<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h1>The Intermediate<br/> Sex</h1>
<p class="center"><i>A Study of Some Transitional Types<br/>
of Men and Women</i></p>
<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br/>
EDWARD CARPENTER</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/publisher.jpg" width-obs="150" height-obs="150" alt="Publisher’s device" /></div>
<p class="titlepage">LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.<br/>
RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.1</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<table summary="Editions">
<tr>
<td><i>First published</i></td>
<td class="tdr"><i>1908</i></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i>Reprinted</i></td>
<td class="tdr"><i>1909</i></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdc">”</td>
<td class="tdr"><i>1912</i></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdc">”</td>
<td class="tdr"><i>1916</i></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdc">”</td>
<td class="tdr"><i>1918</i></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdc">”</td>
<td class="tdr"><i>1921</i></td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr class="chap" />
<p>“<i>There are transitional forms between the metals
and non-metals; between chemical combinations and
simple mixtures, between animals and plants, between
phanerogams and cryptogams, and between mammals
and birds.… The improbability may henceforth be
taken for granted of finding in Nature a sharp cleavage
between all that is masculine on the one side and
all that is feminine on the other; or that any living
being is so simple in this respect that it can be put
wholly on one side, or wholly on the other, of the line.</i>”</p>
<p class="right padr1"><span class="smcap">O. Weininger.</span></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<h2><SPAN name="Pr" id="Pr">Prefatory Note<br/> <small><small><small>TO FIRST EDITION</small></small></small></SPAN></h2>
<p><span class="smcap">The</span> following papers, now collected in book-form,
have been written—and some of them
published—on various occasions during the last
twelve or fourteen years, and in the intervals of
other work; and this must be my excuse for
occasional repetitions or overlapping of matter,
which may be observable among them. I have
thought it best, however, to leave them as they
stand, as in this way each is more complete in
itself. The second essay, which gives its title to
the book, has already appeared in my “Love’s
Coming-of-Age” (edition 1906), but is reprinted
here as belonging more properly to this volume.</p>
<p>A collection of quotations from responsible
writers, who touch on various sides of the subject,
is added at the end, to form an Appendix—which
the author thinks will prove helpful, though he
does not necessarily endorse all the opinions
presented.</p>
<p class="right">E. C.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_8" id="Page_8"> </SPAN></span></p>
<h2>Contents</h2>
<table summary="Contents">
<tr>
<td class="tdr"></td>
<td></td>
<td class="right"><i>Page</i></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr"></td>
<td><span class="smcap">Prefatory Note</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#Pr">7</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">I.</td>
<td><span class="smcap">Introductory</span></td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#I">9</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">II.</td>
<td><span class="smcap">The Intermediate Sex</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#II">16</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">III.</td>
<td><span class="smcap">The Homogenic Attachment</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#III">39</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">IV.</td>
<td><span class="smcap">Affection in Education</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#IV">83</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdr">V.</td>
<td><span class="smcap">The Place of the Uranian in Society</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#V">107</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="right"></td>
<td><span class="smcap">Appendix</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#Appendix">131</SPAN></td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="I">Introductory</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">The</span> subject dealt with in this book is one of
great, and one may say growing, importance.
Whether it is that the present period is one of
large increase in the numbers of men and women
of an intermediate or mixed temperament, or
whether it merely is that it is a period in which
more than usual attention happens to be accorded
to them, the fact certainly remains that the subject
has great actuality and is pressing upon us from
all sides. It is recognised that anyhow the number
of persons occupying an intermediate position
between the two sexes is very great, that
they play a considerable part in general society,
and that they necessarily present and embody
many problems which, both for their own sakes
and that of society, demand solution. The literature
of the question has in consequence already
grown to be very extensive, especially on the
Continent, and includes a great quantity of scientific<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</SPAN></span>
works, medical treatises, literary essays,
romances, historical novels, poetry, etc. And it
is now generally admitted that some knowledge
and enlightened understanding of the subject is
greatly needed for the use of certain classes—as,
for instance, medical men, teachers, parents,
magistrates, judges, and the like.</p>
<p>That there are distinctions and gradations of
Soul-material in relation to Sex—that the inner
psychical affections and affinities shade off and
graduate, in a vast number of instances, most
subtly from male to female, and not always in
obvious correspondence with the outer bodily
sex—is a thing evident enough to anyone who
considers the subject; nor could any good purpose
well be served by ignoring this fact—even
if it were possible to do so. It is easy of course
(as some do) to classify all these mixed or intermediate
types as <em>bad</em>. It is also easy (as some
do) to argue that just because they combine
opposite qualities they are likely to be <em>good</em> and
valuable. But the subtleties and complexities of
Nature cannot be despatched in this off-hand
manner. The great probability is that, as in any
other class of human beings, there will be among
these too, good and bad, high and low, worthy<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</SPAN></span>
and unworthy—some perhaps exhibiting through
their double temperament a rare and beautiful
flower of humanity, others a perverse and tangled
ruin.</p>
<p>Before the facts of Nature we have to preserve
a certain humility and reverence; nor rush in
with our preconceived and obstinate assumptions.
Though these gradations of human type
have always, and among all peoples, been more
or less known and recognised, yet their frequency
to-day, or even the concentration of attention on
them, may be the indication of some important
change actually in progress. We do <em>not</em> know,
in fact, what possible evolutions are to come, or
what new forms, of permanent place and value,
are being already slowly differentiated from the
surrounding mass of humanity. It may be that,
as at some past period of evolution the worker-bee
was without doubt differentiated from the two
ordinary bee-sexes, so at the present time certain
new types of human kind may be emerging,
which will have an important part to play in the
societies of the future—even though for the
moment their appearance is attended by a good
deal of confusion and misapprehension. It may
be so; or it may not. We do not know; and the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</SPAN></span>
best attitude we can adopt is one of sincere and
dispassionate observation of facts.</p>
<p>Of course wherever this subject touches on
the domain of love we may expect difficult queries
to arise. Yet it is here probably that the noblest
work of the intermediate sex or sexes will be accomplished,
as well as the greatest errors committed.
It seems almost a law of Nature that new
and important movements should be misunderstood
and vilified—even though afterwards they
may be widely approved or admitted to honour.
Such movements are always envisaged first from
whatever aspect they may possibly present, of
ludicrous or contemptible. The early Christians,
in the eyes of Romans, were chiefly known as the
perpetrators of obscure rites and crimes in the
darkness of the catacombs. Modern Socialism
was for a long time supposed to be an affair of
daggers and dynamite; and even now there are
thousands of good people ignorant enough to
believe that it simply means “divide up all round,
and each take his threepenny bit.” Vegetarians
were supposed to be a feeble and brainless set of
cabbage-eaters. The Women’s movement, so vast
in its scope and importance, was nothing but an
absurd attempt to make women “the apes of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</SPAN></span>
men.” And so on without end; the accusation in
each case being some tag or last fag-end of fact,
caught up by ignorance, and coloured by prejudice.
So commonplace is it to misunderstand,
so easy to misrepresent.</p>
<p>That the Uranian temperament, especially in
regard to its affectional side, is not without faults
must naturally be allowed; but that it has been
grossly and absurdly misunderstood is certain.
With a good deal of experience in the matter,
I think one may safely say that the defect of the
male Uranian, or Urning,<SPAN name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">1</SPAN> is <em>not</em> sensuality—but
rather <em>sentimentality</em>. The lower, more ordinary
types of Urning are often terribly sentimental;
the superior types strangely, almost incredibly
emotional; but neither <em>as a rule</em> (though of
course there must be exceptions) are so sensual
as the average normal man.</p>
<p>This immense capacity of emotional love represents
of course a great driving force. Whether in
the individual or in society, love is eminently creative.
It is their great genius for attachment which
gives to the best Uranian types their penetrating
influence and activity, and which often makes<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</SPAN></span>
them beloved and accepted far and wide even by
those who know nothing of their inner mind. How
many so-called philanthropists of the best kind
(we need not mention names) have been inspired
by the Uranian temperament, the world will probably
never know. And in all walks of life the
great number and influence of folk of this disposition,
and the distinguished place they already
occupy, is only realised by those who are more or
less behind the scenes. It is probable also that it
is this genius for emotional love which gives to
the Uranians their remarkable <em>youthfulness</em>.</p>
<p>Anyhow, with their extraordinary gift for, and
experience in, affairs of the heart—from the double
point of view, both of the man and of the woman—it
is not difficult to see that these people have
a special work to do as reconcilers and interpreters
of the two sexes to each other. Of this
I have spoken at more length below (chaps. <SPAN href="#II">ii.</SPAN>
and <SPAN href="#V">v.</SPAN>). It is probable that the superior Urnings
will become, in affairs of the heart, to a large
extent the teachers of future society; and if so
that their influence will tend to the realisation and
expression of an attachment less exclusively sensual
than the average of to-day, and to the diffusion
of this in all directions.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</SPAN></span></p>
<p>While at any rate not presuming to speak with
authority on so difficult a subject, I plead for the
necessity of a patient consideration of it, for the
due recognition of the types of character concerned,
and for some endeavour to give them
their fitting place and sphere of usefulness in the
general scheme of society.</p>
<p>One thing more by way of introductory explanation.
The word Love is commonly used in so
general and almost indiscriminate a fashion as
to denote sometimes physical instincts and acts,
and sometimes the most intimate and profound
feelings; and in this way a good deal of misunderstanding
is caused. In this book (unless there
be exceptions in the <SPAN href="#Appendix">Appendix</SPAN>) the word is used
to denote the inner devotion of one person to
another; and when anything else is meant—as,
for instance, sexual relations and actions—this is
clearly stated and expressed.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="II"><small>II</small><br/> The Intermediate Sex.</h2>
<p><small>“Urning men and women, on whose book of life
Nature has written her new word which sounds so
strange to us, bear such storm and stress within them,
such ferment and fluctuation, so much complex material
having its outlet only towards the future; their
individualities are so rich and many-sided, and withal
so little understood, that it is impossible to characterise
them adequately in a few sentences.”—<cite>Otto de Joux.</cite></small></p>
<p><span class="smcap">In</span> late years (and since the arrival of the New
Woman amongst us) many things in the relation
of men and women to each other have altered,
or at any rate become clearer. The growing sense
of equality in habits and customs—university studies,
art, music, politics, the bicycle, etc.—all these
things have brought about a <em lang="fr">rapprochement</em> between
the sexes. If the modern woman is a little
more masculine in some ways than her predecessor,
the modern man (it is to be hoped), while
by no means effeminate, is a little more sensitive
in temperament and artistic in feeling than the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</SPAN></span>
original John Bull. It is beginning to be recognised
that the sexes do not or should not normally
form two groups hopelessly isolated in habit and
feeling from each other, but that they rather represent
the two poles of <em>one</em> group—which is the
human race; so that while certainly the extreme
specimens at either pole are vastly divergent,
there are great numbers in the middle region who
(though differing corporeally as men and women)
are by emotion and temperament very near to
each other.<SPAN name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">2</SPAN> We all know women with a strong
dash of the masculine temperament, and we all
know men whose almost feminine sensibility and
intuition seem to belie their bodily form. Nature,
it might appear, in mixing the elements which go
to compose each individual, does not always keep
her two groups of ingredients—which represent
the two sexes—properly apart, but often throws
them crosswise in a somewhat baffling manner,
now this way and now that; yet wisely, we must
think—for if a severe distinction of elements were
always maintained the two sexes would soon drift
into far latitudes and absolutely cease to understand
each other. As it is, there are some remarkable
and (we think) indispensable types of character<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</SPAN></span>
in whom there is such a union or balance of
the feminine and masculine qualities that these
people become to a great extent the interpreters
of men and women to each other.</p>
<p>There is another point which has become clearer
of late. For as people are beginning to see that
the sexes form in a certain sense a continuous
group, so they are beginning to see that Love and
Friendship—which have been so often set apart
from each other as things distinct—are in reality
closely related and shade imperceptibly into each
other. Women are beginning to demand that
Marriage shall mean Friendship as well as Passion;
that a comrade-like Equality shall be included
in the word Love; and it is recognised that
from the one extreme of a ‘Platonic’ friendship
(generally between persons of the same sex) up
to the other extreme of passionate love (generally
between persons of opposite sex) no hard and fast
line can at any point be drawn effectively separating
the different kinds of attachment. We know, in
fact, of Friendships so romantic in sentiment that
they verge into love; we know of Loves so intellectual
and spiritual that they hardly dwell in the
sphere of Passion.</p>
<p>A moment’s thought will show that the general<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</SPAN></span>
conceptions indicated above—if anywhere near
the truth—point to an immense diversity of human
temperament and character in matters relating
to sex and love; but though such diversity has
probably always existed, it has only in comparatively
recent times become a subject of study.</p>
<p>More than thirty years ago, however, an Austrian
writer, K. H. Ulrichs, drew attention in a
series of pamphlets (<cite>Memnon</cite>, <cite>Ara Spei</cite>, <cite>Inclusa</cite>,
etc.) to the existence of a class of people who
strongly illustrate the above remarks, and with
whom specially this paper is concerned. He
pointed out that there were people born in such
a position—as it were on the dividing line between
the sexes—that while belonging distinctly to one
sex as far as their bodies are concerned they may
be said to belong <em>mentally</em> and <em>emotionally</em> to
the other; that there were men, for instance, who
might be described as of feminine soul enclosed
in a male body (<i lang="la">anima muliebris in corpore
virili inclusa</i>), or in other cases, women whose
definition would be just the reverse. And he
maintained that this doubleness of nature was to
a great extent proved by the special direction of
their love-sentiment. For in such cases, as indeed
might be expected, the (apparently) masculine person<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</SPAN></span>
instead of forming a love-union with a female
tended to contract romantic friendships with one
of his own sex; while the apparently feminine
would, instead of marrying in the usual way, devote
herself to the love of another feminine.</p>
<p>People of this kind (<i>i.e.</i>, having this special
variation of the love-sentiment) he called Urnings;<SPAN name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">3</SPAN>
and though we are not obliged to accept
his theory about the crosswise connexion between
‘soul’ and ‘body,’ since at best these words are
somewhat vague and indefinite; yet his work was
important because it was one of the first attempts,
in modern times, to recognise the existence of
what might be called an Intermediate sex, and
to give at any rate <em>some</em> explanation of it.<SPAN name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">4</SPAN></p>
<p>Since that time the subject has been widely
studied and written about by scientific men and
others, especially on the Continent (though in<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</SPAN></span>
England it is still comparatively unknown), and
by means of an extended observation of present-day
cases, as well as the indirect testimony of the
history and literature of past times, quite a body
of general conclusions has been arrived at—of
which I propose in the following pages to give
some slight account.</p>
<p>Contrary to the general impression, one of the
first points that emerges from this study is that
‘Urnings,’ or Uranians, are by no means so very
rare; but that they form, beneath the surface of
society, a large class. It remains difficult, however,
to get an exact statement of their numbers;
and this for more than one reason: partly because,
owing to the want of any general understanding of
their case, these folk tend to conceal their true
feelings from all but their own kind, and indeed
often deliberately act in such a manner as to lead
the world astray—(whence it arises that a normal
man living in a certain society will often refuse to
believe that there is a single Urning in the circle
of his acquaintance, while one of the latter, or one
that understands the nature, living in the same
society, can count perhaps a score or more)—and
partly because it is indubitable that the numbers
do vary very greatly, not only in different countries<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</SPAN></span>
but even in different classes in the same
country. The consequence of all this being that
we have estimates differing very widely from each
other. Dr. Grabowsky, a well-known writer in
Germany, quotes figures (which we think must be
exaggerated) as high as one man in every 22,
while Dr. Albert Moll (<cite>Die Conträre Sexualempfindung</cite>,
chap. 3) gives estimates varying
from 1 in every 50 to as low as 1 in every 500.<SPAN name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">5</SPAN>
These figures apply to such as are exclusively of
the said nature, <i>i.e.</i>, to those whose deepest feelings
of love and friendship go out only to persons
of their own sex. Of course, if in addition are
included those double-natured people (of whom
there is a great number) who experience the normal
attachment, with the homogenic tendency in
less or greater degree superadded, the estimates
must be greatly higher.</p>
<p>In the second place it emerges (also contrary
to the general impression) that men and women
of the exclusively Uranian type are by no means
necessarily morbid in any way—unless, indeed,
their peculiar temperament be pronounced in itself<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</SPAN></span>
morbid. Formerly it was assumed as a matter of
course, that the type was merely a result of disease
and degeneration; but now with the examination
of the actual facts it appears that, on
the contrary, many are fine, healthy specimens of
their sex, muscular and well-developed in body, of
powerful brain, high standard of conduct, and with
nothing abnormal or morbid of any kind observable
in their physical structure or constitution.
This is of course not true of all, and there still remain
a certain number of cases of weakly type to
support the neuropathic view. Yet it is very noticeable
that this view is much less insisted on by the
later writers than by the earlier. It is also worth
noticing that it is now acknowledged that even
in the most healthy cases the special affectional
temperament of the ‘Intermediate’ is, as a rule,
ineradicable; so much so that when (as in not
a few instances) such men and women, from social
or other considerations, have forced themselves to
marry and even have children, they have still not
been able to overcome their own bias, or the leaning
after all of their life-attachment to some friend
of their own sex.</p>
<p>This subject, though obviously one of considerable
interest and importance, has been hitherto,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</SPAN></span>
as I have pointed out, but little discussed in this
country, partly owing to a certain amount of
doubt and distrust which has, not unnaturally perhaps,
surrounded it. And certainly if the men
and women born with the tendency in question
were only exceedingly rare, though it would not
be fair on that account to ignore them, yet it
would hardly be necessary to dwell at great length
on their case. But as the class is really, on any
computation, numerous, it becomes a duty for
society not only to understand them but to help
them to understand themselves.</p>
<p>For there is no doubt that in many cases people
of this kind suffer a great deal from their own
temperament—and yet, after all, it is possible that
they may have an important part to play in the
evolution of the race. Anyone who realises what
Love is, the dedication of the heart, so profound,
so absorbing, so mysterious, so imperative, and
always just in the noblest natures so strong, cannot
fail to see how difficult, how tragic even, must
often be the fate of those whose deepest feelings
are destined from the earliest days to be a riddle
and a stumbling-block, unexplained to themselves,
passed over in silence by others.<SPAN name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">6</SPAN> To call people<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</SPAN></span>
of such temperament ‘morbid,’ and so forth, is
of no use. Such a term is, in fact, absurdly inapplicable
to many, who are among the most active,
the most amiable and accepted members of society;
besides, it forms no solution of the problem
in question, and only amounts to marking
down for disparagement a fellow-creature who
has already considerable difficulties to contend
with. Says Dr. Moll, “Anyone who has seen many
Urnings will probably admit that they form a by
no means enervated human group; on the contrary,
one finds powerful, healthy-looking folk
among them;” but in the very next sentence he
says that they “suffer severely” from the way
they are regarded; and in the manifesto of a
considerable community of such people in Germany
occur these words, “The rays of sunshine
in the night of our existence are so rare, that we
are responsive and deeply grateful for the least
movement, for every single voice that speaks in
our favour in the forum of mankind.”<SPAN name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">7</SPAN></p>
<p>In dealing with this class of folk, then, while
I do not deny that they present a difficult problem,
I think that just for that very reason their<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</SPAN></span>
case needs discussion. It would be a great mistake
to suppose that their attachments are necessarily
sexual, or connected with sexual acts. On
the contrary (as abundant evidence shows), they
are often purely emotional in their character; and
to confuse Uranians (as is so often done) with
libertines having no law but curiosity in self-indulgence
is to do them a great wrong. At the
same time, it is evident that their special temperament
may sometimes cause them difficulty in regard
to their sexual relations. Into this subject we
need not just now enter. But we may point out how
hard it is, especially for the young among them,
that a veil of complete silence should be drawn
over the subject, leading to the most painful misunderstandings,
and perversions and confusions
of mind; and that there should be no hint of
guidance; nor any recognition of the solitary
and really serious inner struggles they may have
to face! If the problem is a difficult one—as it
undoubtedly is—the fate of those people is already
hard who have to meet it in their own persons,
without their suffering in addition from the refusal
of society to give them any help. It is partly for
these reasons, and to throw a little light where it
may be needed, that I have thought it might be<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</SPAN></span>
advisable in this paper simply to give a few
general characteristics of the Intermediate types.</p>
<p>As indicated then already, in bodily structure
there is, as a rule, nothing to distinguish the subjects
of our discussion from ordinary men and
women; but if we take the general mental characteristics
it appears from almost universal testimony
that the male tends to be of a rather gentle,
emotional disposition—with defects, if such exist,
in the direction of subtlety, evasiveness, timidity,
vanity, etc.; while the female is just the opposite,
fiery, active, bold and truthful, with defects running
to brusqueness and coarseness. Moreover,
the mind of the former is generally intuitive and
instinctive in its perceptions, with more or less
of artistic feeling; while the mind of the latter
is more logical, scientific, and precise than usual
with the normal woman. So marked indeed are
these general characteristics that sometimes by
means of them (though not an infallible guide)
the nature of the boy or girl can be detected in
childhood, before full development has taken
place; and needless to say it may often be very
important to be able to do this.</p>
<p>It was no doubt in consequence of the observation
of these signs that K. H. Ulrichs proposed<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</SPAN></span>
his theory; and though the theory, as we have
said, does not by any means meet <em>all</em> the facts,
still it is perhaps not without merit, and may be
worth bearing in mind.</p>
<p>In the case, for instance, of a woman of this
temperament (defined we suppose as “a male
soul in a female body”) the theory helps us to
understand how it might be possible for her to
fall <i lang="la">bonâ fide</i> in love with another woman. Krafft-Ebing
gives<SPAN name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">8</SPAN> the case of a lady (A.), 28 years
of age, who fell deeply in love with a younger
one (B.). “I loved her divinely,” she said. They
lived together, and the union lasted four years,
but was then broken by the marriage of B.
A. suffered in consequence from frightful depression;
but in the end—though without real love—got
married herself. Her depression however
only increased and deepened into illness. The
doctors, when consulted, said that all would be
well if she could only have a child. The husband,
who loved his wife sincerely, could not understand
her enigmatic behaviour. She was friendly to
him, suffered his caresses, but for days afterwards
remained “dull, exhausted, plagued with
irritation of the spine, and nervous.” Presently<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</SPAN></span>
a journey of the married pair led to another
meeting with the female friend—who had now
been wedded (but also unhappily) for three years.</p>
<p>“Both ladies trembled with joy and excitement
as they fell into each other’s arms, and were
thenceforth inseparable. The man found that
this friendship relation was a singular one, and
hastened the departure. When the opportunity
occurred, he convinced himself from the correspondence
between his wife and her ‘friend’ that
their letters were exactly like those of two lovers.”</p>
<p>It appears that the loves of such women are
often very intense, and (as also in the case of male
Urnings) life-long.<SPAN name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">9</SPAN> Both classes feel themselves
blessed when they love happily. Nevertheless, to
many of them it is a painful fact that—in consequence
of their peculiar temperament—they are,
though fond of children, not in the position to
found a family.</p>
<p>We have so far limited ourselves to some very
general characteristics of the Intermediate race.
It may help to clear and fix our ideas if we now
describe more in detail, first, what may be called
the extreme and exaggerated types of the race,
and then the more normal and perfect types. By<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</SPAN></span>
doing so we shall get a more definite and concrete
view of our subject.</p>
<p>In the first place, then, the extreme specimens—as
in most cases of extremes—are not particularly
attractive, sometimes quite the reverse. In the
male of this kind we have a distinctly effeminate
type, sentimental, lackadaisical, mincing in gait
and manners, something of a chatterbox, skilful
at the needle and in woman’s work, sometimes
taking pleasure in dressing in woman’s clothes;
his figure not unfrequently betraying a tendency
towards the feminine, large at the hips, supple,
not muscular, the face wanting in hair, the voice
inclining to be high-pitched, etc.; while his dwelling-room
is orderly in the extreme, even natty,
and choice of decoration and perfume. His affection,
too, is often feminine in character, clinging,
dependent and jealous, as of one desiring to be
loved almost more than to love.<SPAN name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">10</SPAN></p>
<p>On the other hand, as the extreme type of the
homogenic female, we have a rather markedly
aggressive person, of strong passions, masculine
manners and movements, practical in the conduct<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</SPAN></span>
of life, sensuous rather than sentimental in love,
often untidy, and <i lang="fr">outré</i> in attire;<SPAN name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">11</SPAN> her figure muscular,
her voice rather low in pitch; her dwelling-room
decorated with sporting-scenes, pistols, etc.,
and not without a suspicion of the fragrant weed
in the atmosphere; while her love (generally to
rather soft and feminine specimens of her own
sex) is often a sort of furor, similar to the ordinary
masculine love, and at times almost uncontrollable.</p>
<p>These are types which, on account of their
salience, everyone will recognise more or less.
