[234] This explanation of homosexuality has already been tentatively put forth. Thus, Iwan Bloch (Sexual Life of Our Time, ch. xix, Appendix) vaguely suggests a new theory of homosexuality as dependent on chemical influences. Hirschfeld also believes (Die Homosexualitaet, ch. xx) that the study of the internal secretions is the path to the deepest foundations of inversion.

[235] A.E. Garrod, "The Thymus Gland in its Clinical Aspects," British Medical Journal, Oct. 3, 1914

[236] "The pure female and the pure male are produced by all the internal secretions," Blair Bell, "The Internal Secretions," British Medical Journal, Nov. 15, 1913.

[237] After this chapter was first published (in the Centralblatt fuer Nervenheilkunde, February, 1896), Fere also compared congenital inversion to color-blindness and similar anomalies (Fere, "La Descendance d'un Inverti," Revue Generale de Clinique et Therapeutique, 1896), while Ribot referred to the analogy with color-hearing (Psychology of the Emotions, part ii, ch. vii).

[238] See, e.g., Flournoy, Des Phenomenes de Synopsie, Geneva, 1893; and for a brief discussion of the general phenomena of synesthesia, E. Parish, Hallucinations and Illusions (Contemporary Science Series), chapter vii; Bleuler, article "Secondary Sensations," in Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine; and Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, 5th ed., 1915, pp. 181-4.

[239] Magnan has in recent years reaffirmed this view ("Inversion Sexuelle et Pathologic Mentale," Revue de Psychotherapie, March, 1914): "The invert is a diseased person, a degenerate."

[240] It is this fact which has caused the Italians to be shy of using the word "degeneration;" thus, Marro, in his great work, I Caratteri del Delinquenti, made a notable attempt to analyze the phenomena lumped together as degenerate into three groups: atypical, atavistic, and morbid.

[241] Hirschfeld and Burchard among 200 inverts found pronounced stigmata of degeneration in only 16 per cent. (Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualitaet, ch. xx.)

[242] Alcohol has sometimes been considered an important exciting cause of homosexuality, and alcoholism is certainly not uncommon in the heredity of inverts; according to Hirschfeld (Die Homosexualitaet, p. 386) it is well marked in one of the parents in over 21 per cent, of cases. But it probably has no more influence as an exciting cause in the individual homosexual person than in the individual heterosexual person. From the Freudian standpoint, indeed, Abraham believes (Zeitschrift fuer Sexualwissenschaft, Heft 8, 1908) that even in normal persons alcohol removes the inhibition from a latent homosexuality, and Juliusburger from the same standpoint (Zentralblatt fuer Psychoanalyse, Heft 10 and 11, 1912) thinks that the alcoholic tendency is unconsciously aroused by the homosexual impulse in order to reach its own gratification. But we may accept Naecke's conclusions (Allgemeine Zeitschrift fuer Psychiatrie, vol. lxviii, 1911, p. 852), that (1) alcohol cannot produce homosexuality in persons not predisposed, that (2) it may arouse it in those who are predisposed, that (3) the action of alcohol is the same on the homosexual as the heterosexual, and that (4) alcoholism is not common among inverts.



CHAPTER VII.

CONCLUSIONS.

The Prevention of Homosexuality—The Influence of the School—Coeducation—The Treatment of Sexual Inversion—Castration—Hypnotism—Associational Therapy—Psycho-analysis—Mental and Physical Hygiene—Marriage—The Children of Inverts—The Attitude of Society—The Horror Aroused by Homosexuality—Justinian—The Code Napoleon—The State of the Law in Europe Today—Germany—England—What Should be our Attitude toward Homosexuality?

Having now completed the psychological analysis of the sexual invert, so far as I have been able to study him, it only remains to speak briefly of the attitude of society and the law. First, however, a few words as to the medical and hygienic aspects of inversion. The preliminary question of the prevention of homosexuality is in too vague a position at present to be profitably discussed. So far as the really congenital invert is concerned, prevention can have but small influence; but sound social hygiene should render difficult the acquisition of homosexual perversity, or what has been termed pseudo-homosexuality. It is the school which is naturally the chief theater of immature and temporary homosexual manifestations, partly because school life largely coincides with the period during which the sexual impulse frequently tends to be undifferentiated, and partly because in the traditions of large and old schools an artificial homosexuality is often deeply rooted.

Homosexuality in English schools has already been briefly referred to in chapter iii. As a precise and interesting picture of the phenomena in French schools, I may mention a story by Albert Nortal, Les Adolescents Passionnes (1913), written immediately after the author left college, though not published until more than twenty-five years later, and clearly based on personal observation and experience. As regards German schools, see, e.g., Moll, Untersuchungen ueber die Libido Sexualis, p. 449 et seq., and for sexual manifestations in early life generally, the same author's Sexual Life of the Child; also Hirschfeld, Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. v, 1903, p. 47 et seq., and, for references, Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualitaet, p. 46 et seq.

While much may be done by physical hygiene and other means to prevent the extension of homosexuality in schools,[243] it is impossible, and even undesirable, to repress absolutely the emotional manifestations of sex in either boys or girls who have reached the age of puberty.[244] It must always be remembered that profoundly rooted organic impulses cannot be effectually combated by direct methods. Writing of a period two centuries ago, Casanova, in relating his early life as a seminarist trained to the priesthood, describes the precautions taken to prevent the youths entering each other's beds, and points out the folly of such precautions.[245] As that master of the human heart remarks, such prohibitions intensify the very evil they are intended to prevent by invoking in its aid the impulse to disobedience natural to every child of Adam and Eve, and the observation has often been repeated by teachers since. We probably have to recognize that a way to render such manifestations wholesome, as well as to prepare for the relationships of later life, is the adoption, so far as possible, of the method of coeducation of the sexes,[246]—not, of course, necessarily involving identity of education for both sexes,—since a certain amount of association between the sexes helps to preserve the healthiness of the sexual emotional attitude. Association between the sexes will not, of course, prevent the development of congenital inversion. In this connection it is pointed out by Bethe that it was precisely in Sparta and Lesbos, where homosexuality was most ideally cultivated, that the sexes, so far as we know, associated more freely than in any other Greek State.[247]

The question of the treatment of homosexuality must be approached with discrimination, caution, and skepticism. Nowadays we can have but little sympathy with those who, at all costs, are prepared to "cure" the invert. There is no sound method of cure in radical cases.

At one time the seemingly very radical method of castration was advocated and occasionally carried out, as in a case I have recorded in a previous chapter (History XXVI). Like all methods of treatment, it is sometimes believed to have been successful by those who carried it out. Usually, after a short period, it is found to be unsuccessful, and in some cases the condition, especially the mental condition, is rendered worse. It is not difficult to understand why this should be. Sexual inversion, is not a localized genital condition. It is a diffused condition, and firmly imprinted on the whole psychic state. There may be reasons for castration, or the slighter operation of vasectomy, but, although sexual tension may be thereby diminished, no authority now believes that any such operation will affect the actual inversion. Castration of the body in adult age cannot be expected to produce castration of the mind. Moll, Fere, Naecke, Bloch, Rohleder, Hirschfeld, are all either opposed to castration for inversion, or very doubtful as to any beneficial results.

In a case communicated to me by Dr. Shufeldt, an invert had himself castrated at the age of 26 to diminish sexual desire, make himself more like a woman, and to stop growth of beard. "But the only apparent physical effect," he wrote, "was to increase my weight 10 per cent., and render me a semi-invalid for the rest of my life. After two years my sexuality decreased, but that may have been due to satiety or to advancing years. I was also rendered more easily irritated over trifles and more revengeful. Terrible criminal auto-suggestions came into my head, never experienced before." Fere (Revue de Chirurgie, March 10, 1905) published the case of an invert of English origin who had been castrated. The inverted impulse remained unchanged, as well as sexual desire and the aptitude for erection; but neurasthenic symptoms, which had existed before, were aggravated; he felt less capable to resist his impulses, became migratory in his habits of life, and addicted to the use of laudanum. In a case recorded by C.H. Hughes (Alienist and Neurologist, Aug., 1914) the results were less unsatisfactory; in this case the dorsal nerve of the penis was first excised, without any result (see also Alienist and Neurologist, Feb., 1904, p. 70, as regards worse than useless results of cutting the pudic nerve), and a year or so later the testes were removed and the patient gained tranquillity and satisfaction; his homosexual inclinations appeared to go, and he began to show inclination for asexualized women, being specially anxious to meet with a woman whose ovaries had been removed on account of inversion. (Reference may also be made to Naecke, "Die Ersten Kastrationen aus sozialen Grunden auf europaeischen Boden," Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1909, No. 5, and E. Wilhelm in Juristisch-psychiatrische Grenzfragen, vol. viii, Heft 6 and 7, 1911.)

