\nmuch for the position he has won. He ignores the frequency of acquired\nhabits. He shuts his eyes to the force of fashion and depravity. He\nreckons men like Horace and Ovid and Catullus, among the ancients, who\nwere clearly indifferent in their tastes (as indifferent as the modern\nTurks) to the account of Uranodionings. In one word, he is so\nenthusiastic for his physiological theory that he overlooks all other\naspects of the question. Nevertheless, he has acquired the right to an\nimpartial hearing, while pleading in defence of those who are\nacknowledged by all investigators of the problem to be the subjects of\nan inborn misplacement of the sexual appetite.\n\nLet us turn, then, to the consideration of his arguments in favour of\nfreeing Urnings from the terrible legal penalties to which they are at\npresent subject, and, if this were possible, from the no less terrible\nsocial condemnation to which they are exposed by the repugnance they\nengender in the normally constituted majority. Dealing with these\nexceptions to the kindly race of men and women, these unfortunates who\nhave no family ties knotted by bonds by mutual love, no children to\nexpect, no reciprocity of passion to enjoy, mankind, says Ulrichs, has\nhitherto acted just in the same way as a herd of deer acts when it\ndrives the sickly and the weakly out to die in solitude; burdened with\ncontumely, and cut off from common sympathy.\n\nFrom the point of view of morality and law, he argues, it does not\nsignify whether we regard the sexual inversion of an Urning as morbid or\nas natural. He has become what he is in the dawn and first emergence of\nemotional existence. You may contend, that he derives perverted\ninstincts from his ancestry, that he is the subject of a psychical\ndisorder, that from the cradle he is predestined by atavism or disease\nto misery. I maintain that he is one of nature's sports, a creature\nhealthy and well organised, evolved in her superb indifference to\naberrations from the normal type. We need not quarrel over our\nsolutions of the problem. The fact that he is there, among us, and that\nhe constitutes an ever-present factor in our social system, has to be\nfaced. How are we to deal with him? Has society the right to punish\nindividuals sent into the world with homosexual instincts? Putting the\nquestion at its lowest point, admitting that these persons are the\nvictims of congenital morbidity, ought they to be treated as criminals?\nIt is established that their appetites, being innate, are _to them_ at\nleast natural and undepraved; the common appetites, being excluded from\ntheir sexual scheme, are _to them_ unnatural and abhorrent. Ought not\nsuch beings, instead of being hunted down and persecuted by legal\nbloodhounds, to be regarded with pitying solicitude as among the most\nunfortunate of human beings, doomed as they are to inextinguishable\nlongings and life-long deprivation of that which is the chief prize of\nman's existence on this planet, a reciprocated love? As your laws at\npresent stand, you include all cases of sexual inversion under the one\ndomination of crime. You make exceptions in some special instances, and\ntreat the men involved as lunatics. But the Urning is neither criminal\nnor insane. He is only less fortunate than you are, through an accident\nof birth, which is at present obscure to our imperfect science of sexual\ndetermination.\n\nSo far Ulrichs is justified in his pleading. When it has been admitted\nthat sexual inversion is usually a fact of congenital diathesis, the\ncriminal law stands in no logical relation to the phenomenon. It is\nmonstrous to punish people as wilfully wicked because, having been born\nwith the same organs and the same appetites as their neighbours, they\nare doomed to suffer under the frightful disability of not being able to\nuse their organs or to gratify their appetites in the ordinary way.\n\nBut here arises a difficulty, which cannot be ignored, since upon it is\nbased the only valid excuse for the position taken up by society in\ndealing with this matter. Not all men and women possessed by abnormal\nsexual desires can claim that these are innate. It is certain that the\nhabits of sodomy are frequently acquired under conditions of exclusion\nfrom the company of persons of the other sex--as in public schools,\nbarracks, prisons, convents, ships. In some cases they are deliberately\nadopted by natures tired of normal sexual pleasure. They may even become\nfashionable and epidemic. Lastly, it is probable that curiosity and\nimitation communicate them to otherwise normal individuals at a\nsusceptible moment of development. Therefore society has the right to\nsay: Those who are the unfortunate subjects of inborn sexual inversion\nshall not be allowed to indulge their passions, lest the mischief should\nspread, and a vicious habit should contaminate our youth. From the\nutilitarian point of view, society is justified in protecting itself\nagainst a minority of exceptional beings whom it regards as pernicious\nto the general welfare. From any point of view, the majority is strong\nenough to coerce to inborn instincts and to trample on the anguish of a\nfew unfortunates. But, asks Ulrichs, is this consistent with humanity,\nis it consistent with the august ideal of impartial equity? Are people,\nsound in body, vigorous in mind, wholesome in habit, capable of generous\naffections, good servants of the state, trustworthy in all the ordinary\nrelations of life, to be condemned at law as criminals because they\ncannot feel sexually as the majority feel, because they find some\nsatisfaction for their inborn want in ways which the majority dislike?\n\nSeeking a solution of the difficulty stated in the foregoing paragraph,\nUlrichs finds it in fact and history. His answer is that if society\nleaves nature to take her course, with the abnormal as well as with the\nnormal subjects of sexual inclination, society will not suffer. In\ncountries where legal penalties have been removed from inverted\nsexuality, where this is placed upon the same footing as the normal--in\nFrance, Bavaria (?), the Netherlands (?)--no inconvenience has hitherto\narisen.[61] There has ensued no sudden and flagrant outburst of a\ndepraved habit, no dissemination of a spreading moral poison. On the\nother hand, in countries where these penalties exist and are\nenforced--in England, for example, and in the metropolis of England,\nLondon--inverted sexuality runs riot, despite of legal prohibitions,\ndespite of threats of prison, dread of exposure, and the intolerable\npest of organised _chantage_. In the eyes of Ulrichs, society is engaged\nin sitting on a safety-valve, which if nature were allowed to operate\nunhindered would do society no harm, but rather good. The majority, he\nthinks, are not going to become Urnings, for the simple reason that they\nhave not the unhappy constitution of the Urning. Cease to persecute\nUrnings, accept them as inconsiderable, yet real, factors, in the social\ncommonwealth, leave them to themselves, and you will not be the worse\nfor it, and will also not carry on your conscience the burden of\nintolerant vindictiveness.\n\nSubstantiating this position, Ulrichs demonstrates that acquired habits\nof sexual inversion are almost invariably thrown off by normal natures.\nYour boys at public schools, he says, behave as though they were\nUrnings. In the lack of women, at the time when their passions are\npredominant, they yield themselves up together to mutual indulgences\nwhich would bring your laws down with terrible effect upon adults. You\nare aware of this. You send your sons to Eton and to Harrow, and you\nknow very well what goes on there. Yet you remain untroubled in your\nminds. And why? Because you feel convinced that they will return to\ntheir congenital instincts.\n\nWhen the school, the barrack, the prison, the ship has been abandoned,\nthe male reverts to the female. This is the truth about Dionings. The\nlarge majority of men and women remain normal, simply because they were\nmade normal. They cannot find the satisfaction of their nature in those\ninverted practices to which they yielded for a time through want of\nnormal outlet. Society risks little by the occasional caprice of the\nschool, the barrack, the prison, and the ship. Some genuine Urnings may,\nindeed, discover their inborn inclination by means of the process to\nwhich you subject them. But you are quite right in supposing that a\nDioning, though you have forced him to become for a time an Uraniaster,\nwill never in the long run appear as an Urning. The extensive experience\nwhich English people possess regarding such matters, owing to the\nnotorious condition of their public schools, goes to confirm Ulrichs'\nposition. Headmasters know how many Uraniasters they have dealt with,\nwhat excellent Dionings they become, and how comparatively rare, and yet\nhow incorrigibly steadfast, are the genuine Urnings in their flock.\n\nThe upshot of this matter is that we are continually forcing our young\nmen into conditions under which, if sexual inversion were an acquired\nattribute, it would become stereotyped in their natures. Yet it does not\ndo so. Provisionally, because they are shut off from girls, because they\nfind no other outlet for their sex at the moment of its most imperious\nclaims, they turn toward males, and treat their younger school-fellows\nin ways which would consign an adult to penal servitude. They are\nUraniasters by necessity and _faute de mieux_. But no sooner are they\nlet loose upon the world than the majority revert to normal channels.\nThey pick up women in the streets, and form connections, as the phrase\ngoes. Some undoubtedly, in this fiery furnace through which they have\nbeen passed, discover their inborn sexual inversion. Then, when they\ncannot resist the ply of their proclivity, you condemn them as criminals\nin their later years. Is that just? Would it not be better to revert\nfrom our civilisation to the manners of the savage man--to initiate\nyouths into the mysteries of sex, and to give each in his turn the\nchance of developing a normal instinct by putting him during his time of\npuberty freely and frankly to the female? If you abhor Urnings, as you\nsurely do, you are at least responsible for their mishap by the\nextraordinary way in which you bring them up. At all events, when they\ndevelop into the eccentric beings which they are, you are the last\npeople in the world who have any right to punish them with legal\npenalties and social obloquy.