Naturally, when they occur they excite a good deal
of attention, and it is not an uncommon impression
that most persons of the homogenic nature belong
to either one or other of these classes. But
in reality, of course, these extreme developments
are rare, and for the most part the temperament in
question is embodied in men and women of quite
normal and unsensational exterior. Speaking of
this subject and the connection between effeminateness
and the homogenic nature in men, Dr.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</SPAN></span>
Moll says: “It is, however, as well to point out
at the outset that effeminacy does not by any
means show itself in all Urnings. Though one
may find this or that indication in a great number
of cases, yet it cannot be denied that a very large
percentage, perhaps by far the majority of them,
do <em>not</em> exhibit pronounced Effeminacy.” And it
may be supposed that we may draw the same conclusion
with regard to women of this class—namely,
that the majority of them do not exhibit
pronounced masculine habits. In fact, while these
extreme cases are of the greatest value from a
scientific point of view as marking tendencies and
limits of development in certain directions, it
would be a serious mistake to look upon them as
representative cases of the whole phases of human
evolution concerned.</p>
<p>If now we come to what may be called the more
normal type of the Uranian man, we find a man
who, while possessing thoroughly masculine powers
of mind and body, combines with them the
tenderer and more emotional soul-nature of the
woman—and sometimes to a remarkable degree.
Such men, as said, are often muscular and well-built,
and not distinguishable in exterior structure
and the carriage of body from others of their own<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</SPAN></span>
sex; but emotionally they are extremely complex,
tender, sensitive, pitiful and loving, “full of storm
and stress, of ferment and fluctuation” of the
heart; the logical faculty may or may not, in their
case, be well-developed, but intuition is always
strong; like women they read characters at a
glance, and know, without knowing how, what
is passing in the minds of others; for nursing and
waiting on the needs of others they have often a
peculiar gift; at the bottom lies the artist-nature,
with the artist’s sensibility and perception. Such
an one is often a dreamer, of brooding, reserved
habits, often a musician, or a man of culture,
courted in society, which nevertheless does not
understand him—though sometimes a child of
the people, without any culture, but almost always
with a peculiar inborn refinement. De Joux, who
speaks on the whole favourably of Uranian men
and women, says of the former: “They are enthusiastic
for poetry and music, are often eminently
skilful in the fine arts, and are overcome with
emotion and sympathy at the least sad occurrence.
Their sensitiveness, their endless tenderness for
children, their love of flowers, their great pity
for beggars and crippled folk are truly womanly.”
And in another passage he indicates the artist-nature,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</SPAN></span>
when he says: “The nerve-system of
many an Urning is the finest and the most complicated
musical instrument in the service of the
interior personality that can be imagined.”</p>
<p>It would seem probable that the attachment of
such an one is of a tender and profound character;
indeed, it is possible that in this class of
men we have the love sentiment in one of its most
perfect forms—a form in which from the necessities
of the situation the sensuous element, though
present, is exquisitely subordinated to the spiritual.
Says one writer on this subject, a Swiss,
“Happy indeed is that man who has won a real
Urning for his friend—he walks on roses, without
ever having to fear the thorns”; and he adds,
“Can there ever be a more perfect sick-nurse
than an Urning?” And though these are <i lang="la">ex
parte</i> utterances, we may believe that there is an
appreciable grain of truth in them. Another writer,
quoted by De Joux, speaks to somewhat the same
effect, and may perhaps be received in a similar
spirit. “We form,” he says, “a peculiar aristocracy
of modest spirits, of good and refined
habit, and in many masculine circles are the representatives
of the higher mental and artistic
element. In us dreamers and enthusiasts lies the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</SPAN></span>
continual counterpoise to the sheer masculine
portion of society—inclining, as it always does, to
mere restless greed of gain and material sensual
pleasures.”</p>
<p>That men of this kind despise women, though
a not uncommon belief, is one which hardly appears
to be justified. Indeed, though naturally
not inclined to “fall in love” in this direction,
such men are by their nature drawn rather near
to women, and it would seem that they often feel
a singular appreciation and understanding of the
emotional needs and destinies of the other sex,
leading in many cases to a genuine though what
is called ‘Platonic’ friendship. There is little
doubt that they are often instinctively sought after
by women, who, without suspecting the real cause,
are conscious of a sympathetic chord in the homogenic
which they miss in the normal man. To
quote De Joux once more: “It would be a mistake
to suppose that all Urnings must be woman-haters.
Quite the contrary. They are not seldom
the faithfulest friends, the truest allies, and most
convinced defenders of women.”</p>
<p>To come now to the more normal and perfect
specimens of the homogenic <em>woman</em>, we find a
type in which the body is thoroughly feminine and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</SPAN></span>
gracious, with the rondure and fulness of the
female form, and the continence and aptness of its
movements, but in which the inner nature is to
a great extent masculine; a temperament active,
brave, originative, somewhat decisive, not too
emotional; fond of out-door life, of games and
sports, of science, politics, or even business;
good at organisation, and well-pleased with positions
of responsibility, sometimes indeed making
an excellent and generous leader. Such a woman,
it is easily seen, from her special combination of
qualities, is often fitted for remarkable work, in
professional life, or as manageress of institutions,
or even as ruler of a country. Her love goes out
to younger and more feminine natures than her
own; it is a powerful passion, almost of heroic
type, and capable of inspiring to great deeds;
and when held duly in leash may sometimes become
an invaluable force in the teaching and
training of girlhood, or in the creation of a school
of thought or action among women. Many a
Santa Clara, or abbess-founder of religious houses,
has probably been a woman of this type; and in
all times such women—not being bound to men
by the ordinary ties—have been able to work the
more freely for the interests of their sex, a cause<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</SPAN></span>
to which their own temperament impels them to
devote themselves <i lang="it">con amore</i>.</p>
<p>I have now sketched—very briefly and inadequately
it is true—both the extreme types and
the more healthy types of the ‘Intermediate’ man
and woman: types which can be verified from
history and literature, though more certainly and
satisfactorily perhaps from actual life around us.
And unfamiliar though the subject is, it begins
to appear that it is one which modern thought and
science will have to face. Of the latter and more
normal types it may be said that they exist, and
have always existed, in considerable abundance,
and from that circumstance alone there is a strong
probability that they have their place and purpose.
As pointed out there is no particular indication
of morbidity about them, unless the special nature
of their love-sentiment be itself accounted morbid;
and in the alienation of the sexes from each other,
of which complaint is so often made to-day, it
must be admitted that they do much to fill the gap.</p>
<p>The instinctive artistic nature of the male of this
class, his sensitive spirit, his wavelike emotional
temperament, combined with hardihood of intellect
and body; and the frank, free nature of the
female, her masculine independence and strength<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</SPAN></span>
wedded to thoroughly feminine grace of form and
manner; may be said to give them both, through
their double nature, command of life in all its
phases, and a certain freemasonry of the secrets
of the two sexes which may well favour their
function as reconcilers and interpreters. Certainly
it is remarkable that some of the world’s
greatest leaders and artists have been dowered
either wholly or in part with the Uranian temperament—as
in the cases of Michel Angelo, Shakespeare,
Marlowe, Alexander the Great, Julius
Cæsar, or, among women, Christine of Sweden,
Sappho the poetess, and others.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="III"><small><small>III</small></small><br/> The Homogenic Attachment</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">In</span> its various forms, so far as we know them,
Love seems always to have a deep significance
and a most practical importance to us little mortals.
In one form, as the mere semi-conscious
Sex-love, which runs through creation and is
common to the lowest animals and plants, it appears
as a kind of organic basis for the unity of
all creatures; in another, as the love of the mother
for her offspring—which may also be termed a
passion—it seems to pledge itself to the care and
guardianship of the future race; in another, as
the marriage of man and woman, it becomes the
very foundation of human society. And so we
can hardly believe that in its homogenic form,
with which we are here concerned, it has not also
a deep significance, and social uses and functions
which will become clearer to us, the more we
study it.</p>
<p>To some perhaps it may appear a little strained<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</SPAN></span>
to place this last-mentioned form of attachment on
a level of importance with the others, and such
persons may be inclined to deny to the homogenic<SPAN name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">12</SPAN>
or homosexual love that intense, that
penetrating, and at times overmastering character
which would entitle it to rank as a great human
passion. But in truth this view, when entertained,
arises from a want of acquaintance with the actual
facts; and it may not be amiss here, in the briefest
possible way, to indicate what the world’s
History, Literature, and Art has to say to us on
this aspect of the subject, before going on to
further considerations. Certainly, if the confronting
of danger and the endurance of pain and
distress for the sake of the loved one, if sacrifice,
unswerving devotion and life-long union, constitute
proofs of the reality and intensity (and let
us say healthiness) of an affection, then these
proofs have been given in numberless cases of
such attachment, not only as existing between
men, but as between women, since the world
began. The records of chivalric love, the feats of
enamoured knights for their ladies’ sakes, the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</SPAN></span>
stories of Hero and Leander, etc., are easily
paralleled, if not surpassed, by the stories of the
Greek comrades-in-arms and tyrannicides—of
Cratinus and Aristodemus, who offered themselves
together as a voluntary sacrifice for the purification
of Athens; of Chariton and Melanippus,<SPAN name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">13</SPAN>
who attempted to assassinate Phalaris, the tyrant
of Agrigentum; or of Cleomachus who in like manner,
in a battle between the Chalkidians and
Eretrians, being entreated to charge the latter,
“asked the youth he loved, who was standing
by, whether he would be a spectator of the fight;
and when he said he would, and affectionately
kissed Cleomachus and put his helmet on his head,
Cleomachus with a proud joy placed himself in the
front of the bravest of the Thessalians and charged
the enemy’s cavalry with such impetuosity that
he threw them into disorder and routed them;
and the Eretrian cavalry fleeing in consequence,
the Chalkidians won a splendid victory.”<SPAN name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">14</SPAN></p>
<p>The annals of all nations contain similar records—though
probably among none has the ideal of
this love been quite so enthusiastic and heroic
as among the post-Homeric Greeks. It is well<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</SPAN></span>
known that among the Polynesian Islanders—for
the most part a very gentle and affectionate
people, probably inheriting the traditions of a
higher culture than they now possess—the most
romantic male friendships are (or were) in vogue.
Says Herman Melville in “Omoo” (chap. 39),
“The really curious way in which all Polynesians
are in the habit of making bosom friends is deserving
of remark.… In the annals of the
island (Tahiti) are examples of extravagant friendships,
unsurpassed by the story of Damon and
Pythias—in truth much more wonderful; for notwithstanding
the devotion—even of life in some
cases—to which they led, they were frequently
entertained at first sight for some stranger from
another island.” So thoroughly recognised indeed
were these unions that Melville explains (in
“Typee,” chap. 18) that if two men of hostile
tribes or islands became thus pledged to each
other, then each could pass through the enemy’s
territory without fear of molestation or injury; and
the passionate nature of these attachments is indicated
by the following passage from “Omoo”
(another book of Melville’s):—“Though little
inclined to jealousy in ordinary love-matters, the
Tahitian will hear of no rivals in his <em>friendship</em>.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Even among savage races lower down than
these in the scale of evolution, and who are generally
accused of being governed in their love-relations
only by the most animal desires, we find a
genuine sentiment of comradeship beginning to
assert itself—as among the Balonda<SPAN name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">15</SPAN> and other
African tribes, where regular ceremonies of the
betrothal of comrades take place, by the transfusion
of a few drops of blood into each other’s
drinking-bowls, by the exchange of names,<SPAN name="FNanchor_16" id="FNanchor_16"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">16</SPAN> and
the mutual gift of their most precious possessions;
but unfortunately, owing to the obtuseness of
current European opinion on this subject, these
and other such customs have been but little investigated
and have by no means received the
attention that they ought.</p>
<p>When we turn to the poetic and literary utterances
of the more civilised nations on this subject
we cannot but be struck by the range and intensity
of the emotions expressed—from the beautiful
threnody of David over his friend whose love
was passing the love of women, through the vast
panorama of the Homeric Iliad, of which the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</SPAN></span>
heroic friendship of Achilles and his dear Patroclus
forms really the basic theme, down to the
works of the great Greek age—the splendid odes
of Pindar burning with clear fire of passion, the
lofty elegies of Theognis, full of wise precepts to
his beloved Kurnus, the sweet pastorals of Theocritus,
the passionate lyrics of Sappho, or the
more sensual raptures of Anacreon. Some of
the dramas of Æschylus and Sophocles—as the
“Myrmidones” of the former and the “Lovers of
Achilles” of the latter—appear to have had this
subject for their motive<SPAN name="FNanchor_17" id="FNanchor_17"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">17</SPAN>; and many of the prose-poem
dialogues of Plato were certainly inspired
by it.</p>
<p>Then coming to the literature of the Roman
age, whose materialistic spirit could only with
difficulty seize the finer inspiration of the homogenic
love, and which in such writers as Catullus
and Martial could only for the most part give
expression to its grosser side, we still find in
Vergil, a noble and notable instance. His second
Eclogue bears the marks of a genuine passion;
and, according to some,<SPAN name="FNanchor_18" id="FNanchor_18"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">18</SPAN> he there under the name<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</SPAN></span>
of Alexis immortalises his own love for the youthful
Alexander. Nor is it possible to pass over in
this connection the great mass of Persian literature,
and the poets Sadi, Hafiz, Jami, and many
others, whose names and works are for all time,
and whose marvellous love-songs (“Bitter and
sweet is the parting kiss on the lips of a friend”)
are to a large extent, if not mostly, addressed to
those of their own sex.<SPAN name="FNanchor_19" id="FNanchor_19"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">19</SPAN></p>
<p>Of the mediæval period in Europe we have of
course but few literary monuments. Towards its
close we come upon the interesting story of Amis
and Amile (thirteenth century), unearthed by
Mr. W. Pater from the Bibliotheca Elzeviriana.<SPAN name="FNanchor_20" id="FNanchor_20"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">20</SPAN>
Though there is historic evidence of the prevalence
of the passion we may say of this period
that its <em>ideal</em> was undoubtedly rather the chivalric
love than the love of comrades. But with the
Renaissance in Italy and the Elizabethan period
in England the latter once more comes to evidence
in a burst of poetic utterance,<SPAN name="FNanchor_21" id="FNanchor_21"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">21</SPAN> which culminates<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</SPAN></span>
perhaps in the magnificent sonnets of Michel
Angelo and of Shakespeare; of Michel Angelo
whose pure beauty of expression lifts the enthusiasm
into the highest region as the direct perception
of the divine in mortal form;<SPAN name="FNanchor_22" id="FNanchor_22"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">22</SPAN> and of Shakespeare—whose
passionate words and amorous spirituality
of friendship have for long enough been<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</SPAN></span>
a perplexity to hide-bound commentators. Thence
through minor writers (not overlooking Winckelmann<SPAN name="FNanchor_23" id="FNanchor_23"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">23</SPAN>
in Germany) we pass to quite modern times—in
which, notwithstanding the fact that the passion
has been much misunderstood and misinterpreted,
two names stand conspicuously forth—those
of Tennyson, whose “In Memoriam” is
perhaps his finest work, and of Walt Whitman,
the enthusiasm of whose poems on Comradeship
is only paralleled by the devotedness of his labors
for his wounded brothers in the American Civil
War.</p>
<p>It will be noticed that here we have some of the
very greatest names in all literature concerned;
and that their utterances on this subject equal
if they do not surpass, in beauty, intensity and
humanity of sentiment, whatever has been written
in praise of the other more ordinarily recognised
love.</p>
<p>And when again we turn to the records of Art,
and compare the way in which man’s sense of
Love and Beauty has expressed itself in the portrayal
of the male form and the female form
respectively we find exactly the same thing. The<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</SPAN></span>
whole vista of Greek statuary shows the male passion
of beauty in high degree. Yet though the
statues of men and youths (by men sculptors)
preponderate probably considerably, both in actual
number and in devotedness of execution, over
the statues of female figures, it is, as J. A.
Symonds says in his “Life of Michel Angelo,”
remarkable that in all the range of the former
there are hardly two or three that show a base
or licentious expression, such as is not so very
uncommon in the female statues. Knowing as
we do the strength of the male physical passion
in the life of the Greeks, this one fact speaks
strongly for the sense of proportion which must
have characterised this passion—at any rate in
the most productive age of their Art.</p>
<p>In the case of Michel Angelo we have an artist
who with brush and chisel portrayed literally
thousands of human forms; but with this peculiarity,
that while scores and scores of his male
figures are obviously suffused and inspired by
a romantic sentiment, there is hardly one of his
female figures that is so,—the latter being mostly
representative of woman in her part as mother,
or sufferer, or prophetess or poetess, or in old
age, or in any aspect of strength or tenderness,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</SPAN></span>
except that which associates itself especially with
romantic love. Yet the cleanliness and dignity
of Michel Angelo’s male figures are incontestable,
and bear striking witness to that nobility
of the sentiment in him, which we have already
seen illustrated in his sonnets.<SPAN name="FNanchor_24" id="FNanchor_24"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">24</SPAN></p>
<p>This brief sketch may suffice to give the reader
some idea of the place and position in the world
of the particular sentiment which we are discussing;
nor can it fail to impress him—if any
reference is made to the authorities quoted—with
a sense of the dignity and solidity of the sentiment,
at any rate as handled by some of the world’s
greatest men. At the same time it would be
affectation to ignore the fact that side by side with
this view of the subject there has been another
current of opinion leading people—especially in
quite modern times in Europe—to look upon
attachments of the kind in question with much
suspicion and disfavour.<SPAN name="FNanchor_25" id="FNanchor_25"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">25</SPAN> And it may be necessary
here to say a few words on this latter view.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</SPAN></span></p>
<p>The origin of it is not far to seek. Those
who have no great gift themselves for this
kind of friendship—who are not in the inner
circle of it, so to speak, and do not understand
or appreciate its deep emotional and romantic
character, have nevertheless heard of certain corruptions
and excesses; for these latter leap to
publicity. They have heard of the debaucheries
of a Nero or a Tiberius; they have noted the
scandals of the Police Courts; they have had
some experience perhaps of abuses which may be
found in Public Schools or Barracks; and they
(not unnaturally) infer that these things, these
excesses and sensualities, are the motive of comrade-attachments,
and the object for which they
exist; nor do they easily recognise any more
profound and intimate bond. To such people
physical intimacies of <em>any</em> kind (at any rate between
males) seem inexcusable. There is no
distinction in their minds between the simplest or
most naive expression of feeling and the gravest
abuse of human rights and decency; there is no
distinction between a genuine heart-attachment
and a mere carnal curiosity. They see certain<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</SPAN></span>
evils that occur or have occurred, and they think,
perfectly candidly, that any measures are justifiable
to prevent such things recurring. But they
do not see the interior love-feeling which when it
exists does legitimately demand <em>some</em> expression.
Such folk, in fact, not having the key in themselves
to the real situation hastily assume that the
homogenic attachment has no other motive than,
or is simply a veil and a cover for, sensuality—and
suspect or condemn it accordingly.</p>
<p>Thus arises the curious discrepancy of people’s
views on this important subject—a discrepancy
depending on the side from which they approach
it.</p>
<p>On the one hand we have anathemas and execrations,
on the other we have the lofty enthusiasm
of a man like Plato—one of the leaders of
the world’s thought for all time—who puts, for
example, into the mouth of Phædrus (in the
“Symposium”) such a passage as this<SPAN name="FNanchor_26" id="FNanchor_26"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">26</SPAN>: “I know
not any greater blessing to a young man beginning
life than a virtuous lover, or to the lover
than a beloved youth. For the principle which
ought to be the guide of men who would nobly
live—that principle, I say, neither kindred, nor<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</SPAN></span>
honour, nor wealth, nor any other motive is able
to implant so well as love. Of what am I speaking?
Of the sense of honour and dishonour,
without which neither states nor individuals ever
do any good or great work.… For what lover
would not choose rather to be seen of all mankind
than by his beloved, either when abandoning his
post or throwing away his arms? He would
be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than
endure this. Or who would desert his beloved
or fail him in the hour of danger? The veriest
coward would become an inspired hero, equal
to the bravest, at such a time; love would inspire
him. That courage which, as Homer says, the
god breathes into the soul of heroes, love of his
own nature inspires into the lover.” Or again
in the “Phædrus” Plato makes Socrates say<SPAN name="FNanchor_27" id="FNanchor_27"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">27</SPAN>:
“In like manner the followers of Apollo and of
every other god, walking in the ways of their
god, seek a love who is to be like their god, and
when they have found him, they themselves imitate
their god, and persuade their love to do the
same, and bring him into harmony with the form
and ways of the god as far as they can; for
they have no feelings of envy or jealousy towards<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</SPAN></span>
their beloved, but they do their utmost to create
in him the greatest likeness of themselves and
the god whom they honour. Thus fair and
blissful to the beloved when he is taken, is the
desire of the inspired lover, and the initiation of
which I speak into the mysteries of true love, if
their purpose is effected.”</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>With these few preliminary remarks we may
pass on to consider some recent scientific investigations
of the matter in hand. In late times—that
is, during the last thirty years or so—a group
of scientific and capable men chiefly in Germany,
France, and Italy, have made a special and more
or less impartial study of it. Among these may
be mentioned Dr. Albert Moll of Berlin; R. von
Krafft-Ebing, one of the leading medical authorities
of Vienna, whose book on “Sexual Psychopathy”
has passed into its tenth edition; Dr.
Paul Moreau (“Des Aberrations du sens génésique”);
Cesare Lombroso, the author of various
works on Anthropology; M. A. Raffalovich
(“Uranisme et unisexualité”); Auguste Forel
(“Die Sexuelle Frage”); Mantegazza; K. H.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</SPAN></span>
Ulrichs; and last but not least, Dr. Havelock
Ellis, of whose great work on the Psychology of
Sex the second volume is dedicated to the subject
of “Sexual Inversion.”<SPAN name="FNanchor_28" id="FNanchor_28"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">28</SPAN> The result of these investigations
has been that a very altered complexion
has been given to the subject. For
whereas at first it was easily assumed that the
phenomena were of morbid character, and that
the leaning of the love-sentiment towards one of
the same sex was always associated with degeneracy
or disease, it is very noticeable that step
by step with the accumulation of reliable information
this assumption has been abandoned. The
point of view has changed; and the change has
been most marked in the latest authors, such as
A. Moll and Havelock Ellis.</p>
<p>It is not possible here to go into anything like
a detailed account of the works of these various
authors, their theories, and the immense number
of interesting cases and observations which they
have contributed; but some of the general conclusions
which flow from their researches may be
pointed out. In the first place their labors have<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</SPAN></span>
established the fact, known hitherto only to individuals,
that <em>sexual inversion</em>—that is the leaning
of desire to one of the same sex—is in a vast
number of cases quite instinctive and congenital,
mentally and physically, and therefore twined
in the very roots of individual life and practically
ineradicable. To Men or Women thus affected
with an innate homosexual bias, Ulrichs gave
the name of Urning,<SPAN name="FNanchor_29" id="FNanchor_29"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">29</SPAN> since pretty widely accepted
by scientists. Some details with regard to
“Urnings,” I have given in the preceding paper,
but it should be said here that too much emphasis
cannot be laid on the distinction between these
born lovers of their own kind, and that class of
persons, with whom they are so often confused,
who out of mere carnal curiosity or extravagance
of desire, or from the dearth of opportunities
for a more normal satisfaction (as in schools,
barracks, etc.) adopt some homosexual practices.