More trust has usually been placed in the psychotherapeutical than the surgical treatment of homosexuality. At one time hypnotic suggestion was carried out very energetically on homosexual subjects. Krafft-Ebing seems to have been the first distinguished advocate of hypnotism for application to the homosexual. Dr. von Schrenck-Notzing displayed special zeal and persistency in this treatment. He undertook to treat even the most pronounced cases of inversion by courses lasting more than a year, and involving, in at least one case, nearly one hundred and fifty hypnotic sittings; he prescribed frequent visits to the brothel, previous to which the patient took large doses of alcohol; by prolonged manipulations a prostitute endeavored to excite erection, a process attended with varying results. It appears that in some cases this course of treatment was attended by a certain sort of success, to which an unlimited good will on the part of the patient, it is needless to say, largely contributed. The treatment was, however, usually interrupted by continual backsliding to homosexual practices, and sometimes, naturally, the cure involved a venereal disorder. The patient was enabled to marry and to beget children.[248] It is a method of treatment which seems to have found few imitators. This we need not regret. The histories I have recorded in previous chapters show that it is not uncommon for even a pronounced invert to be able sometimes to effect coitus. It often becomes easy if at the time he fixes his thoughts on images connected with his own sex. But the perversion remains unaffected; the subject is merely (as one of Moll's inverts expressed it) practising masturbation per vaginam. Such treatment is a training in vice, and, as Raffalovich points out, the invert is simply perverted and brought down to the vicious level which necessarily accompanies perversity.[249]

There can be no doubt that in slight and superficial cases of homosexuality, suggestion may really exert an influence. We can scarcely expect it to exert such influence when the homosexual tendency is deeply rooted in an organic inborn temperament. In such cases indeed the subject may resist suggestion even when in the hypnotic state. This is pointed out by Moll, a great authority on hypnotism, and with much experience of its application to homosexuality, but never inclined to encourage an exaggerated notion of its efficacy in this field. Forel, who was also an authority on hypnotism, was equally doubtful as to its value in relation to inversion, especially in clearly inborn cases. Krafft-Ebing at the end said little about it, and Naecke (who was himself without faith in this method of treating inversion) stated that he had been informed by the last homosexual case treated by Krafft-Ebing by hypnotism that, in spite of all good-will on the patient's side, the treatment had been quite useless. Fere, also, had no belief in the efficacy of suggestive treatment, nor has Merzbach, nor Rohleder. Numa Praetorius states that the homosexual subjects he is acquainted with, who had been so treated, were not cured, and Hirschfeld remarks that the inverts "cured" by hypnotism were either not cured or not inverted.[250]

Moll has shown his doubt as to the wide applicability of suggestive therapeutics in homosexuality by developing in recent years what he terms association-therapy. In nearly all perverse individuals, he points out, there is a bridge,—more or less weak, no doubt,—which leads to the normal sexual life. By developing such links of association with normality, Moll believes, it may be possible to exert a healing influence on the homosexual. Thus a man who is attracted to boys may be brought to love a boyish woman.[251] Indications of this kind have long been observed and utilized, though not developed into a systematic method of treatment. In the case of bisexual individuals, or of youthful subjects whose homosexuality is not fully developed, it is probable that this method is beneficial. It is difficult to believe, however, that it possesses any marked influence on pronounced and developed cases of inversion.[252]

Somewhat the same aim as Moll's association-therapy, though on the basis of a more elaborate theory, is sought by Freud's psychoanalytic method of treating homosexuality. For the psychoanalytic theory (to which reference was made in the previous chapter) the congenital element of inversion is a rare and usually unimportant factor; the chief part is played by perverse psychic mechanisms. It is the business of psychoanalysis to straighten these out, and from the bisexual constitution, which is regarded as common to every one, to bring into the foreground the heterosexual elements, and so to reconstruct a normal personality, developing new sexual ideals from the patient's own latent and subconscious nature. Sadger has especially occupied himself with the psychoanalytic treatment of homosexuality and claims many successes.[253] Sadger admits that there are many limits to the success of this treatment, and that it cannot affect the inborn factors of homosexuality when present. Other psychoanalysts are less sanguine as to the cure of inversion. Stekel appears to have stated that he has never seen a complete cure by psychoanalysis, and Ferenezi is not able to give a good account of the results; especially as regards what he terms obsessional homosexuality, he states that he has never succeeded in effecting a complete cure, although obsessions in general are especially amenable to psychoanalysis.[254]

I have met with at least two homosexual persons who had undergone psychoanalytic treatment and found it beneficial. One, however, was bisexual, so that the difficulties in the way of the success—granting it to be real—were not serious. In the other case, the inversion persisted after treatment, exactly the same as before. The benefit he received was due to the fact that he was enabled to understand himself better and to overcome some of his mental difficulties. The treatment, therefore, in his case, was not a method of cure, but of psychic hygiene, of what Hirschfeld would call "adaptation-therapy." There can be no doubt that—even if we put aside all effort at cure and regard an invert's condition as inborn and permanent—a large and important field of treatment here still remains.

As we have seen in the two previous chapters, sexual inversion cannot be regarded as essentially an insane or psychopathic state.[255] But it is frequently associated with nervous conditions which may be greatly benefited by hygiene and treatment, without any attempt at all to overcome a homosexual attitude which may be too deeply rooted to be changed. The invert is specially liable to suffer from a high degree of neurasthenia, often involving much nervous weakness and irritability, loss of self-control, and genital hyperesthesia.[256] Hirschfeld finds that over 67 per cent. inverts suffer from nervous troubles, and among the cases dealt with in the present Study (as shown in chapter v) slight nervous functional disturbances are very common. These are conditions which may be ameliorated, and they may be treated in much the same way as if no inversion existed, by physical and mental tonics; or, if necessary, sedatives; by regulated gymnastics and out-of-door exercises; and by occupations which employ, without overexerting, the mind. Very great and permanent benefit may be obtained by a prolonged course of such mental and physical hygiene; the associated neurasthenic conditions may be largely removed, with the morbid fears, suspicions, and irritabilities that are usually part of neurasthenia, and the invert may be brought into a fairly wholesome and tonic condition of self-control.

The inversion is not thus removed. But if the patient is still young, and if the perversion does not appear to be deeply rooted in the organism, it is probable that—provided his own good-will is aiding—general hygienic measures, together with removal to a favorable environment, may gradually lead to the development of the normal sexual impulse. If it fails to do so, it becomes necessary to exercise great caution in recommending stronger methods. Purely "Platonic association with the other sex," Moll points out, "leads to better results than any prescribed attempt at coitus." For even when such attempt is successful, it is not usually possible to regard the results with much satisfaction. Not only is the acquisition of the normal instinct by an invert very much on a level with the acquisition of a vice, but probably it seldom succeeds in eradicating the original inverted instinct.[257] What usually happens is that the person becomes capable of experiencing both impulses,—not a specially satisfactory state of things. It may be disastrous, especially if it leads to marriage, as it may do in an inverted man or still more easily in an inverted woman. The apparent change does not turn out to be deep, and the invert's position is more unfortunate than his original position, both for himself and for his wife.[258]

It may be observed in the Histories brought forward in chapter iii that the position of married inverts (we must, of course, put aside the bisexual) is usually more distressing than that of the unmarried. Among my cases 14 per cent. are married. Hirschfeld finds that 16 per cent. of inverts are married and 50 per cent. are impotent; he is unable to find a single cure of homosexuality, and seldom any improvement, due to marriage; nearly always the impulse remains unaffected. The invert's happiness is, however, often affected for the worse, and not least by the feeling that he is depriving his wife of happiness. An invert, who had left his country through fear of arrest and married a rich woman who was in love with him, said to Hirschfeld: "Five years' imprisonment would not have been worse than one year of marriage."[259] In a marriage of this kind the homosexual partner and the normal partner—however ignorant of sexual matters—are both conscious, often with equal pain, that, even in the presence of affection and esteem and the best will in the world, there is something lacking. The instinctive and emotional element, which is the essence of sexual love and springs from the central core of organic personality, cannot voluntarily be created or even assumed.[260]

For the sake of the possible offspring, also, marriage is to be avoided. It is sometimes entirely for the sake of children that the invert desires to marry. But it must be pointed out that homosexuality is undoubtedly in many cases inherited. Often, it is true, the children turn out fairly well, but, in many cases, they bear witness that they belong to a neurotic and failing stock;[261] Hirschfeld goes so far as to say that it is always so, and concludes that from the eugenic standpoint the marriage of a homosexual person is always very risky. In a large number of cases such marriages prove sterile. The tendency to sexual inversion in eccentric and neurotic families seems merely to be nature's merciful method of winding up a concern which, from her point of view, has ceased to be profitable.