\n\nConsidering the present state of the law in most countries to be\ninequitable toward a respectable minority of citizens, Ulrichs proposes\nthat Urnings should be placed upon the same footing as other men. That\nis to say, sexual relations between males and males should not be\ntreated as criminal, unless they be attended with violence (as in the\ncase of rape), or be carried on in such a way as to offend the public\nsense of decency (in places of general resort or on the open street), or\nthirdly be entertained between an adult and a boy under age (the\nprotected age to be decided as in the case of girls). What he demands is\nthat when an adult male, freely and of his own consent, complies with\nthe proposals of an adult person of his own sex, and their intercourse\ntakes place with due regard for public decency, neither party shall be\nliable to prosecution and punishment at law. In fact he would be\nsatisfied with the same conditions as those prevalent in France, and\nsince June, 1889, in Italy.\n\nIf so much were conceded by the majority of normal people to the\nabnormal minority, continues Ulrichs, an immense amount of misery and\nfurtive vice would be at once abolished. And it is difficult to conceive\nwhat evil results would follow. A defender of the present laws of\nEngland, Prussia, &c., might indeed reply: \"This is opening a free way\nto the seduction and corruption of young men.\" But young men are surely\nat least as capable of defending themselves against seduction and\ncorruption as young women are. Nay, they are far more able, not merely\nbecause they are stronger, but because they are not usually weakened by\nan overpowering sexual instinct on which the seducer plays. Yet the\nseduction and corruption of young women is tolerated, in spite of the\nattendant consequences of illegitimate childbirth, and all which that\ninvolves. This toleration of the seduction of women by men springs from\nthe assumption that only the normal sexual appetite is natural. The\nseduction of a man by a male passes for criminal, because the inverted\nsexual instinct is regarded as unnatural, depraved, and wilfully\nperverse. On the hypothesis that individuals subject to perverted\ninstincts can suppress them at pleasure or convert them into normal\nappetite, it is argued that they must be punished. But when the real\nfacts come to be studied, it will be found: first, that these instincts\nare inborn in Urnings, and are therefore in their case natural;\nsecondly, that the suppression of them is tantamount to life-long\nabstinence under the constant torture of sexual solicitation; thirdly,\nthat the conversion of them into normal channels is in a large\npercentage of cases totally impossible, in nearly all where it has been\nattempted is only partially successful, and where marriage ensues has\ngenerally ended in misery for both parties. Ulrichs, it will be noticed,\ndoes not distinguish between Urnings, in whom the inversion is admitted\nto be congenital, and Uraniasters, in whom it has been acquired or\ndeliberately adopted. And it would be very difficult to frame laws which\nshould take cognisance of these two classes. The Code Napoleon\nlegalises the position of both, theoretically at any rate. The English\ncode treats both as criminal, doing thereby, it must be admitted, marked\ninjustice to recognised Urnings, who at the worst are morbid or insane,\nor sexually deformed, through no fault of their own.\n\nIn the present state of things, adds Ulrichs, the men who yield their\nbodies to abnormal lovers, do not merely do so out of compliance,\nsympathy, or the desire for reasonable reward. Too often they speculate\nupon the illegality of the connection, and have their main object in the\nextortion of money by threats of exposure. Thus the very basest of all\ntrades, that of _chantage_, is encouraged by the law. Alter the law, and\ninstead of increasing vice, you will diminish it; for a man who should\nthen meet the advances of an Urning, would do so out of compliance, or,\nas is the case with female prostitutes, upon the expectation of a\nreasonable gain. The temptation to ply a disgraceful profession with the\nobject of extorting money would be removed. Moreover, as regards\nindividuals alike abnormally constituted, voluntary and mutually\nsatisfying relations, free from degrading risks, and possibly permanent,\nmight be formed between responsible agents. Finally, if it be feared\nthat the removal of legal disabilities would turn the whole male\npopulation into Urnings, consider whether London is now so much purer in\nthis respect than Paris?\n\nOne serious objection to recognising and tolerating sexual inversion has\nalways been that it tends to check the population. This was a sound\npolitical and social argument in the time of Moses, when a small and\nmilitant tribe needed to multiply to the full extent of its procreative\ncapacity. It is by no means so valid in our age, when the habitable\nportions of the globe are rapidly becoming overcrowded.[62] Moreover, we\nmust bear in mind that society, under the existing order, sanctions\nfemale prostitution, whereby men and women, the normally procreative,\nare sterilised to an indefinite extent. Logic, in these circumstances,\nrenders it equitable and ridiculous to deny a sterile exercise of sex to\nabnormal men and women, who are by instinct and congenital diathesis\nnon-procreative.\n\nAs the result of these considerations, Ulrichs concludes that there is\nno real ground for the persecution of Urnings except as may be found in\nthe repugnance by the vast numerical majority for an insignificant\nminority. The majority encourages matrimony, condones seduction,\nsanctions prostitution, legalises divorce in the interests of its own\nsexual proclivities. It makes temporary or permanent unions illegal for\nthe minority whose inversion of instinct it abhors. And this\npersecution, in the popular mind at any rate, is justified, like many\nother inequitable acts of prejudice or ignorance, by theological\nassumptions and the so-called mandates of revelation.\n\nIn the next place it is objected that inversed sexuality is demoralising\nto the manhood of a nation, that it degrades the dignity of a man, and\nthat it is incapable of moral elevation. Each of these points may be\ntaken separately. They are all of them at once and together contradicted\nby the history of ancient Greece. There the most warlike sections of the\nrace, the Dorians of Crete and Sparta, and the Thebans, organised the\nlove of male for male because of the social and military advantages they\nfound in it. Their annals abound in eminent instances of heroic\nenthusiasm, patriotic devotion, and high living, inspired by homosexual\npassion. The fighting peoples of the world, Kelts in ancient story,\nNormans, Turks, Afghans, Albanians, Tartars, have been distinguished by\nthe frequency among them of what popular prejudice regards as an\neffeminate vice.\n\nWith regard to the dignity of man, is there, asks Ulrichs, anything more\ndegrading to humanity in sexual acts performed between male and male\nthan in similar acts performed between male and female. In a certain\nsense all sex has an element of grossness which inspires repugnance. The\ngods, says Swinburne,\n\n    \"Have strewed one marriage-bed with tears and fire,\n     For extreme loathing and supreme desire.\"\n\nIt would not be easy to maintain that a curate begetting his fourteenth\nbaby on the body of a worn-out wife is a more elevating object of\nmental contemplation than Harmodius in the embrace of Aristogeiton, or\nthat a young man sleeping with a prostitute picked up in the Haymarket\nis cleaner than his brother sleeping with a soldier picked up in the\nPark. Much of this talk about the dignity of man, says Ulrichs, proceeds\nfrom a vulgar misconception as to the nature of inverted sexual desire.\nPeople assume that Urnings seek their pleasure only or mainly in an act\nof unmentionable indecency. The exact opposite, he assures them, is the\ntruth. The act in question is no commoner between men and men than it is\nbetween men and women. Ulrichs, upon this point, may be suspected,\nperhaps, as an untrustworthy witness. His testimony, however, is\nconfirmed by Krafft-Ebing, who, as we have seen, has studied sexual\ninversion long and minutely from the point of view of psychical\npathology. \"As regards the nature of their sexual gratification,\" he\nwrites, \"it must be established at the outset that the majority of them\nare contented with reciprocal embraces; the act commonly ascribed to\nthem they generally abhor as much as normal men do; and, inasmuch as\nthey always prefer adults, they are in no sense specially dangerous to\nboys.\"[63] This author proceeds to draw a distinction between Urnings in\nwhom sexual inversion is congenital, and old debauchees or half-idiotic\nindividuals, who are in the habit of misusing boys. The vulgar have\nconfounded two different classes; and everybody who studies the\npsychology of Urnings is aware that this involves a grave injustice to\nthe latter.\n\n\"But, after all,\" continues the objector, \"you cannot show that inverted\nsexuality is capable of any moral elevation.\" Without appealing to\nantiquity, the records of which confute this objection overwhelmingly,\none might refer to the numerous passages in Ulrich's writings where he\nrelates the fidelity, loyalty, self-sacrifice, and romantic enthusiasm\nwhich frequently accompany such loves, and raises them above baseness.\nBut, since here again he may be considered a suspicious witness, it will\nsuffice, as before, to translate a brief passage from Krafft-Ebing. \"The\nUrning loves, idolizes his friend, quite as much as the normal man loves\nand idolizes his girl. He is capable of making for him the greatest\nsacrifices. He suffers the pangs of unhappy, often unreturned,\naffection; feels jealousy, mourns under the fear of his friend's\ninfidelity.