It is the latter class who become chiefly prominent
in the public eye, and who excite, naturally
enough, public reprobation. In their case the
attraction is felt, by themselves and all concerned,
to be merely sensual and morbid. In the case of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</SPAN></span>
the others, however, the feeling is, as said, so
deeply rooted and twined with the mental and
emotional life that the person concerned has
difficulty in imagining himself affected otherwise
than he is; and to him at least his love appears
healthy and natural, and indeed a necessary part
of his individuality.</p>
<p>In the second place it has become clear that
the number of individuals affected with ‘sexual
inversion’ in some degree or other is very great—much
greater than is generally supposed to be the
case. It is however very difficult or perhaps impossible
to arrive at satisfactory figures on the
subject,<SPAN name="FNanchor_30" id="FNanchor_30"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">30</SPAN> for the simple reasons that the proportions
vary so greatly among different peoples and
even in different sections of society and in different
localities, and because of course there are
all possible grades of sexual inversion to deal
with, from that in which the instinct is <em>quite
exclusively</em> directed towards the same sex, to the
other extreme in which it is normally towards the
opposite sex but capable, occasionally and under
exceptional attractions, of inversion towards its
own—this last condition being probably among
some peoples very widespread, if not universal.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</SPAN></span></p>
<p>In the third place, by the tabulation and comparison
of a great number of cases and “confessions,”
it has become pretty well established
that the individuals affected with inversion in
marked degree do not after all differ from the rest
of mankind, or womankind, in any other physical
or mental particular which can be distinctly indicated.<SPAN name="FNanchor_31" id="FNanchor_31"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">31</SPAN>
No congenital association with any
particular physical conformation or malformation
has yet been discovered; nor with any distinct
disease of body or mind. Nor does it appear that
persons of this class are usually of a gross or
specially low type, but if anything rather the
opposite—being mostly of refined, sensitive nature
and including, as Krafft-Ebing points out (“Psychopathia
Sexualis,” seventh ed., p. 227) a great
number “highly gifted in the fine arts, especially
music and poetry”; and, as Mantegazza
says,<SPAN name="FNanchor_32" id="FNanchor_32"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">32</SPAN> many persons of high literary and social
distinction. It is true that Krafft-Ebing insists on
the generally strong sexual equipment of this
class of persons (among men), but he hastens to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</SPAN></span>
say that their emotional love is also “enthusiastic
and exalted,”<SPAN name="FNanchor_33" id="FNanchor_33"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">33</SPAN> and that, while bodily congress
is desired, the special act with which they
are vulgarly credited is in most cases repugnant
to them.<SPAN name="FNanchor_34" id="FNanchor_34"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">34</SPAN></p>
<p>The only distinct characteristic which the scientific
writers claim to have established is a marked
tendency to nervous development in the subject,
not infrequently associated with nervous maladies;
but—as I shall presently have occasion to show—there
is reason to think that the validity even of
this characteristic has been exaggerated.</p>
<p>Taking the general case of men with a marked
exclusive preference for persons of their own
sex, Krafft-Ebing says (“P.S.” p. 256): “The
sexual life of these Homosexuals is <i lang="la">mutatis mutandis</i>
just the same as in the case of normal sex-love.… The
Urning loves, deifies his male beloved
one, exactly as the woman-wooing man does
<em>his</em> beloved. For him, he is capable of the greatest
sacrifice, experiences the torments of unhappy,
often unrequited, love, of faithlessness on his
beloved’s part, of jealousy, and so forth. His
attention is enchained only by the male form<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</SPAN></span>
… The sight of feminine charms is indifferent
to him, if not repugnant.” Then he goes on to
say that many such men, notwithstanding their
actual aversion to intercourse with the female, do
ultimately marry—either from ethical, as sometimes
happens, or from social considerations. But
very remarkable—as illustrating the depth and
tenacity of the homogenic instinct<SPAN name="FNanchor_35" id="FNanchor_35"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">35</SPAN>—and pathetic
too, are the records that he gives of these cases;
for in many of them a real friendship and regard
between the married pair was still of no avail
to overcome the distaste on the part of one to
sexual intercourse with the other, or to prevent
the experience of actual physical distress after
such intercourse, or to check the continual flow
of affection to some third person of the same sex;
and thus unwillingly, so to speak, this bias remained
a cause of suffering to the end.</p>
<p>I have said that at the outset it was assumed
that the Homogenic emotion was morbid in itself,
and probably always associated with distinct disease,
either physical or mental, but that the progress<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</SPAN></span>
of the inquiry has served more and more to
dissipate this view; and that it is noticeable that
the latest of the purely scientific authorities are
the least disposed to insist upon the theory of
morbidity. It is true that Krafft-Ebing clings to
the opinion that there is generally some <em>neurosis</em>,
or degeneration of a nerve-centre, or <em>inherited
tendency in that direction</em>, associated with the
instinct; see p. 190 (seventh ed.), also p. 227,
where he speaks, rather vaguely, of “an hereditary
neuropathic or psychopathic tendency”—<i lang="de">neuro(psycho)pathische
Belastung</i>. But it is an
obvious criticism on this that there are few people
in modern life, perhaps none, who could be pronounced
absolutely free from such a <i lang="de">Belastung</i>!
And whether the Dorian Greeks or the Polynesian
Islanders or the Albanian mountaineers, or any
of the other notably hardy races among whom
this affection has been developed, were particularly
troubled by nervous degeneration we may
well doubt!</p>
<p>As to Moll, though he speaks<SPAN name="FNanchor_36" id="FNanchor_36"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">36</SPAN> of the instinct as
morbid (feeling perhaps in duty bound to do so),
it is very noticeable that he abandons the ground
of its association with other morbid symptoms—as<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</SPAN></span>
this association, he says, is by no means always
to be observed; and is fain to rest his judgment
on the <i lang="la">dictum</i> that the mere failure of the sexual
instinct to propagate the species is itself pathological—a
<i lang="la">dictum</i> which in its turn obviously
springs from that pre-judgment of scientists that
generation is the sole object of love,<SPAN name="FNanchor_37" id="FNanchor_37"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">37</SPAN> and which
if pressed would involve the good doctor in
awkward dilemmas, as for instance that every
worker-bee is a pathological specimen.</p>
<p>Finally we find that Havelock Ellis, one of the
latest writers of weight on this subject, in chapter
vi. of his “Sexual Inversion,” combats the idea
that this temperament is necessarily morbid; and
suggests that the tendency should rather be called
an anomaly than a disease. He says (2nd edition,
p. 186)<SPAN name="FNanchor_38" id="FNanchor_38"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">38</SPAN> “Thus in sexual inversion we have
what may fairly be called a ‘sport’ or variation,
one of those organic aberrations which we see
throughout living nature in plants and in
animals.”<SPAN name="FNanchor_39" id="FNanchor_39"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">39</SPAN></p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</SPAN></span></p>
<p>With regard to the nerve-degeneration theory,
while it may be allowed that sexual inversion is
not uncommonly found in connection with the
specially nervous temperament, it must be remembered
that its occasional association with nervous
troubles or disease is quite another matter; since
such troubles ought perhaps to be looked upon as
the results rather than the causes of the inversion.
It is difficult of course for outsiders not personally
experienced in the matter to realise the great
strain and tension of nerves under which those
persons grow up from boyhood to manhood—or
from girl to womanhood—who find their deepest
and strongest instincts under the ban of the
society around them; who before they clearly
understand the drift of their own natures discover
that they are somehow cut off from the sympathy
and understanding of those nearest to them; and
who know that they can never give expression to
their tenderest yearnings of affection without exposing
themselves to the possible charge of actions
stigmatised as odious crimes.<SPAN name="FNanchor_40" id="FNanchor_40"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">40</SPAN> That such a strain,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</SPAN></span>
acting on one who is perhaps already of a nervous
temperament, should tend to cause nervous prostration
or even mental disturbance is of course
obvious; and if such disturbances are really found
to be commoner among homogenic lovers than
among ordinary folk we have in these social
causes probably a sufficient explanation of the
fact.</p>
<p>Then again in this connexion it must never be
forgotten that the medico-scientific enquirer is
bound on the whole to meet with those cases that
<em>are</em> of a morbid character, rather than with those
that are healthy in their manifestation, since indeed
it is the former that he lays himself out for.
And since the field of his research is usually a
great modern city, there is little wonder if disease
colours his conclusions. In the case of Dr. Moll,
who carried out his researches largely under the
guidance of the Berlin police (whose acquaintance
with the subject would naturally be limited to its
least satisfactory sides), the only marvel is that
his verdict is so markedly favorable as it is. As
Krafft-Ebing says in his own preface, “It is the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</SPAN></span>
sad privilege of Medicine, and especially of Psychiatry,
to look always on the reverse side of life,
on the weakness and wretchedness of man.”</p>
<p>Having regard then to the direction in which
science has been steadily moving in this matter, it
is not difficult to see that the epithet “morbid”
will probably before long be abandoned as descriptive
of the homogenic bias—that is, of the
general sentiment of love towards a person of the
same sex. That there are excesses of the passion—cases,
as in ordinary sex-love, where mere physical
desire becomes a mania—we may freely admit;
but as it would be unfair to judge of the
purity of marriage by the evidence of the Divorce
courts, so it would be monstrous to measure the
truth and beauty of the attachment in question by
those instances which stand most prominently perhaps
in the eye of the modern public; and after
all deductions there remains, we contend, the vast
body of cases in which the manifestation of the
instinct has on the whole the character of normality
and healthfulness—sufficiently so in fact to
constitute this <em>a distinct variety of the sexual
passion</em>. The question, of course, not being
whether the instinct is <em>capable</em> of morbid and
extravagant manifestation—for that can easily be<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</SPAN></span>
proved of any instinct—but whether it is capable
of a healthy and sane expression. And this, we
think, it has abundantly shown itself to be.</p>
<p>Anyhow the work that Science has practically
done has been to destroy the dogmatic attitude
of the former current opinion from which itself
started, and to leave the whole subject freed from
a great deal of misunderstanding, and much more
open than before. If on the one hand its results
have been chiefly of a negative character, and it
admits that it does not understand the exact place
and foundation of this attachment; on the other
hand since it recognises the deeply beneficial influences
of an intimate love-relation of the usual
kind on those concerned, it also allows that there
are some persons for whom these necessary reactions
can only come from one of the same sex
as themselves.</p>
<p>“Successful love,” says Moll (p. 125) “exercises
a helpful influence on the Urning. His mental
and bodily condition improves, and capacity of
work increases—just as it happens in the case of
a normal youth with <em>his</em> love.” And further on
(p. 173) in a letter from a man of this kind
occur these words:—“The passion is I suppose
so powerful, just because one looks for everything<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</SPAN></span>
in the loved man—Love, Friendship, Ideal, and
Sense-satisfaction.… As it is at present I suffer
the agonies of a deep unresponded passion,
which wake me like a nightmare from sleep. And
I am conscious of physical pain in the region of
the heart.” In such cases the love, in some degree
physically expressed, of another person of the
same sex, is allowed to be as much a necessity
and a condition of healthy life and activity, as in
more ordinary cases is the love of a person of the
opposite sex.</p>
<p>If then the physical element which is sometimes
present in the love of which we are speaking is
a difficulty and a stumbling-block, it must be
allowed that it is a difficulty that Nature confronts
us with, and which cannot be disposed of by mere
anathema and execration. The only theory—from
K. H. Ulrichs to Havelock Ellis—which has at all
held its ground in this matter, is that in congenital
cases of sex-inversion there is a mixture of male
and female elements in the same person; so that
for instance in the same embryo the emotional and
nervous regions may develop along feminine lines
while the outer body and functions may determine
themselves as distinctly masculine, or <i lang="la">vice versa</i>.
Such cross-development may take place obviously<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</SPAN></span>
in a great variety of ways, and thus possibly explain
the remarkable varieties of the Uranian
temperament; but in all such cases, strange as
may be the problems thus arising, these problems
are of Nature’s own producing and can hardly be
laid to the door of the individual who has literally
to bear their cross. For such individuals expressions
of feeling become natural, which to others
seem out of place and uncalled for; and not only
natural, but needful and inevitable. To deny to
such people <em>all</em> expression of their emotion, is
probably in the end to cause it to burst forth with
the greater violence; and it may be suggested
that our British code of manners, by forbidding
the lighter marks of affection between youths and
men, acts just contrary to its own purpose, and
drives intimacies down into less open and unexceptionable
channels.</p>
<p>With regard to this physical element it must
also be remembered that since the homogenic
love—whether between man and man, or between
woman and woman—can from the nature of the
case never find expression on the physical side
so freely and completely as is the case with
the ordinary love, it must tend rather more than
the latter to run along <em>emotional</em> channels, and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</SPAN></span>
to find its vent in sympathies of social life and
companionship. If one studies carefully the expression
of the Greek statues (see <SPAN href="#Page_9"></SPAN>, supra) and
the lesson of the Greek literature, one sees clearly
that the <em>ideal</em> of Greek life was a very continent
one: the trained male, the athlete, the man temperate
and restrained, even chaste, for the sake of
bettering his powers. It was round this conception
that the Greeks kindled their finer emotions.
And so of their love: a base and licentious indulgence
was not in line with it. They may not have
always kept to their ideal, but there it was. And
I am inclined to think that the homogenic instinct
(for the reasons given above) would in the long
run tend to work itself out in this direction. And
consonant with this is the fact that this passion in
the past (as pointed out by J. Addington Symonds
in his paper on “Dantesque and Platonic Ideals of
Love”<SPAN name="FNanchor_41" id="FNanchor_41"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">41</SPAN>) has, as a matter of fact, inspired such
a vast amount of heroism and romance—only
paralleled indeed by the loves of Chivalry, which
of course, owing to their special character, were
subject to a similar Transmutation.</p>
<p>In all these matters the popular opinion has<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</SPAN></span>
probably been largely influenced by the arbitrary
notion that the function of love is limited to child-breeding;
and that any love not concerned in the
propagation of the race must necessarily be of
dubious character. And in enforcing this view, no
doubt the Hebraic and Christian tradition has exercised
a powerful influence—dating, as it almost
certainly does, from far-back times when the multiplication
of the tribe was one of the first duties of
its members, and one of the first necessities of
corporate life.<SPAN name="FNanchor_42" id="FNanchor_42"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">42</SPAN> But nowadays when the need has
swung round all the other way it is not unreasonable
to suppose that a similar revolution will take
place in people’s views of the place and purpose
of the non-child-bearing love.<SPAN name="FNanchor_43" id="FNanchor_43"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">43</SPAN></p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>I have now said enough I think to show that
though much in relation to the homogenic attachment
is obscure, and though it may have its
special pitfalls and temptations—making it quite
necessary to guard against a too great latitude<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</SPAN></span>
on the physical side; yet on its ethical and social
sides it is pregnant with meaning and has received
at various times in history abundant justification.
It certainly does not seem impossible to suppose
that as the ordinary love has a special function
in the propagation of the race, so the other has
its special function in social and heroic work, and
in the generation—not of bodily children—but of
those children of the mind, the philosophical conceptions
and ideals which transform our lives and
those of society. J. Addington Symonds, in his
privately printed pamphlet, “A Problem in Greek
Ethics” (now published in a German translation),<SPAN name="FNanchor_44" id="FNanchor_44"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">44</SPAN>
endeavours to reconstruct as it were the genesis
of comrade-love among the Dorians in early Greek
times. Thus:—“Without sufficiency of women,
without the sanctities of established domestic life,
inspired by the memories of Achilles and venerating
their ancestor Herakles, the Dorian warriors
had special opportunity for elevating comradeship
to the rank of an enthusiasm. The incidents
of emigration into a foreign country—perils of
the sea, passages of rivers and mountains, assaults
of fortresses and cities, landings on a hostile<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</SPAN></span>
shore, night-vigils by the side of blazing beacons,
foragings for food, picquet service in the front
of watchful foes—involved adventures capable of
shedding the lustre of romance on friendship.
These circumstances, by bringing the virtues of
sympathy with the weak, tenderness for the beautiful,
protection for the young, together with corresponding
qualities of gratitude, self-devotion,
and admiring attachment into play, may have
tended to cement unions between man and man
no less firm than that of marriage. On such
connections a wise captain would have relied for
giving strength to his battalions, and for keeping
alive the flames of enterprise and daring.” The
author then goes on to suggest that though in such
relations as those indicated the physical probably
had some share, yet it did not at that time overbalance
the emotional and spiritual elements, or
lead to the corruption and effeminacy of a later
age.</p>
<p>At Sparta the lover was called <i lang="el">Eispnêlos</i>, the
inspirer, and the younger beloved <i lang="el">Aïtes</i>, the
hearer. This alone would show the partly educational
aspects in which comradeship was conceived;
and a hundred passages from classic
literature might be quoted to prove how deeply<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</SPAN></span>
it had entered into the Greek mind that this love
was the cradle of social chivalry and heroic life.
Finally it seems to have been Plato’s favorite
doctrine that the relation if properly conducted
led up to the disclosure of true philosophy in the
mind, to the divine vision or mania, and to the
remembrance or rekindling within the soul of all
the forms of celestial beauty. He speaks of this
kind of love as causing a “generation in the
beautiful”<SPAN name="FNanchor_45" id="FNanchor_45"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">45</SPAN> within the souls of the lovers. The
image of the beloved one passing into the mind of
the lover and upward through its deepest recesses
reaches and unites itself to the essential forms of
divine beauty there long hidden—the originals as
it were of all creation—and stirring them to life
excites a kind of generative descent of noble
thoughts and impulses, which henceforward modify
the whole cast of thought and life of the one
so affected.</p>
<p>If there is any truth—even only a grain or two—in
these speculations, it is easy to see that the
love with which we are specially dealing is a very
important factor in society, and that its neglect, or
its repression, or its vulgar misapprehension, may
be matters of considerable danger or damage to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</SPAN></span>
the common-weal. It is easy to see that while on
the one hand marriage is of indispensable importance
to the State as providing the workshop
as it were for the breeding and rearing of children,
another form of union is almost equally indispensable
to supply the basis for social activities of
other kinds. Every one is conscious that without a
close affectional tie of some kind his life is not
complete, his powers are crippled, and his energies
are inadequately spent. Yet it is not to be expected
(though it may of course happen) that the man
or woman who have dedicated themselves to each
other and to family life should leave the care of
their children and the work they have to do at
home in order to perform social duties of a remote
and less obvious, though may be more arduous,
character. Nor is it to be expected that a man
or woman single-handed, without the counsel of
a helpmate in the hour of difficulty, or his or her
love in the hour of need, should feel equal to
these wider activities. If—to refer once more to
classic story—the love of Harmodius had been
for a wife and children at home, he would probably
not have cared, and it would hardly have
been his business, to slay the tyrant. And unless
on the other hand each of the friends had had the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</SPAN></span>
love of his comrade to support him, the two could
hardly have nerved themselves to this audacious
and ever-memorable exploit. So it is difficult to
believe that anything can supply the force and
liberate the energies required for social and mental
activities of the most necessary kind so well
as a comrade-union which yet leaves the two
lovers free from the responsibilities and impedimenta
of family life.</p>
<p>For if the slaughter of tyrants is not the chief
social duty nowadays, we have with us hydra-headed
monsters at least as numerous as the
tyrants of old, and more difficult to deal with,
and requiring no little courage to encounter.
And beyond the extirpation of evils we have solid
work waiting to be done in the patient and life-long
building up of new forms of society, new
orders of thought, and new institutions of human
solidarity—all of which in their genesis must meet
with opposition, ridicule, hatred, and even violence.
Such campaigns as these—though different
in kind from those of the Dorian mountaineers
described above—will call for equal hardihood and
courage, and will stand in need of a comradeship
as true and valiant. And it may indeed be
doubted whether the higher heroic and spiritual<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</SPAN></span>
life of a nation is ever quite possible without the
sanction of this attachment in its institutions,
adding a new range and scope to the possibilities
of love.<SPAN name="FNanchor_46" id="FNanchor_46"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">46</SPAN></p>
<p>Walt Whitman, the inaugurator, it may almost
be said, of a new world of democratic ideals and
literature, and—as one of the best of our critics has
remarked—the most Greek in spirit and in performance
of modern writers, insists continually on
this social function of “intense and loving comradeship,
the personal and passionate attachment
of man to man.” “I will make,” he says, “the most
splendid race the sun ever shone upon, I will make
divine magnetic lands.… I will make inseparable
cities with their arms about each others’
necks, by the love of comrades.” And again, in
“Democratic Vistas,” “It is to the development,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</SPAN></span>
identification, and general prevalence of that fervid
comradeship (the adhesive love at least
rivaling the amative love hitherto possessing imaginative
literature, if not going beyond it), that
I look for the counterbalance and offset of materialistic
and vulgar American Democracy, and for
the spiritualisation thereof.… I say Democracy
infers such loving comradeship, as its most inevitable
twin or counterpart, without which it will
be incomplete, in vain, and incapable of perpetuating
itself.”</p>
<p>Yet Whitman could not have spoken, as he did,
with a kind of authority on this subject, if he had
not been fully aware that through the masses of
the people this attachment was already alive and
working—though doubtless in a somewhat suppressed
and un-self-conscious form—and if he had
not had ample knowledge of its effects and influence
in himself and others around him. Like
all great artists he could but give form and light
to that which already existed dim and inchoate in
the heart of the people. To those who have dived
at all below the surface in this direction it will be
familiar enough that the homogenic passion ramifies
widely through all modern society, and that
among the masses of the people as among the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</SPAN></span>
classes, even below the stolid surface and reserve
of British manners, letters pass and enduring
attachments are formed, differing in no very
obvious respect from those correspondences which
persons of opposite sex knit with each other under
similar circumstances; but that hitherto while
this relation has occasionally, in its grosser forms
and abuses, come into public notice through the
police reports, etc., its more sane and spiritual
manifestations—though really a moving force in
the body politic—have remained unrecognised.</p>
<p>It is hardly needful in these days when social
questions loom so large upon us to emphasise
the importance of a bond which by the most
passionate and lasting compulsion may draw members
of the different classes together, and (as it
often seems to do) none the less strongly because
they are members of different classes. A moment’s
consideration must convince us that such a comradeship
may, as Whitman says, have “deepest
relations to general politics.” It is noticeable,
too, in this deepest relation to politics that the
movement among women towards their own liberation
and emancipation, which is taking place all
over the civilised world, has been accompanied
by a marked development of the homogenic passion<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</SPAN></span>
among the female sex. It may be said that
a certain strain in the relations between the opposite
sexes which has come about owing to a
growing consciousness among women that they
have been oppressed and unfairly treated by men,
and a growing unwillingness to ally themselves
unequally in marriage—that this strain has caused
the womenkind to draw more closely together and
to cement alliances of their own. But whatever the
cause may be it is pretty certain that such comrade-alliances—and
of quite devoted kind—are
becoming increasingly common, and especially
perhaps among the more cultured classes of
women, who are working out the great cause of
their sex’s liberation; nor is it difficult to see the
importance of such alliances in such a campaign.
In the United States where the battle of women’s
independence is also being fought, the tendency
mentioned is as strongly marked.</p>
<p>A few words may here be said about the legal
aspect of this important question. It has to be
remarked that the present state of the Law, both
in Germany and Britain—arising as it does partly
out of some of the misapprehensions above alluded
to, and partly out of the sheer unwillingness of
legislators to discuss the question—is really<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</SPAN></span>
impracticable. While the Law rightly seeks to prevent
acts of violence or public scandal, it may
be argued that it is going beyond its province
when it attempts to regulate the private and
voluntary relations of adult persons to each other.