As a rule, inverts have no desire to be different from what they are, and, if they have any desire for marriage, it is usually only momentary. Very pathetic appeals for help are, however, sometimes made. I may quote from a letter addressed to me by a gentleman who desired advice on this matter: "In part, I write to you as a moralist and, in part, as to a physician. Dr. Q. has published a book in which, without discussion, hypnotic treatment of such cases was reported as successful. I am eager to know if your opinion remains what it was. This new assurance comes from a man whose moral firmness and delicacy are unquestionable, but you will easily imagine how one might shrink from the implantation of new impulses in the unconscious self, since newly created inclinations might disturb the conditions of life. At any rate, in my ignorance of hypnotism I fear that the effort to give the normal instinct might lead to marriage without the assurance that the normal instinct would be stable. I write, therefore, to explain my present condition and crave your counsel. It is with the greatest reluctance that I reveal the closely guarded secret of my life. I have no other abnormality, and have not hitherto betrayed my abnormal instinct. I have never made any person the victim of passion: moral and religious feelings were too powerful. I have found my reverence for other souls a perfect safeguard against any approach to impurity. I have never had sexual interest in women. Once I had a great friendship with a beautiful and noble woman, without any mixture of sexual feeling on my part. I was ignorant of my condition, and I have the bitter regret of having caused in her a hopeless love—proudly and tragically concealed to her death. My friendships with men, younger men, have been colored by passion, against which I have fought continually. The shame of this has made life a hell, and the horror of this abnormality, since I came to know it as such, has been an enemy to my religious faith. Here there could be no case of a divinely given instinct which I was to learn to use in a rational and chaste fashion, under the control of spiritual loyalty. The power which gave me life seemed to insist on my doing that for which the same power would sting me with remorse. If there is no remedy I must either cry out against the injustice of this life of torment between nature and conscience, or submit to the blind trust of baffled ignorance. If there is a remedy life will not seem to be such an intolerable ordeal. I am not pleading that I must succumb to impulse. I do not doubt that a pure celibate life is possible so far as action is concerned. But I cannot discover that friendship with younger men can go on uncolored by a sensuous admixture which fills me with shame and loathing. The gratification of passion—normal or abnormal—is repulsive to esthetic feeling. I am nearly 42 and I have always diverted myself from personal interests that threatened to become dangerous to me. More than a year ago, however, a new fate seemed to open to my unhappy and lonely life. I became intimate with a young man of 20, of the rarest beauty of form and character. I am confident that he is and always has been pure. He lives an exalted moral and religious life dominated by the idea that he and all men are partners of the divine nature, and able in the strength of that nature to be free from evil. I believe him to be normal. He shows pleasure in the society of attractive young women and in an innocent, light-hearted way refers to the time when he may be able to marry. He is a general favorite, but turned to me as to a friend and teacher. He is poor, and it was possible for me to guarantee him a good education. I began to help him from the longings of a lonely life. I wanted a son and a friend in my inward desolation. I craved the companionship of this pure and happy nature. I felt such a reverence for him that I hoped to find the sensuous element in me purged away by his purity. I am, indeed, utterly incapable of doing him harm; I am not morally weak; nevertheless the sensuous element is there, and it poisons my happiness. He is ardently affectionate and demonstrative. He spends the summers with me in Europe, and the tenderness he feels for me has prompted him at times to embrace and kiss me as he always has done to his father. Of late I have begun to fear that without will or desire I may injure the springs of feeling in him, especially if it is true that the homosexual tendency is latent in most men. The love he shows me is my joy, but a poisoned joy. It is the bread and wine of life to me; but I dare not think what his ardent affection might ripen into. I can go on fighting the battle of good and evil in my attachment to him, but I cannot define my duty to him. To shun him would be cruelty and would belie his trust in human fidelity. Without my friendship he will not take my money—the condition of a large career. I might, indeed, explain to him what I explain to you, but the ordeal and shame are too great, and I cannot see what good it would do. If he has the capacity of homosexual feeling he might be violently stimulated; if he is incapable of it, he would feel repulsion.

"Suppose, then, that I should seek hypnotic treatment, I still do not know what tricks an abnormal nature might play me when diverted by suggestion. I might lose the joy of this friendship without any compensation. I am afraid; I am afraid! Might I not be influenced to shun the only persons who inspire unselfish feeling?

"Bear with this account of my story. Many virtues are easy for me, and my life is spent in pursuits of culture. Alas, that all the culture with which I am credited, all the prayers and aspirations, all the strong will and heroic resolves have not rid my nature of this evil bent! What I long for is the right to love, not for the mere physical gratification, for the right to take another into the arms of my heart and profess all the tenderness I feel, to find my joy in planning his career with him, as one who is rightfully and naturally entitled to do so. I crave this since I cannot have a son. I leave the matter here.

"When I read what I have written I see how pointless it is. It is possible, indeed, that brooding over my personal calamity magnifies in my mind the sense of danger to this friend through me, and that I only need to find the right relation of friendliness coupled with aloofness which will secure him against any too ardent attachment. Certainly I have no fear that I shall forget myself. Yet two things array themselves on the other side: I rebel inwardly against the necessity of isolating myself as if I were a pestilence, and I rebel against the taint of sensuous feeling. The normal man can feel that his instinct is no shame when the spirit is in control. I know that to the consciousness of others my instinct itself would be a shame and a baseness, and I have no tendency to construct a moral system for myself. I have, to be sure, moments when I declare to myself that I will have my sensuous gratification as well as other men, but, the moment I think of the wickedness of it, the rebellion is soon over. The disesteem of self, the sense of taint, the necessity of withdrawing from happiness lest I communicate my taint, that is a spiritual malady which makes the ground-tone of my existence one of pain and melancholy. Should you have only some moral consolation without the promise of medical assistance I should feel grateful."

In such a case as this, one can do little more than advise the sufferer that, however painful his lot may be, it is not without its consolations, and that he would be best advised to pursue, as cheerfully as may be, the path that he has already long since marked out for himself. The invert sometimes fails to realize that for no man with high moral ideals, however normal he may be, is the conduct of life easy, and that if the invert has to be satisfied with affection without passion, and to live a life of chastity, he is doing no more than thousands of normal men have done, voluntarily and contentedly. As to hypnotism in such a case as this, it is altogether unreasonable to expect that suggestion will supplant the deeply rooted organic impulses that have grown up during a lifetime.

We may thus conclude that in the treatment of inversion the most satisfactory result is usually obtained when it is possible by direct and indirect methods to reduce the sexual hyperesthesia which frequently exists, and by psychic methods to refine and spiritualize the inverted impulse, so that the invert's natural perversion may not become a cause of acquired perversity in others. The invert is not only the victim of his own abnormal obsession, he is the victim of social hostility. We must seek to distinguish the part in his sufferings due to these two causes. When I review the cases I have brought forward and the mental history of inverts I have known, I am inclined to say that if we can enable an invert to be healthy, selfrestrained and selfrespecting, we have often done better than to convert him into the mere feeble simulacrum of a normal man. An appeal to the paiderastia of the best Greek days, and the dignity, temperance, even chastity, which it involved, will sometimes find a ready response in the emotional, enthusiastic nature of the congenital invert. Plato's Dialogues have frequently been found a source of great help and consolation by inverts. The "manly love" celebrated by Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass, although it may be of more doubtful value for general use, furnishes a wholesome and robust ideal to the invert who is insensitive to normal ideals.[262]

Among recent books, Iolaeus: An Anthology of Friendship, edited by Edward Carpenter, may be recommended. A similar book in German, of a more extended character, is Lieblingminne und Freudesliebe in der Weltliteratur, edited by Elisar von Kupffer. Mention may also be made of the Freundschaft (1912) of Baron von Gleichen-Russwurm, a sort of literary history of friendship, without specific reference to homosexuality, although many writers of inverted tendency are introduced. Platen's Tagebuecher are notable as the diary of an invert of high character and ideals. The volumes of the Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen contain many studies bearing on the ideal and esthetic aspects of homosexuality.

Various modern poets of high ability have given expression to emotions of exalted or passionate friendship toward individuals of the same sex, whether or not such friendship can properly be termed homosexual. It is scarcely necessary to refer to In Memoriam, in which Tennyson enshrined his affection for his early friend, Arthur Hallam, and developed a picture of the universe on the basis of that affection. The poems of Edward Cracroft Lefroy are notable, and Mr. John Gambril Nicholson has privately issued several volumes of verse (A Chaplet of Southernwood, A Garland of Ladslove, etc.) showing delicate charm combined with high technical skill. Some books mainly or entirely written in prose may fairly be included in the same group. Such are In the Key of Blue, by John Addington Symonds, and the Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton (published anonymously by a well-known author, A.C. Benson), in which on somewhat Platonic lines the idea is worked out that the individual sufferer must pass "from the love of one fair form to the love of abstract beauty" and "from the contemplation of his own suffering to the consideration of the root of all human suffering."

As regards the modern poetic literature of feminine homosexuality there is probably nothing to put beside the various volumes—pathetic in their brave simplicity and sincerity—of "Renee Vivien" (see ante, p. 200). Most other feminine singers of homosexuality have cautiously thrown a veil of heterosexuality over their songs.

Novels of a more or less definitely homosexual tone are now very numerous in English, French, German, and other languages. In English the homosexuality is for the most part veiled and the narrative deals largely with school-life and boys in order that the emotional and romantic character of the relations described may appear more natural. Thus Tim, an anonymously published book by H.O. Sturgis (1891), described the devotion of a boy to an older boy at Eton and his death at an early age. Jaspar Tristram, by A.W. Clarke (1899), again, is a well-written story of a schoolboy friendship of homosexual tone; a boy is represented as feeling attraction to boys who are like girls, and a girl became attractive to the hero because she is like a boy and recalls her brother whom he had formerly loved. The Garden God: A Tale of Two Boys, by Forrest Reid (1905), is another rather similar book, in its way a charming and delicately written idyll. Imre: A Memorandum, (1906), by "Xavier Mayne" (the pseudonym of an American author, who has also written The Intersexes), privately issued at Naples, is a book of a different class; representing the frankly homosexual passion of two mutually attracted men, an Englishman who is supposed to write the story and a Hungarian officer; it embodies a notable narrative of homosexual development which is probably more or less real.