\"[64] When the time comes for speaking about Walt Whitman's\ntreatment of this topic, it will appear that the passion of a man for\nhis comrade has been idealised in fact and deed, as well as in poetry.\nFor the present it is enough to remark that a kind of love, however\nspontaneous and powerful, which is scouted, despised, tabooed, banned,\npunished, relegated to holes and corners, cannot be expected to show its\nbest side to the world. The sense of sin and crime and danger, the\nhumiliation and repression and distress to which the unfortunate pariahs\nof inverted sexuality are daily and hourly exposed must inevitably\ndeteriorate the nobler elements in their emotion. Give abnormal love\nthe same chance as normal love, subject it to the wholesome control of\npublic opinion, allow it to be self-respecting, draw it from dark slums\ninto the light of day, strike off its chains and set it free--and I am\nconfident says Ulrichs, that it will exhibit analogous virtues,\ncheckered, of course, by analogous vices, to those with which you are\nfamiliar in the mutual love of male and female. The slave has of\nnecessity a slavish soul. The way to elevate is to emancipate him.\n\n\"All that may be true,\" replies the objector: \"it is even possible that\nsociety will take the hard case of your Urnings into consideration, and\nlisten to their bitter cry. But, in the meanwhile, supposing these\ninverted instincts to be inborn, supposing them to be irrepressible and\ninconvertible, supposing them to be less dirty and nasty than they are\ncommonly considered, is it not the plain duty of the individual to\nsuppress them, so long as the law of his country condemns them?\" No,\nrejoins Ulrichs, a thousand times no! It is only the ignorant antipathy\nof the majority which renders such law as you speak of possible. Go to\nthe best books of medical jurisprudence, go to the best authorities on\npsychical deviations from the normal type. You will find that these\nsupport me in my main contention. These, though hostile in their\nsentiments and chilled by natural repugnance, have a respect for\nscience, and they agree with me in saying that the Urning came into this\nworld an Urning, and must remain till the end of his life an Urning\nstill. To deal with him according to your code is no less monstrous than\nif you were to punish the colour-blind, or the deaf and dumb, or\nalbinoes, or crooked-back cripples. \"Very well,\" answers the objector:\n\"But I will quote the words of an eloquent living writer, and appeal to\nyour generous instincts and your patriotism. Professor Dowden observes\nthat 'self-surrender is at times sternly enjoined, and if the egoistic\ndesires are brought into conflict with social duties, the individual\nlife and joy within us, at whatever cost of personal suffering, must be\nsacrificed to the just claims of our fellows.'[65] What have you to say\nto that?\" In the first place, replies Ulrichs, I demur in this case to\nthe phrases _egoistic desires_, _social duties_, _just claims of our\nfellows_. I maintain that in trying to rehabilitate men of my own stamp\nand to justify their natural right to toleration I am not egoistic. It\nis begging the question to stigmatise their inborn desire as selfish.\nThe social duties of which you speak are not duties, but compliances to\nlaw framed in blindness and prejudice. The claims of our fellows, to\nwhich you appeal, are not just, but cruelly inequitous. My insurgence\nagainst all these things makes me act indeed as an innovator; and I may\nbe condemned, as a consequence of my rashness, to persecution, exile,\ndefamation, proscription. But let me remind you that Christ was\ncrucified, and that he is now regarded as a benefactor. \"Stop,\" breaks\nin the objector: \"We need not bring most sacred names into this\ndiscussion. I admit that innovators have done the greatest service to\nsociety. But you have not proved that you are working for the salvation\nof humanity at large. Would it not be better to remain quiet, and to\nsacrifice your life and joy, the life and joy of an avowed minority, for\nthe sake of the immense majority who cannot tolerate you, and who dread\nyour innovation? The Catholic priesthood is vowed to celibacy; and\nunquestionably there are some adult men in that order who have trampled\nout the imperious appetite of the male for the female. What they do for\nthe sake of their vow will not you accomplish, when you have so much of\ngood to gain, of evil to escape?\" What good, what evil? rejoins Ulrichs.\nYou are again begging the question; and now you are making appeals to my\nselfishness, my personal desire for tranquillity, my wish to avoid\npersecution and shame. I have taken no vow of celibacy. If I have taken\nany vow at all, it is to fight for the rights of an innocent, harmless,\ndowntrodden group of outraged personalities. The cross of a Crusade is\nsewn upon the sleeve of my right arm. To expect from me and from my\nfellows the renouncement voluntarily undertaken by a Catholic priest is\nan absurdity, when we join no order, have no faith to uphold, no\necclesiastical system to support. We maintain that we have the right to\nexist after the fashion in which nature made us. And if we cannot alter\nyour laws, we shall go on breaking them. You may condemn us to infamy,\nexile, prison--as you formerly burned witches. You may degrade our\nemotional instincts and drive us into vice and misery. But you will not\neradicate inverted sexuality. Expel nature with a fork, and you know\nwhat happens. \"That is enough,\" says the objector: \"We had better close\nthis conversation. I am sorry for you, sorry that you will not yield to\nsense and force. The Urning must be punished.\"\n\n\n\n\nVIII.\n\nLITERATURE--IDEALISTIC.\n\n\nTo speak of Walt Whitman at all in connection with Ulrichs and sexual\ninversion seems paradoxical. At the outset it must be definitely stated\nthat he has nothing to do with anomalous, abnormal, vicious, or diseased\nforms of the emotion which males entertain for males. Yet no man in the\nmodern world has expressed so strong a conviction that \"manly\nattachment,\" \"athletic love,\" \"the high towering love of comrades,\" is a\nmain factor in human life, a virtue upon which society will have to\nrest, and a passion equal in its permanence and intensity to sexual\naffection.\n\nHe assumes, without raising the question, that the love of man for man\nco-exists with the love of man for woman in one and the same individual.\nThe relation of the two modes of feeling is clearly stated in this\npoem:--\n\n    \"Fast-anchored, eternal, O love! O woman I love!\n     O bride! O wife! More resistless than I can tell, the thought of you\n     Then separate, as disembodied, or another born,\n     Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation;\n     I ascend--I float in the regions of your love, O man,\n     O sharer of my roving life.\"\n\nNeuropathical Urnings are not hinted at in any passage of his works. As\nhis friend and commentator Mr. Burroughs puts it: \"The sentiment is\nprimitive, athletic, taking form in all manner of large and homely\nout-of-door images, and springs, as anyone may see, directly from the\nheart and experience of the poet.\"\n\nThis being so, Whitman never suggests that comradeship may occasion the\ndevelopment of physical desires. But then he does not in set terms\ncondemn these desires, or warn his disciples against them. To a Western\nboy he says:--\n\n    \"If you be not silently selected by lovers, and do not silently seek\n      lovers,\n     Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine.\"\n\nLike Plato, in the Ph\u00e6drus, Whitman describes an enthusiastic type of\nmasculine emotion, leaving its private details to the moral sense and\nspecial inclination of the person concerned.[66]\n\nThe language of \"Calamus\" (that section of \"Leaves of Grass\" which is\ndevoted to the gospel of comradeship) has a passionate glow, a warmth of\nemotional tone, beyond anything to which the modern world is used in\nthe celebration of the love of friends. It recalls to our mind the early\nGreek enthusiasm--that fellowship in arms which flourished among Dorian\ntribes, and made a chivalry for prehistoric Hellas. Nor does the poet\nhimself appear to be unconscious that there are dangers and difficulties\ninvolved in the highly-pitched emotions he is praising. The whole tenor\nof two mysterious compositions, entitled \"Whoever you are, Holding me\nnow in Hand,\" and \"Trickle, Drops,\" suggests an underlying sense of\nspiritual conflict. The following poem, again, is sufficiently\nsignificant and typical to call for literal transcription:--\n\n    \"Earth, my likeness!\n\n     Though you look so impressive, ample and spheric here,\n     I now suspect that is not all;\n     I now suspect there is something fierce in you,\n       eligible to burst forth;\n     For an athletic is enamoured of me--and I of him,\n     But toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me,\n       eligible to burst forth,\n     I dare not tell it in words--not even in these songs.\"\n\nThe reality of Whitman's feeling, the intense delight which he derives\nfrom the personal presence and physical contact of a beloved man, find\nexpression in \"A Glimpse,\" \"Recorders ages hence,\" \"When I heard at the\nClose of Day,\" \"I saw in Louisiana a Live Oak growing,\" \"Long I thought\nthat Knowledge alone would content me,\"[67] \"O Tan-faced Prairie Boy,\"\nand \"Vigil Strange I kept on the Field one Night.