The homogenic affection is a valuable social
force, and in some cases a necessary element
of noble human character—yet the Act of 1885
makes almost any familiarity in such cases the
possible basis of a criminal charge. The Law
has no doubt had substantial ground for previous
statutes on this subject—dealing with a certain
gross act; but in so severely condemning the
least familiarity between male persons<SPAN name="FNanchor_47" id="FNanchor_47"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">47</SPAN> we
think it has gone too far. It has undertaken a
censorship over private morals (entirely apart
from social results) which is beyond its province,
and which—even if it were its province—it could
not possibly fulfil;<SPAN name="FNanchor_48" id="FNanchor_48"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">48</SPAN> it has opened wider than
ever before the door to a real, most serious social
evil and crime—that of blackmailing; and it<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</SPAN></span>
has thrown a shadow over even the simplest and
most ordinary expressions of an attachment which
may, as we have seen, be of great value in the
national life.</p>
<p>That the homosexual feeling, like the heterosexual,
may lead to public abuses of liberty and
decency; that it needs a strict self-control;
and that much teaching and instruction on the
subject is needed; we of course do not deny. But
as, in the case of persons of opposite sex, the law
limits itself on the whole to a maintenance of
public order, the protection of the weak from
violence and insult,<SPAN name="FNanchor_49" id="FNanchor_49"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">49</SPAN> and of the young from their
inexperience; so we think it should be here. The
much-needed teaching and the true morality on
the subject must be given—as it can only be
given—by the spread of proper education and
ideas, and not by the clumsy bludgeon of the
statute-book.<SPAN name="FNanchor_50" id="FNanchor_50"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">50</SPAN></p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Having thus shown the importance of the homogenic
or comrade-attachment, in some form, in
national life, it would seem high time now that
the modern peoples should recognise this in their
institutions, and endeavour at least in their public
opinion and systems of education to understand
this factor and give it its proper place. The undoubted
evils which exist in relation to it, for
instance in our public schools as well as in our
public life, owe their existence largely to the fact
that the whole subject is left in the gutter so to
speak—in darkness and concealment. No one
offers a clue of better things, nor to point a way
out of the wilderness; and by this very non-recognition
the passion is perverted into its least
satisfactory channels. All love, one would say,
must have its responsibilities, else it is liable to
degenerate, and to dissipate itself in mere sentiment
or sensuality. The normal marriage between
man and woman leads up to the foundation of
the household and the family; the love between
parents and children implies duties and cares on
both sides. The homogenic attachment left unrecognised,
easily loses some of its best quality
and becomes an ephemeral or corrupt thing. Yet,
as we have seen, and as I am pointing out in the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</SPAN></span>
<SPAN href="#IV">following chapter</SPAN>, it may, when occurring between
an elder and younger, prove to be an immense
educational force; while, as between equals, it
may be turned to social and heroic uses, such as
can hardly be demanded or expected from the
ordinary marriage. It would seem high time,
I say, that public opinion should recognise these
facts; and so give to this attachment the sanction
and dignity which arise from public recognition,
as well as the definite form and outline which
would flow from the existence of an accepted
ideal or standard in the matter. It is often said
how necessary for the morality of the ordinary
marriage is some public recognition of the relation,
and some accepted standard of conduct in it.
May not, to a lesser degree, something of the
same kind (as suggested in the next chapter) be
true of the homogenic attachment? It has had its
place as a recognised and guarded institution in
the elder and more primitive societies; and it
seems quite probable that a similar place will be
accorded to it in the societies of the future.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="IV"><small><small>IV</small></small><br/> Affection in Education</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">The</span> place of Affection, and the need of it, as an
educative force in school-life, is a subject which
is beginning to attract a good deal of attention.
Hitherto Education has been concentred on
intellectual (and physical) development; but the
affections have been left to take care of themselves.
Now it is beginning to be seen that the
affections have an immense deal to say in the
building up of the brain and the body. Their
evolution and organisation in some degree is
probably going to become an important part of
school management.</p>
<p>School friendships of course exist; and almost
every one remembers that they filled a large place
in the outlook of his early years; but he remembers,
too, that they were not recognised in any
way, and that in consequence the main part of
their force and value was wasted. Yet it is<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</SPAN></span>
evident that the first unfolding of a strong attachment
in boyhood or girlhood must have a profound
influence; while if it occurs between an
elder and a younger school-mate, or—as sometimes
happens—between the young thing and its
teacher, its importance in the educational sense
can hardly be overrated.</p>
<p>That such feelings sometimes take quite intense
and romantic forms few will deny. I have before
me a letter, in which the author, speaking of an
attachment he experienced when a boy of sixteen
for a youth somewhat older than himself, says:—</p>
<p class="quote">“I would have died for him ten times over.
My devices and plannings to meet him (to come
across him casually, as it were) were those of
a lad for his sweetheart, and when I saw him my
heart beat so violently that it caught my breath,
and I could not speak. We met in——, and for
the weeks that he stayed there I thought of
nothing else—thought of him night and day—and
when he returned to London I used to write
him weekly letters, veritable love-letters of many
sheets in length. Yet I never felt one particle
of jealousy, though our friendship lasted for some
years. The passion, violent and extravagant as it
was, I believe to have been perfectly free from
sex-feeling and perfectly wholesome and good
for me. It distinctly contributed to my growth.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</SPAN></span>
Looking back upon it and analysing it as well
as I can, I seem to see as the chief element in it
an escape from the extremely narrow Puritanism
in which I was reared, into a large sunny ingenuous
nature which knew nothing at all of the
bondage of which I was beginning to be acutely
conscious.”</p>
<p>Shelley in his fragmentary “Essay on Friendship”
speaks in the most glowing terms of an
attachment he formed at school, and so does
Leigh Hunt in his “Autobiography.” Says the
latter:—</p>
<p class="quote">“If I had reaped no other benefit from Christ
Hospital, the school would be ever dear to me
from the recollection of the friendships I formed
in it, and of the first heavenly taste it gave me of
that most spiritual of the affections.… I shall
never forget the impression it made on me.
I loved my friend for his gentleness, his candour,
his truth, his good repute, his freedom even from
my own livelier manner, his calm and reasonable
kindness.… I doubt whether he ever had a
conception of a tithe of the regard and respect
I entertained for him, and I smile to think of
the perplexity (though he never showed it) which
he probably felt sometimes at my enthusiastic
expressions; for I thought him a kind of angel.”</p>
<p>It is not necessary, however, to quote authorities<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</SPAN></span>
on such a subject as this.<SPAN name="FNanchor_51" id="FNanchor_51"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">51</SPAN> Any one who has
had experience of schoolboys knows well enough
that they are capable of forming these romantic
and devoted attachments, and that their alliances
are often of the kind especially referred to as
having a bearing on education—<i>i.e.</i>, between an
elder and a younger. They are genuine attractions,
free as a rule, and at their inception, from
secondary motives. They are not formed by the
elder one for any personal ends. More often,
indeed, I think they are begun by the younger,
who naively allows his admiration of the elder one
to become visible. But they are absorbing and
intense, and on either side their influence is deeply
felt and long remembered.</p>
<p>That such attachments <em>may</em> be of the very
greatest value is self-evident. The younger boy
looks on the other as a hero, loves to be with him,
thrills with pleasure at his words of praise or kindness,
imitates, and makes him his pattern and
standard, learns exercises and games, contracts
habits, or picks up information from him. The
elder one, touched, becomes protector and helper;
the unselfish side of his nature is drawn out, and
he develops a real affection and tenderness towards<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</SPAN></span>
the younger. He takes all sorts of trouble
to initiate his <i lang="fr">protégé</i> in field sports or studies; is
proud of the latter’s success; and leads him on
perhaps later to share his own ideals of life and
thought and work.</p>
<p>Sometimes the alliance will begin, in a corresponding
way, from the side of the elder boy.
Sometimes, as said, between a boy and a master
such an attachment, or the germ of it, is found;
and indeed it is difficult to say what gulf, or
difference of age, or culture, or class in society,
is so great that affection of this kind will not on
occasion overpass it. I have by me a letter which
was written by a boy of eleven or twelve to a
young man of twenty-four or twenty-five. The
boy was rather a wild, “naughty” boy, and had
given his parents (working-class folk) a good deal
of trouble. He attended, however, some sort of
night-school or evening class and there conceived
the strongest affection (evidenced by this letter)
for his teacher, the young man in question, quite
spontaneously, and without any attempt on the
part of the latter to elicit it; and (which was
equally important) without any attempt on his
part to <em>deny</em> it. The result was most favorable;
the one force which could really reach the boy<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</SPAN></span>
had, as it were, been found; and he developed
rapidly and well.</p>
<p>The following extract is from a letter written by
an elderly man who has had large experience as
a teacher. He says—</p>
<p class="quote">“It has always seemed to me that the <i lang="fr">rapport</i>
that exists between two human beings, whether
of the same or of different sexes, is a force not
sufficiently recognised, and capable of producing
great results. Plato fully understood its importance,
and aimed at giving what to his countrymen
was more or less sensual, a noble and exalted
direction.… As one who has had much to do
in instructing boys and starting them in life, I am
convinced that the great secret of being a good
teacher consists in the possibility of that <i lang="fr">rapport</i>;
not only of a merely intellectual nature, but involving
a certain physical element, a personal
affection, almost indescribable, that grows up
between pupil and teacher, and through which
thoughts are shared and an influence created that
could exist in no other way.”</p>
<p>And it must be evident to every one that to the
expanding mind of a small boy to have a relation
of real affection with some sensible and helpful
elder of his own sex must be a priceless boon.
At that age love to the other sex has hardly declared<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</SPAN></span>
itself, and indeed is not exactly what is
wanted. The unformed mind requires an ideal
of itself, as it were, to which it can cling or towards
which it can grow. Yet it is equally evident
that the relation and the success of it, will depend
immensely on the character of the elder one, on
the self-restraint and tenderness of which he is
capable, and on the ideal of life which he has in
his mind. That, possibly, is the reason why
Greek custom, at least in the early days of Hellas,
not only recognised friendships between elder
and younger youths as a national institution of
great importance, but laid down very distinct laws
or rules concerning the conduct of them, so as to
be a guide and a help to the elder in what was
acknowledged to be a position of responsibility.</p>
<p>In Crete, for instance,<SPAN name="FNanchor_52" id="FNanchor_52"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">52</SPAN> the friendship was
entered into in quite a formal and public way,
with the understanding and consent of relatives;
the position of the elder was clearly defined, and
it became his business to train and exercise the
younger in skill of arms, the chase, etc.; while
the latter could obtain redress at law if the elder
subjected him to insult or injury of any kind. At<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</SPAN></span>
the end of a certain period of probation, if the
younger desired it he could leave his comrade;
if not, he became his squire or henchman—the
elder being bound to furnish his military equipments—and
they fought thenceforward side by
side in battle, “inspired with double valor, according
to the notions of the Cretans, by the gods of
war and love.”<SPAN name="FNanchor_53" id="FNanchor_53"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">53</SPAN> Similar customs prevailed in
Sparta, and, in a less defined way, in other Greek
states; as, indeed, they have prevailed among
many semi-barbaric races on the threshold of
civilisation.</p>
<p>When, however, we turn to modern life and the
actual situation, as for instance in the public
schools of to-day, it may well be objected that we
find very little of the suggested ideal, but rather
an appalling descent into the most uninspiring
conditions. So far from friendship being an
institution whose value is recognised and understood,
it is at best scantily acknowledged, and
is often actually discountenanced and misunderstood.
And though attachments such as we have
portrayed exist, they exist underground, as it
were, at their peril, and half-stifled in an atmosphere
which can only be described as that of the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</SPAN></span>
gutter. Somehow the disease of premature sexuality
seems to have got possession of our centres
of education; wretched practices and habits
abound, and (what is perhaps their worst feature)
cloud and degrade the boys’ conception of what
true love or friendship may be.</p>
<p>To those who are familiar with large public
schools the state of affairs does not need describing.
A friend (who has placed some notes at
my disposal) says that in his time a certain well-known
public school was a mass of uncleanness, incontinence,
and dirty conversation, while at the
same time a great deal of genuine affection, even
to heroism, was shown among the boys in their
relations with one another. But “all these things
were treated by masters and boys alike as more
or less unholy, with the result that they were
either sought after or flung aside according to the
sexual or emotional instinct of the boy. No
attempt was made at discrimination. A kiss was
by comparison as unclean as the act of <i lang="la">fellatio</i>,
and no one had any gauge or principle whatever
on which to guide the cravings of boyhood.” The
writer then goes into details which it is not necessary
to reproduce here. He (and others) were
initiated in the mysteries of sex by the dormitory<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</SPAN></span>
servant; and the boys thus corrupted mishandled
each other.</p>
<p>Naturally in any such atmosphere as this the
chances <em>against</em> the formation of a decent and
healthy attachment are very large. If the elder
youth happen to be given to sensuality he has
here his opportunity; if on the other hand he is
<em>not</em> given to it, the ideas current around probably
have the effect of making him suspect his own
affection, and he ends by smothering and disowning
the best part of his nature. In both ways
harm is done. The big boys in such places become
either coarse and licentious or hard and
self-righteous; the small boys, instead of being
educated and strengthened by the elder ones,
become effeminate little wretches, the favorites,
the petted boys, and the “spoons” of the school.
As time goes on the public opinion of the school
ceases to believe in the possibility of a healthy
friendship; the masters begin to presume (and
not without reason) that all affection means sensual
practices, and end by doing their best to
discourage it.</p>
<p>Now this state of affairs is really desperate.
There is no need to be puritanical, or to look
upon the lapses of boyhood as unpardonable<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</SPAN></span>
sins; indeed, it may be allowed, as far as that
goes, that a little frivolity is better than hardness
and self-righteousness; yet every one feels, and
must feel, who knows anything about the matter,
that the state of our schools is bad.</p>
<p>And it is so because, after all, purity (in the
sense of continence) <em>is</em> of the first importance to
boyhood. To prolong the period of continence
in a boy’s life is to prolong the period of <em>growth</em>.
This is a simple physiological law, and a
very obvious one; and whatever other things may
be said in favour of purity, it remains perhaps
the most weighty. To introduce sensual and
sexual habits—and one of the worst of these is
self-abuse—at an early age, is to arrest growth,
both physical and mental.</p>
<p>And what is even more, it means to arrest the
capacity for affection. I believe affection, attachment—whether
to the one sex or the other—springs
up normally in the youthful mind in
a quite diffused, ideal, emotional form—a kind
of longing and amazement as at something divine—with
no definite thought or distinct consciousness
of sex in it. The sentiment expands and
fills, as it were like a rising tide, every cranny
of the emotional and moral nature; and the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</SPAN></span>
longer (of course within reasonable limits) its
definite outlet towards sex is deferred, the longer
does this period of emotional growth and development
continue, and the greater is the refinement
and breadth and strength of character resulting.
All experience shows that a too early outlet towards
sex cheapens and weakens affectional
capacity.</p>
<p>Yet this early outlet it is which is the great
trouble of our public schools. And it really does
not seem unlikely that the peculiar character of
the middle-class man of to-day, his undeveloped
affectional nature and something of brutishness
and woodenness, is largely due to the prevalent
condition of the places of his education. The
Greeks, with their wonderful instinct of fitness,
seem to have perceived the right path in all
this matter; and, while encouraging friendship,
as we have seen, made a great point of modesty
in early life—the guardians and teachers of every
well-born boy being especially called upon to
watch over the sobriety of his habits and
manners.<SPAN name="FNanchor_54" id="FNanchor_54"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">54</SPAN></p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</SPAN></span></p>
<p>We have then in education generally, it seems
to me (and whether of boys or of girls), two great
currents to deal with, which cannot be ignored,
and which certainly ought to be candidly recognized
and given their right direction. One of
these currents is that of friendship. The other
is that of the young thing’s natural curiosity about
sex. The latter is of course, or should be,
a perfectly legitimate interest. A boy at puberty
naturally wants to know—and ought to know—what
is taking place, and what the uses and
functions of his body are. He does not go very
deep into things; a small amount of information
will probably satisfy him; but the curiosity is
there, and it is pretty certain that the boy, if he
is a boy of any sense or character, <em>will</em> in some
shape or another get to satisfy it.</p>
<p>The process is really a <em>mental</em> one. Desire—except
in some abnormal cases—has not manifested
itself strongly; and there is often perhaps
generally, an actual repugnance at first to anything
like sexual practices; but the wish for
information exists and is, I say, legitimate
enough.<SPAN name="FNanchor_55" id="FNanchor_55"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">55</SPAN> In almost all human societies except,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</SPAN></span>
curiously, the modern nations, there have been
institutions for the initiation of the youth of
either sex into these matters, and these initiations
have generally been associated, in the opening
blossom of the young mind, with inculcation of
the ideals of manhood and womanhood, courage,
hardihood, and the duties of the citizen or the
soldier.<SPAN name="FNanchor_56" id="FNanchor_56"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">56</SPAN></p>
<p>But what does the modern school do? It shuts
a trap-door down on the whole matter. There is
a hush; a grim silence. Legitimate curiosity
soon becomes illegitimate of its kind; and a
furtive desire creeps in, where there was no desire
before. The method of the gutter prevails. In
the absence of any recognition of schoolboy
needs, contraband information is smuggled from
one to another; chaff and ‘smut’ take the place
of sensible and decent explanations; unhealthy
practices follow; the sacredness of sex goes its
way, never to return, and the school is filled with
premature and morbid talk and thought about<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</SPAN></span>
a subject which should, by rights, only just be
rising over the mental horizon.</p>
<p>The meeting of these two currents, of ideal
attachment and sexual desire, constitutes a rather
critical period, even when it takes place in the
normal way—<i>i.e.</i>, later on, and at the matrimonial
age. Under the most favorable conditions a certain
conflict occurs in the mind at their first
encounter. But in the modern school this conflict,
precipitated far too soon, and accompanied by
an artificial suppression of the nobler current and
a premature hastening of the baser one, ends in
simple disaster to the former. Masters wage
war against incontinence, and are right to do so.
But how do they wage it? As said, by grim
silence and fury, by driving the abscess deeper,
by covering the drain over, <em>and</em> by confusing
when it comes before them—both in their own
minds and those of the boys—a real attachment
with that which they condemn.</p>
<p>Not long ago the headmaster of a large public
school coming suddenly out of his study chanced
upon two boys embracing each other in the
corridor. Possibly, and even probably, it was the
simple and natural expression of an unsophisticated
attachment. Certainly, it was nothing that<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</SPAN></span>
in itself could be said to be either right or wrong.
What did he do? He haled the two boys into his
study, gave them a long lecture on the nefariousness
of their conduct, with copious hints that he
knew <em>what such things meant</em>, and <em>what they
led to</em>, and ended by punishing both condignly.
Could anything be more foolish? If their friendship
was clean and natural, the master was only
trying to make them feel that it was unclean and
unnatural, and that a lovely and honorable thing
was disgraceful; if the act was—which at least is
improbable—a mere signal of lust—even then the
best thing would have been to assume that it was
honorable, and by talking to the boys, either
together or separately, to try and inspire them
with a better ideal; while if, between these positions,
the master really thought the affection
though honorable would lead to things undesirable,
then, plainly, to punish the two was only to
cement their love for each other, to give them
a strong reason for concealing it, and to hasten
its onward course. Yet every one knows that
this is the <em>kind</em> of way in which the subject is
treated in schools. It is the method of despair.
And masters (perhaps not unnaturally) finding
that they have not the time which would be<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</SPAN></span>
needed for personal dealing with each boy, nor
the forces at their command by which they might
hope to introduce new ideals of life and conduct
into their little community, and feeling thus utterly
unable to cope with the situation, allow themselves
to drift into a policy of mere silence with
regard to it, tempered by outbreaks of ungoverned
and unreasoning severity.</p>
<p>I venture to think that school-masters will never
successfully solve the difficulty until they boldly
recognize the two needs in question, and proceed
candidly to give them their proper satisfaction.</p>
<p>The need of information—the legitimate curiosity—of
boys (and girls) must be met, (1) partly
by classes on physiology, (2) partly by private
talks and confidences between elder and younger,
based on friendship. With regard to (1) classes
of this kind are already, happily, being carried
on at a few advanced schools, and with good
results. And though such classes can only go
rather generally into the facts of motherhood
and generation they cannot fail, if well managed,
to impress the young minds, and give them a far
grander and more reverent conception of the
matter than they usually gain.</p>
<p>But (2) although some rudimentary teaching<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</SPAN></span>
on sex and lessons in physiology may be given
in classes, it is obvious that further instruction
and indeed any real help in the conduct of life
and morals can only come through very close and
tender confidences between the elder and the
younger, such as exist where there is a strong
friendship to begin with. It is obvious that
effective help <em>can</em> only come in this way, and
that this is the only way in which it is desirable
that it should come. The elder friend in this
case would, one might say, naturally be, and in
many instances may be, the parent, mother or
father—who ought certainly to be able to impress
on the clinging child the sacredness of the relation.
And it is much to be hoped that parents
will see their way to take this part more freely in
the future. But for some unexplained reason
there is certainly often a gulf of reserve between
the (British) parent and child; and the boy who
is much at school comes more under the influence
of his elder companions than his parents. If,
therefore, boys and youths cannot be trusted and
encouraged to form decent and loving friendships
with each other, and with their elders or juniors—in
which many delicate questions could be discussed
and the tradition of sensible and manly<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</SPAN></span>
conduct with regard to sex handed down—we
are indeed in a bad plight and involved in a
vicious circle from which escape seems difficult.</p>
<p>And so (we think) the need of attachment must
also be met by full recognition of it, and the granting
of it expression within all reasonable limits;
by the dissemination of a good ideal of friendship
and the enlistment of it on the side of manliness
and temperance. Is it too much to hope that
schools will in time recognise comradeship as
a regular institution—considerably more important,
say, than “fagging”—an institution having
its definite place in the school life, in the games
and in the studies, with its own duties, responsibilities,
privileges, etc., and serving to ramify
through the little community, hold it together,
and inspire its members with the two qualities of
heroism and tenderness, which together form the
basis of all great character?</p>
<p>But here it must be said that if we are hoping
for any great change in the conduct of our large
boys’ schools, the so-called public schools are not
the places in which to look for it—or at any rate
for its inception. In the first place these institutions
are hampered by powerful traditions which
naturally make them conservative; and in the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</SPAN></span>
second place their mere size and the number of
boys make them difficult to deal with or to modify.
The masters are overwhelmed with work; and
the (necessary) division of so many boys into
separate ‘houses’ has this effect that a master
who introduces a better tradition into his own
house has always the prospect before him that
his work will be effaced by the continual and
perhaps contaminating contact with the boys from
the other houses. No, it will be in smaller schools,
say of from 50 to 100 boys, where the personal
influence of the headmaster will be a real force
reaching each boy, and where he will be really
able to mould the tradition of the school, that we
shall alone be able to look for an improved state
of affairs.<SPAN name="FNanchor_57" id="FNanchor_57"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">57</SPAN></p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</SPAN></span></p>
<p>No doubt the first steps in any reform of this
kind are difficult; but masters are greatly hampered
by the confusion in the public mind, to
which we have already alluded—which so often
persists in setting down any attachment between
two boys, or between a boy and his teacher, to
nothing but sensuality. Many masters quite understand
the situation, but feel themselves helpless
in the face of public opinion. Who so fit (they
sometimes feel) to enlighten a young boy and
guide his growing mind as one of themselves,
when the bond of attachment exists between
the two? Like the writer of a letter quoted in
the early part of this paper they believe that
“a personal affection, almost indescribable, grows
up between pupil and teacher, through which
thoughts are shared and an influence created that
could exist in no other way.” Yet when the pupil
comes along of whom all this might be true, who
shows by his pleading looks the sentiment which
animates him, and the profound impression which
he is longing, as it were, to receive from his
teacher, the latter belies himself, denies his own<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</SPAN></span>
instinct and the boy’s great need, and treats him
distantly and with coldness. And why? Simply
because he dreads, even while he desires it, the
boy’s confidence. He fears the ingenuous and
perfectly natural expression of the boy’s affection
in caress or embrace, because he knows how a
bastard public opinion will interpret, or misinterpret
it; and rather than run such a risk as this
he seals the fountains of the heart, withholds the
help which love alone can give, and deliberately
nips the tender bud which is turning to him for
light and warmth.<SPAN name="FNanchor_58" id="FNanchor_58"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">58</SPAN></p>
<p>The panic terror which prevails in England with
regard to the expression of affection of this kind
has its comic aspect. The affection exists, and
is known to exist, on all sides; but we must bury
our heads in the sand and pretend not to see it.