In French there are a number of novels dealing with homosexuality, sometimes sympathetically, sometimes with artistic indifference, sometimes satirically. Andre Gide (in L'Immoraliste and other books), Rachilde (Madame Vallette), Willy (in the well-known Claudine series) may be mentioned, among other writers of more or less distinction, who have once or oftener dealt with homosexuality. Special reference should be made to the Belgian author George Eekhoud, whose Escal-Vigor (prosecuted at Bruges on its publication) is a book of special power. The homosexual stories of Essebac, of which L'Elu (1902) is considered the best, are of a romantic and sentimental character. Lucien (1910), by Binet-Valmer, is a penetrating and scarcely sympathetic study of inversion. Nortal's Les Adolescents Passionnes (already mentioned, p. 325) is a notably intimate and precise study of homosexuality in French schools. It would be easy to mention many others.

In Germany during recent years many novels of homosexual character have been published. They are not usually, it would seem, of high literary character, but are sometimes notable as being more or less disguised narratives of real fact. Body's Aus Eines Mannes Maedchenjahren is said to be a faithful autobiography. Der Neue Werther: eine Hellenische Passions-geschichte by Narkissos (1902) is also said to be authentic. Another book that may be mentioned is Konradin's Ein Junger Platos: Aus dem Leben eines Entgbeistes (1914). The German belletristic literature of homosexuality, as well as that of other countries, will be found adequately summarized and criticised by Numa Praetorius in the volumes of the Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen. See also Hirschfeld's Die Homosexualitaet, pp. 47 and 1018 et seq.

It is by some such method of self-treatment as this that most of the more highly intelligent men and women whose histories I have already briefly recorded have at last slowly and instinctively reached a condition of relative health and peace, both physical and moral. The method of self-restraint and self-culture, without self-repression, seems to be the most rational method of dealing with sexual inversion when that condition is really organic and deeply rooted. It is better that a man should be enabled to make the best of his own strong natural instincts, with all their disadvantages, than that he should be unsexed and perverted, crushed into a position which he has no natural aptitude to occupy. As both Raffalovich and Fere have insisted, it is the ideal of chastity, rather than of normal sexuality, which the congenital invert should hold before his eyes. He may not have in him the making of l'homme moyen sensuel; he may have in him the making of a saint.[263] What good work in the world the inverted may do is shown by the historical examples of distinguished inverts; and, while it is certainly true that these considerations apply chiefly to the finer-grained natures, the histories I have brought together suffice to show that such natures constitute a considerable proportion of inverts. The helplessly gross sexual appetite cannot thus be influenced; but that remains true whether the appetite is homosexual or heterosexual, and nothing is gained by enabling it to feed on women as well as on men.

A strictly ascetic life, it needs scarcely be said, is with difficulty possible for all persons, either homosexual or heterosexual. It is, however, outside the province of the physician to recommend his inverted patients to live according to their homosexual impulses, even when those impulses seem to be natural to the person displaying them. The most that the physician is entitled to do, it seems to me, is to present the situation clearly, and leave to the patient a decision for which he must himself accept the responsibility. Forel goes so far as to say that he sees no reason why inverts should not build cities of their own and marry each other if they so please, since they can do no harm to normal adults, while children can be protected from them.[264] Such notions are, however, too far removed from our existing social conventions to be worth serious consideration.

The standpoint here taken up, it may be remarked, by no means denies to the invert a right to the fulfillment of his impulses. Numa Praetorius remarks, it would seem justly, that while the invert must properly be warned against unnatural sexual license, and while those who are capable of continence do well to preserve it, to deny all right to sexual activity to the invert merely causes those inverts who are incapable of self-control to throw recklessly aside all restraints (Zeitschrift fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. viii, 1906, p. 726). The invert has the right to sexual indulgence, it may be, but he has also the duty to accept the full responsibility for his own actions, and the necessity to recognize the present attitude of the society he lives in. He cannot be advised to set himself in violent opposition to that society.

The world will not be a tolerable place for pronounced inverts until they are better understood, and that will involve a radical change in general and even medical opinion. An inverted physician, of high character and successful in his profession, writes to me on this point: "The first, and easiest, thing to do, it seems to me, is to convince the medical profession that we unfortunate people are not only as sane, but as moral, as our normal brothers; and that we are even more alive to the supreme necessity of self-control (necessary from every point of view) than they. It is not license we want, but justice; it is the cruelty and prejudice of convention which we wish to abolish—not the proper and just indignation of society with crimes against the social order. We want to make it possible for us to satisfy our inborn instincts (which are not concerned essentially with sexual acts, so called, alone) without thereby becoming criminals. One of us who would, under any circumstances, seduce a person of his own sex of immature age, and particularly one whose sexual complexion was unknown, deserves the severe punishment which would be meted out to a normal person who did the same to a young girl—but no more; while, so long as no public offense is given, there should be no penalty or obloquy whatever attached to sexual acts committed with full consent between mature persons. These acts may or may not be wrong and immoral, just as sexual acts between mature persons of different sexes may or may not be wrong or immoral. But in neither case has the law any concern; and public opinion should make no distinction between the two. It is in the highest degree important that it should be clearly understood that we want no relaxation of moral obligations. At present we suffer an inconceivably cruel wrong."

We have always to remember, and there is, indeed, no possibility of forgetting, that the question of homosexuality is a social question. Within certain limits, the gratification of the normal sexual impulse, even outside marriage, arouses no general or profound indignation; and is regarded as a private matter; rightly or wrongly, the gratification of the homosexual impulse is regarded as a public matter. This attitude is more or less exactly reflected in the law. Thus it happens that whenever a man is openly detected in a homosexual act, however exemplary his life may previously have been, however admirable it may still be in all other relations, every ordinary normal citizen, however licentious and pleasure-loving his own life may be, feels it a moral duty to regard the offender as hopelessly damned and to help in hounding him out of society. At very brief intervals cases occur, and without reaching the newspapers are more or less widely known, in which distinguished men in various fields, not seldom clergymen, suddenly disappear from the country or commit suicide in consequence of some such exposure or the threat of it. It is probable that many obscure tragedies could find their explanation in a homosexual cause.

Some of the various tragic ways in which homosexual passions are revealed to society may be illustrated by the following communication from a correspondent, not himself inverted, who here narrates cases that came under his observation in various parts of the United States. The cases referred to will be known to many, but I have disguised the names of persons and places:—

"At the age of 14 I was a chorister at —— church, whose choirmaster, an Englishman named M.W.M., was an accomplished man, seemingly a perfect gentleman, and a devout churchman. He never seemed to care for the society of ladies, never mingled much with the men, but sought companionship with the choristers of my age. He frequently visited at the homes of his favorites, to tea, and when he asked the parents' consent for George's or Frank's company on an excursion or to the theater, and then to spend the night with him, such request was invariably granted. I shall ever remember my first night with him; he began by fondling and caressing me, quieting my alarm by assurances of not hurting me, and after invoking me to secrecy and with promises of many future pleasures, I consented to his desire or passion, which he seemed to satisfy by an attempt at fellatio. Was this depravity? I would say 'No!' after reading his subsequent confession, found in his room after his death by suicide. This was brought about by his too intimate relations with the rector's son who contracted St. Vitus's dance and in the delirium of a fever that followed from nervous exhaustion told of him and his doings. A thorough investigation took place and M. fled, a broken-hearted and disgraced man, who, as the result of remorse, relentless persecution, and exposure through several years, ended his life by drowning himself. In his confession he spoke of having been raised under a very strong moral restraint and having lived an exemplary life, with the exception of this strange desire that his will-power could not control.

"The next case is that of C.H. He came of an old family of brainy men who have, and do yet, occupy prominent places in the pulpit and the bar, and was himself a gifted young attorney. I knew him intimately, as for six years he was a close neighbor and we were associated in lodge-work. He was an effeminate little fellow: height, 5 feet 2 inches; weight, 105 pounds; very near-sighted; and he had a light voice, not a treble or falsetto, but still a voice that detracted materially from the beautiful rhetoric that flowed from his lips. He had served his country as its representative in the Legislature and had received the nomination for senator, over a hard-fought political battle. The last canvass and speeches were made at a town which was, in consequence, crowded. That night H. had to occupy a room with a stranger, named E., a travelling salesman. There were two beds in this room. Mr. E., on the following day told several people that during the night he was awakened by H., who had come over to his bed and had his mouth on his 'person,' and that he had threatened to kick him out of the room, but that H. pleaded with him and fell on his knees and swore that he had been overcome by a passion that he had heretofore controlled, and begged of him not to expose him. These facts coming to the notice of his opponents, within twenty-four hours, they hastened to take advantage of it by placarding H. as a second Oscar Wilde, and stating the facts as far as decency and the law allowed. H.'s friends came to him and gave him one of two alternatives: if guilty, either to kill himself or leave that section forever; if not guilty, to slay his traducer, E.H. affirmed his innocence, and in company with two friends, C. and J., took the train for ——. Learning there that E. was at a town twelve miles east, they hired a fast livery and drove overland. They found E. at the station, awaiting the arrival of a train. H., with a pistol, strode forward and in his excitement said: 'You exposed me, did you?' Being near-sighted, his aim proved wide of the mark. E. sprang forward and grappled with H. for possession of the pistol, and was fired upon by C. and J., who shot him in the back. He expired in a few minutes, his last statement being to the effect that H. was guilty as accused. H., C., and J. were sentenced to the penitentiary for life. During my six years' acquaintance with H. I knew of nothing derogatory to his character, nor has anyone ever come forward to say that on any other occasion he ever displayed this weakness. I know his early life had a pure atmosphere, as he was an only child and the idol of both his parents, who builded high their hopes of his future success, and who survive this disgrace, but are broken-hearted.