\"[68]\n\nIt is clear, then, that in his treatment of comradeship, or the\nimpassioned love of man for man, Whitman has struck a keynote, to the\nemotional intensity of which the modern world is unaccustomed. It\ntherefore becomes of much importance to discover the poet-prophet's\n_Stimmung_--his radical instinct with regard to the moral quality of the\nfeeling he encourages. Studying his works by their own light, and by the\nlight of their author's character, interpreting each part by reference\nto the whole and in the spirit of the whole, an impartial critic will, I\nthink, be drawn to the conclusion that what he calls the \"adhesiveness\"\nof comradeship is meant to have no interblending with the \"amativeness\"\nof sexual love. Personally, it is undeniable that Whitman possesses a\nspecially keen sense of the fine restraint and continence, the\ncleanliness and chastity, that are inseparable from the perfectly virile\nand physically complete nature of healthy manhood. Still, we may\npredicate the same ground-qualities in the early Dorians, those martial\nfounders of the institution of Greek Love; and it is notorious to\nstudents of Greek civilisation that the lofty sentiment of their\nchivalry was intertwined with singular anomalies in its historical\ndevelopment.\n\nTo remove all doubt about Whitman's own intentions when he composed\n\"Calamus,\" and promulgated his doctrine of impassioned comradeship, I\nwrote to him, frankly posing the questions which perplexed my mind. The\nanswer I received, dated Camden, New Jersey, U.S.A., August 19, 1890,\nand which he permits me to make use of, puts the matter beyond all\ndebate, and confirms the conclusions to which I had been led by\ncriticism. He writes as follows: \"About the questions on 'Calamus,'\n&c., they quite daze me. 'Leaves of Grass' is only to be rightly\nconstrued by and within its own atmosphere and essential character--all\nits pages and pieces so coming strictly under. That the Calamus part has\never allowed the possibility of such construction as mentioned is\nterrible. I am fain to hope the pages themselves are not to be even\nmentioned for such gratuitous and quite at the time undreamed and\nunwished possibility of morbid inferences--which are disavowed by me and\nseem damnable.\"\n\nNo one who knows anything about Walt Whitman will for a moment doubt his\ncandour and sincerity. Therefore the man who wrote \"Calamus,\" and\npreached the gospel of comradeship, entertains feelings at least as\nhostile to sexual inversion as any law-abiding humdrum Anglo-Saxon could\ndesire. It is obvious that he has not even taken the phenomena of\nabnormal instinct into account. Else he must have foreseen that, human\nnature being what it is, we cannot expect to eliminate all sexual alloy\nfrom emotions raised to a high pitch of passionate intensity, and that\npermanent elements within the midst of our society will emperil the\nabsolute purity of the ideal he attempts to establish.\n\nThese considerations do not, however, affect the spiritual nature of\nthat ideal. After acknowledging, what Whitman has omitted to perceive,\nthat there are inevitable points of contact between sexual inversion and\nhis doctrine of comradeship, the question now remains whether he has not\nsuggested the way whereby abnormal instincts may be moralised and raised\nto higher value. In other words, are those instincts provided in\n\"Calamus\" with the means of their salvation from the filth and mire of\nbrutal appetite? It is difficult to answer this question; for the issue\ninvolved is nothing less momentous than the possibility of evoking a new\nchivalrous enthusiasm, analogous to that of primitive Hellenic society,\nfrom emotions which are at present classified among the turpitudes of\nhuman nature.\n\nLet us look a little closer at the expression which Whitman has given to\nhis own feelings about friendship. The first thing that strikes us is\nthe mystic emblem he has chosen for masculine love. That is the\nwater-plant, or scented rush, called Calamus, which springs in wild\nplaces, \"in paths untrodden, in the growth by margins of pond-waters\" He\nhas chosen these \"emblematic and capricious blades\" because of their\nshyness, their aromatic perfume, their aloofness from the patent life of\nthe world. He calls them \"sweet leaves, pink-tinged roots, timid\nleaves,\" \"scented herbage of my breast.\" Finally, he says:--[69]\n\n    \"Here my last words, and the most baffling,\n     Here the frailest leaves of me, and yet my strongest-lasting,\n     Here I shade down and hide my thoughts--I do not expose them,\n     And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.\"\n\nThe manliness of the emotion, which is thus so shyly, mystically\nindicated, appears in the magnificent address to soldiers at the close\nof the great war: \"Over the Carnage rose Prophetic a Voice.\"[70] Its\ntenderness emerges in the elegy on a slain comrade--:[71]\n\n    \"Vigil for boy of responding kisses (never again on earth responding),\n     Vigil for comrade swiftly slain--vigil I never forget, how as day\n       brightened,\n     I rose from the chill ground, and folded my soldier well in his blanket,\n     And buried him where he fell.\"\n\nIts pathos and clinging intensity transpire through the first lines of\nthe following piece, which may have been suggested by the legends of\nDavid and Jonathan, Achilles and Patroclus, Oretes and Pylades:--[72]\n\n    \"When I pursue the conquered fame of heroes, and the victories of mighty\n       generals,\n     I do not envy the generals,\n     Nor the president in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house;\n     But when I read of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them,\n     How through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long and long,\n     Through youth, and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, how\n       affectionate and faithful they were,\n     Then I am pensive--I hastily put down the book, and walk away, filled\n       with the bitterest envy.\"\n\nBut Whitman does not conceive of comradeship as a merely personal\npossession, delightful to the friends it links in bonds of amity. He\nregards it essentially as a social and political virtue. This human\nemotion is destined to cement society and to render commonwealths\ninviolable. Reading some of his poems, we are carried back to ancient\nGreece--to Plato's Symposium, to Philip gazing on the Sacred Band of\nThebans after the fight at Ch\u00e6ronea.[73]\n\n    \"I dream'd in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole\n       of the rest of the earth;\n     I dream'd that was the new City of Friends;\n     Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love--it led\n       the rest;\n     It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,\n     And in all their looks and words.\"\n\nAnd again:[74]\n\n    \"I believe the main purport of these States is to found a superb\n       friendship, exalt\u00e9, previously unknown,\n     Because I perceive it waits, and has been always waiting, latent in\n       all men.\"\n\nAnd once again:--[75]\n\n     \"Come, I will make the continent indissoluble;\n      I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon;\n      I will make divine magnetic lands,\n              With the love of comrades,\n            With the life-long love of comrades.\n    I will plant companionship thick as trees all along the shores of America,\n       and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies;\n    I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other's necks;\n              By the love of comrades,\n            By the manly love of comrades.\n      For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!\n      For you, for you I am thrilling these songs.\"\n\nIn the company of Walt Whitman we are very far away from Gibbon and\nCarlier, from Tardieux and Casper-Liman, from Krafft-Ebing and Ulrichs.\nWhat indeed has this \"superb friendship, exalt\u00e9, previously unknown,\"\nwhich \"waits, and has been always waiting, latent in all men,\" that\n\"something fierce in me, eligible to burst forth,\" \"ethereal\ncomradeship,\" \"the last athletic reality\"--what has all this in common\nwith the painful topic of the preceding sections of my Essay?\n\nIt has this in common with it. Whitman recognises among the sacred\nemotions and social virtues, destined to regenerate political life and\nto cement nations, an intense, jealous, throbbing, sensitive, expectant\nlove of man for man: a love which yearns in absence, droops under the\nsense of neglect, revives at the return of the beloved; a love that\nfinds honest delight in hand-touch, meeting lips, hours of privacy,\nclose personal contact. He proclaims this love to be not only a daily\nfact in the present, but also a saving and ennobling aspiration. While\nhe expressly repudiates, disowns, and brands as \"damnable\" all \"morbid\ninferences\" which may be drawn by malevolence or vicious cunning from\nhis doctrine, he is prepared to extend the gospel of comradeship to the\nwhole human race. He expects Democracy, the new social and political\nmedium, the new religious ideal of mankind, to develop and extend \"that\nfervid comradeship,\" and by its means to counterbalance and to\nspiritualise what is vulgar and materialistic in the modern world.\n\"Democracy,\" he maintains, \"infers such loving comradeship, as its most\ninevitable twin or counterpart, without which it will be incomplete, in\nvain, and incapable of perpetuating itself.\"[76]\n\nIf this be not a dream, if he is right in believing that \"threads of\nmanly friendship, fond and loving, pure and sweet, strong and life-long,\ncarried to degrees hitherto unknown,\" will penetrate the organism of\nsociety, \"not only giving tone to individual character, and making it\nunprecedentedly emotional, muscular, heroic, and refined, but having\ndeepest relations to general politics\"--then are we perhaps justified in\nforeseeing here the advent of an enthusiasm which shall rehabilitate\nthose outcast instincts, by giving them a spiritual atmosphere, an\nenvironment of recognised and healthy emotions, wherein to expand at\nliberty and purge away the grossness and the madness of their pariahdom?\n\nThis prospect, like all ideals, until they are realised in experience,\nmay seem fantastically visionary. Moreover, the substance of human\nnature is so mixed that it would perhaps be fanatical to expect from\nWhitman's chivalry of \"adhesiveness\" a more immaculate purity than was\nattained by the medi\u00e6val chivalry of \"amativeness.