And if by any chance we are compelled to recognize
it, we must show our vast discernment by
<em>suspecting</em> it. And thus we fling on the dust-heap
one of the noblest and most precious elements in
human nature. Certainly, if the denial and suspicion
of all natural affection were beneficial, we<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</SPAN></span>
should find this out in our schools; but seeing
how complete is its failure there to clarify their
tone it is sufficiently evident that the method itself
is wrong.</p>
<p class="tb">The remarks in this paper have chiefly had
reference to boys’ schools; but they apply in the
main to girls’ schools, where much the same
troubles prevail—with this difference, that in girls’
schools friendships instead of being repressed
are rather encouraged by public opinion; only
unfortunately they are for the most part friendships
of a weak and sentimental turn, and not
very healthy either in themselves or in the habits
they lead to. Here too, in girls’ schools, the
whole subject wants facing out; friendship wants
setting on a more solid and less sentimental basis;
and on the subject of sex, so infinitely important
to women, there needs to be sensible and consistent
teaching, both public and private. Possibly
the co-education of boys and girls may be of use
in making boys less ashamed of their feelings,
and girls more healthy in the expression of them.</p>
<p>At any rate the more the matter is thought of,
the clearer I believe will it appear that a healthy
affection must in the end be the basis of education,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</SPAN></span>
and that the recognition of this will form the only
way out of the modern school-difficulty. It is
true that such a change would revolutionise our
school-life; but it will have to come, all the same,
and no doubt will come <i lang="la">pari passu</i> with other
changes that are taking place in society at large.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="V"><small><small>V</small></small><br/> The Place of the Uranian in Society</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Whatever</span> differing views there may be on the
many problems which the Intermediate sexes present—and
however difficult of solution some of
the questions involved—there is one thing which
appears to me incontestable: namely that a vast
number of intermediates do actually perform most
valuable social work, and that they do so partly
on account and by reason of their special temperament.</p>
<p>This fact is not generally recognised as it ought
to be, for the simple reason that the Uranian
himself is not recognised, and indeed (as we have
already said) tends to conceal his temperament
from the public. There is no doubt that if it became
widely known <em>who are</em> the Uranians, the
world would be astonished to find so many of its
great or leading men among them.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</SPAN></span></p>
<p>I have thought it might be useful to indicate
some of the lines along which valuable work is
being performed, or has been performed, by
people of this disposition; and in doing this I do
not of course mean to disguise or conceal the
fact that there are numbers of merely frivolous,
or feeble or even vicious homosexuals, who practically
do no useful work for society at all—<em>just
as there are of normal people</em>. The existence of
those who do no valuable work does not alter the
fact of the existence of others whose work is of
great importance. And I wish also to make it
clearly understood that I use the word Uranians
to indicate simply those whose lives and activities
are inspired by a genuine friendship or love
for their own sex, without venturing to specify
their individual and particular habits or relations
towards those whom they love (which relations in
most cases we have no means of knowing). Some
Intermediates of light and leading—doubtless not
a few—are physically very reserved and continent;
others are sensual in some degree or other. The
point is that they are all men, or women, whose
most powerful motive comes from the dedication
to their own kind, and is bound up with it in some
way. And if it seems strange and anomalous that<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</SPAN></span>
in such cases work of considerable importance to
society is being done by people whose affections
and dispositions society itself would blame, this
is after all no more than has happened a thousand
times before in the history of the world.</p>
<p>As I have already hinted, the Uranian temperament
(probably from the very fact of its dual nature
and the swift and constant interaction between
its masculine and feminine elements) is exceedingly
sensitive and emotional; and there is no doubt
that, going with this, a large number of the artist
class, musical, literary or pictorial, belong to this
description. That delicate and subtle sympathy
with every wave and phase of feeling which makes
the artist possible is also very characteristic of
the Uranian (the male type), and makes it easy
or natural for the Uranian man to become an
artist. In the ‘confessions’ and ‘cases’ collected
by Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis and others,
it is remarkable what a large percentage of men
of this temperament belong to the artist class.
In his volume on “Sexual Inversion,”<SPAN name="FNanchor_59" id="FNanchor_59"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">59</SPAN> speaking
of the cases collected by himself, Ellis says:—“An
examination of my cases reveals the interesting
fact that thirty-two of them, or sixty-eight per<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</SPAN></span>
cent., possess artistic aptitude in varying degree.
Galton found, from the investigation of nearly one
thousand persons, that the general average showing
artistic taste in England is only about thirty
per cent. It must also be said that my figures are
probably below the truth, as no special point was
made of investigating the matter, and also that in
many of my cases the artistic aptitudes are of high
order. With regard to the special avocations of
my cases, it must of course be said that no occupation
furnishes a safeguard against inversion.
There are, however, certain occupations to which
inverts are specially attracted. Acting is certainly
one of the chief of these. Three of my cases
belong to the dramatic profession, and others
have marked dramatic ability. Art, again, in its
various forms, and music, exercise much attraction.
In my experience, however, literature is the
avocation to which inverts seem to feel chiefly
called, and that moreover in which they may find
the highest degree of success and reputation. At
least half-a-dozen of my cases are successful men
of letters.”</p>
<p>Of Literature in this connection, and of the
great writers of the world whose work has been
partly inspired by the Uranian love, I have myself<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</SPAN></span>
already spoken.<SPAN name="FNanchor_60" id="FNanchor_60"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">60</SPAN> It may further be said that
those of the modern artist-writers and poets who
have done the greatest service in the way of interpreting
and reconstructing <em>Greek</em> life and ideals—men
like Winckelmann, Goethe, Addington
Symonds, Walter Pater—have had a marked
strain of this temperament in them. And this has
been a service of great value, and one which
the world could ill have afforded to lose.</p>
<p>The painters and sculptors, especially of the
renaissance period in Italy, yield not a few examples
of men whose work has been similarly inspired—as
in the cases of Michel Angelo, Lionardo,
Bazzi, Cellini, and others. As to music,
this is certainly the art which in its subtlety and
tenderness—and perhaps in a certain inclination
to <em>indulge</em> in emotion—lies nearest to the Urning
nature. There are few in fact of this nature who
have not some gift in the direction of music—though,
unless we cite Tschaikowsky, it does not
appear that any thorough-going Uranian has
attained to the highest eminence in this art.</p>
<p>Another direction along which the temperament
very naturally finds an outlet is the important<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</SPAN></span>
social work of Education. The capacity that
a man has, in cases, of devoting himself to the
welfare of boys or youths, is clearly a thing
which ought not to go wasted—and which may
be most precious and valuable. It is incontestable
that a great number of men (and women) are
drawn into the teaching profession by this sentiment—and
the work they do is, in many cases,
beyond estimation. Fortunate the boy who meets
with such a helper in early life! I know a man—a
rising and vigorous thinker and writer—who
tells me that he owes almost everything mentally
to such a friend of his boyhood, who took the
greatest interest in him, saw him almost every
day for many years, and indeed cleared up for
him not only things mental but things moral,
giving him the affection and guidance his young
heart needed. And I have myself known and
watched not a few such teachers, in public
schools and in private schools, and seen something
of the work and of the real inspiration
they have been to boys under them. Hampered
as they have been by the readiness of the world
to misinterpret, they still have been able to do
most precious service. Of course here and there
a case occurs in which privilege is abused; but<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</SPAN></span>
even then the judgment of the world is often unreasonably
severe. A poor boy once told me with
tears in his eyes of the work a man had done for
him. This man had saved the boy from drunken
parents, taken him from the slums, and by means
of a club helped him out into the world. Many
other boys he had rescued, it appeared, in the
same way—scores and scores of them. But on
some occasion or other he got into trouble,
and was accused of improper familiarities. No
excuse, or record of a useful life, was of the least
avail. Every trumpery slander was believed,
every mean motive imputed, and he had to throw
up his position and settle elsewhere, his life-work
shattered, never to be resumed.</p>
<p>The capacity for sincere affection which causes
an elder man to care so deeply for the welfare
of a youth or boy, is met and responded to by
a similar capacity in the young thing of devotion
to an elder man. This fact is not always recognised;
but I have known cases of boys and even
young men who would feel the most romantic
attachments to quite mature men, sometimes as
much as forty or fifty years of age, and only for
them—passing by their own contemporaries of
either sex, and caring only to win a return affection<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</SPAN></span>
from these others. This may seem strange,
but it is true. And the fact not only makes one
understand what riddles there are slumbering in
the breasts of our children, but how greatly important
it is that we should try to read them—since
here, in such cases as these, the finding of
an answering heart in an elder man would probably
be the younger one’s salvation.</p>
<p>How much of the enormous amount of philanthropic
work done in the present day—by women
among needy or destitute girls of all sorts, or by
men among like classes of boys—is inspired by
the same feeling, it would be hard to say; but
it must be a very considerable proportion.
I think myself that the best philanthropic work—just
because it is the most personal, the most
loving, and the least merely formal and self-righteous—has
a strong fibre of the Uranian
heart running through it; and if it should be said
that work of this very personal kind is more liable
to dangers and difficulties on that account, it is
only what is true of the best in almost all departments.</p>
<p>Eros is a great leveler. Perhaps the true
Democracy rests, more firmly than anywhere else,
on a sentiment which easily passes the bounds<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</SPAN></span>
of class and caste, and unites in the closest affection
the most estranged ranks of society. It is
noticeable how often Uranians of good position
and breeding are drawn to rougher types, as of
manual workers, and frequently very permanent
alliances grow up in this way, which although not
publicly acknowledged have a decided influence on
social institutions, customs and political tendencies—and
which would have a good deal more influence
could they be given a little more scope
and recognition. There are cases that I have
known (although the ordinary commercial world
might hardly believe it) of employers who have
managed to attach their workmen, or many of
them, very personally to themselves, and whose
object in running their businesses was at least as
much to provide their employees with a living
as themselves; while the latter, feeling this, have
responded with their best output. It is possible
that something like the guilds and fraternities
of the middle ages might thus be reconstructed,
but on a more intimate and personal basis than
in those days; and indeed there are not wanting
signs that such a reconstruction is actually taking
place.</p>
<p>The “Letters of Love and Labour” written by<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</SPAN></span>
Samuel M. Jones of Toledo, Ohio, to his workmen
in the engineering firm of which he was master,
are very interesting in this connection. They
breathe a spirit of extraordinary personal affection
towards, and confidence in, the employees,
which was heartily responded to by the latter; and
the whole business was carried on, with considerable
success, on the principle of a close and
friendly co-operation all round.<SPAN name="FNanchor_61" id="FNanchor_61"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">61</SPAN></p>
<p>These things indeed suggest to one that it is
possible that the Uranian spirit may lead to something
like a general enthusiasm of Humanity,
and that the Uranian people may be destined to
form the advance guard of that great movement
which will one day transform the common life
by substituting the bond of personal affection and
compassion for the monetary, legal and other
external ties which now control and confine society.
Such a part of course we cannot expect
the Uranians to play unless the capacity for their
kind of attachment also exists—though in a germinal
and undeveloped state—in the breast of
mankind at large. And modern thought and investigation<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</SPAN></span>
are clearly tending that way—to confirm
that it does so exist.</p>
<p>Dr. E. Bertz in his late study of Whitman as
a person of strongly homogenic temperament<SPAN name="FNanchor_62" id="FNanchor_62"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">62</SPAN>
brings forward the objection that Whitman’s gospel
of Comradeship as a means of social regeneration
is founded on a false basis—because (so Dr.
Bertz says) the gospel derives from an abnormality
in himself, and therefore cannot possibly have
a universal application or create a general enthusiasm.
But this is rather a case of assuming
the point which has to be proved. Whitman constantly
maintains that his own disposition at any
rate is normal, and that he represents the average
man. And it <em>may</em> be true, even as far as his
Uranian temperament is concerned, that while this
was specially developed in him the germs of it
<em>are</em> almost, if not quite, universal. If so, then the
Comradeship on which Whitman founds a large
portion of his message may in course of time
become a general enthusiasm, and the nobler
Uranians of to-day may be destined, as suggested,
to be its pioneers and advance guard. As one of
them himself has sung:—</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</SPAN></span></p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="line">These things shall be! A loftier race,</div>
<div class="line i1">Than e’er the world hath known, shall rise</div>
<div class="line">With flame of freedom in their souls,</div>
<div class="line i1">And light of science in their eyes.</div>
<div class="line">Nation with nation, land with land,</div>
<div class="line i1">In-armed shall live as comrades free;</div>
<div class="line">In every heart and brain shall throb</div>
<div class="line i1">The pulse of one fraternity.<SPAN name="FNanchor_63" id="FNanchor_63"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">63</SPAN></div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>To proceed. The Uranian, though generally
high-strung and sensitive, is by no means always
dreamy. He is sometimes extraordinarily and
unexpectedly practical; and such a man may,
and often does, command a positive enthusiasm
among his subordinates in a business organisation.
The same is true of military organisation.
As a rule the Uranian temperament (in the male)
is not militant. War with its horrors and savagery
is somewhat alien to the type. But here again
there are exceptions; and in all times there have
been great generals (like Alexander, Cæsar,
Charles XII. of Sweden, or Frederick II. of
Prussia—not to speak of more modern examples)
with a powerful strain in them of the homogenic
nature, and a wonderful capacity for organisation
and command, which combined with their personal
interest in, or attachment to, their troops,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</SPAN></span>
and the answering enthusiasm so elicited, have
made their armies well-nigh invincible.</p>
<p>The existence of this great practical ability in
some Uranians cannot be denied; and it points
to the important work they may some day have
to do in social reconstruction. At the same time
I think it is noticeable that <em>politics</em> (at any rate
in the modern sense of the word, as concerned
mainly with party questions and party government)
is not as a rule congenial to them. The
personal and affectional element is perhaps too
remote or absent. Mere ‘views’ and ‘questions’
and party strife are alien to the Uranian man,
as they are on the whole to the ordinary woman.</p>
<p>If politics, however, are not particularly congenial,
it is yet remarkable how many royal
personages have been decidedly homogenic in
temperament. Taking the Kings of England from
the Norman Conquest to the present day, we may
count about thirty. And three of these, namely,
William Rufus, Edward II., and James I. were
homosexual in a marked degree—might fairly be
classed as Urnings—while some others, like
William III., had a strong admixture of the same
temperament. Three out of thirty yields a high
ratio—ten per cent—and considering that sovereigns<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</SPAN></span>
do not generally choose themselves, but
come into their position by accident of birth, the
ratio is certainly remarkable. Does it suggest
that the general percentage in the world at large
is equally high, but that it remains unnoticed,
except in the fierce light that beats upon thrones?
or is there some other explanation with regard
to the special liability of royalty to inversion?
Hereditary degeneracy has sometimes been suggested.
But it is difficult to explain the matter
even on this theory; for though the epithet
‘degenerate’ might possibly apply to James I.,
it would certainly not be applicable to William
Rufus and William III., who, in their different
ways, were both men of great courage and personal
force—while Edward II. was by no means
wanting in ability.</p>
<p>But while the Uranian temperament has, in
cases, specially fitted its possessors to become
distinguished in art or education or war or administration,
and enabled them to do valuable
work in these fields; it remains perhaps true that
above all it has fitted them, and fits them, for
distinction and service in affairs of the heart.</p>
<p>It is hard to imagine human beings more skilled
in these matters than are the Intermediates. For<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</SPAN></span>
indeed no one else can possibly respond to and
understand, as they do, all the fluctuations and
interactions of the masculine and feminine in
human life. The pretensive coyness and passivity
of women, the rude invasiveness of men;
lust, brutality, secret tears, the bleeding heart;
renunciation, motherhood, finesse, romance, angelic
devotion—all these things lie slumbering
in the Uranian soul, ready on occasion for expression;
and if they are not always expressed are
always there for purposes of divination or interpretation.
There are few situations, in fact, in
courtship or marriage which the Uranian does
not instinctively understand; and it is strange to
see how even an unlettered person of this type will
often read Love’s manuscript easily in cases where
the normal man or woman is groping over it
like a child in the dark. [Not of course that this
means to imply any superiority of <em>character</em> in
the former; but merely that with his double outlook
he necessarily discerns things which the
other misses.]</p>
<p>That the Uranians do stand out as helpers and
guides, not only in matters of Education, but in
affairs of love and marriage, is tolerably patent
to all who know them. It is a common experience<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</SPAN></span>
for them to be consulted now by the man, now
by the woman, whose matrimonial conditions are
uncongenial or disastrous—not generally because
the consultants in the least perceive the Uranian
nature, but because they instinctively feel that
here is a strong sympathy with and understanding
of their side of the question. In this way it
is often the fate of the Uranian, himself unrecognised,
to bring about happier times and a better
comprehension of each other among those with
whom he may have to deal. Also he often becomes
the confidant of young things of either sex,
who are caught in the tangles of love or passion,
and know not where to turn for assistance.</p>
<p>I say that I think perhaps of all the services
the Uranian may render to society it will be
found some day that in this direction of solving
the problems of affection and of the heart he
will do the greatest service. If the day is coming
as we have suggested—when Love is at last to
take its rightful place as the binding and directing
force of society (instead of the Cash-nexus),
and society is to be transmuted in consequence to
a higher form, then undoubtedly the superior
types of Uranians—prepared for this service by
long experience and devotion, as well as by much<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</SPAN></span>
suffering—will have an important part to play in
the transformation. For that the Urnings in
their own lives put Love before everything else—postponing
to it the other motives like money-making,
business success, fame, which occupy so much
space in most people’s careers—is a fact which
is patent to everyone who knows them. This may
be saying little or nothing in favor of those of this
class whose conception of love is only of a poor
and frivolous sort; but in the case of those others
who see the god in his true light, the fact that they
serve him in singleness of heart and so unremittingly
raises them at once into the position of the
natural leaders of mankind.</p>
<p>From this fact—<i>i.e.</i>, that these folk think so
much of affairs of the heart—and from the fact
that their alliances and friendships are formed
and carried on beneath the surface of society, as
it were, and therefore to some extent beyond the
inquisitions and supervisions of Mrs. Grundy,
some interesting conclusions flow.</p>
<p>For one thing, the question is constantly arising
as to how Society would shape itself if <em>free</em>: what
form, in matters of Love and Marriage, it would
take, if the present restrictions and sanctions
were removed or greatly altered. At present in<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</SPAN></span>
these matters, the Law, the Church, and a strong
pressure of public opinion interfere, compelling
the observance of certain forms; and it becomes
difficult to say how much of the existing order is
due to the spontaneous instinct and common sense
of human nature, and how much to mere outside
compulsion and interference: how far, for instance,
Monogamy is natural or artificial; to what
degree marriages would be permanent if the Law
did not make them so; what is the rational view
of Divorce; whether jealousy is a necessary accompaniment
of Love; and so forth. These are
questions which are being constantly discussed,
without finality; or not infrequently with quite
pessimistic conclusions.</p>
<p>Now in the Urning societies a certain freedom
(though not complete, of course) exists. Underneath
the surface of general Society, and consequently
unaffected to any great degree by its laws
and customs, alliances are formed and maintained,
or modified or broken, more in accord with inner
need than with outer pressure. Thus it happens
that in these societies there are such opportunities
to note and observe human grouping under conditions
of freedom, as do not occur in the ordinary
world. And the results are both interesting and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</SPAN></span>
encouraging. As a rule I think it may be said
that the alliances are remarkably permanent. Instead
of the wild “general post” which so many
good people seem to expect in the event of law
being relaxed, one finds (except of course in
a few individual cases) that common sense and
fidelity and a strong tendency to permanence prevail.
In the ordinary world so far has doubt gone
that many to-day disbelieve in a life-long free
marriage. Yet among the Uranians such a thing
is, one may almost say, common and well known;
and there are certainly few among them who do
not believe in its possibility.</p>
<p>Great have been the debates, in all times and
places, concerning Jealousy; and as to how far
jealousy is natural and instinctive and universal,
and how far it is the product of social opinion
and the property sense, and so on. In ordinary
marriage what may be called social and proprietary
jealousy is undoubtedly a very great
factor. But this kind of jealousy hardly appears
or operates in the Urning societies. Thus we
have an opportunity in these latter of observing
conditions where only the natural and instinctive
jealousy exists. This of course is present among
the Urnings—sometimes rampant and violent,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</SPAN></span>
sometimes quiescent and vanishing almost to <em>nil</em>.
It seems to depend almost entirely upon the individual;
and we certainly learn that jealousy though
frequent and widespread, is not an absolutely
necessary accompaniment of love. There are
cases of Uranians (whether men or women) who,
though permanently allied, do not object to lesser
friendships on either side—and there are cases of
very decided objection. And we may conclude
that something the same would be true (is true)
of the ordinary Marriage, the property considerations
and the property jealousy being once removed.
The tendency anyhow to establish a
dual relation more or less fixed, is seen to be very
strong among the Intermediates, and may be
concluded to be equally strong among the more
normal folk.</p>
<p>Again with regard to Prostitution. That there
are a few natural-born prostitutes is seen in the
Urning-societies; but prostitution in that world
does not take the important place which it does
in the normal world, partly because the law-bound
compulsory marriage does not exist there, and
partly because prostitution naturally has little
chance and cannot compete in a world where
alliances are free and there is an open field for<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</SPAN></span>
friendship. Hence we may see that freedom of
alliance and of marriage in the ordinary world will
probably lead to the great diminution or even
disappearance of Prostitution.</p>
<p>In these and other ways the experience of the
Uranian world forming itself freely and not subject
to outside laws and institutions comes as a
guide—and really a hopeful guide—towards the
future. I would say however that in making these
remarks about certain conclusions which we are
able to gather from some spontaneous and comparatively
unrestricted associations, I do not at
all mean to argue <em>against</em> institutions and forms.
I think that the Uranian love undoubtedly suffers
from want of a recognition and a standard. And
though it may at present be better off than if
subject to a foolish and meddlesome regulation;
yet in the future it will have its more or less fixed
standards and ideals, like the normal love. If
one considers for a moment how the ordinary
relations of the sexes would suffer were there no
generally acknowledged codes of honor and conduct
with regard to them, one then indeed sees
that reasonable forms and institutions are a help,
and one may almost wonder that the Urning<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</SPAN></span>
circles are so well-conducted on the whole as
they are.</p>
<p>I have said that the Urning men in their own
lives put love before money-making, business success,
fame, and other motives which rule the
normal man. I am sure that it is also true of
them as a whole that they put love before lust.
I do not feel <em>sure</em> that this can be said of the
normal man, at any rate in the present stage of
evolution. It is doubtful whether on the whole the
merely physical attraction is not the stronger
motive with the latter type. Unwilling as the
world at large is to credit what I am about to
say, and great as are the current misunderstandings
on the subject, I believe it is true that the
Uranian men are superior to the normal men in
this respect—in respect of their love-feeling—which
is gentler, more sympathetic, more considerate,
more a matter of the heart and less one
of mere physical satisfaction than that of ordinary
men.<SPAN name="FNanchor_64" id="FNanchor_64"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">64</SPAN> All this flows naturally from the presence
of the feminine element in them, and its blending
with the rest of their nature. It should be expected
<i lang="la">a priori</i>, and it can be noticed at once by
those who have any acquaintance with the Urning<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</SPAN></span>
world. Much of the current misunderstanding
with regard to the character and habits of the
Urning arises from his confusion with the ordinary
<i lang="fr">roué</i> who, though of normal temperament,
contracts homosexual habits out of curiosity and
so forth—but this is a point which I have touched
on before, and which ought now to be sufficiently
clear. If it be once allowed that the love-nature
of the Uranian is of a sincere and essentially
humane and kindly type then the importance of
the Uranian’s place in Society, and of the social
work he may be able to do, must certainly also
be acknowledged.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<h2 id="FOOTNOTES">FOOTNOTES</h2>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">1</span></SPAN> For the derivation of these terms see ch. ii., <SPAN href="#Page_20"></SPAN>,
<i lang="la">infra</i>.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">2</span></SPAN> See Appendix, <SPAN href="#Page_139">pp. 139 and 140</SPAN>.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">3</span></SPAN> From <i lang="el">Uranos</i>, heaven; his idea being that the
Uranian love was of a higher order than the ordinary
attachment. For further about Ulrichs and his theories
see Appendix, <SPAN href="#Page_157">pp. 157-159</SPAN>.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">4</span></SPAN> Charles G. Leland (“Hans Breitmann”) in his
book “The Alternate Sex” (Wellby, 1904), insists
much on the frequent combination of the characteristics
of both sexes in remarkable men and women, and
has a chapter on “The Female Mind in Man,” and
another on “The Male Intellect in Woman.”</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">5</span></SPAN> Some late statistical inquiries (see “Statistische
Untersuchungen,” von Dr. M. Hirschfeld, Leipzig,
1904) yield 1.5 to 2.0 per cent. as a probable ratio.