"The next case is that of the Rev. T.W., professor at the University of ——. Mr. W. is a scholarly gentleman, affable in his address, eloquent in his oratory, and a fine classical scholar. He was exposed by some of his students, who, to use a slang phrase, accused him of being a 'head-worker.' At his examination by the faculty he confessed his weakness, and said he could not control his unholy passion. His resignation was accepted both by the church and the college, and he left.

"I know of a few other cases that have their peculiar traits, and am confident that these persons did not become possessed of this habit through the so-called 'indiscretions of youth,' as in every case their early life was freer from contamination than that of 90 per cent. of the boys who, on reaching man's estate, have, like myself, no desire to deviate from the old-fashioned way formulated by our ancient sire, Adam."

It can scarcely be said that the consciousness of this attitude of society is favorable to the invert's attainment of a fairly sane and well-balanced state of mind. This is, indeed, one of the great difficulties in his way, and often causes him to waver between extremes of melancholia and egotistic exaltation. We regard all homosexuality with absolute and unmitigated disgust. We have been taught to venerate Alexander the Great, Epaminondas, Socrates, and other antique heroes; but they are safely buried in the remote past, and do not affect our scorn of homosexuality in the present.

It was in the fourth century, at Rome, that the strong modern opposition to homosexuality was first clearly formulated in law.[265] The Roman race had long been decaying; sexual perversions of all kinds flourished; the population was dwindling. At the same time, Christianity, with its Judaic-Pauline antagonism to homosexuality, was rapidly spreading. The statesmen of the day, anxious to quicken the failing pulses of national life, utilized this powerful Christian feeling. Constantine, Theodosius, and Valentinian all passed laws against homosexuality, the last, at all events, ordaining as penalty the vindices flammae; but their enactments do not seem to have been strictly carried out. In the year 538, Justinian, professing terror of certain famines, earthquakes, and pestilences in which he saw the mysterious "recompense which was meet" prophesied by St. Paul,[266] issued his edict condemning unnatural offenders to the sword, "lest as the result of these impious acts" (as the preamble to his Novella 77 has it) "whole cities should perish, together with their inhabitants; for we are taught by Holy Scripture that through these acts cities have perished with the men in them."[267] This edict (which Justinian followed up by a fresh ordinance to the same effect) constituted the foundation of legal enactment and social opinion concerning the matter in Europe for thirteen hundred years.[268] In France the vindices flammae survived to the last; St. Louis had handed over these sacrilegious offenders to the Church to be burned; in 1750 two pederasts were burned in the Place de Greve, and only a few years before the Revolution a Capuchin monk named Pascal was also burned.

After the Revolution, however, began a new movement, which has continued slowly and steadily ever since, though it still divides European nations into two groups. Justinian, Charlemagne, and St. Louis had insisted on the sin and sacrilege of sodomy as the ground for its punishment.[269] It was doubtless largely as a religious offense that the Code Napoleon omitted to punish it. The French law makes a clear and logical distinction between crime on the one hand, vice and irreligion on the other, only concerning itself with the former. Homosexual practices in private, between two consenting adult parties, whether men or women, are absolutely unpunished by the Code Napoleon and by French law of today. Only under three conditions does the homosexual act come under the cognizance of the law as a crime: (1) when there is outrage public a la pudeur,—i.e., when the act is performed in public or with a possibility of witnesses; (2) when there is violence or absence of consent, in whatever degree the act may have been consummated; (3) when one of the parties is under age, or unable to give valid consent; in some cases it appears possible to apply Article 334 of the penal code, directed against habitual excitation to debauch of young persons of either sex under the age of 21.

This method of dealing with unnatural offenses has spread widely, at first because of the political influence of France, and more recently because such an attitude has commended itself on its merits. In Belgium the law is similar to that of the Code Napoleon, as it is also in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Roumania, Japan, and numerous South American lands. In Switzerland the law is a little vague and varies slightly in the different cantons, but it is not severe; in Geneva and some other cantons there is no penalty; the general tendency is to inflict brief imprisonment when serious complaints have been lodged, and cases can sometimes be settled privately by the magistrate.

The only large European countries in which homosexuality per se remains a penal offense appear to be Germany, Austria, Russia, and England. In several of the German States, such as Bavaria and Hanover, simple homosexuality formerly went unpunished, but when the laws of Prussia were in 1871 applied to the new German Empire this ceased to be the case, and unnatural carnality between males became an offense against the law. This article of the German Code (Section 175) has caused great discussion and much practical difficulty, because, although the terms of the law make it necessary to understand by widernatuerliche Unzucht other practices besides paedicatio, not every homosexual practice is included; it must be some practice resembling normal coitus. There is a widespread opinion that this article of the code should be abolished; it appears that at one time an authoritative committee pronounced in favor of this step, and their proposition came near adoption. The Austrian law is somewhat similar to the German, but it applies to women as well as to men; this is logical, for there is no reason why homosexuality should be punished in men and left unpunished in women. In Russia the law against homosexual practices appears to be very severe, involving, in some cases, banishment to Siberia and deprivation of civil rights; but it can scarcely be rigorously executed.

The existing law in England is severe, but simple. Carnal knowledge per anum of either a man or a woman or an animal is punishable by a sentence of penal servitude with not less than three years, or of imprisonment with not more than two years. Even "gross indecency" between males, however privately committed, has been since 1885 a penal offense.[270] The clause is open to criticism. With the omission of the words "or private," it would be sound and in harmony with the most enlightened European legislation; but it must be pointed out that an act only becomes indecent when those who perform it or witness it regard it as indecent. The act which brought each of us into the world is not indecent; it would become so if carried on in public. If two male persons, who have reached years of discretion, consent together to perform some act of sexual intimacy in private, no indecency has been committed. If one of the consenting parties subsequently proclaims the act, indecency may doubtless be created, as may happen also in the case of normal sexual intercourse, but it seems contrary to good policy that such proclamation should convert the act itself into a penal offense. Moreover, "gross indecency" between males usually means some form of mutual masturbation; no penal code regards masturbation as an offense, and there seems to be no sufficient reason why mutual masturbation should be so regarded.[271] The main point to be insured is that no boy or girl who has not reached years of discretion should be seduced or abused by an older person, and this point is equally well guaranteed on the basis introduced by the Code Napoleon. However shameful, disgusting, personally immoral, and indirectly antisocial it may be for two adult persons of the same sex, men or women, to consent together to perform an act of sexual intimacy in private, there is no sound or adequate ground for constituting such act a penal offense by law.

One of the most serious objections to the legal recognition of private "gross indecency" is the obvious fact that only in the rarest cases can such indecency become known to the police, and we thus perpetrate what is very much like a legal farce. "The breaking of few laws," as Moll truly observes, regarding the German law, "so often goes unpunished as of this." It is the same in England, as is amply evidenced by the fact that, of the English sexual inverts, whose histories I have obtained, not one, so far as I am aware, has ever appeared in a police-court on this charge.

It may further be pointed out that legislation against homosexuality has no clear effect either in diminishing or increasing its prevalence. This must necessarily be so as regards the kernel of the homosexual group, if we are to regard a considerable proportion of cases as congenital. In France homosexuality per se has been untouched by the law for a century; yet it abounds, chiefly, it seems, among the lowest in the community; although the law is silent, social feeling is strong, and when—as has been the case in one instance—a man of undoubted genius has his name associated with this perversion it becomes difficult or impossible for the admirers of his work to associate with him personally; very few cases of homosexuality have been recorded in France among the more intelligent classes; the literature of homosexuality is there little more than the literature of male prostitution, as described by police-officials, and as carried on largely for the benefit of foreigners. In Germany and Austria, where the law against homosexuality is severe, it abounds also, perhaps to a much greater extent than in France;[272] it certainly asserts itself more vigorously; a far greater number of cases have been recorded than in any other country, and the German literature of homosexuality is very extensive, often issued in popular form, and sometimes enthusiastically eulogistic. In England the law is exceptionally severe; yet, according to the evidence of those who have an international acquaintance with these matters, homosexuality is fully as prevalent as on the Continent; some would say that it is more so. Much the same is true of the United States, though there is less to be seen on the surface. It cannot, therefore, be said that legislative enactments have very much influence on the prevalence of homosexuality. The chief effect seems to be that the attempt at suppression arouses the finer minds among sexual inverts to undertake the enthusiastic defense of homosexuality, while coarser minds are stimulated to cynical bravado.[273]

As regards the prevalence of homosexuality in the United States, I may quote from a well-informed American correspondent:—

"The great prevalence of sexual inversion in American cities is shown by the wide knowledge of its existence. Ninety-nine normal men out of a hundred have been accosted on the streets by inverts, or have among their acquaintances men whom they know to be sexually inverted. Everyone has seen inverts and knows what they are. The public attitude toward them is generally a negative one—indifference, amusement, contempt.