\" Still that medi\u00e6val\nchivalry, the great emotional product of feudalism, though it fell short\nof its own aspiration, bequeathed incalculable good to modern society by\nrefining and clarifying the crudest of male appetites. In like manner,\nthe democratic chivalry, announced by Whitman, may be destined to\nabsorb, control, and elevate those darker, more mysterious, apparently\nabnormal appetites, which we have seen to be widely diffused and\nineradicable in the ground-work of human nature.\n\nReturning from the dream, the vision of a future possibility, it will at\nany rate be conceded that Whitman has founded comradeship, the\nenthusiasm which binds man to man in fervent love, upon a natural basis.\nEliminating classical associations of corruption, ignoring the\nperplexed questions of a guilty passion doomed by law and popular\nantipathy to failure, he begins anew with sound and primitive humanity.\nThere he discovers \"a superb friendship, exalt\u00e9, previously unknown.\" He\nperceives that \"it waits, and has been always waiting, latent in all\nmen.\" His method of treatment, fearless and uncowed by any thought of\nevil, his touch upon the matter, chaste and wholesome and aspiring,\nreveal the possibility of restoring in all innocence to human life a\nportion of its alienated or unclaimed moral birthright. The aberrations\nwe have been discussing in this treatise are perhaps the morbid symptoms\nof suppression, of hypertrophy, of ignorant misregulation, in a genuine\nemotion capable of being raised to good by sympathetic treatment.\n\nIt were well to close upon this note. The half, as the Greeks said, is\nmore than the whole; and the time has not yet come to raise the question\nwhether the love of man for man shall be elevated through a hitherto\nunapprehended chivalry to nobler powers, even as the barbarous love of\nman for woman once was. This question at the present moment is deficient\nin actuality. The world cannot be invited to entertain it.[77]\n\n\n\n\nIX.\n\nEPILOGUE.\n\n\nThe conclusions to which I am led by this enquiry into sexual inversion\nare that its several manifestations may be classified under the\nfollowing categories: (1) Forced abstinence from intercourse with\nfemales, or _faute de mieux;_ (2) Wantonness and curious seeking after\nnovel pleasure; (3) Pronounced morbidity; (4) Inborn instinctive\npreference for the male and indifference to the female sex; (5) Epochs\nof history when the habit has become established and endemic in whole\nnations.\n\nUnder the first category we group the phenomena presented by schools,\nprisons, convents, ships, garrisons in solitary stations, nomadic tribes\nof marauding conquerors.[78]\n\nTo the second belong those individuals who amuse themselves with\nexperiments in sensual pleasure, men jaded with ordinary sexual\nindulgence, and indifferent voluptuaries. It is possible that something\nmorbid or abnormal usually marks this class.\n\nTo the third we assign clear cases of hereditary malady, in which a want\nof self-control is prominent, together with sufferers from nervous\nlesion, wounds, epilepsy, senile brain-softening, in so far as these\nphysical disturbances are complicated with abnormal passions.[79]\n\nThe fourth includes the whole class of Urnings, who have been hitherto\nignored by medical investigators, and on whose numerical importance\nUlrichs has perhaps laid exaggerated stress. These individuals behave\nprecisely like persons of normal sexual proclivities, display no signs\nof insanity, and have no morbid constitutional diathesis to account for\ntheir peculiarity.\n\nUnder the existing conditions of European Society, these four categories\nexist sporadically. That is to say, the members of them are found\nscattered through all communities, but are nowhere recognised except by\nthe penal code and the medical profession. In the fifth category we are\nbrought face to face with the problem offered by ancient Hellas, by\nPersia, by Afghan, by the peoples of what Burton calls the Sotadic Zone.\nHowever we may account for the origin of sexual inversion, the instinct\nhas through usage, tradition, and social toleration passed here into the\nnature of the race; so that the four previous categories are confounded,\nor, if distinguished, are only separable in the same way as the vicious\nand morbid affections of the ordinary sexual appetite may be\ndifferentiated from its healthier manifestations.\n\nReturning to the first four categories, which alone have any importance\nfor a modern European, we perceive that only one of them, the third, is\npositively morbid, and only one, the second, is _ipso facto_ vicious.\nThe first is immoral in the same sense as all incontinence, including\nself-abuse, fornication, and so forth, practised _faute de mieux_, is\nimmoral; but it cannot be called either morbid or positively vicious,\nbecause the habit in question springs up under extra-social\ncircumstances. The members of the fourth category are abnormal through\ntheir constitution. Whether we refer that abnormality to atavism, or to\nsome hitherto unapprehended deviation from the rule in their sexual\nconformation, there is no proof that they are the subjects of disease.\nAt the same time it is certain that they are not deliberately vicious.\n\nThe treatment of sexual inversion by society and legislation follows the\nview taken of its origin and nature. Ever since the age of Justinian, it\nhas been regarded as an unqualified crime against God, the order of the\nworld, and the State. This opinion, which has been incorporated in the\ncodes of all the Occidental races, sprang originally from the conviction\nthat sterile passions are injurious to the tribe by checking\npropagation. Religion adopted this view, and, through the legend of\nSodom and Gomorrah, taught that God was ready to punish whole nations\nwith violent destruction if they practised the \"unmentionable vice.\"\nAdvancing civilisation, at the same time, sought in every way to limit\nand regulate the sexual appetite; and while doing so, it naturally\nexcluded those forms which were not agreeable to the majority, which\npossessed no obvious utility, and which _prima facie_ seemed to violate\nthe cardinal laws of human nature.\n\nSocial feeling, moulded by religion, by legislation, by civility, and by\nthe persistent antipathies of the majority regards sexual inversion with\nimmitigable abhorrence. It does not distinguish between the categories I\nhave indicated, but includes all species under the common condemnation\nof crime.\n\nMeanwhile, of late years, we have come to perceive that the phenomena\npresented by sexual inversion, cannot be so roughly dealt with. Two\ngreat nations, the French and the Italian, by the \"Code Napoleon\" and\nthe \"Codice Penale\" of 1889, remove these phenomena from the category of\ncrime into that of immorality at worst. That is to say, they place the\nintercourse of males with males upon the same legal ground as the normal\nsexual relation. They punish violence, protect minors, and provide for\nthe maintenance of public decency. Within these limitations, they\nrecognise the right of adults to deal as they choose with their persons.\n\nThe new school of anthropologists and psychological physicians study\nsexual inversion partly on the lines of historical evolution, and partly\nfrom the point of view of disease. Mixing up atavism and heredity with\nnervous malady in the individual, they wish to substitute medical\ntreatment for punishment, life-long sequestration in asylums for terms\nof imprisonment differing in duration according to the offence.\n\nNeither society nor science entertains the notion that those instincts\nwhich the laws of France and Italy tolerate, under certain restrictions,\ncan be simply natural in a certain percentage of male persons. Up to the\npresent time the Urning has not been considered as a sport of nature in\nher attempt to differentiate the sexes. Ulrichs is the only European\nwho has maintained this view in a long series of polemical and\nimperfectly scientific works. Yet facts brought daily beneath the notice\nof open-eyed observers prove that Ulrichs is justified in his main\ncontention. Society lies under the spell of ancient terrorism and\ncoagulated errors. Science is either wilfully hypocritical or radically\nmisinformed.\n\nWalt Whitman, in America, regards what he calls \"manly love\" as destined\nto be a leading virtue of democratic nations, and the source of a new\nchivalry. But he does not define what he means by \"manly love.\" And he\nemphatically disavows any \"morbid inferences\" from his doctrine as\n\"damnable.\"\n\nThis is how the matter stands now. The one thing which seems clear is\nthat sexual inversion is no subject for legislation, and that the\nexample of France and Italy might well be followed by other nations. The\nproblem ought to be left to the physician, the moralist, the educator,\nand finally to the operation of social opinion.\n\n\n\n\nX.\n\nSUGGESTIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF SEXUAL INVERSION IN RELATION TO LAW AND\nEDUCATION.\n\n\nI.\n\nThe laws in force against what are called unnatural offences derive from\nan edict of Justinian, A.D. 538. The Emperor treated these offences as\ncriminal, on the ground that they brought plagues, famines, earthquakes,\nand the destruction of whole cities, together with their inhabitants,\nupon the nations who tolerated them.\n\n\nII.\n\nA belief that sexual inversion is a crime against God, nature, and the\nState pervades all subsequent legislation on the subject. This belief\nrests on (1) theological conceptions derived from the Scriptures; (2) a\ndread of decreasing the population; (3) the antipathy of the majority\nfor the tastes of the minority; (4) the vulgar error that antiphysical\ndesires are invariably voluntary, and the result either of inordinate\nlust or of satiated appetites.\n\n\nIII.