See also Appendix, <SPAN href="#Page_134">pp. 134-136</SPAN>.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">6</span></SPAN> For instances, see Appendix, <SPAN href="#Page_149">pp. 149-153</SPAN>.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">7</span></SPAN> See De Joux, “Die Enterbten des Liebesglückes”
(Leipzig, 1893), p. 21.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">8</span></SPAN> “Psychopathia Sexualis,” 7th ed., p. 276.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">9</span></SPAN> See Appendix, <SPAN href="#Page_153">pp. 153-156</SPAN>.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">10</span></SPAN> A good deal in this description may remind readers
of history of the habits and character of Henry III. of
France.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">11</span></SPAN> Perhaps, like Queen Christine of Sweden, who rode
across Europe, on her visit to Italy, in jack-boots and
sitting astride of her horse. It is said that she shook
the Pope’s hand, on seeing him, so heartily that the
doctor had to attend to it afterwards!</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">12</span></SPAN> “Homosexual,” generally used in scientific works,
is of course a bastard word. “Homogenic” has been
suggested, as being from two roots, both Greek, <i>i.e.</i>,
“homos,” same, and “genos,” sex.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_13"><span class="label">13</span></SPAN> “Athenæus” xiii., ch. 78.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_14" id="Footnote_14"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_14"><span class="label">14</span></SPAN> See Plutarch’s “Eroticus,” §xvii.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_15" id="Footnote_15"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_15"><span class="label">15</span></SPAN> See “Natural History of Man,” by J. G. Wood.
Vol: “Africa,” p. 419.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_16" id="Footnote_16"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_16"><span class="label">16</span></SPAN> See also Livingstone’s “Expedition to the Zambesi”
(Murray, 1865) p. 148.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_17" id="Footnote_17"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_17"><span class="label">17</span></SPAN> Though these two plays, except for some quotations,
are lost.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_18" id="Footnote_18"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_18"><span class="label">18</span></SPAN> Mantegazza and Lombroso. See Albert Moll, “Conträre
Sexualempfindung,” 2nd ed., p. 36.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_19" id="Footnote_19"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_19"><span class="label">19</span></SPAN> Though in translation this fact is often by pious
fraudulence disguised.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_20" id="Footnote_20"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_20"><span class="label">20</span></SPAN> W. Pater’s “Renaissance,” pp. 8-16.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_21" id="Footnote_21"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_21"><span class="label">21</span></SPAN> Among <em>prose</em> writers of this period, Montaigne,
whose treatment of the subject is enthusiastic and
unequivocal, should not be overlooked. See Hazlitt’s
“Montaigne,” ch. xxvii.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_22" id="Footnote_22"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_22"><span class="label">22</span></SPAN> I may be excused for quoting here the sonnet No.
54, from J. A. Symonds’ translation of the sonnets of
Michel Angelo:—</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="line i05">“From thy fair face I learn, O my loved lord,</div>
<div class="line i1">That which no mortal tongue can rightly say:</div>
<div class="line i1">The soul, imprisoned in her house of clay,</div>
<div class="line i1">Holpen by thee to God hath often soared:</div>
<div class="line">And though the vulgar, vain, malignant horde</div>
<div class="line i1">Attribute what their grosser wills obey,</div>
<div class="line i1">Yet shall this fervent homage that I pay,</div>
<div class="line i1">This love, this faith, pure joys for us afford,</div>
<div class="line">Lo, all the lovely things we find on earth,</div>
<div class="line i1">Resemble for the soul that rightly sees,</div>
<div class="line i1">That source of bliss divine which gave us birth:</div>
<div class="line">Nor have we first-fruits or remembrances</div>
<div class="line i1">Of heaven elsewhere. Thus, loving loyally,</div>
<div class="line i1">I rise to God, and make death sweet by thee.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>The labours of von Scheffler, followed by J. A.
Symonds, have now pretty conclusively established the
pious frauds of the nephew, and the fact that the love-poems
of the elder Michel Angelo were, for the most
part, written to male friends.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_23" id="Footnote_23"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_23"><span class="label">23</span></SPAN> See an interesting paper in W. Pater’s “Renaissance.”</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_24" id="Footnote_24"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_24"><span class="label">24</span></SPAN> For a fuller collection of instances of this Friendship-love
in the history of the world, see “Ioläus: an
Anthology,” by E. Carpenter (George Allen, London.
3/- net). Also “Liebling-minne und Freundesliebe
in der Welt-literatur,” von Elisar von Kupffer (Adolf
Brand, Berlin, 1900).</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_25" id="Footnote_25"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_25"><span class="label">25</span></SPAN> As in the case, for instance, of Tennyson’s “In
Memoriam,” for which the poet was soundly rated by
the <cite>Times</cite> at the time of its publication.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_26" id="Footnote_26"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_26"><span class="label">26</span></SPAN> Jowett’s “Plato,” 2nd ed., vol. ii., p. 30.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_27" id="Footnote_27"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_27"><span class="label">27</span></SPAN> Jowett, vol. ii., p. 130.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_28" id="Footnote_28"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_28"><span class="label">28</span></SPAN> One ought also to mention some later writers, like
Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and Dr. von Römer, whose work
though avowedly favourable to the Urning-movement,
is in a high degree scientific and reliable in character.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_29" id="Footnote_29"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_29"><span class="label">29</span></SPAN> From <i lang="el">Uranos</i>—see, for derivation, <SPAN href="#Page_20"></SPAN>, <i lang="la">supra</i>—also
Plato’s “Symposium,” speech of Pausanias.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_30" id="Footnote_30"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_30"><span class="label">30</span></SPAN> See, for estimates, Appendix, <SPAN href="#Page_134">pp. 134-136</SPAN>.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_31" id="Footnote_31"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_31"><span class="label">31</span></SPAN> Though there is no doubt a general <em>tendency</em>
towards femininity of type in the male Urning, and
towards masculinity in the female.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_32" id="Footnote_32"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_32"><span class="label">32</span></SPAN> “Gli amori degli uomini.”</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_33" id="Footnote_33"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_33"><span class="label">33</span></SPAN> “Psychopathia Sexualis,” 7th ed., p. 227.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_34" id="Footnote_34"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_34"><span class="label">34</span></SPAN> <cite>Ibid</cite>, pp. 229 and 258. See Appendix, <SPAN href="#Page_160"></SPAN>.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_35" id="Footnote_35"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_35"><span class="label">35</span></SPAN> “How deep congenital sex-inversion roots may be
gathered from the fact that the pleasure-dream of the
male Urning has to do with male persons, and of the
female with females.”—Krafft-Ebing, “P.S.,” 7th ed.,
p. 228.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_36" id="Footnote_36"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_36"><span class="label">36</span></SPAN> “Conträre Sexualempfindung,” 2nd ed., p. 269.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_37" id="Footnote_37"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_37"><span class="label">37</span></SPAN> See “Love’s Coming-of-Age,” p. 22.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_38" id="Footnote_38"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_38"><span class="label">38</span></SPAN> Pub.: F. A. Davis, Philadelphia, 1901.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_39" id="Footnote_39"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_39"><span class="label">39</span></SPAN> Otto Weininger even goes further, and regards the
temperament as a natural intermediate form (“Sex
and Character,” ch. iv.) See also Appendix, <i lang="la">infra</i>,
<SPAN href="#Page_169"></SPAN>.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_40" id="Footnote_40"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_40"><span class="label">40</span></SPAN> “Though then before my own conscience I cannot
reproach myself, and though I must certainly reject
the judgment of the world about us, yet I suffer
greatly. In very truth I have injured no one, and
I hold my love in its nobler activity for just as holy as
that of normally disposed men, but under the unhappy
fate that allows us neither sufferance nor recognition
I suffer often more than my life can bear.”—Extract
from a letter given by Krafft-Ebing.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_41" id="Footnote_41"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_41"><span class="label">41</span></SPAN> See “In the Key of Blue,” by J. A. Symonds
(Elkin Mathews, 1893).</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_42" id="Footnote_42"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_42"><span class="label">42</span></SPAN> See Appendix, <SPAN href="#Page_162">pp. 162 and 163</SPAN>.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_43" id="Footnote_43"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_43"><span class="label">43</span></SPAN> See also “Love’s Coming-of-Age,” 5th ed., pp. 173,
174.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_44" id="Footnote_44"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_44"><span class="label">44</span></SPAN> See “Das Conträre Geschlechtsgefühl,” von Havelock
Ellis und J. A. Symonds (Leipzig, 1896).</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_45" id="Footnote_45"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_45"><span class="label">45</span></SPAN> “Symposium,” Speech of Socrates.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_46" id="Footnote_46"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_46"><span class="label">46</span></SPAN> It is interesting in this connection to notice the
extreme fervour, almost of romance, of the bond which
often unites lovers of like sex over a long period of
years, in an unfailing tenderness of treatment and
consideration towards each other, equal to that shown
in the most successful marriages. The love of many
such men, says Moll (p. 119), “developed in youth
lasts at times the whole life through. I know of such
men, who had not seen their first love for years, even
decades, and who yet on meeting showed the old fire
of their first passion. In other cases, a close love-intimacy
will last unbroken for many years.”</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_47" id="Footnote_47"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_47"><span class="label">47</span></SPAN> Though, inconsistently enough, making no mention
of females.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_48" id="Footnote_48"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_48"><span class="label">48</span></SPAN> Dr. Moll maintains (2nd ed., pp. 314, 315) that if
familiarities between those of the same sex are made
illegal, as immoral, self-abuse ought much more to
be so made.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_49" id="Footnote_49"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_49"><span class="label">49</span></SPAN> Though it is doubtful whether the marriage-laws
even do this.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_50" id="Footnote_50"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_50"><span class="label">50</span></SPAN> In France, since the adoption of the Code Napoleon,
sexual inversion is tolerated under the same
restrictions as normal sexuality; and according to
Carlier, formerly Chief of the French Police, Paris is
not more depraved in this matter than London. Italy
in 1889 also adopted the principles of the Code Napoleon
on this point. For further considerations with
regard to the Law, see Appendix, <SPAN href="#Page_164">pp. 164 and 165</SPAN>.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_51" id="Footnote_51"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_51"><span class="label">51</span></SPAN> For further instances, see Appendix, <SPAN href="#Page_143">pp. 143-148</SPAN>.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_52" id="Footnote_52"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_52"><span class="label">52</span></SPAN> See Müller’s “History and Antiquities of the Doric
Race.”</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_53" id="Footnote_53"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_53"><span class="label">53</span></SPAN> Müller.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_54" id="Footnote_54"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_54"><span class="label">54</span></SPAN> Cf. the incident at the end of Plato’s “Lysis,” when
the tutors of Lysis and Menexenus come in and send
the youths home.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_55" id="Footnote_55"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_55"><span class="label">55</span></SPAN> For a useful little manual on this subject, see “How
We are Born,” by Mrs. N. J. (Daniel, London, price
2/-). For a general argument in favour of sex-teaching
see “The Training of the Young in Laws of Sex,”
by Canon Lyttelton, Headmaster of Eton College
(Longmans, 2/6).</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_56" id="Footnote_56"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_56"><span class="label">56</span></SPAN> See J. G. Wood’s “Natural History of Man,” vol.
“Africa,” p. 324 (the Bechuanas); also vol. “Australia,”
p. 75.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_57" id="Footnote_57"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_57"><span class="label">57</span></SPAN> With the rapid rise which is taking place, in scope
and social status, of the state day-schools, it is probable
that some change of opinion will take place with
regard to the wisdom of sending young boys of ten to
fourteen to upper-class boarding-schools. For a boy
of fifteen or sixteen and upwards the boarding-school
system may have its advantages. By that time a boy
is old enough to understand some questions; he is
old enough to have some rational ideal of conduct, and
to hold his own in the pursuit of it; and he may learn
in the life away from home a lot in the way of discipline,
organization, self-reliance, etc. But to send a young
thing, ignorant of life, and quite unformed of character,
to take his chance by day and night in the public
school as it at present exists, is—to say the least—a
rash thing to do.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_58" id="Footnote_58"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_58"><span class="label">58</span></SPAN> It should be also said, in fairness, that the fear of
showing undue partiality, often comes in as a paralysing
influence.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_59" id="Footnote_59"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_59"><span class="label">59</span></SPAN> “Studies in the Psychology of Sex,” vol. ii., p. 173.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_60" id="Footnote_60"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_60"><span class="label">60</span></SPAN> See <SPAN href="#II">ch. ii.</SPAN> <i lang="la">supra</i>, also <cite>Ioläus</cite>, an Anthology of
Friendship, by E. Carpenter.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_61" id="Footnote_61"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_61"><span class="label">61</span></SPAN> Mr. Jones became Mayor of Toledo; but died at
the early age of 53. See also “Workshop Reconstruction,”
by C. R. Ashbee, Appendix, <i lang="la">infra</i>, <SPAN href="#Page_146"></SPAN>.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_62" id="Footnote_62"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_62"><span class="label">62</span></SPAN> “Whitman: ein Charakterbild,” by Edward Bertz
(Leipzig, Max Spohr).</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_63" id="Footnote_63"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_63"><span class="label">63</span></SPAN> John Addington Symonds.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_64" id="Footnote_64"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_64"><span class="label">64</span></SPAN> See Appendix, <SPAN href="#Page_172">pp. 172-174</SPAN>.</p>
</div>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="Appendix"><span class="smcap">Appendix</span></h2>
<div class="blockquote">
<p class="tb">“In this country [Britain] we have too long, from
a sense of mock modesty, neglected the science relating
to sex. In Germany this is not so. There we find
workers who have elaborated for themselves a new
science, and who have given to the world knowledge
which is of the very utmost importance. We now know
that there are females with strong male characteristics,
and <i lang="la">vice-versa</i>. Anatomically and mentally we find
all shades existing from the pure genus man to the pure
genus woman. Thus there has been constituted what
is well named by an illustrious exponent of the science
‘The Third Sex’.”—Dr. <span class="smcap">James Burnet</span>, <cite>The Medical
Times and Hospital Gazette</cite>, vol. xxxiv., No. 1497,
10th November, 1906. London.</p>
<p class="tb">“Every citizen of age to fulfil his duties as a citizen,
whether he be a father or husband, teacher or pupil,
master or servant, official or subordinate, has the right,
and owes it as a duty, to know the facts of sexual inversion,
to combat and to prevent debauchery, crime
and vice, to learn and to teach others the place of
inversion in Society, and its morals, the duties of the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</SPAN></span>
invert towards himself, and towards other inverts, towards
the normal man, and towards women and children.
And the duties of the normal man towards the
invert are no less—no less difficult, no less indispensable.”—<span class="smcap">M.
A. Raffalovich</span>, “Uranisme et Unisexualité.” Paris, 1896.</p>
<p class="tb">“That sex inversion is not a chance phenomenon …
appears from the fact that it has been observed at all
times and in all places, and among peoples quite separate
from each other.”—<span class="smcap">A. Moll</span>, “Die Conträre
Sexualempfindung,” 2nd Edition, p. 15. Berlin, 1893.</p>
<p class="tb">“Concerning the wide prevalence of sexual inversion,
and of homosexual phenomena generally, there
can be no manner of doubt. In Berlin, Moll states that
he has himself seen between six hundred and seven
hundred homosexual persons, and heard of some two
hundred and fifty to three hundred others. I have
much evidence as to its frequency both in England and
the United States. In England, concerning which I
can naturally speak with most assurance, its manifestations
are well-marked for those whose eyes have been
opened.… Among the professional and most cultured
element of the middle class in England there
must be a distinct percentage of inverts, which may
sometimes be as much as five per cent., though such
estimates must always be hazardous. Among women
of the same class the percentage seems to be at least
double—though here the phenomena are less definite
and deepseated.”—<span class="smcap">Havelock Ellis</span>, “Psychology of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</SPAN></span>
Sex,” vol. <cite>Sexual Inversion</cite>, pp. 29, 30. Philadelphia,
1901.</p>
<p class="tb">“According to the information of De Joux in ‘The
Disinherited of Love,’ the number of Urnings in all
Europe is about five millions; about 4.5 per cent. of
all males in Europe are Urnings, while only 0.1 per
cent. of females are Urningins. A malady therefore—if
malady it should be called—which is so widespread
certainly demands our deepest interest; and it is
strange that it is only since the ’70’s that this subject
has been discussed in scientific literature.</p>
<p>“It is owing to this ignorance that the public mind has
been dominated, and still is dominated, by the prejudice,
that psychical hermaphroditism and sex-inversion
are nothing but crimes, wilful crimes, whereas they
proceed necessarily out of the inborn nature of such
individuals.”—<span class="smcap">Norbert Grabowsky</span>, “Die verkehrte
Geschlechtsempfindung,” p. 16. Leipzig, 1894.</p>
<p class="tb">Dr. <span class="smcap">Hirschfeld</span>, in his “Statistischen Untersuchunge
über den Prozentensatz der Homosexuellen,”
gives the result of various statistical investigations on
this subject; and their remarkable agreement enables
him to speak with some confidence. He says (p. 41),
“Now we <em>know</em> that we must reckon the numbers of
those who vary from the normal, not by fractions of
thousands but by fractions of hundreds. The fact
that, as a result of these circular enquiries and commissions
about the same figure has emerged (for the
proportion of exclusively homosexual persons), namely,
a figure in the neighbourhood of 1½ per cent.—this<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</SPAN></span>
extraordinary agreement cannot possibly be a chance,
but must rest on a law—a law of nature—namely, that
only 90 to 95 per cent. of mankind are normally sexual
by birth; that about 1½ to 2 per cent. are born pure
homosexuals (say about 1,000,000 in Germany); and
that between the two classes there remain some 4 per
cent. who are bisexual by nature.”</p>
<p>And again (p. 60), “But what do these figures show?
They show that of 100,000 inhabitants on the average
only 94,600 are sexually normal, while 5,400 vary from
the normal. Of these latter 1,500 are exclusively homosexual,
and 3,900 bisexual. While of these last again
700 are <em>predominantly</em> homosexual; so that of 100,000
Germans, 2,200 (or 2.2 per cent.) are either exclusively
or predominantly homosexual—making 1,200,000 for
the whole German Fatherland.”</p>
<p class="tb">“Sexual inversion has usually been regarded as
psycho-pathological, as a symptom of degeneration;
and those who exhibit it have been considered as physically
unfit. This view, however, is falling into disrepute,
especially as Krafft-Ebing, its principal champion,
abandoned it in the later editions of his work. None
the less, it is not generally recognised that sexual inverts
may be otherwise perfectly healthy, and with
regard to other social matters quite normal. When
they have been asked if they would have wished
matters to be different with them in this respect, they
almost invariably answer in the negative.”—<span class="smcap">O. Weininger</span>,
“Sex and Character,” ch. iv. Heinemann,
London, 1906.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</SPAN></span></p>
<p class="tb">“It is a common belief that a male who experiences
love for his own sex must be despicable, degraded,
depraved, vicious, and incapable of humane or generous
sentiments. If Greek history did not contradict this
supposition, a little patient enquiry into contemporary
manners would suffice to remove it.”—<span class="smcap">J. Addington
Symonds</span>, “A Problem in Modern Ethics,” p. 10.</p>
<p class="tb">“Mantegazza rightly insists that Urnings are found
by no means only among the dregs of the people, but
that they are rather to be noted in circles which in
respect of culture, wealth, and social position rank
among the first. Thus, among the aristocracy without
doubt a great number of Urnings are to be found.”—<span class="smcap">A. Moll</span>,
<cite>op. cit.</cite> p. 76.</p>
<p class="tb">“In no rank are there so many Urnings as among
servants. One may say that every third male domestic
is an Urning.”—<span class="smcap">De Joux</span>, “Die Enterbten des Liebesglückes,”
p. 193. Leipzig, 1893.</p>
<p class="tb">“It is therefore certain, as we have seen, that many
Urnings come from nervous or pathologically disposed
families.… All the same, I must say that there is
no proof to hand in <em>all</em> cases of sex-inversion among
men, that the individuals concerned are thus hereditarily
weighted. And besides, there is the consideration
that the extension, according to some authors, of hereditary
trouble is at present so great that one may<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</SPAN></span>
prove a tendency to nervous or mental maladies in
almost everybody.”—<span class="smcap">A. Moll</span>, <cite>op. cit.</cite>, p. 221.</p>
<p class="tb">“The truth is that we can no more explain the inverted
sex-feeling than we can the normal impulse;
all the attempts at explanation of these things, and
of Love, are defective.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>, p. 253.</p>
<p class="tb">“Among the <i lang="fr">penchants</i> of Urnings one finds not
infrequently a great partiality for Art and Music—and
indeed, for active interest in the same as well as passive
enjoyment … the Actor’s talent is especially noticeable
among some.… But it must not be thought that
Urnings are only capable of a special activity of the
imagination. On the contrary, there are undoubted
cases in which they contribute something in the scientific
direction.… Also in Poetry do Urnings occasionally
show exceptional talent; especially in love-verses
addressed to men.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>, p. 80.</p>
<p class="tb">“An examination of my cases [of Inverts] reveals the
interesting fact that 68 per cent. possess artistic aptitude
in varying degree. Galton found, from the investigation
of nearly 1,000 persons that the average showing artistic
tastes in England is only about 30 per cent.”—<span class="smcap">Havelock
Ellis</span>, “Sexual Inversion,” p. 173.</p>
<p class="tb">“In Antiquity, especially among the Greeks, there
seem to have been numbers of men who in their
emotional natures were hermaphrodites. I think that
the study of psychical hermaphrodisy is most important,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</SPAN></span>
and will throw yet greater light on the psychology
of Love itself. Observation so far already shows that
the same individual at differing times can experience
quite different sexual feelings.”—<span class="smcap">A. Moll</span>, <cite>op. cit.</cite>,
p. 200.</p>
<p class="tb">“The Urning is capable, through the force of his
love, of making the greatest sacrifices for his beloved,
and on that account the love of the Urning has been
often compared with Woman’s love. Just as the
Woman’s love is stronger and more devoted than that
of the normal man, just as it exceeds that of the Man
in inwardness, so, according to Ulrichs should the
Urning’s love in this respect stand higher than that
of the woman-loving Man.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>, p. 118.</p>
<p class="tb">“Womanish men often know how to treat women
better than manly men do. Manly men, except in most
rare cases, learn how to deal with women only after
long experience, and even then most imperfectly.”—<span class="smcap">O.
Weininger</span>, “Sex and Character,” ch. v.</p>
<p class="tb">“Is it really the case that all women and men are
marked off sharply from each other, the women on the
one hand alike in all points, the men on the other?…
There are transitional forms between the metals
and non-metals, between chemical combinations and
simple mixtures, between animals and plants, between
phanerogams and cryptogams, and between mammals
and birds.… The improbability may henceforth be
taken for granted of finding in Nature a sharp cleavage<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</SPAN></span>
between all that is masculine on the one side and
all that is feminine on the other; or that any living
being is so simple in this respect that it can be put
wholly on one side, or wholly on the other, of the line.”—<span class="smcap">Weininger</span>,
<cite>Ibid</cite>, introduction, p. 2.</p>
<p class="tb">“Upon this, Chéron made a rather strange observation.