"The world of sexual inverts is, indeed, a large one in any American city, and it is a community distinctly organized—words, customs, traditions of its own; and every city has its numerous meeting-places: certain churches where inverts congregate; certain cafes well known for the inverted character of their patrons; certain streets where, at night, every fifth man is an invert. The inverts have their own 'clubs,' with nightly meetings. These 'clubs' are, really, dance-halls, attached to saloons, and presided over by the proprietor of the saloon, himself almost invariably an invert, as are all the waiters and musicians. The frequenters of these places are male sexual inverts (usually ranging from 17 to 30 years of age); sightseers find no difficulty in gaining entrance; truly, they are welcomed for the drinks they buy for the company—and other reasons. Singing and dancing turns by certain favorite performers are the features of these gatherings, with much gossip and drinking at the small tables ranged along the four walls of the room. The habitues of these places are, generally, inverts of the most pronounced type, i.e., the completely feminine in voice and manners, with the characteristic hip motion in their walk; though I have never seen any approach to feminine dress there, doubtless the desire for it is not wanting and only police regulations relegate it to other occasions and places. You will rightly infer that the police know of these places and endure their existence for a consideration; it is not unusual for the inquiring stranger to be directed there by a policeman."

The Oscar Wilde trial (see ante, p. 48), with its wide publicity, and the fundamental nature of the questions it suggested, appears to have generally contributed to give definiteness and self-consciousness to the manifestations of homosexuality, and to have aroused inverts to take up a definite attitude. I have been assured in several quarters that this is so and that since that case the manifestations of homosexuality have become more pronounced. One correspondent writes:—

"Up to the time of the Oscar Wilde trial I had not known what the condition of the law was. The moral question in itself—its relation to my own life and that of my friends—I reckoned I had solved; but I now had to ask myself how far I was justified in not only breaking the law, but in being the cause of a like breach in others, and others younger than myself. I have never allowed the dictum of the law to interfere with what I deemed to be a moral development in any youth for whom I am responsible. I cannot say that the trial made me alter my course of life, of the rightness of which I was too convincingly persuaded, but it made me much more careful, and it probably sharpened my sense of responsibility for the young. Reviewing the results of the trial as a whole, it doubtless did incalculable harm, and it intensified our national vice of hypocrisy. But I think it also may have done some good in that it made those who, like myself, have thought and experienced deeply in the matter—and these must be no small few—ready to strike a blow, when the time comes, for what we deem to be right, honorable, and clean."

From America a lady writes with reference to the moral position of inverts, though without allusion to the Wilde trial:—

"Inverts should have the courage and independence to be themselves, and to demand an investigation. If one strives to live honorably, and considers the greatest good to the greatest number, it is not a crime nor a disgrace to be an invert. I do not need the law to defend me, neither do I desire to have any concessions made for me, nor do I ask my friends to sacrifice their ideals for me. I too have ideals which I shall always hold. All that I desire—and I claim it as my right—is the freedom to exercise this divine gift of loving, which is not a menace to society nor a disgrace to me. Let it once be understood that the average invert is not a moral degenerate nor a mental degenerate, but simply a man or a woman who is less highly specialized, less completely differentiated, than other men and women, and I believe the prejudice against them will disappear, and if they live uprightly they will surely win the esteem and consideration of all thoughtful people. I know what it means to an invert—who feels himself set apart from the rest of mankind—to find one human heart who trusts him and understands him, and I know how almost impossible this is, and will be, until the world is made aware of these facts."

But, while the law has had no more influence in repressing abnormal sexuality than, wherever it has tried to do so, it has had in repressing the normal sexual instinct, it has served to foster another offense. What is called blackmailing in England, chantage in France, and Erpressung in Germany—in other words, the extortion of money by threats of exposing some real or fictitious offense—finds its chief field of activity in connection with homosexuality.[274] No doubt the removal of the penalty against simple homosexuality does not abolish blackmailing, as the existence of this kind of chantage in France shows, but it renders its success less probable.

On all these grounds, and taking into consideration the fact that the tendency of modern legislation generally, and the consensus of authoritative opinion in all countries, are in this direction, it seems reasonable to conclude that neither "sodomy" (i.e., immissio membri in anum hominis vel mulieris) nor "gross indecency" ought to be penal offenses, except under certain special circumstances. That is to say, that if two persons of either or both sexes, having reached years of discretion,[275] privately consent to practise some perverted mode of sexual relationship, the law cannot be called upon to interfere. It should be the function of the law in this matter to prevent violence, to protect the young, and to preserve public order and decency. Whatever laws are laid down beyond this must be left to the individuals themselves, to the moralists, and to social opinion.

At the same time, and while such a modification in the law seems to be reasonable, the change effected would be less considerable than may appear at first sight. In a very large proportion, indeed, of cases boys are involved. It is instructive to observe that in Legludic's 246 cases (including victims and aggressors together) in France, 127, or more than half, were between the ages of 10 and 20, and 82, or exactly one-third, were between the ages of 10 and 14. A very considerable field of operation is thus still left for the law, whatever proportion of cases may meet with no other penalty than social opinion.

That, however, social opinion—law or no law—will speak with no uncertain voice is very evident. Once homosexuality was primarily a question of population or of religion. Now we hear little either of its economic aspects or of its sacrilegiousness; it is for us primarily a disgusting abomination, i.e., a matter of taste, of esthetics; and, while unspeakably ugly to the majority, it is proclaimed as beautiful by a small minority. I do not know that we need find fault with this esthetic method of judging homosexuality. But it scarcely lends itself to legal purposes. To indulge in violent denunciation of the disgusting nature of homosexuality, and to measure the sentence by the disgust aroused, or to regret, as one English judge is reported to have regretted when giving sentence, that "gross indecency" is not punishable by death, is to import utterly foreign considerations into the matter. The judges who yield to this temptation would certainly never allow themselves to be consciously influenced on the bench by their political opinions. Yet esthetic opinions are quite as foreign to law as political opinions. An act does not become criminal because it is disgusting. To eat excrement, as Moll remarks, is extremely disgusting, but it is not criminal. The confusion which thus exists, even in the legal mind, between the disgusting and the criminal is additional evidence of the undesirability of the legal penalty for simple homosexuality. At the same time it shows that social opinion is amply adequate to deal with the manifestations of inverted sexuality. So much for the legal aspects of sexual inversion.

But while there can be no doubt about the amply adequate character of the existing social reaction to all manifestations of perverted sexuality, the question still remains how far not merely the law, but also the state of public opinion, should be modified in the light of such a psychological study as we have here undertaken. It is clear that this public opinion, molded chiefly or entirely with reference to gross vice, tends to be unduly violent in its reaction. What, then, is the reasonable attitude of society toward the congenital sexual invert? It seems to lie in the avoidance of two extremes. On the one hand, it cannot be expected to tolerate the invert who flouts his perversion in its face, and assumes that, because he would rather take his pleasure with a soldier or a policeman than with their sisters, he is of finer clay than the vulgar herd. On the other, it might well refrain from crushing with undiscerning ignorance beneath a burden of shame the subject of an abnormality which, as we have seen, has not been found incapable of fine uses. Inversion is an aberration from the usual course of nature. But the clash of contending elements which must often mark the history of such a deviation results now and again—by no means infrequently—in nobler activities than those yielded by the vast majority who are born to consume the fruits of the earth. It bears, for the most part, its penalty in the structure of its own organism. We are bound to protect the helpless members of society against the invert. If we go farther, and seek to destroy the invert himself before he has sinned against society, we exceed the warrant of reason, and in so doing we may, perhaps, destroy also those children of the spirit which possess sometimes a greater worth than the children of the flesh.

Here we may leave this question of sexual inversion. In dealing with it I have sought to avoid that attitude of moral superiority which is so common in the literature of this subject, and have refrained from pointing out how loathsome this phenomenon is, or how hideous that. Such an attitude is as much out of place in scientific investigation as it is in judicial investigation, and may well be left to the amateur. The physician who feels nothing but disgust at the sight of disease is unlikely to bring either succor to his patients or instruction to his pupils.

That the investigation we have here pursued is not only profitable to us in succoring the social organism and its members, but also in bringing light into the region of sexual psychology, is now, I hope, clear to every reader who has followed me to this point. There are a multitude of social questions which we cannot face squarely and honestly unless we possess such precise knowledge as has been here brought together concerning the part played by the homosexual tendency in human life. Moreover, the study of this perverted tendency stretches beyond itself;

"O'er that art Which you say adds to Nature, is an art That Nature makes."

Pathology is but physiology working under new conditions. The stream of nature still flows into the bent channel of sexual inversion, and still runs according to law. We have not wasted our time in this toilsome excursion. With the knowledge here gained we are the better equipped to enter upon the study of the wider questions of sex.

FOOTNOTES:

[243] In this connection I may refer to Moll's Sexual Life of the Child, to the writings of Dr. Clement Dukes, physician to Rugby School, who fully recognizes the risks of school-life, and to the discussion on sexual vice in schools, started by an address by the Rev. J.M. Wilson, head-master of Clifton College, in the English Journal of Education, 1881-82.

[244] With regard to the importance of the sexual emotions generally and their training, see the well-known book by Edward Carpenter, Love's Coming of Age; Professor Gurlitt ("Knabenfreundschaften," Sexual-Probleme, Oct., 1909) also upholds the intimate friendships of youth, which in his own experience have not had even a suspicion of homosexuality.