\n\nScientific investigation has proved in recent years that a very large\nproportion of persons in whom abnormal sexual inclinations are\nmanifested possess them from their earliest childhood, that they cannot\ndivert them into normal channels, and that they are powerless to get rid\nof them. In these cases, then, legislation is interfering with the\nliberty of individuals, under a certain misconception regarding the\nnature of their offence.\n\n\nIV.\n\nThose who support the present laws are therefore bound to prove that the\ncoercion, punishment, and defamation of such persons are justified\neither (1) by any injury which these persons suffer in health of body or\nmind, or (2) by any serious danger arising from them to the social\norganism.\n\n\nV.\n\nExperience, confirmed by scientific observation, proves that the\ntemperate indulgence of abnormal sexuality is no more injurious to the\nindividual than a similar indulgence of normal sexuality.\n\n\nVI.\n\nIn the present state of over-population, it is not to be apprehended\nthat a small minority of men exercising sterile and abnormal sexual\ninclinations should seriously injure society by limiting the increase of\nthe human race.\n\n\nVII.\n\nLegislation does not interfere with various forms of sterile intercourse\nbetween men and women: (1) prostitution, (2) cohabitation in marriage\nduring the period of pregnancy, (3) artificial precautions against\nimpregnation, and (4) some abnormal modes of congress with the consent\nof the female. It is therefore in an illogical position, when it\ninterferes with the action of those who are naturally sterile, on the\nground of maintaining the numerical standard of the population.\n\n\nVIII.\n\nThe danger that unnatural vices, if tolerated by the law, would increase\nuntil whole nations acquired them, does not seem to be formidable. The\nposition of women in our civilisation renders sexual relations among us\noccidentals different from those of any country--ancient Greece and\nRome, modern Turkey and Persia--where antiphysical habits have hitherto\nbecome endemic.\n\n\nIX.\n\nIn modern France, since the promulgation of the Code Napoleon, sexual\ninversion has been tolerated under the same restrictions as normal\nsexuality. That is to say, violence and outrages to public decency are\npunished, and minors are protected, but adults are allowed to dispose as\nthey like of their own persons. The experience of nearly a century shows\nthat in France, where sexual inversion is not criminal _per se_, there\nhas been no extension of it through society. Competent observers, like\nagents of police, declare that London, in spite of our penal\nlegislation, is no less notorious for abnormal vice than Paris.\n\n\nX.\n\nItaly, by the Penal Code of 1889, adopted the principles of the Code\nNapoleon on this point. It would be interesting to know what led to this\nalteration of the Italian law. But it cannot be supposed that the\nresults of the Code Napoleon in France were not fully considered.\n\n\nXI.\n\nThe severity of the English statutes render them almost incapable of\nbeing put in force. In consequence of this the law is not unfrequently\nevaded, and crimes are winked at.\n\n\nXII.\n\nAt the same time our laws encourage blackmailing upon false accusation;\nand the presumed evasion of their execution places from time to time a\nvile weapon in the hands of unscrupulous politicians, to attack the\nGovernment in office. Examples: the Dublin Castle Scandals of 1884, the\nCleveland Street Scandals of 1889.\n\n\nXIII.\n\nThose who hold that our penal laws are required by the interests of\nsociety must turn their attention to the higher education. This still\nrests on the study of the Greek and Latin classics, a literature\nimpregnated with p\u00e6derastia. It is carried on at public schools, where\nyoung men are kept apart from females, and where homosexual vices are\nfrequent. The best minds of our youth are therefore exposed to the\ninfluences of a p\u00e6derastic literature at the same time that they acquire\nthe knowledge and experience of unnatural practices. Nor is any trouble\ntaken to correct these adverse influences by physiological instruction\nin the laws of sex.\n\n\nXIV.\n\nThe points suggested for consideration are whether England is still\njustified in restricting the freedom of adult persons, and rendering\ncertain abnormal forms of sexuality criminal, by any real dangers to\nsociety: after it has been shown (1) that abnormal inclinations are\ncongenital, natural, and ineradicable in a large percentage of\nindividuals; (2) that we tolerate sterile intercourse of various types\nbetween the two sexes; (3) that our legislation has not suppressed the\nimmorality in question; (4) that the operation of the Code Napoleon for\nnearly a century has not increased this immorality in France; (5) that\nItaly, with the experience of the Code Napoleon to guide her, adopted\nits principles in 1889; (6) that the English penalties are rarely\ninflicted to their full extent; (7) that their existence encourages\nblackmailing, and their non-enforcement gives occasion for base\npolitical agitation; (8) that our higher education is in open\ncontradiction to the spirit of our laws.[80]\n\n\nFINIS.\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] Vindices Flamm\u00e6.\n\n[2] Stieber, \"Practisches Lehrbuch der Criminal-Polizei,\" 1860, cap. 19,\nquoted by Ulrichs, \"Araxes,\" p. 9. It is not necessary to multiply\nevidences upon a point so patent to every man of the world. But I will\nnevertheless translate a striking passage from Mantegazza (_op. cit._,\np. 148). \"Nor is this infamous abomination confined to the vilest\nclasses of our society. It soars into the highest spheres of wealth and\nintelligence. Within the narrow range of my own experience I have known\namong the most scandalous sodomites a French journalist, a German poet,\nan Italian statesman, and a Spanish jurist; all of these men of\nexquisite taste and profound culture!\" It would not be difficult to draw\nup a list of English kings, bishops, deans, nobles of the highest rank,\npoets, historians, dramatists, officers in the army and navy, civil\nservants, schoolmasters in the most fashionable schools, physicians,\nmembers of Parliament, journalists, barristers, who in their lifetime\nwere, as Dante says, \"d'un medesmo peccato al mondo lerci.\" Many\nbelonging to the past are notorious; and no good could come of\nmentioning the names of the living.\n\n[3] This accusation against men who feel a sexual inclination for males\nloses some of its significance when we consider how common the practice\nof _Venus aversa_ is among libertines who love women. Parent-Duchatelet\nasserts that no prostitute after a certain age has escaped it.\nCoffignon, in his book on, \"La Corruption \u00e0 Paris\" (p. 324), says:\n\"Chaque ann\u00e9e, il passe en tra\u00eetement a l'h\u00f4pital de Lourcine une\ncentaine de femmes sodomistes.... Je suis persuad\u00e9 qu'\u00e0 l'h\u00f4pital de St.\nLazare la proportion des sodomistes est encore beaucoup plus grande....\nLes ma\u00eetresses de maison, professant cet odieux principe que la\nclient\u00e8le doit \u00eatre satisfaite, ne permettent pas \u00e0 une fille de se\nrefuser \u00e0 une acte de sodomie.\" Tardieu (Attentats, &c., p. 198)\nobserves: \"Chose singuli\u00e8re! c'est principalement des rapports conjugaux\nque se sont produits les faits de cette nature.\"\n\n[4] See Casper-Liman, vol. i., p. 182, at the end of Case 71.\n\n[5] While studying what Germans call the _Casuistik_ of this question in\nmedical, forensic, and anthropological works, we often meet with cases\nwhere inverted sexuality exhibits extraordinary symptoms of apparent\ncraziness--strange partialities for particular kinds of dress,\noccupations in the beloved object, nastinesses, and so forth. But it\nmust be remarked first that the same symptoms are exhibited by sexually\nnormal natures (Krafft-Ebing, Observations 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33,\n34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, and the cases recorded in footnote to page 90);\nand, secondly, that if they should appear to be more frequent in the\nabnormal, this can in a great measure be ascribed to the fact that these\nlatter cases only come under the observation of medical men and judges\nwhen the patients have already for many years been suffering from all\nthe pangs of a coerced and defrauded instinct. There is nothing in the\ncopious history of Greece and Rome upon this subject to lead us to\nsuppose that in a society which tolerated sexual inversion, its subjects\nwere more conspicuous for filthy and degrading or insane proclivities\nthan ordinary men and women were. Those who can bring themselves to\nenquire into such matters may convince themselves by reading Forberg's\nannotations to \"Hermaphroditus,\" Rosenbaum's \"Lustseuche,\" the\npseudo-Meursius, and the pornographical dialogues of Aretino. It will\nappear conclusively that both in ancient and in modern times the normal\nsexual instinct has been subject to the wildest freaks and aberrations;\nnot in actually diseased persons, but simply in lustful wantons and the\nepicures of new sensations. The curious things we know about\nflagellation and cruelty in connection with the ordinary appetite should\nalso be remembered. As a final note on this topic, I will refer to a\npassage quoted by Tarnowsky from a work of Taxil, describing a\npeculiarly repulsive class of fashionable libertines in Paris called\n\"les stercoraires\" (_op. cit._, p. 70). Compare what Mantegazza reports\nof a \"gentile ufficiale francese\" (Gli amore degli uomini, vol. i. p.\n117).\n\n[6] See upon this point Tardieu, \"Attentats aux Moeurs,\" Rosenbaum, \"Die\nLustseuche.\"\n\n[7] Ancient literature abounds in prose and poetry which are both of\nthem concerned with homosexual love. Only a portion of this can be\ncalled pornographic: among the Greeks, the [Greek: Mousa Paidik\u00ea], parts\nof Lucian, and occasional hints in Athen\u00e6us and Aristophanes perhaps\ndeserve the name; among the Romans, the Priapeia, the Satyricon of\nPetronius, some elegies and satires, certainly do so. Italian literature\ncan show the Rime Burlesche, Beccadelli's Hermaphroditus, the Canti\nCarnascialeschi, the maccaronic poems of Fidentius, and the remarkably\noutspoken romance entitled \"Alcibiade fanciullo a scolla.