‘We have,’ she said, ‘with regard to sexual
distinctions, notions that were not dreamed of by the
primitive simplicity of the people of the age now gone
by. From the fact that there are two sexes, and only
two, they for a long time drew false inferences. They
concluded that a woman is simply a woman, and a
man simply a man. In reality this is not so; there
are women who are very much women, and women
who are very little so. Such differences, concealed in
former times by costume and mode of life, and masked
by prejudice, stand out clearly in our society. And
not only so, but they become more accentuated and
apparent in each generation.’”—<span class="smcap">Anatole France</span>,
“Sur la Pierre Blanche,” p. 301.</p>
<p class="tb">“In <em>every</em> human being there are present both male
and female elements, only in normal persons (according
to their sex) the one set of elements is more
greatly developed than the other. The chief difference
in the case of homosexual persons is that in them the
male and female elements are more equalized; so that
when, in addition, the general development is of a
high grade, we find among this class the most perfect
types of humanity.”—Dr. <span class="smcap">Arduin</span>, “Die Frauenfrage,”<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</SPAN></span>
in <cite lang="de">Jahrbuch der Sexuellen Zwischenstufen</cite>, vol. ii.,
p. 217. Leipzig, 1900.</p>
<p class="tb">“The notion that human beings were originally
hermaphroditic is both ancient and widespread. We
find it in the book of Genesis, unless indeed there be
a confusion here between two separate theories of
creation. God is said to have first made man in His
image, male and female in one body, and to have
bidden them multiply. Later on He created the woman
out of part of this primitive man.” (See also the myth
related by Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium.)—<span class="smcap">Havelock
Ellis</span>, “Sexual Inversion,” p. 229.</p>
<p class="tb">“When the sexual instinct first appears in early
youth, it seems to be much less specialised than normally
it becomes later. Not only is it, at the outset,
less definitely directed to a specific sexual end, but
even the sex of its object is sometimes uncertain.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>,
p. 44.</p>
<p class="tb">“In me the homosexual nature is singularly complete,
and is undoubtedly congenital. The most intense
delight of my childhood (even when a tiny boy in my
nurse’s charge) was to watch acrobats and riders at
the circus. This was not so much for the skilful feats
as on account of the beauty of their persons. Even
then I cared chiefly for the more lithe and graceful
fellows. People told me that circus actors were wicked
and would steal little boys, and so I came to look on
my favorites as half-devil and half-angel. When I was<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</SPAN></span>
older and could go about alone, I would often hang
around the tents of travelling shows in hope of catching
a glimpse of the actors. I longed to see them
naked, without their tights, and used to lie awake at
night, thinking of them and longing to be embraced
and loved by them.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>, “case” ix., p. 62.</p>
<p class="tb">“I was fifteen years and ten-and-a-half months old
when the first erotic dream announced the arrival of
puberty. I had had no previous experience of sex-satisfaction,
either in the Urning direction or in any
other. This occurrence therefore came about quite
normally. From a much earlier time, however, I had
been subject partly to tender yearnings and partly to
sensual longing without definite form and purpose—the
two emotions being always separate from each
other and never experienced for one and the same
young man. These aimless sensual longings plagued
me often in hours of solitude; and I could not overcome
them. They showed themselves first, during my
fifteenth year, when I was at school at Detmold, in
the following two ways:—First, they were awakened
by a drawing in Normand’s “Saülen-ordnungen,” of
the figure of a Greek god or hero, standing there in
naked beauty. This image, a hundred times put
away, came again a hundred times before my mind.
(I need not say it did not <em>cause</em> the Urning temperament
in me; it merely awoke what was slumbering
there already—a thing that any other circumstance
might have done.) Secondly, when studying in my
little room, or when I lay upon my bed before going<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</SPAN></span>
to sleep, the thought used suddenly and irresistibly
to rise up in my mind—“If only a soldier would
clamber through the window and come into my room!”
Then my imagination painted me a splendid soldier-figure
of twenty to twenty-two years old; and I was,
as it were, all on fire. And yet my thoughts were
quite vague, and undirected to any definite satisfaction;
nor had I ever spoken a word with a real soldier.”—<span class="smcap">K.
H. Ulrichs</span>, “Memnon,” §77. Leipzig, 1898.
See also “A Problem in Modern Ethics,” p. 73.</p>
<p class="tb">“The friendships of this kind which I formed at
School were two in number—I shall never forget the
absorbing depth and intensity of them. I never talked
about them to anyone else, they were much too sacred
and serious for that, nor—strange as it may seem—did
I ever speak of them to the boys themselves, or
indeed, show any signs of affection towards them. If
they had been told that I was devoted to their welfare,
and willing to sacrifice myself and all I had to it
(which was indeed the fact) they would have been
simply astonished; more especially as they were both
young boys not yet arrived at puberty.</p>
<p>“I am at present somewhat bitterly conscious that
in these cases one of the strongest influences for good
that ever came into my life was nine-tenths wasted.
How much better it all might have been under more
favourable surroundings it is impossible to imagine.
Still, it was not without its good influence on me,
though (owing to their complete ignorance of my
feelings) it could have had none whatever on the boys.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</SPAN></span>
I was conscious of a bracing and inspiring effect on my
whole nature, a confirmed health of body, and most of
all, of a greatly increased capacity for work. And
doubtless all this might have been intensified a thousand
fold if I had been ever so little guided and
encouraged by public opinion sanctioning these friendships.</p>
<p>“The Public School boy has after all strong feelings
of honour and fairness: and I am sure much might be
done by cultivating the Public Opinion of the school:
making devoted and disinterested friendships highly
thought of and praised, and condemning as base and
mean the least attempt to befoul a young boy’s purity
through a gross and selfish desire for personal gratification.
School public opinion would, I am sure, tend
quite readily to flow in such channels. But this would
demand an openness of treatment of the whole question
such as does not at present exist. That the
greatest force the schoolmaster has at his command
should be so ignored (and so needlessly) is more than
absurd: it is monstrous. And it concerns him as a
teacher quite as much as the boys themselves in their
relations with each other. I believe that gaining a
boy’s affection is the necessary preliminary to really
<em>teaching</em> him anything. Otherwise you do not really
teach him at all.”—<cite>Private letter.</cite></p>
<p class="tb">“I could tell you a good deal of another equally
strong friendship I formed (myself twenty-five, boy
fourteen) which was one of the happiest events of my
life. It was acknowledged on both sides, but perfectly<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</SPAN></span>
restrained and pure: and we saw a great deal of each
other during most of the school holidays for about
a year. I could have done anything with that boy,
my influence over him was for the time being I should
say unlimited: and undoubtedly <em>immense</em> good accrued
to us both.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>.</p>
<p class="tb">“In my own school-life—as a day scholar—I had
two such friendships, though of course in a day
school there was not the same possibility of their
development. One was with an elder boy some five
years my senior, and the other with a master some
twelve years older than myself. I was a shy, timid
youngster, and not having a robust physique did not
enter much into the ordinary athletics of the school.
My elder friend was a very delicate, gentle, refined
boy with a purity and loftiness of mind in striking
contrast to the filthy moral atmosphere of the school
at that time, but he was never censorious or self-righteous.
I feel that this friendship was the most
powerful influence in my early life in keeping a high
ideal of conduct before me—much more powerful than
the influence of home, which I do not think I was
at all conscious of.</p>
<p>“After he left school, for Cambridge, we used to
write regularly to one another—long letters, hardly
ever less than three sheets in length. I remember
I used to think him the most handsome man I knew,
but looking now at his photo, taken about that time
and comparing it with others, I see that his features
were inferior to many others of my school-fellows.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</SPAN></span>
At the end of his second year he died of consumption.
It was during the Long Vacation, and I was abroad at
the time. I remember I used to sit up late into the
night writing very long letters to him about all I had
seen, to interest him during his illness. I did not
know how ill he really was, but I had a terrible fear
that I should not see him again. When I got back
and found he had just died the shock was awful. For
weeks I felt as if I had not a friend in the whole
world. I have never felt any loss so keenly either
before or since.…</p>
<p>“The other friendship with my mathematical master,
though not so intimate, was still of a very affectionate
character. I feel I owe a great deal to it—he
laid the foundation of my ideal of a teacher’s duty to
his pupils.”—<cite>Private letter.</cite></p>
<p class="tb">“It is not new in itself; this, the feeling that drew
Jesus to John, or Shakespeare to the youth of the sonnets,
or that inspired the friendships of Greece, has
been with us before, and in the new citizenship we shall
need it again. The Whitmanic love of comrades is its
modern expression; Democracy—as socially, not politically
conceived—its basis. The thought as to how
much of the solidarity of labour and the modern Trade-Union
movement may be due to an unconscious faith
in this principle of comradeship, is no idle one. The
freer, more direct, and more genuine relationship
between men, which is implied by it, must be the ultimate
basis of the reconstructed Workshop.”—C. R.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</SPAN></span>
<span class="smcap">Ashbee</span>, “Workshop Reconstruction and Citizenship,”
p. 160.</p>
<p class="tb">A case of passionate attachment between two Indian
boys was told to the author of the present book
by a master at a school in India. The boys—who
were about sixteen years of age—were both at the
same school, and were devoted friends; but the day
came when they had to part. One was taken away
by his parents to go to a distant part of the country.
The other was inconsolable at the prospect. When
the day arrived, and his companion was removed, he
soon after went quietly to a well in the school precincts,
jumped in, and was drowned. The news, sent on by
wire, reached the departing friend while still on his
journey. He said little, but at one of the stations left
the train and disappeared. The train went on, but
at a little distance out, the boy ran out of the bushes
by the line, threw himself on the rails, and was killed.</p>
<p class="tb">The following is taken from one of the “cases”
recorded by Havelock Ellis in his “Sexual Inversion”;
“The earliest sex-impression that I am conscious of
is at the age of nine or ten falling in love with a
handsome boy who must have been about two years
my senior. I do not recollect ever having spoken to
him, but my desire, as far as I can recall, was that he
should seize hold of and handle me. I have a distinct
impression yet of how pleasurable even physical pain
or cruelty would have been at his hands.”—<span class="smcap">Havelock
Ellis</span>, <cite>op. cit.</cite>, “case” xiii., p. 71.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</SPAN></span></p>
<p class="tb">“When I was about sixteen-and-a-half years old,
there came into the house a boy about two years
younger than myself, who became the absorbing
thought of my school-days. I do not remember a
moment, from the time I first saw him to the time
I left school, that I was not in love with him, and the
affection was reciprocated, if somewhat reservedly.
He was always a little ahead of me in books and
scholarship, but as our affection ripened we spent most
of our spare time together, and he received my advances
much as a girl who is being wooed, a little
mockingly perhaps, but with real pleasure. He allowed
me to fondle and caress him, but our intimacy never
went further than a kiss, and about that even was the
slur of shame; there was always a barrier between
us, and we never so much as whispered to one another
concerning those things of which all the school obscenely
talked.”—<cite>Same case</cite>, p. 73.</p>
<p class="tb">“At the age of twenty-one I began gradually to
remark that I was not somehow like my comrades, that
I had no pleasure in male occupations, that smoking,
drinking, and card-playing gave me little satisfaction,
and that I had a real death-horror of a brothel. And,
as a matter of fact, I had never been in one, as on
every occasion under some pretext or other I have succeeded
in stealing off. I now began to think about
myself; I felt myself frightfully desolate, miserable
and unfortunate, and longed for a friend of the same
nature as myself—yet without dreaming that there
could be other such men. At the age of twenty-two<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</SPAN></span>
I came to know a young man who at last cleared up
my mind about sexual inversion and those affected
with it, since he—an Urning, like myself—had fallen
in love with me. The scales fell from my eyes, and
I bless the day which brought light to me.… Towards
woman in her sexual relation I feel a real
horror, which the exercise of all my strongest powers
of imagination would not avail to overcome; and
indeed, I have never attempted to overcome it, since
I am quite persuaded of the fruitlessness of such an
attempt, which to me appears sinful and unnatural.”—<span class="smcap">Krafft-Ebing</span>,
“Psychopathia Sexualis,” 7th edition,
“case” No. 122, p. 291. Stuttgart, 1892.</p>
<p class="tb">“I can no longer exist without men’s love; without
such I must ever remain at strife with myself.… If
marriage between men existed I believe I should not
be afraid of a life-long union—a thing which with a
woman seems to be something impossible.…
Since, however, this kind of love is reckoned criminal,
by its satisfaction I can be at harmony with myself
but never with the world, and necessarily in consequence
must ever be somewhat out of tune; and all
the more so because my character is open, and I hate
lies of all kinds. This torment, to have always to conceal
everything, has forced me to confess my anomaly
to a few friends, of whose understanding and reticence
I am sure. Although oftentimes my condition seems
to me sad enough, by reason of the difficulty of satisfaction
and the general contempt of manly love, yet
I am often just a little proud on account of having<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</SPAN></span>
these anomalous feelings. Naturally, I shall never
marry—but this seems to me by no means a misfortune,
although I am fond of family life, and up to now
have passed my time only among my own relations.
I live in the hope that later I shall have a permanent
loved one; such indeed I must have, else would the
future seem gray and drear, and every object which
folk usually pursue—honour, high position, etc.—only
vain and unattractive.</p>
<p>“Should this hope not be fulfilled, I know that
I should be unable, permanently and with pleasure,
to give myself to my calling, and that I should be
capable of setting aside everything in order to gain
the love of a man. I feel no longer any moral scruples
on account of my anomalous leaning, and generally
have never been troubled because I felt myself drawn
to youths.… Up to now it has only seemed to me
bad and immoral to do that which is injurious to
another, or which I would not wish done to myself,
and in this respect I can say that I try as much as
possible not to infringe on the rights of others, and
am capable of being violently roused by any injustice
done to others.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>, p. 249, “case” No. 110 (official
in a factory, age 31).</p>
<p class="tb">“My thoughts are by no means exclusively of the
body or morbidly sensual. How often at the sight of
a handsome youth does a deeply enthusiastic mood
come upon me, and I offer a prayer, so to speak, in
the glorious words of Heine—”Du bist wie eine<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</SPAN></span>
Blume, so hold, so schön, so rein“.… Never has
a young man yet guessed my love for him, I have
never corrupted or damaged the morals of one, but
for many have I here and there smoothed their pathway;
and then I stick at no trouble and make sacrifices
such as I can only make for them.</p>
<p>“When thus I have a chance to have a loved friend
near me, to teach, to support and help, when my
unconfest love finds a loving response (though naturally
not sexual), then all the unclean images fade more
and more from my mind. Then does my love become
almost platonic, and lifts itself up—only to sink again
in the mire, when it is deprived of its proper activity.</p>
<p>“For the rest, I am—and I can say it without boasting—not
one of the worst of men. Mentally more
sensitive than most average folk, I take interest in
everything that moves mankind. I am kindly-disposed,
tender, and easily moved to pity, can do no injury to
any animal, certainly not to a human being, but on the
contrary am active in a human-friendly way, where
and however I can.</p>
<p>“Though then before my own conscience I cannot
reproach myself, and though I must certainly reject
the judgment of the world about us, yet I suffer
greatly. In very truth I have injured no one; and
I hold my love in its nobler activity for just as holy
as that of normally disposed men, but under the unhappy
fate that allows us neither sufferance nor recognition,
I suffer often more than my life can bear.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>,
p. 268, “case” No. 114.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</SPAN></span></p>
<p class="tb">“To depict all the misery, all the unfortunate situations,
the constant dread of being found out in one’s
peculiarity and of becoming impossible in society—to
give an idea of all this is truly more than pen or
words can compass. The very thought, so soon as it
arises, of losing one’s social existence and of being
rejected by everybody is more torment than can be
imagined. In such a case, everything, everything would
be forgotten that one had ever done in the way of
good; in the consciousness of his lofty morality every
normally disposed man would puff himself up, however
frivolously he might really have acted in the matter of
his love. I know many such normal folk whose unworthy
conception of their love is indeed hard for me
to understand.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>, p. 269.</p>
<p class="tb">“The torturing images of betrayed love prevent
my sleeping, so that I am forced, now and again, to
have recourse to chloral. My dreams are only a continuation
of actual life, and just as painful. How all
this will end I really know not; but I suppose these
root-emotions must take their own course.… The
only reasonable end of the struggle is Death.”—<span class="smcap">A.
Moll</span>, “Conträre Sexualempfindung,” 2nd edition,
p. 123 (quotation from a letter).</p>
<p class="tb">“Weary and worn, I have passed through every
tempest of anguish and despair. Years of the most
racking mental agony have gone over my head without
killing me. Through the long night watches I have
heard the unceasing hours toll. Sleep has never been<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</SPAN></span>
thought of by me, but I have lain on my bed trying
to read some book, or have knelt by my bedside and
endeavoured to raise my heart and spirit in prayer
for succour or forgiveness. At last, unable to hold out
any longer, with mouth tight-closed and knitted brow
the Charmer has deadened my senses for one or two
brief hours; but only that I may wake to a stronger
and clearer perception of my hopeless condition.</p>
<p>“How the days have got on I know not. How I can
have lived so long through such misery I know not.
But torture like this is cruelly slow, whilst it is sure.
It is the nature of youth to be long-enduring where
Love is put to the test and a kind of occasional flicker—a
kind of mocking semblance of hope, as like to
hope as the rushing meteor is to the enduring sun—helps
to support the load of misery, and so to prolong
it. I am hundreds of years old in this my wretchedness
of every moment. I cannot battle against Love
and crush it out—never! God has implanted the
necessity of the sentiment in my heart; it is scarce
possible not to ask oneself why has He implanted so
divine an element in my nature, which is doomed to
die unsatisfied, which is destined in the end to be
my very death?”—<cite>From a manuscript left to the
Author by an Urning.</cite></p>
<p class="tb"><span class="smcap">H. Ellis</span>, in Appendix D. of his book on “Sexual
Inversion,” speaks at some length on the School-friendships
of girls: what they call “Flames” and
“Raves”; of love at first sight; romance; courtship;
meetings despite all obstacles; long letters; jealousy;<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</SPAN></span>
the writing the beloved’s name everywhere, etc. These
alliances are sometimes sexual, but oftener not so—though
full of “psychic erethism.”</p>
<p class="tb">In the same Appendix he quotes a woman of thirty-three,
who writes, “At fourteen I had my first case
of love, but it was with a girl. It was insane, intense
love, but had the same quality and sensations as my
first love with a man at eighteen. In neither case was
the object idealized: I was perfectly aware of their
faults; nevertheless, my whole being was lost, immersed,
in their existence. The first lasted two years,
the second seven years. No love has since been so
intense, but now these two persons, though living, are
no more to me than the veriest stranger.”</p>
<p class="tb">Another woman of thirty-five writes, “Girls between
the ages of fourteen and eighteen at college or girls’
schools often fall in love with the same sex. This is
not friendship. The loved one is older, more advanced,
more charming or beautiful. When I was a freshman
in college I knew at least thirty girls who were in love
with a senior. Some sought her because it was the
fashion, but I knew that my own homage and that of
many others was sincere and passionate. I loved her
because she was brilliant and utterly indifferent to
the love shown her. She was not pretty, though at the
time we thought her beautiful. One of her adorers,
on being slighted, was ill for two weeks. On her return
she was speaking to me when the object of our admiration
came into the room. The shock was too great,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</SPAN></span>
and she fainted. When I reached the senior year
I was the recipient of languishing glances, original
verses, roses, and passionate letters written at midnight
and three in the morning.”</p>
<p class="tb">“Passionate friendships among girls, from the most
innocent to the most elaborate excursions in the direction
of Lesbos, are extremely common in theatres, both
among actresses, and even more among chorus and
ballet-girls.”—<span class="smcap">Havelock Ellis</span>, “Sexual Inversion,”
p. 130.</p>
<p class="tb">“The love of homosexual women is often very
passionate, as is that of Urnings. Just like these, the
former often feel themselves blessed when they love
happily. Nevertheless, to many of them, as to the
Urning, is the circumstance very painful that in consequence
of their antipathy to the touch of the male
they are not in the position to found a family. Sometimes,
when the love of a homosexual woman is not
responded to, serious disturbances of the nerve-system
may ensue, leading even to paroxysms of fury.”—<span class="smcap">A.
Moll</span>, <cite>op. cit.</cite>, p. 338.</p>
<p class="tb">“It is noteworthy how many inverted women have,
with more or less fraud, been married to the woman
of their choice, the couple living happily together for
long periods. I know of one case, probably unique,
in which the ceremony was gone through without any
deception on any side; a congenitally inverted English
woman of distinguished intellectual ability, now dead,
was attached to the wife of a clergyman, who, in full<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</SPAN></span>
cognisance of all the facts of the case, privately married
the two ladies in his own church.”—<span class="smcap">Havelock
Ellis</span>, <cite>op. cit.</cite>, p. 146, footnote.</p>
<p class="tb">“Seven or eight girls, we are told (in Montaigne’s
‘Journal du Voyage en Italie,’ 1350), belonging to
Chaumont, resolved to dress and to work as men; one
of these came to Vitry to work as a weaver, and was
looked upon as a well-conditioned young man, and
liked by everyone. At Vitry she became betrothed
to a woman, but, a quarrel arising, no marriage took
place. Afterwards, ‘she fell in love with a woman
whom she married, and with whom she lived for four or
five months, to the wife’s great contentment, it is said;
but having been recognised by some one from Chaumont,
and brought to justice, she was condemned to
be hanged. She said she would even prefer this to
living again as a girl, and was hanged for using illicit
inventions to supply the defects of her sex’.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>,
p. 119.</p>
<p class="tb">“It is evident that there must be some radical causes
for the frequency of homosexuality among prostitutes.
One such cause doubtless lies in the character of the
prostitute’s relations with men; these relations are
of a professional character, and, as the business element
becomes emphasized, the possibility of sexual
satisfaction diminishes; at the best also there lacks
the sense of social equality, the feeling of possession,
and scope for the exercise of feminine affection and
devotion.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>, p. 149.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</SPAN></span></p>
<p class="tb">“Among the inscribed prostitutes of Berlin there
are without doubt a great number who honour the love
of women. I am told from well-informed sources, that
about twenty-five per cent. of the prostitutes of Berlin
have relations with other women.”—<span class="smcap">A. Moll</span>, <cite>op. cit.</cite>,
p. 331.</p>
<p class="tb">“Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (born in 1825 near Aurich),
who for many years expounded and defended homosexual
love, and whose views are said to have had some
influence in drawing Westphal’s attention to the matter,
was a Hanoverian legal official (Amts-assessor), himself
sexually inverted. From 1864 onward, at first
under the name of ‘Numa Numantius,’ and subsequently
under his own name, Ulrichs published in
various parts of Germany a long series of works dealing
with this question, and made various attempts to
obtain a revision of the legal position of the sexual
invert in Germany.</p>
<p>“Although not a writer whose psychological views
can carry much scientific weight, Ulrichs appears to
have been a man of most brilliant ability, and his
knowledge is said to have been of almost universal
extent; he was not only well-versed in his own special
subjects of jurisprudence and theology, but in many
branches of natural science, as well as in archæology;
he was also regarded by many as the best Latinist of
his time. In 1880 he left Germany and settled in
Naples, and afterwards at Aquila in the Abruzzi,
whence he issued a Latin periodical. He died in
1895.”—<span class="smcap">Havelock Ellis</span>, <cite>op. cit.</cite>, p. 33.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</SPAN></span></p>
<p class="tb">Ulrichs enters into an elaborate classification of
human types, with a corresponding nomenclature,
which, though somewhat ponderous, has been of use.
Among males, for instance, he distinguishes the quite
normal man, whom he calls “Dioning,” from the invert,
whom he calls “Urning.” Among Urnings, again,
he distinguishes (1) those who are thoroughly manly
in appearance and in mental habit and character
(“Mannlings”), and who tend to love softer and
younger specimens of their own sex; (2) those who
are effeminate in appearance and cast of mind (“Weiblings”),
and who love rougher and older men; and
(3) those who are of a medium type (“Zwischen
Urnings”) and love young men. Then again there is
the “Urano-dioning,” who is born with a capacity
of love in both directions, <i>i.e.</i>, for women and for men.