[245] Casanova, Memoires, vol. i (edition Garnier), p. 160. See also remarks by an experienced master in one of the largest English public schools, which I have brought forward in vol. i of these Studies, "Auto-erotism," 3d ed., 1910.

[246] See, e.g., Professor J.R. Angell, "Some Reflections upon the Reaction from Coeducation," Popular Science Monthly, Nov., 1902; also Moll's Sexual Life of the Child, ch. ix, and for a general discussion of coeducation, S. Poirson, La Coeducation, 1911.

[247] Bethe, "Die Dorische Knabenliebe," Rheinisches Museum fuer Philologie; vol. lxii, Heft 3, p. 440; cf. Edward Carpenter, Intermediate Types among Primitive Folk, ch. vi.

[248] Schrenck-Notzing, Die Suggestionstherapie bei krankhaften Erscheinungen des Geschlechtsinnes, 1892. (Eng. trans. Therapeutic Suggestion, 1895.)

[249] Raffalovich, Uranisme et Unisexualite, 1896, p. 16. He remarks that the congenital invert who has never had relations with women, and whose abnormality, to use Krafft-Ebing's distinction, is a perversion and not a perversity, is much less dangerous and apt to seduce others than the more versatile and corrupt person who has known all methods of gratification.

[250] See, e.g., Moll, Die Kontraere Sexualempfindung, ch. xi; Forel, Die Sexuelle Frage, ch. xiv; Naecke, "Die Behandlung der Homosexualitaet," Sexual-Probleme, Aug., 1910; Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualitaet, ch. xxii.

[251] Moll, Zeitschrift fuer Psychotherapie, 1911, Heft 1; id., Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften, 1912, p. 662 et seq.

[252] This is also the opinion of Numa Praetorius, Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Jan., 1913, p. 222.

[253] See, especially, Sadger, Zeitschrift fuer Sexualwissenschaft, Heft 12, 1908; also Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. ix, 1908; Sadger's methods are criticised by Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualitaet, ch. xxii, and defended by Sadger, Internationale Zeitschrift fuer Aerztliche Psychoanalyse, July, 1914, p. 392. For a discussion of the psychoanalytic treatment of homosexuality by a leading American Freudian, see Brill, Journal American Medical Association, Aug. 2, 1913.

[254] Internationale Zeitschrift fuer Aerztliche Psychoanalyse, March, 1914.

[255] This is now generally recognized. See, e.g., Roubinovitch and Borel, "Un Cas d'Uranisme," L'Encephale, Aug., 1913. These authors conclude that it is today impossible to look upon inversion as the equivalent or the symptom of a psychopathic state, though we have to recognize that it frequently coexists with morbid emotional states. Naecke, also, in his extensive experience, found that homosexuality is rare in asylums and slight in character; he dealt with this question on various occasions; see, e.g., Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. viii, 1906.

[256] Krafft-Ebing considered that the temporary or lasting association of homosexuality with neurasthenia having its root in congenital conditions is "almost invariable," and some authorities (like Meynert) have regarded inversion as an accidental growth on the foundation of neurasthenia.

[257] Fere expressed himself concerning the general treatment of homosexuality in the same sense, and even more emphatically (Fere, L'Instinct Sexuel, 1899, pp. 272, 286). He considers that all forms of congenital inversion resist treatment, and that, since a change in the invert's instincts must be regarded rather as a perversion of the invert than a cure of the inversion, one may be permitted to doubt not only the utility of the treatment, but even the legitimacy of attempting it. The treatment of sexual inversion, he declared, is as much outside the province of medicine as the restoration of color-vision in the color-blind. The ideal which the physician and the teacher must place before the invert is that of chastity; he must seek to harness his wagon to a star.

[258] I have been told by a distinguished physician, who was consulted in the case, of a congenital invert highly placed in the English government service, who married in the hope of escaping his perversion, and was not even able to consummate the marriage. It is needless to insist on the misery which is created in such cases. It is not, of course, denied that such marriages may not sometimes become eventually happy. Thus Kiernan ("Psychical Treatment of Congenital Sexual Inversion," Review of Insanity and Nervous Diseases, June, 1894) reports the case of a thoroughly inverted girl who married the brother of the friend to whom she was previously attached merely in order to secure his sister's companionship. She was able to endure and even enjoy intercourse by imagining that her husband, who resembled his sister, was another sister. Liking and esteem for the husband gradually increased and after the sister died a child was born who much resembled her; "the wife's esteem passed through love of the sister to intense natural love of the daughter, as resembling the sister; through this to normal love of the husband as the father and brother." The final result may have been satisfactory, but this train of circumstances could not have been calculated beforehand. Moll is also opposed, on the whole (e.g., Deutsche medicinische Presse, No. 6, 1902), to marriage and procreation by inverts.

[259] Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualitaet, ch. xxi. It might seem on theoretical grounds that the marriage of a homosexual man with a homosexual woman might turn out well. Hirschfeld, however, states that he knows of 14 such marriages, and the theoretical expectation has not been justified; 3 of the cases speedily terminated in divorce, 4 of the couples lived separately, and all but 2 of the remaining couples regretted the step they had taken. I may add that in such a case even the expectation of happiness scarcely seems reasonable, since neither of the parties can feel a true mating impulse toward the other.

[260] Hirschfeld also notes (Die Homosexualitaet, p. 95) that women often instinctively feel that there is something wrong in the love of their inverted husbands who may perhaps succeed in copulating, but betray their deepest feelings by a repugnance to touch the sexual parts with the hand. The homosexual woman, also, as Hirschfeld elsewhere points out with cases in illustration (p. 84), may suffer seriously through being subjected to normal sexual relationships.

[261] Fere reports the case of an invert of great intellectual ability who had never had any sexual relationships, and was not averse from a chaste life; he was urged by his doctor to acquire the power of normal intercourse and to marry, on the ground that his perversion was merely a perversion of the imagination. He did so, and, though he married a perfectly strong and healthy woman, and was himself healthy, except in so far as his perversion was concerned, the offspring turned out disastrously. The eldest child was an epileptic, almost an imbecile, and with strongly marked homosexual impulses; the second and third children were absolute idiots; the youngest died of convulsions in infancy (Fere, L'Instinct Sexuel, p. 269 et seq.) No doubt this is not an average case, but the numerous examples of the offspring of similar marriages brought forward by Hirschfeld (op. cit., p. 391) scarcely present a much better result.

[262] It is scarcely necessary to add that the same principle is adaptable to the case of homosexual women. "In all such cases," writes an American woman physician, "I would recommend that the moral sense be trained and fostered, and the persons allowed to keep their individuality, being taught to remember always that they are different from others, rather sacrificing their own feelings or happiness when necessary. It is good discipline for them, and will serve in the long run to bring them more favor and affection than any other course. This quality or idiosyncrasy is not essentially evil, but, if rightly used, may prove a blessing to others and a power for good in the life of the individual; nor does it reflect any discredit upon its possessor."

[263] The existence of an affinity between homosexuality and the religious temperament has been referred to in ch. i as recognized in many parts of the world. See, for a more extended discussion, Horneffer, Der Priester, and Bloch, Die Prostitution, vol. i, pp. 101-110. The psychoanalysts have also touched on this point; thus Pfister, Die Frommingkeit des Grafen von Zinzendorf (1910), argues that the founder of the pietistic sect of the Herrenhuter was of sublimated homosexual (or bisexual) temperament.

[264] Forel, Die Sexuelle Frage, p. 528. Such ideas are, of course, often put forward by inverts themselves.

[265] Roman law previously seems to have been confined in this matter to the protection of boys. The Scantinian and other Roman laws against paiderasty seem to have been usually a dead letter. See, for various notes and references, W.G. Holmes, The Age of Justinian and Theodora, vol. i, p. 121.

[266] Epistle to the Romans, chapter i, verses 26-7.

[267] In practice this penalty of death appears to have been sometimes commuted to ablation of the sexual organs.

[268] For a full sketch of the legal enactments against homosexual intercourse in ancient and modern times, see Numa Praetorius, "Die straflichen Bestimmungen gegen den gleichgeschlechtlichen Verkehr," Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. i, pp. 97-158. This writer points out that Justinian, and still more clearly, Pius V, in the sixteenth century, distinguished between occasional homosexuality and deep-rooted inversion, habitual offenders alone, not those who had only been guilty once or twice, being punished.

[269] The influence of the supposed connection of sodomy with unbelief, idolatry, and heresy in arousing the horror of it among earlier religions has been emphasized by Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. i, p. 486 et seq.

[270] "Any male person who in public or private commits, or is a party to the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, being convicted thereof, shall be liable at the discretion of the court to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labor."

[271] This point is brought forward by Dr. Leon de Rode in his report on "L'Inversion Genitale et la Legislation," prepared for the Third (Brussels) Congress of Criminal Anthropology in 1892. The same point is insisted on by some of my correspondents.

[272] It is a remarkable and perhaps significant fact that, while homosexuality is today in absolute disrepute in France, it was not so under the less tolerant law of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Duc de Gesvres, as described by Besenval (Memoires, i, p. 178), was a well-marked invert of feminine type, impotent, and publicly affecting all the manners of women; yet he was treated with consideration. In 1687 Madame, the mother of the Regent, writes implying that "all the young men and many of the old" practised pederasty: il n'y a que les gens du commun qui aiment les femmes. The marked tendency to inversion in the French royal family at this time is well known.

[273] A man with homosexual habits, I have been told, declared he would be sorry to see the English law changed, as then he would find no pleasure in his practices.

[274] Blackmailing appears to be the most serious risk which the invert runs. Hirschfeld states in an interesting study of blackmailing (Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen, April, 1913) that his experience shows that among 10,000 homosexual persons hardly one falls a victim to the law, but over 3000 are victimized by blackmailers.

[275] Krafft-Ebing would place this age not under 16, the age at which in England girls may legally consent to normal sexual intercourse (Psychopathia Sexualis, 1893, p. 419). It certainly should not be lower.



APPENDICES.

APPENDIX A.

HOMOSEXUALITY AMONG TRAMPS.

BY "JOSIAH FLYNT."

I have made a rather minute study of the tramp class in the United States, England, and Germany, but I know it best in the States. I have lived with the tramps there for eight consecutive months, besides passing numerous shorter periods in their company, and my acquaintance with them is nearly of ten years' standing. My purpose in going among them has been to learn about their life in particular and outcast life in general. This can only be done by becoming part and parcel of its manifestations.

There are two kinds of tramps in the United States: out-of-works and "hoboes." The out-of-works are not genuine vagabonds; they really want work and have no sympathy with the hoboes. The latter are the real tramps. They make a business of begging—a very good business too—and keep at it, as a rule, to the end of their days. Whisky and Wanderlust, or the love of wandering, are probably the main causes of their existence; but many of them are discouraged criminals, men who have tried their hand at crime and find that they lack criminal wit. They become tramps because they find that life "on the road" comes the nearest to the life they hoped to lead. They have enough talent to do very well as beggars, better, generally speaking, then the men who have reached the road simply as drunkards; they know more about the tricks of the trade and are cleverer in thinking out schemes and stories. All genuine tramps in America are, however, pretty much the same, as far as manners and philosophy are concerned, and all are equally welcome at the "hang-out."[276] The class of society from which they are drawn is generally the very lowest of all, but there are some hoboes who have come from the very highest, and these latter are frequently as vicious and depraved as their less well-born brethren.

Concerning sexual inversion among tramps, there is a great deal to be said, and I cannot attempt to tell all I have heard about it, but merely to give a general account of the matter. Every hobo in the United States knows what "unnatural intercourse" means, talking about it freely, and, according to my finding, every tenth man practises it, and defends his conduct. Boys are the victims of this passion. The tramps gain possession of these boys in various ways. A common method is to stop for awhile in some town, and gain acquaintance with the slum children. They tell these children all sorts of stories about life "on the road," how they can ride on the railways for nothing, shoot Indians, and be "perfeshunnels" (professionals), and they choose some boy who specially pleases them. By smiles and flattering caresses they let him know that the stories are meant for him alone, and before long, if the boy is a suitable subject, he smiles back just as slyly. In time he learns to think that he is the favorite of the tramp, who will take him on his travels, and he begins to plan secret meetings with the man. The tramp, of course, continues to excite his imagination with stories and caresses, and some fine night there is one boy less in the town. On the road the lad is called a "prushun," and his protector a "jocker." The majority of prushuns are between 10 and 15 years of age, but I have known some under 10 and a few over 15. Each is compelled by hobo law to let his jocker do with him as he will, and many, I fear, learn to enjoy his treatment of them. They are also expected to beg in every town they come to, any laziness on their part receiving very severe punishment.

How the act of unnatural intercourse takes place is not entirely clear; the hoboes are not agreed. From what I have personally observed I should say that it is usually what they call "leg-work" (intercrural), but sometimes immissio penis in anum, the boy, in either case, lying on his stomach. I have heard terrible stories of the physical results to the boy of anal intercourse.

One evening, near Cumberland, Pennsylvania, I was an unwilling witness of one of the worst scenes that can be imagined. In company with eight hoboes, I was in a freight-car attached to a slowly moving train. A colored boy succeeded in scrambling into the car, and when the train was well under way again he was tripped up and "seduced" (to use the hobo euphemism) by each of the tramps. He made almost no resistance, and joked and laughed about the business as if he had expected it. This, indeed, I find to be the general feeling among the boys when they have been thoroughly initiated. At first they do not submit, and are inclined to run away or fight, but the men fondle and pet them, and after awhile they do not seem to care. Some of them have told me that they get as much pleasure out of the affair as the jocker does. Even little fellows under 10 have told me this, and I have known them to willfully tempt their jockers to intercourse. What the pleasure consists in I cannot say. The youngsters themselves describe it as a delightful tickling sensation in the parts involved, and this is possibly all that it amounts to among the smallest lads. Those who have passed the age of puberty seem to be satisfied in pretty much the same way that the men are. Among the men the practice is decidedly one of passion. The majority of them prefer a prushun to a woman, and nothing is more severely judged than rape. One often reads in the newspapers that a woman has been assaulted by a tramp, but the perverted tramp is never the guilty party.

I believe, however, that there are a few hoboes who have taken to boys because women are so scarce "on the road." For every woman in hoboland there are a hundred men. That this disproportion has something to do with the popularity of boys is made clear by the following case: In a gaol, where I was confined for a month during my life in vagabondage, I got acquainted with a tramp who had the reputation of being a "sod" (sodomist). One day a woman came to the gaol to see her husband, who was awaiting trial. One of the prisoners said he had known her before she was married and had lived with her. The tramp was soon to be discharged, and he inquired where the woman lived. On learning that she was still approachable, he looked her up immediately after his release, and succeeded in staying with her for nearly a month. He told me later that he enjoyed his life with her much more than his intercourse with boys. I asked him why he went with boys at all, and he replied: "'Cause there ain't women enough. If I can't get them I've got to have the other."

It is in gaols that one sees the worst side of this perversion. In the daytime the prisoners are let out into a long hall, and can do much as they please; at night they are shut up, two and even four in a cell. If there are any boys in the crowd, they are made use of by all who care to have them. If they refuse to submit, they are gagged and held down. The sheriff seldom knows what goes on, and for the boys to say anything to him would be suicidal. There is a criminal ignorance all over the States concerning the life of these gaols, and things go on that would be impossible in any well-regulated prison. In one of these places I once witnessed the fiercest fight I have ever seen among hoboes; a boy was the cause of it. Two men said they loved him, and he seemed to return the affection of both with equal desire. A fight with razors was suggested to settle who should have him.[277] The men prepared for action, while the crowd gathered round to watch. They slashed away for over half an hour, cutting each other terribly, and then their backers stopped them for fear of fatal results. The boy was given to the one who was hurt the least.

Jealousy is one of the first things one notices in connection with this passion. I have known them to withdraw entirely from the "hang-out" life simply to be sure that their prushuns were not touched by other tramps. Such attachments frequently last for years, and some boys remain with their first jockers until they are "emancipated."

Emancipation means freedom to "snare" some other boy, and make him submit as the other had been obliged to submit when younger. As a rule, the prushun is freed when he is able to protect himself. If he can defend his "honor" from all who come, he is accepted into the class of "old stagers," and may do as he likes. This is the one reward held out to prushuns during their apprenticeship. They are told that some day they can have a boy and use him as they have been used. Thus hoboland is always sure of recruits.

It is difficult to say how many tramps are sexually inverted. It is not even certainly known how many vagabonds there are in the country. I have stated in one of my papers on tramps that, counting the boys, there are between fifty and sixty thousand genuine hoboes in the United States. A vagabond in Texas who saw this statement wrote me that he considered my estimate too low. The newspapers have criticised it as too high, but they are unable to judge. If my figures are, as I believe, at least approximately correct, the sexually perverted tramps may be estimated at between five and six thousand; this includes men and boys.

I have been told lately by tramps that the boys are less numerous than they were a few years ago. They say that it is now a risky business to be seen with a boy, and that it is more profitable, as far as begging is concerned, to go without them. Whether this means that the passion is less fierce than it used to be, or that the men find sexual satisfaction among themselves, I cannot say definitely. But from what I know of their disinclination to adopt the latter alternative, I am inclined to think that the passion may be dying out somewhat. I am sure that women are not more numerous "on the road" than formerly, and that the change, if real, has not been caused by them. So much for my finding in the United States.

In England, where I have also lived with tramps for some time, I have found very little contrary sexual feeling. In Germany, also, excepting in prisons and work-houses, it seems very little known among vagabonds. There are a few Jewish wanderers (sometimes peddlers) who are said to have boys in their company, and I am told that they use them as the hoboes in the United States use their boys, but I cannot prove this from personal observation. In England I have met a number of male tramps who had no hesitation in declaring their preference for their own sex, and particularly for boys, but I am bound to say that I have seldom seen them with boys; as a rule, they were quite alone, and they seem to live chiefly by themselves.

It is a noteworthy fact that both in England and Germany there are a great many women "on the road," or, at all events, so near it that intercourse with them is easy and cheap. In Germany almost every town has its quarter of "Stadt-Schieze"[278]: women who sell their bodies for a very small sum. They seldom ask over thirty or forty pfennigs for a night, which is usually spent in the open air. In England it is practically the same thing. In all the large cities there are women who are glad to do business for three or four pence, and those "on the road" for even less.