\" Balzac has\ntreated the theme, but with reserve and delicacy. Mirabeau's \"Erotika\nBiblion\" is a kind of classic on the subject. In English literature, if\nwe except Shakespeare's Sonnets, George Barnfield's Poems, parts of\nMarlowe, \"Roderick Random,\" Churchill's Satire \"The Times,\" homosexual\npassions have been rarely handled, and none of these works are\npornographic. In Germany, Count von Platen, Heine's victim, was\ncertainly an Urning; but his homosexual imitations of Persian poetry are\npure, though passionate. I am not acquainted with more than the titles\nof some distinctly pornographic German books. The following appears to\nbe of this sort: \"Mannesliebe, oder drei Jahre aus dem Leben eines\njungen Mannes.\"\n\n[8] Les Deux Prostitutions, par F. Carlier, Ancien Chef du Service actif\ndes Moeurs \u00e0 la Pr\u00e9fecture de Police. Paris. Dentu. 1889.\n\n[9] Paris, Brossier, 1889.\n\n[10] In the recently published military novel \"Sous Offs.\" (by Lucien\nDescaves, Paris, Tresse et Stock, 1890) some details are given regarding\nestablishments of this nature. See pp. 322, 412, 417, for a description\nof the drinking-shop called \"Aux Amis de l'Arm\u00e9e,\" where a few maids\nwere kept for show, and also of its frequenters, including in particular\nthe adjutant Lapr\u00e9votte (cp. 44).\n\n[11] On the morals of the Foreign Legions, see Ulrichs, Ara Spei, p. 20;\nMemnon, p. 27. Also General Brossier's report, quoted by Burton, Arabian\nNights, vol. x. p. 251\n\n[12] P. 459.\n\n[13] Tardieu, _op. cit._, pp. 213-255.\n\n[14] In dealing with Tardieu, Casper-Liman, and Tarnowsky, I have\ndirected the reader to passages in the works of the three medical\nauthorities who have spoken most decidedly upon this topic. After\ncomparing their evidence, the case seems to me to stand thus. Both male\nand female prostitutes are exposed to considerable risks of physical\ndeformation in the exercise of their illicit trade. But males and\nfemales, if they keep their vicious propensities within the bounds of\ntemperance, offer no physical deformations to observation. Only those\nmen who for years have practised promiscuous prostitution earn epithets\nlike the Greek slang [Greek: eurypr\u00f4ktos], or the Italian _culo rotto_.\n\n[15] Casper-Liman, _op. cit._, vol. i. p. 164.\n\n[16] Casper-Liman, _op. cit._, vol. i. pp. 174-181.\n\n[17] _Op. cit._, vol. i. pp. 164-166.\n\n[18] Having criticised Tardieu for his use of the phrase _p\u00e6derast_,\nCasper and Liman can find no better.\n\n[19] Westphal: Die Contr\u00e4re Sexualempfindung. Archiv f\u00fcr Psychatrie,\nvol. ii. I.\n\n[20] The Standard of Sanity, Br. Med. Journal, Nov. 28, 1885.\n\n[21] See Tarnowsky about the opinion of the lower classes in St.\nPetersburg, _op. cit._, p. 99. \"Ueberhaupt verhalten sich die gemeinen\nungebildeten Leute, dem Ausspruch aller mir bekannten P\u00e4derasten gem\u00e4ss,\n\u00e4usserat nachsichtig gegen unz\u00fcchtige Antr\u00e4ge--'herrschaft-liche\nSpielerei,' wie sie es nennen.\" This is true not only of Russia, but of\ncountries where we should least expect to find the compliance in\nquestion.\n\n[22] P. 73. The italics are the translator's. The adjective\n_homosexual_, though ill-compounded of a Greek and a Latin word, is\nuseful, and has been adopted by medical writers on this topic.\n_Unisexual_ would perhaps be better.\n\n[23] A note upon this subject has to be written; and it may be\nintroduced here as well as elsewhere. Balzac, in _Une derni\u00e8re\nincarnation de Vautrin_, describes the morals of the French _bagnes_.\nDostoieffsky, in _Prison Life in Siberia_, touches on the same topic.\nSee his portrait of Sirotkin, p. 52, _et seq._, p. 120 (edn. J. & R.\nMaxwell, London). We may compare Carlier, _op. cit._, pp. 300, 301, for\nan account of the violence of homosexual passions in French prisons. The\ninitiated are familiar with the facts in English prisons. There is a\nmilitary prison on the Lido at Venice, where incorrigible lovers of\ntheir own sex, amongst other culprits, are confined. A man here said:\n\"All our loves in this place are breech-loaders.\" Bouchard, in his\n_Confessions_ (Paris, Liseux, 1881), describes the convict station at\nMarseilles in 1630. The men used to be allowed to bring women on board\nthe galleys. At that epoch they \"les besognoient avant tout le monde,\nles couchant sous le banc sur leur 'capot. Mais depuis quelques ann\u00e9es\nen ca, le general a defendu entr\u00e9e aux femmes. De sorte qu'il ne se\np\u00eache plus maintenant l\u00e0-dedans qu'en sodomie, mollesse, irrumation, et\nautres pareilles tendresses\" (p. 151). The same Frenchman, speaking of\nthe Duc d'Orl\u00e9ans' pages at Paris, says that this was a \"cour extr\u00e8memen\nimpie et d\u00e9bauch\u00e9e, surtout pour les gar\u00e7ons, M. d'Orl\u00e9ans deffendoit \u00e0\nses pages de se besogner ni branler la pique; leur donnant au reste\ncong\u00e9 de voir les femmes tant qu'ils voudroient, et quelquefois venant\nde nuict heurter \u00e0 la porte de leur chambre, avec cinq ou six garses,\nqu'il enfermoit avec eux une heure \u00e0 deux\" (p. 88). This prince was of\nthe same mind as Campanella, who, in the _Citt\u00e0 del Sole_, laid it down\nthat young men ought to be freely admitted to women, for the avoidance\nof sexual aberrations. Aretino and Berni enable us to comprehend the\nsexual immorality of males congregated together in the courts of Roman\nprelates. As regards military service, the facts related by Ulrichs\nabout the French Foreign Legion in Algeria, on the testimony of a\ncredible witness, who had been a pathic in his regiment, deserve\nattention (_Ara Spei_, p. 20; _Memnon_, p. 27). This man, who was a\nGerman, told Ulrichs that the Spanish, French, and Italian soldiers were\nthe lovers, the Swiss and German their beloved. See General Brossier,\ncited above, p. 19. Ulrichs reports that in the Austrian army lectures\non homosexual vices are regularly given to cadets and conscripts\n(_Memnon_, p. 20).\n\n[24] See above, p. 33, my criticism of Moreau upon this point, with\nspecial reference to Greece.\n\n[25] Prometheus, pp. 20-26, _et seq._\n\n[26] Without having recourse to Ulrichs, it may be demonstrated from\nKrafft-Ebing's own cases of genuine Urnings that early onanism is by no\nmeans more frequent among them than among normal males. Five marked\nspecimens showed no inclination for self-abuse. The first (p. 128) says:\n\"As I never masturbated and felt no inclination for it, I sometimes had\na nocturnal pollution.\" The second (p. 155): \"You will be surprised to\nhear that before my twenty-eighth year I never had any ejaculation of\nsemen, either by nocturnal emissions, or by masturbation, or by contact\nwith a man.\" The third (p. 172): \"Onanism is a miserable makeshift, and\npernicious, whereas homosexual love elevates the moral and strengthens\nthe physical nature.\" The fourth (p. 163): \"I had an internal horror of\nonanism, although from the very first appearance of puberty I was\nsensually very excitable and troubled with persistent erections.\" The\nfifth (p. 142) is not so clear; but it is obvious from his remarks that\nthe first ejaculation of semen which happened to him did so at the sight\nof a handsome soldier: \"feeling my parts moistened, I was horribly\nfrightened and thought it was a h\u00e6morrhage.\" Some of the cases do not\nmention the subject at all. A good many seem to have begun to masturbate\nearly; but the proportion is not excessive to the whole number. One\nUrning explains the _faute de mieux_ system (p. 115): \"If we have no\nfriend, whose sexual company has become needful to the preservation of\nour health, and if we abandon ourselves at last to masturbation alone\nwith our imagination, then indeed do we become ill.\" Another speaks as\nfollows (p. 151): \"Homosexual indulgence with a man gave me enjoyment\nand a consequent feeling of well-being, whereas onanism _faute de mieux_\nproduced an opposite result.\"\n\n[27] P. 82. Herodotus called it \"the female disease.\"\n\n[28] P. 86, _et seq._\n\n[29] P. 88, _et seq._\n\n[30] Henceforward we may use the word Urning without apology; for\nhowever the jurists and men of science repudiate Ulrichs' doctrine, they\nhave adopted his designation for a puzzling and still unclassified\nmember of the human race. A Dr. Kaserer, of Vienna, is said to have\ninvented the term Urning.\n\n[31] This is a hit at Westphal, Krafft-Ebing's predecessor, who laid\ndown the doctrine that Urnings are conscious of their own morbidity. Of\ncourse, both authorities are equally right. Approach an Urning with\nterrors of social opinion and law; and he will confess his dreadful\napprehensions. Approach him from the point of view of science; and he\nwill declare that, within four closed walls, he has no thought of guilt.\n\n[32] Pp. 97-106.\n\n[33] The physical repugnance of true Urnings for women may be\nillustrated by passages from three of Krafft-Ebing's cases (pp. 117,\n123, 163), which I will translate. (1) \"I had observed that a girl was\nmadly in love with me, and longed intensely to yield herself up to me. I\ngave her an assignation in my house, hoping that I should succeed better\nwith a girl who sought me out of love than I had with public women.\nAfter her first fiery caresses, I did indeed feel a little less frigid;\nbut when it came to thinking about copulation, all was over--the same\nstark frost set in, and my part was played out. I sent her away, deeply\nexcited, with some moral remarks; and I have never tried the like\nexperiments again. On all these occasions _the specific odour of the\nfemale added to my horror_.\" (2) \"The proximity of wenches aroused in me\nqualms and nausea; _in particular I could not bear to smell them_.\" (3)\n\"It seems to me absurd to set up the female form as the prototype of\nhuman beauty. I regard a woman's person as displeasing, the formation of\nher hips as ugly and un\u00e6sthetic. Dancing is therefore an abomination to\nme. _I loathe the odour which the so-called fair sex exhales when heated\nby the dance._\" The disgust inspired in these three Urnings by the smell\nof the female is highly significant; since we know that the sense of\nsmell acts powerfully upon the sexual appetite of normal individuals. It\nmay be remarked that in all the instances of pronounced Urnings, sexual\ncongress with women seems to have been followed with disgust, nervous\nexhaustion, and the sense of an unnatural act performed without\npleasure. This is true even of those who have brought themselves to\nmarriage.\n\n[34] A sign, by the way, which may be observed in the most masculine of\nathletes. This is very noticeable in the nude photographs of Sandow.\n\n[35] Englishmen know the type as Mariannes, and had occasion to study\ntheir habits in the Boulton and Park trial. For the type in Paris,\nconsult Carlier, _op. cit._, pp. 323-326, 339-351, 463.\n\n[36] I have used the German version of Lombroso's work, because of the\ntranslator's preface and occasional annotations.\n\n[37] See Dufour, \"Histoire de la Prostitution,\" vol. iii. (France, ch.\ni.) p. 193.\n\n[38] See Dufour, \"Histoire de la Prostitution,\" (France, chs. 6 and 7).\n\n[39] See above, p. 35, for an ingenious definition by Dr. Huggard, which\ncovers both classes as born criminals and moral madmen.\n\n[40] His German translator calls attention to this omission; p. 153\nfootnote.\n\n[41] Third edition. Halle a. S., 1882.\n\n[42] Psych. Sex., p. 82.\n\n[43] Leipzig, Wigand, 1860.\n\n[44] Arabian Nights, 1885, vol. x., pp. 205-254.\n\n[45] Burton's acquaintance with what he called \"le Vice\" was principally\nconfined to Oriental nations. He started on his enquiries, imbued with\nvulgar errors; and he never weighed the psychical theories examined by\nme in the foregoing section of this Essay. Nevertheless, he was led to\nsurmise a crasis of the two sexes in persons subject to sexual\ninversion. Thus he came to speak of \"the third sex.\" During\nconversations I had with him less than three months before his death, he\ntold me that he had begun a general history of \"le Vice\"; and at my\nsuggestion he studied Ulrichs and Krafft-Ebing. It is to be lamented\nthat life failed before he could apply his virile and candid criticism\nto those theories, and compare them with the facts and observations he\nhad independently collected.\n\n[46] I give the author's own text, p. 206.\n\n[47] P. 208.\n\n[48] P. 251.\n\n[49] P. 222.\n\n[50] Pp. 204, 209.\n\n[51] Gli amori degli Uomini, Milano, 1886, vol. i. cap. 5.\n\n[52] _Ibid._, p. 149.\n\n[53] Pp. 148-154.\n\n[54] P. 154.\n\n[55] See above, p. 55, note.\n\n[56] The notion that human beings were originally hermaphrodite is both\nancient and wide-spread. We find it in the Book of Genesis, unless,\nindeed, there be a confusion here between two separate theories of\ncreation. God is said to have first made man in his own image, male and\nfemale in one body, and to have bidden them multiply. Later on he\ncreated the woman out of part of the primitive man. The myth related by\nAristophanes in Plato's _Symposium_ has a curious bearing upon Ulrichs'\nspeculations. There were originally human beings of three sexes: men,\nthe children of the sun; women, the children of the earth; and\nhermaphrodites, the children of the moon. They were round, with two\nfaces, four hands, four feet and two sets of reproductive organs apiece.\nIn the case of the third sex, one set was male, the other female. Zeus,\non account of their strength and insolence, sliced them into halves.\nSince that time the halves of each sort have always striven to unite\nwith their corresponding halves, and have found some satisfaction in\ncarnal congress--males with males, females with females, and males and\nfemales with each other: \"They who are a section of the male follow the\nmale, and while they are young, being slices of the original man, they\nhang about men and embrace them, and they are themselves the best of\nboys and youths, because they have the most manly nature. And when they\nreach manhood, they are lovers of youth, and are not naturally inclined\nto marry or beget children, which they do, if at all, only in obedience\nto the law, but they are satisfied if they may be allowed to live with\none another unwedded; and such a nature is prone to love and ready to\nreturn love, always embracing that which is akin to him.\" (Symp. 191-2,\nJowett's translation.) Then follows a glowing description of Greek Love,\nthe whole reminding us very closely of the confessions made by Urnings\nin modern times, and preserved by medical or forensic writers on sexual\ninversion.\n\n[57] Memnon, section xix.\n\n[58] See above, p. 36, the suggestion quoted from Dr. Huggard of \"a\ncongenital lack of balance between structures themselves healthy.\" It\nmight be queried whether this \"imperfect sexual differentiation,\" or\nthis \"congenital lack of balance between structures themselves healthy,\"\nis not the result of an evolutionary process arriving through heredity\nand casual selection at an abnormal, but not of necessity a morbid,\nphenomenon in certain individuals.\n\n[59] The first two from Casper-Liman, Handbuch der gerichtlichen\nMedicin, vol. i. pp. 166-169. The others from Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia\nSexualis.\n\n[60] Memnon, section lxxiii. p. 54.\n\n[61] Since Ulrichs left off writing, Italy (by the \"Nuovo Codice Penale\"\nof 1889) has adopted the principles of the Code Napoleon, and has placed\nsexual inversion under the same legal limitations as the normal sexual\ninstinct.\n\n[62] Dr. W. Ogle, on the 18th March, 1890, read a paper before the\nStatistical Society upon \"Marriage Rates and Ages.\" The conclusion he\narrived at, with regard to the rapidly-advancing over-population of\nEngland, was that, in order to equalise the death-rate with the\nbirth-rate (or in other words, to maintain the population at its present\nlevel), we must look forward either to (1) an increase of emigration\nwhich would involve social revolution, or (2) to the advance of the\naverage age at which women marry to the point of thirty years, or (3) to\nan exclusion of 45 per cent. of those who now marry from matrimony at\nany period of life. In the face of these calculations, after admitting\ntheir possible exaggeration, it seems illogical to punish with severe\nlegal penalties those members of the male sex who do not want to marry,\nand who can satisfy their natural desires in ways which involve no\ndetriment to the State and no violation of the rights of individuals.\n\n[63] Psych. Sex., p. 108. I have condensed the sense of four short\nparagraphs, to translate which in full would have involved a\ndisagreeable use of medical language.\n\n[64] Psych. Sex., p. 107.\n\n[65] Studies in Literature, p. 119.\n\n[66] In this relation it is curious to note what one of Casper-Liman's\ncorrespondents says about the morals of North America (_op. cit._, vol.\ni. p. 173). \"Half a year after my return I went to North America, to try\nmy fortune. There the unnatural vice in question is more ordinary than\nit is here; and I was able to indulge my passions with less fear of\npunishment or persecution. The American's tastes in this matter resemble\nmy own; and I discovered, in the United States, that I was always\nimmediately recognised as a member of the confraternity.\" The date of\nthis man's visit to America was the year 1871-72. He had just returned\nfrom serving as a volunteer in the great Franco-German war of 1870-71.\n\n[67] Not included in the \"Complete Poems and Prose.\" It will be found in\n\"Leaves of Grass,\" Boston, 1860-1861.\n\n[68] The two last are from \"Drum-Taps.\"\n\n[69] This I cannot find in \"Complete Poems and Prose.\" It is included in\nthe Boston edition, 1860-61, and the Camden edition, 1876.\n\n[70] \"Drum-Taps.\" Complete Poems, p. 247.\n\n[71] _Ibid._, p, 238.\n\n[72] \"Leaves of Grass.\" Complete Poems, p. 107.\n\n[73] Complete Poems, p. 109. Compare, \"I hear it was charged against\nme,\" _ibid._, p. 107.\n\n[74] Complete Poems, p. 110.\n\n[75] Camden edition, 1876, p. 127. Complete Poems, p. 99. Compare\n\"Democratic Vistas,\" Complete Prose, p. 247, note.\n\n[76] These prose passages are taken from \"Democratic Vistas,\" cited\nabove, p. 119, note.\n\n[77] While these sheets were going through the press, I communicated\nWhitman's reply to a judicious friend, whose remarks upon it express my\nown opinion more clearly and succinctly than I have done above: \"I do\nnot feel that this answer throws light on the really interesting\nquestion; does the sentiment of 'Calamus' represent, in its own way, the\nideal which we should aim at impressing on passionate affections between\nmen, as certainly liable to take other objectionable forms? Is there\nsufficient affinity between the actual and the ideal for this to be\npracticable? That is what I have never felt sure about when we have\ndiscussed these matters. But I do not feel that my doubts have been\nresolved in any negative direction by Walt Whitman.\"\n\n[78] Kelts, Scythians, Dorians, Tartars, Normans.\n\n[79] It ought to be borne in mind that they are by no means invariably\ncomplicated with abnormal sexuality, but quite as often with normal\nsexuality in some extravagant shape, as well as with other kinds of\nmoral aberration.\n\n[80] It may not be superfluous to recapitulate the main points of\nEnglish legislation on this topic. (1) Sodomy is a felony, defined as\nthe carnal knowledge (per anum) of any man or of any woman by a male\nperson; punishable with penal servitude for life as a maximum, for ten\nyears as a minimum. (2) The attempt to commit sodomy is punishable with\nten years' penal servitude as a maximum. (3) The commission, in public\nor private, by any male person with another male person, of \"any act of\ngross indecency,\" is punishable with two years' imprisonment and hard\nlabour.\"","title":"A Problem in Modern Ethics: Being an Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Sexual Inversion, Addressed Especially to Medical Psychologists and Jurists","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":35741}