He is generally of the manly type. And besides these,
some sub-species, like the “Uraniaster,” who is a normal
man who has contracted the Urning habit, and
the “Virilised Urning,” who is an Urning who has
contracted the normal habit, though this is not really
natural to him! The whole may be set out in a table
as follows:—<br/><br/></p>
<table summary="Men according to Ulrichs" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height:.95em;" border="0">
<tr>
<td rowspan="6">The Human Male</td>
<td rowspan="6"><b>⎛<br/>⎢<br/>⎢<br/>⎢<br/>⎢<br/>⎢<br/>⎢<br/>⎝</b></td>
<td class="tdl" colspan="3"><p class="indent">(<i>a</i>) Normal Man or Dioning—called
Uraniaster when he acquires Urning tendencies.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan="4">(<i>b</i>) Urning</td>
<td rowspan="4"><b>⎛<br/>⎢<br/>⎢<br/>⎢<br/>⎝</b></td>
<td>1. Mannling.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2. Zwischen-Urning.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>3. Weibling.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p class="indent">4. Also called Virilised Urning when he acquires the normal habit.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="3">(<i>c</i>) Urano-dioning.</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p><br/><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</SPAN></span></p>
<p>If we add to this a corresponding table for the
female we shall have an idea of the complication of
Ulrichs’ system! Yet, complex as it is, and whatever
criticisms we may make upon it, we must allow that
it does not exceed the complexity of the real facts of
Nature. (See <span class="smcap">K. H. Ulrichs</span>’ “Memnon,” ch. iii.-v.)</p>
<p class="tb">Krafft-Ebing’s analysis of the subject is fully as
elaborate as that of Ulrichs. It is given by <span class="smcap">J. A.
Symonds</span> in the form of a table, as follows:—<br/><br/></p>
<table summary="Symonds' table of Krafft-Ebing’s classifications" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height:.95em;" border="0">
<tr>
<td class="tdc" rowspan="7">Sexual Inversion</td>
<td rowspan="7"><b>⎛<br/>⎢<br/>⎢<br/>⎢<br/>⎢<br/>⎝</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">Acquired</td>
<td rowspan="2"><b>⎛<br/>⎢<br/>⎝</b></td>
<td colspan="4">Persistent.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">Episodical.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan="4">Congenital</td>
<td rowspan="4"><b>⎛<br/>⎢<br/>⎢<br/>⎢<br/>⎝</b></td>
<td colspan="3">Psychic Hermaphrodites.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">Urnings</td>
<td rowspan="2"><b>⎛<br/>⎝</b></td>
<td>Male Habitus (Mannlings).</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Female Habitus (Weiblings).</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">Androgyni.</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p><br/>And Symonds continues:—“What is the rational
explanation of the facts presented to us by the analysis
which I have formulated in this table, cannot as yet be
thoroughly determined. We do not know enough
about the law of sex in human beings to advance a
theory. Krafft-Ebing and writers of his school are
at present inclined to refer them all to diseases of the
nervous centres, inherited, congenital, excited by
early habits of self-abuse. The inadequacy of this
method I have already attempted to set forth; and
I have also called attention to the fact that it does not
sufficiently account for the phenomena known to us
through history and through every-day experience.”
[It should be noted that in later editions of his book
Krafft-Ebing considerably modifies the view that these<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</SPAN></span>
sex-variations all indicate disease.]—“A Problem in
Modern Ethics,” p. 46.</p>
<p class="tb">Moll, speaking of the act so commonly credited to
Urnings (sodomy), says:—“The common assumption
is that the intercourse of Urnings consists in this. But
it is a great error to suppose that this act is so frequent
among them.”—<span class="smcap">A. Moll</span>, <cite>op. cit.</cite>, p. 139.</p>
<p class="tb">And Krafft-Ebing also speaks of it as rare among
true Urnings, though not uncommon among old roués
and debauchees of more normal temperament.—“Psychopathia
Sexualis,” 7th edition, p. 258.</p>
<p class="tb">“The Urning denies not only the ‘unnaturalness’
of his leanings, but also their pathological character;
he protests against comparison with the lame and the
deaf. The occasional coincidence of sexual inversion
with other really morbid conditions settles nothing,
nor is the reminder that it is antagonistic to the purpose
of race-propagation a proof; for who can assure
us that Nature has intended all people for race-propagation?
Even to the worker-bee Nature has not granted
this function, although in her stunted female sex-organs
there exists an undeniable indication or suggestion
of sex-feeling.”—<span class="smcap">A. Moll</span>, <cite>op. cit.</cite>, p. 271. (From
a letter by a sixty year old Urning.)</p>
<p class="tb">“Homosexuality, therefore, might be described as
an abnormal variety of the sex-impulse, but hardly as
a morbid variety. If you like, it might be termed an<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</SPAN></span>
arrest of development or a kind of reversion. And
this is quite in accord with the fact that the best experts
in the subject have so far not discovered more psychic
abnormalities among homosexuals than among heterosexuals—nor
more degeneracy or signs of degeneracy.”—Consulting-Physician
Dr. <span class="smcap">Paul Naecke</span>, in <cite lang="de">Der
Tag</cite>, 26th Oct., 1907.</p>
<p class="tb">“As a result of these considerations Ulrichs concludes
that there is no real ground for the persecution
of Urnings except such as may be found in the repugnance
felt by the vast numerical majority for an insignificant
minority. The majority encourages matrimony,
condones seduction, sanctions prostitution, legalises
divorce, in the interest of its own sexual proclivities.
It makes temporary or permanent unions illegal for the
minority whose inversion of instinct it abhors. And
this persecution, in the popular mind at any rate, is
justified, like many other inequitable acts of prejudice
or ignorance, by theological assumptions and the so-called
mandates of revelation.”—“A Problem in
Modern Ethics,” p. 83.</p>
<p class="tb">“We understand by ‘homosexual’ a person who
feels himself drawn to individuals of the same sex by
feelings of real love. Whether or not he acts in accordance
with this homosexual feeling is, from the scientific
standpoint, beside the question. Just as there are
normal folk who live chastely, so there are homosexual
persons whose love bears a distinctly psychic, ideal
and ‘platonic’ character.…</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</SPAN></span></p>
<p>“The feminine impress, in the case of homosexual
men, is in general best indicated by the presence of
greater sensitiveness and receptivity, also by the dominance
of the emotional life, by a strong artistic sense,
especially in the direction of music, often too by a
tendency to mysticism, and by various inclinations and
habits feminine in the good or less good sense of the
word. This blending of temperament, however, does
not make the homosexual as such a less worthy person.
He is indeed not of the same nature as the heterosexual,
but he is of equal worth.”—Dr <span class="smcap">M. Hirschfeld’s</span>
evidence as medical specialist in the Moltké-Harden
trial.</p>
<p class="tb">“One serious objection to recognising and tolerating
sexual inversion has always been that it tends to
check the population. This was a sound political and
social argument in the time of Moses, when a small
militant tribe needed to multiply to the full extent of
its procreative capacity. It is by no means so valid
in our age, when the habitable portions of the globe
are rapidly becoming overcrowded. Moreover, we must
bear in mind that society under the existing order sanctions
female prostitution, whereby men and women,
though normally procreative, are sterilized to an indefinite
extent.”—<span class="smcap">J. A. Symonds</span>, “A Problem in
Modern Ethics,” p. 82.</p>
<p class="tb">“Before Justinian, both Constantine and Theodosius
passed laws against sexual inversion, committing the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</SPAN></span>
offenders to ‘avenging flames.’ But these statutes
were not rigidly enforced, and modern opinion on the
subject may be said to flow from Justinian’s legislation.
Opinion, in matters of custom and manners, always
follows law. Though Imperial edicts could not eradicate
a passion which is inherent in human nature, they
had the effect of stereotyping extreme punishments in
all the codes of Christian nations, and of creating
a permanent social antipathy.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>, p. 13.</p>
<p class="tb">“Our modern attitude is sometimes traced back to
the Jewish Law and its survival in St. Paul’s opinion on
this matter. But the Jewish Law itself had a foundation.
Wherever the enlargement of the population
becomes a strongly-felt social need—as it was among
the Jews in their exaltation of family life, and as it was
when the European populations were constituted—there
homosexuality has been regarded as a crime,
even punishable with death.… It was in the fourth
century at Rome that the strong modern opposition
to it was formulated in law. 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, utilised this powerful Christian
feeling. Constantine, Theodosius, Valentinian, all
passed laws against homosexuality—the last, at all
events, ordaining as a penalty the <i lang="la">vindices flammæ</i>.”
<span class="smcap">Havelock Ellis</span>, <cite>op. cit.</cite>, p. 206.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</SPAN></span></p>
<p class="tb">“At the present time, shoemakers, who make shoes
to measure, deal more rationally with individuals than
our teachers and school-masters do, in their application
to moral principles. The sexually intermediate forms
of individuals are treated exactly as if they were good
examples of the ideal male or female types. There is
wanted an ‘orthopædic’ treatment of the soul, instead
of the torture caused by the application of ready-made
conventional shapes. The present system stamps out
much that is original, uproots much that is truly natural,
and distorts much into artificial and unnatural
forms.”—<span class="smcap">O. Weininger</span>, “Sex and Character,” ch. v.</p>
<p class="tb">“What is new in my view is that according to it
homosexuality cannot be regarded as an atavism or as
due to arrested embryonic development, or to incomplete
differentiation of sex; it cannot be regarded as an
anomaly of rare occurrence interpolating itself in
customary complete separation of the sexes. Homosexuality
is merely the sexual condition of those intermediate
sexual forms that stretch from one ideal sexual
condition to the other ideal sexual condition. In my
view, all actual organisms have both homosexuality and
heterosexuality.”—<span class="smcap">O. Weininger</span>, “Sex and Character,”
ch. iv.</p>
<p class="tb">“How is it then that in our age reputed so philanthropic,
whole classes of men, on account of inborn
mental abnormalities, are marked down and banned,
frantically persecuted, publicly branded, and threatened
with the severest legal penalties? Any one would<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</SPAN></span>
hardly believe what gross cases of justiciary murder,
morally speaking, still take place in this matter even
at the end of the nineteenth century. To the pitiful
ignorance of the judges, to the thousand inherited
prejudices of public opinion, as well as to the mental
slavery of legislative bodies, must it be ascribed that
the penal code of most civilised states is still in great
measure formulated in the gloomy spirit of the Middle
Ages.”—O. de <span class="smcap">Joux</span>, “Die Enterbten des Liebesglückes,”
p. 16.</p>
<p class="tb">“Up till now homosexual humanity has found itself
in a peculiar position. Its mouth was closed, it could
not speak. It was bound hand and foot and could not
move. But now there has come an important change.
Science has taken the part of these folk and defended
their honour … I protest therefore earnestly that
these men, whether by means of the Law or any other
means, should no longer be branded in the name of
Christianity.”—From a letter written by a Catholic
priest in reply to a circular sent by the Humane-Science
Committee of Berlin. (See “Jahrbuch der
Sexuellen Zwischenstufen,” vol. ii., p. 177.)</p>
<p class="tb">“Thus the very basest of all trades, that of <em>chantage</em>
[blackmailing] is encouraged by the law.… The
miserable persecuted wretch, placed between the alternative
of paying money down or of becoming socially
impossible, losing a valued position, and seeing dishonour
burst upon himself and family, pays; and still
the more he pays the greedier becomes the vampire<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</SPAN></span>
who sucks his life-blood, until at last there lies nothing
else before him except total financial ruin or disgrace.
Who will be astonished if the nerves of an individual
in this position are not equal to the horrid strain?
In some cases the nerves give way altogether.… Alter
the law and instead of increasing vice you will
diminish it. The temptation to ply a disgraceful profession
with the object of extorting money would be
removed.”—“A Problem in Modern Ethics,” pp. 56
and 86.</p>
<p class="tb">“You will rightly infer that it is difficult for me to
say exactly how I regard (morally) the homosexual
tendency. Of this much, however, I am certain that
even if it were possible I would not exchange my
inverted nature for a normal one. I suspect that the
sexual emotions and even inverted ones have a more
subtle significance than is generally attributed to them;
but modern moralists either fight shy of transcendental
interpretations or see none, and I am ignorant and
unable to solve the mystery these feelings seem to
imply.”—<span class="smcap">Havelock Ellis</span>, <cite>op. cit.</cite>, p. 65, “case” ix.</p>
<p class="tb">“I cannot regard my sexual feelings as unnatural
or abnormal, since they have disclosed themselves so
perfectly naturally and spontaneously within me. All
that I have read in books or heard spoken about the
ordinary sexual love, its intensity and passion, life-long
devotion, love at first sight, etc., seems to me to be
easily matched by my own experiences in homosexual<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</SPAN></span>
form; and with regard to the morality of this complex
subject, my feeling is that it is the same as should prevail
in love between man and woman, namely: that no
bodily satisfaction should be sought at the cost of
another person’s distress or degradation. I am sure that
this kind of love is, notwithstanding the physical difficulties
that attend it, as deeply stirring and ennobling as
the other kind, if not more so; and I think that for a
perfect relationship the actual sex-gratifications (whatever
they may be) probably hold a less important place
in this love than in the other.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>, “case” vii.,
p. 58.</p>
<p class="tb">“I grew older, I entered my professional studies,
and I was very diligent with them. I lived in a great
capital, I moved much in general society. I had a
large and lively group of friends. But always, over
and over, I realised that, in the kernel, at the very
root and fibre of myself, there was the throb and glow,
the ebb and the surge, the seeking as in a vain dream
to realise again that passion of friendship which could
so far transcend the cold modern idea of the tie; the
Over-Friendship, the Love-Friendship of Hellas, which
meant that between man and man could exist—the
sexual-psychic love. That was still possible! I knew
that now. I had read it in the verses or the prose of
the Greek or Latin or Oriental authors who have
written out every shade of its beauty or unloveliness,
its worth or debasement—from Theokritos to Martial,
or Abu-Nuwas, to Platen, Michel-Angelo, Shakespeare.
I had learned it from the statues of sculptors—in those<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</SPAN></span>
lines so often vivid with a merely physical male beauty—works
which beget, which sprang from, the sense of
it in a race. I had half-divined it in the music of a
Beethoven and a Tschaikowsky before knowing facts
in the life-stories of either of them—or of an hundred
other tone-autobiographists. And I had recognised
what it all meant to most people to-day—from the
disgust, scorn, and laughter of my fellow-men when
such an emotion was hinted at.”—<cite>Imre: a memorandum</cite>,
by <span class="smcap">Xavier Mayne</span>, p. 110. Naples, R. Rispoli,
1906.</p>
<p class="tb">“Presently, during that same winter, accident opened
my eyes wider to myself. Since then, I have needed
no further knowledge from the Tree of my Good and
Evil. I met with a mass of serious studies, German,
Italian, French, English, from the chief European
specialists and theorists on the similisexual topic; many
of them with quite other views than those of my well-meaning
but far too conclusive Yankee doctor (who
had recommended marriage as a cure). I learned of
the much-discussed theories of ‘secondary sexes’ and
‘intersexes.’ I learned of the theories and facts of
homosexualism, of the Uranian Love, of the Uranian
race, of the ‘Sex within a Sex.’ … I came to know
their enormous distribution all over the world to-day;
and of the grave attention that European scientists and
jurists have been devoting to problems concerned with
homosexualism. I could pursue intelligently the growing
efforts to set right the public mind as to so ineradicable
and misunderstood a phase of humanity.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</SPAN></span>
I realised that I had always been a member of that
hidden brotherhood and Sub-Sex, or Super-Sex. In
wonder too I informed myself of its deep instinctive
freemasonries—even to organised ones—in every social
class, every land, and every civilisation.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>, pp.
134, 135.</p>
<p class="tb">“Thus in sexual inversion we have what may be
fairly called a ‘sport’ or variation, one of those organic
aberrations which we see throughout living nature, in
plants and in animals.”… “All these organic variations
which I have here mentioned to illustrate sexual
inversion, are abnormalities. It is important that we
should have a clear idea as to what abnormality is.
Many people imagine that what is abnormal is necessarily
diseased. That is not the case, unless we give
the word disease an inconveniently and illegitimately
wide extension. It is both inconvenient and inexact to
speak of colour-blindness, criminality and genius as
diseases in the same sense as we speak of scarlet fever,
tuberculosis, or general paralysis as diseases.”—<span class="smcap">Havelock
Ellis</span>, <cite>op. cit.</cite>, p. 186.</p>
<p class="tb">“I have had for some time past a theory about this
‘Homogenic’ business—I do not suppose it is new—but
it is that when man reaches a certain stage of
development and approaches the totality of Human
Nature, there gets to exist in him, though subordinately
at first, a female element as well as a male. That is to
say that as he passes the various barriers, he passes the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</SPAN></span>
barrier of sex too, on his way to become the complete
Human—the Universal.”—<cite>From a private letter.</cite></p>
<p class="tb">“Great geniuses, men like Goethe, Shakespeare,
Shelley, Byron, Darwin, all had the feminine soul very
strongly developed in them.… As we are continually
meeting in cities women who are one-quarter, or one-eighth,
or so on, <em>male</em> … so there are in the Inner
Self similar half-breeds, all adapting themselves to
circumstances with perfect ease. The Greeks recognised
that such a being could exist even in harmony
with Nature, and so beautified and idealised it as
Sappho.”—<span class="smcap">Charles G. Leland</span>, “The Alternate
Sex,” pp. 41, and 57. London, 1904.</p>
<p class="tb">“I have considered and inquired into this question
for many years; and it has long been my settled
conviction that no breach of morality is involved in
homosexual love; that, like every other passion, it
tends, when duly understood and controlled by spiritual
feeling, to the physical and moral health of the
individual and the race, and that it is only its brutal
perversions which are immoral. I have known many
persons more or less the subjects of this passion,
and I have found them a particularly high-minded,
upright, refined, and (I must add) pure-minded class
of men.”—<i>Communicated by <span class="antiqua">Professor ——</span> in Appendix
to</i> <span class="smcap">Havelock Ellis’s</span> “Sexual Inversion,”
p. 240.</p>
<p class="tb">“What from the beginning struck me most, but<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</SPAN></span>
now appears perfectly clear and indeed necessary is
that among the homosexuals there is found the <em>most</em>
remarkable class of men, namely, those whom I call
<em>supervirile</em>. These men stand by virtue of the special
variation of their soul-material, just as much above
Man, as the normal sex man does above Woman.
Such an individual is able to bewitch men by his soul-aroma,
as they—though passively—bewitch him. But
as he always lives in men’s society, and men, so to
speak, sit at his feet, it comes about that such a supervirile
often climbs the very highest steps of spiritual
evolution, of social position, and of manly capacity.
Hence it arises that the most famous names of the
world and the history of culture stand rightly or
wrongly on the list of homosexuals. Names like Alexander
the Great, Socrates, Plato, Julius Cæsar, Michel
Angelo, Charles XII. of Sweden, William of Orange,
and so forth. Not only is this so, but it must be so.
As certainly as a woman’s hero remains a spiritually
inferior man, must a man’s hero—well <em>be</em> a man’s
hero, if in any way he has the stuff for it.</p>
<p>“Consequently the German penal code, in stamping
homosexuality as a crime, puts the highest blossoms
of humanity on the proscription list.”—Professor
Dr. <span class="smcap">Jaeger</span>, “Die Entdeckung der Seele,” pp. 268,
269.</p>
<p class="tb">“The licentious or garrulous or morbid types of
inverts have been so honoured with publicity that the
other types are even yet little known. The latter,
in the maturity of their intellectual and moral nature,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</SPAN></span>
cease to look upon sex as the pivot of the universe.
They cease to repine about their lot. They have their
mission to fulfil here below, and they try to fulfil it as
best they can. In the same way we find there are
heterosexual (or normal) folk who at a certain stage of
their growth free themselves from the sexual life.—<span class="smcap">M.
A. Raffalovich</span>, “Uranisme et Unisexualité,”
p. 74.</p>
<p class="tb">“The well-bred, highly-cultured Urning is a complete
Idealist; matter is for him only a symbol of
thought, and the actual only the living expression of
the Invisible.”—<span class="smcap">De Joux</span>, “Die Enterbten des Liebesglückes,”
p. 46.</p>
<p class="tb">“As nature and social law are so cruel as to impose
a severe celibacy on him his whole being is consequently
of astonishing freshness and superb purity,
and his manners of life modest as those of a saint—a
thing which, in the case of a man in blooming health
and moving about in the world, is certainly very
unusual.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>, p. 41.</p>
<p class="tb">“If the soul of woman in its usual form represents
a secret closed with seven seals, it is—when prisoned
in the sturdy body of a man and fused with some of
the motives of manhood, a far more enigmatic scripture
of whose sibylline meaning one can never be
really sure. Only the Urning can understand the
Urning.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>, p. 63.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</SPAN></span></p>
<p class="tb">“Because they (Urnings) themselves are of a very
complex nature and put together of opposing elements,
they seek out and love the simple, plain, and straightforward
natures. Because they continually suffer from
the rebellion of their desires against good taste and
morals, they often long for a barbaric freedom. And
because their every emotion is cut short, distracted,
and worn out by the thousand doubts and suspicions
of their Urning-minds, they gather to themselves men
who are wont to live straight from feeling to action,
and who work from untamed masterly instincts, as
sure as the animals.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>, p. 97.</p>
<p class="tb">“It is true that we are often inferior to normal men
in force of will, worldly wisdom, and sense of duty;
but on the other hand, in depth and delicacy of feeling
and every virtue of the heart, we are far superior.
We cannot <em>love</em> women, but we lament with them, and
help them on the hearth and by the cradle, in need and
loneliness, as their most unselfish friends.… We do
not despise women because they are weak, for we are
much clearer-sighted, much less prejudiced than the so-called
lords of creation, much nobler, more helpful,
and just-minded than they.… Anyhow, if either of
the sexes has cause to withhold its respect in any
degree from the other—which has the most cause?
Say what you will of them, the second and third sexes—women
and Urnings—are ever so much better than
the brutal egotistical Men, who to-day are plunged in
grossest materialism; for, with whatever corruption,
both the former are still of purer heart, easier kindled<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</SPAN></span>
towards whatever is good, and more capable of genuine
enthusiasm and love of their fellows, than the
latter.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>, p. 204.</p>
<p class="tb">“Embodying as he does Love, Patience, Renunciation,
Humility and Mildness, the Urning should seek
to soothe with his gentle hand all hurts, and to heal
all wounds, which are the results of weak Man’s
original sinfulness. The tender emotions in his breast,
his all too soft and easily troubled heart, his delicate
sensitiveness and receptiveness of all that is lofty and
pure, his mildness, goodness and inexhaustible patience—all
these divine gifts of his soul point clearly to the
conclusion that the great framer of the world meant
to create in Urnings a noble priesthood, a race of
Samaritans, a severely pure order of men, in order to
offer a strong counterpoise to the immoral tendencies
of the human race, which increase with its increasing
culture.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>, p. 253.</p>
<p class="tb">“When I review the cases I have brought forward
and the mental history of the inverted I have known,
I am inclined to say that if we can enable an invert to
be healthy, self-restrained and self-respecting, we have
often done better than to convert him to the mere
feeble simulacrum of a normal man. An appeal to
the <i lang="el">paiderastia</i> 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. The<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</SPAN></span>
‘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.
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, physical and moral.”—<span class="smcap">Havelock
Ellis</span>, “Sexual Inversion,” p. 202.</p>
<p class="tb">“From America a lady writes:—‘Inverts should
have the courage and independence to be themselves,
and to demand an investigation. If one strives to live
honourably, 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 specialised, 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 is to be an invert—who feels himself<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</SPAN></span>
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.”—<cite>Ibid</cite>, p. 213.</p>
<p class="titlepage">THE END.</p>
<p class="titlepage smaller"><i>Printed in Great Britain by</i><br/>
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON</p>
</div>
<SPAN name="endofbook"></SPAN>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />