The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional
Types of Men and Women 1908
FULL NAME: Edward Carpenter
BORN: 29 August 1844, Brighton
DIED: 28 June 1929, Guildford, aged 84
CONTENTS
"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."
O. WEININGER.
PREFATORY NOTE
THE 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.
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.
E. C.
<p. 9>
I. INTRODUCTORY
THE 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 <p. 10>
scientific 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 se of certain classes--as, for instance,
medical men, teachers, parents, magistrates, judges, and the like.
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 bad. It is also easy (as some do) to
argue that just because they combine opposite qualities they are
likely to be good 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 <p.
11> and unworthy--some perhaps exhibiting through their double
temperament a rare and beautiful flower of humanity, others a
perverse and tangled ruin.
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 not 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 <p. 12>
best attitude we can adopt is one of sincere and dispassionate
observation of facts.
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 <p. 13>
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.
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,<Note: For
the derivation of these terms see ch. ii., p. 20, intra.> is
not sensuality--but rather sentimentality. The lower, more ordinary
types of Urning are often terribly sentimental; the superior types
strangely, almost incredibly emotional; but neither as a rule
(though of course there must be exceptions) are so sensual as
the average normal man.
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 <p. 14> 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 youthfulness.
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. ii. and v.). 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. 15> 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.
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 Appendix) 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. 16>
II. THE INTERMEDIATE SEX
"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."--Otto
de Joux. IN 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 rapprochement 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 <p. 17> 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 one 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.<Note:
See Appendix, pp. 139 and 140.> 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 <p. 18> character
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.
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.
A moment's thought will show that the general <p. 19> 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.
More than thirty years ago, however, an Austrian writer, K. H.
Ulrichs, drew attention in a series of pamphlets (Memnon, Ara
Spei, Inclusa, 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 mentally
and emotionally to the other; that there were men, for instance,
who might be described as of feminine soul enclosed in a male
body (anima muliebris in corpore virili inclusa), 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
<p. 20> person 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.
People of this kind (i.e., having this special variation of the
love-sentiment) he called Urnings;<Note: From Uranos, 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, pp. 157-159.> 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 some explanation of it.<Note: 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.">
Since that time the subject has been widely studied and written
about by scientific men and others, especially on the Continent
(though in <p. 21> 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.
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 <p. 22> countries
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 (Die Conträre
Sexualempfindung, chap. 3) gives estimates varying from 1 in every
50 to as low as 1 in every 500.<Note: Some late statistical
inquiries (see Statistische Untersuchungen, by Dr. M. Hirschfeld,
Leipzig, 1904) yield 1.5 to 2.0 per cent. as a probable ratio.
See also Appendix, pp. 134-136.> These figures apply to such
as are exclusively of the said nature, i.e., 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.
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 <p. 23> 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.
This subject, though obviously one of considerable interest and
importance, has been hitherto, <p. 24> 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.
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.<Note: For
instances, see Appendix, pp. 149-153.> To call people <p.
25> 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."<Note: See De Joux, Die Enterbten des Liebesglückes
(Leipzig, 1893), p. 21.>
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 <p. 26> 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 <p. 27> advisable in this paper simply to give a few
general characteristics of the Intermediate types.
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.
It was no doubt in consequence of the observation of these signs
that K. H. Ulrichs proposed <p. 28> his theory; and though
the theory, as we have said, does not by any means meet all the
facts, still it is perhaps not without merit, and may be worth
bearing in mind.
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
bonâ fide in love with another woman. Krafft-Ebing gives<Note:
"Psychopathia Sexualis," 7th ed., p. 276.> 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." <p. 29> Presently 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. "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."
It appears that the loves of such women are often very intense,
and (as also in the case of male Urnings) life-long.<Note:
See Appendix, pp. 153-156.> 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.
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 in more detail, first, what may be called the
extreme and exaggerated types of the race, and then the more normal
and perfect types. By <p. 30> doing so we shall get a more
definite and concrete view of our subject.
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.<Note: A good deal in this description
may remind readers of history of the habits and character of Henry
III. of France.>
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 <p.
31> of life, sensuous rather than sentimental in love, often
untidy, and outré in attire;<Note: 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!> 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.
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. <p. 32>
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 not 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.
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 <p. 33> 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 <p. 34> artist-nature,
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."
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 ex parte 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 <p. 35>
continual counterpoise to the sheer masculine portion of society--inclining,
as it always does, to mere restless greed of gain and material
sensual pleasures." 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."
To come now to the more normal and perfect specimens of the homogenic
woman, we find a type in which the body is thoroughly feminine
and <p. 36> 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 girl-hood, 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 <p. 37> to which
their own temperament impels them to devote themselves con amore.
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.
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 <p.
38> 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. 39>
III. THE HOMOGENIC ATTACHMENT
IN 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.
To some perhaps it may appear a little strained <p. 40>
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<Note: "Homosexual," generally
used in scientific works is of course a bastard word. "Homogenic"
has been suggested, as being from two roots, both Greek, i.e.,
"homos," same, and "genos," sex.> 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 <p. 41> 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,<Note:
"Athenæus" xiii., ch. 78.> 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."<Note:
See Plutarch's "Eroticus," xvii.>
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 <p.
42> 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":--"Though little inclined to jealousy
in ordinary love-matters, the Tahitian will hear of no rivals
in his friendship."
<p. 43> 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<Note: See "Natural History
of Man," by J. G. Wood. Vol: "Africa," p. 419.>
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,<Note:
See also Livingstone's "Expedition to the Zambesi" (Murray,
1865) p. 148.> 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.
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 <p. 44> 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 AEschylus 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;<Note: Though these
two plays, except for some quotations, are lost.> and many
of the prose-poem dialogues of Plato were certainly inspired by
it.
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,<Note: Mantegazza and Lombroso. See Albert Moll, "Conträre
Sexualempfindung," 2nd ed., p. 36.> he there under the
name <p. 45> 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.<Note: Though
in translation this fact is often by pious fraudulence disguised.>
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.<Note: W. Pater's
"Renaissance," pp. 8-16.> Though there is historic
evidence of the prevalence of the passion we may say of this period
that its ideal 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,<Note: Among prose writers of
this period, Montaigne, whose treatment of the subject is enthusiastic
and unequivocal, should not be overlooked. See Hazlitt's "Montaigne,"
ch. xxvii.> which culminates <p. 46> 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;<Note: I may be excused for quoting here the sonnet No.
54, from J. A. Symonds' translation of the sonnets of Michel Angelo:--
"From thy fair face I learn, O my loved lord,
That which no mortal tongue can rightly say:
The soul, imprisoned in her house of clay,
Holpen by thee to God hath often soared:
And though the vulgar, vain, malignant horde
Attribute what their grosser wills obey,
Yet shall this fervent homage that I pay,
This love, this faith, pure joys for us afford,
Lo, all the lovely things we find on earth,
Resemble for the soul that rightly sees,
That source of bliss divine which gave us birth:
Nor have we first-fruits or remembrances
Of heaven elsewhere. Thus, loving loyally,
I rise to God, and make death sweet by thee."
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.> and of Shakespeare--
whose passionate words and amorous spirituality of friendship
have for long enough been <p. 47> a perplexity to hide-bound
commentators. Thence through minor writers (not overlooking Winckelmann<Note:
See an interesting paper in W. Pater's "Renaissance.">
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 labours for his wounded brothers
in the American Civil War.
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.
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 <p. 48> 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.
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, <p. 49> 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.<Note: 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, 1902). Also "Lieblingminne
und Freundesliebe in der Weltliteratur," by Elisar von Kupffer
(Adolf Brand, Berlin, 1900).>
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.<Note: As in the case, for instance, of Tennyson's
"In Memoriam," for which the poet was soundly rated
by the Times at the time of its publication.> And it may be
necessary here to say a few words on this latter view.
<p. 50> 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 any 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 <p. 51> 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 some 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.
Thus arises the curious discrepancy of people's views on this
important subject--a discrepancy depending on the side from which
they approach it.
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:<Note: Jowett's "Plato," 2nd ed.,
vol. ii., p. 30.> "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 <p. 52> 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:<Note: Jowett, vol. ii., p. 130.> "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 <p. 53> 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." --------
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; <p. 54> K. H. 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."<Note: 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.>
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.
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
labours have <p. 55> established the fact, known hitherto
only to individuals, that sexual inversion-- 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,<Note: From Uranos--see,
for derivation, p. 20, supra--also Plato's "Symposium,"
speech of Pausanias.> 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 <p. 56> 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.
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,<Note: See, for estimates,
Appendix, pp. 134-136.> 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 quite exclusively 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. 57> 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.<Note: Though there is no
doubt a general tendency towards femininity of type in the male
Urning, and towards masculinity in the female.> 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,<Note: "Gli
amori degli uomini."> 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 <p. 58> say that their emotional
love is also "enthusiastic and exalted,"<Note: "Psychopathia
Sexualis," 7th ed., p. 227.> and that, while bodily congress
is desired, the special act with which they are vulgarly credited
is in most cases repugnant to them.<Note: Ibid, pp. 229 and
258. See Appendix, p. 160.>
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.
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 mutatis
mutandis 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 his 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 <p.
59> form . . . 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<Note:
"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.>--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.
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 <p.
60> progress 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 neurosis, or degeneration
of a nerve-centre, or inherited tendency in that direction, associated
with the instinct; see p. 190 (seventh ed.), also p. 227, where
he speaks, rather vaguely, of "an hereditary neuropathic
or psychopathic tendency"-- neuro(psycho)pathische Belastung.
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 Belastung! 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!
As to Moll, though he speaks<Note: "Conträre Sexualempfindung,"
2nd ed., p. 269.> 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 <p.
61> this association, he says, is by no means always to be
observed; and is fain to rest his judgment on the dictum that
the mere failure of the sexual instinct to propagate the species
is itself pathological--a dictum which in its turn obviously springs
from that pre- judgment of scientists that generation is the sole
object of love,<Note: See "Love's Coming-of-Age,"
p. 22.> and which if pressed would involve the good doctor
in awkward dilemmas, as for instance that every worker-bee is
a pathological specimen.
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)<Note:
Pub.: F. A. Davis, Philadelphia, 1901.> "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."<Note: Otto Weininger
even goes further, and regards the temperament as a natural intermediate
form ("Sex and Character," ch. iv.) See also Appendix,
infra, p. 169.>
<p. 62> 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.<Note: "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.> That such a strain, <p.
63> 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.
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 are 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 favourable as it is. As Krafft-Ebing
says in his own preface, "It is the <p. 64> sad privilege
of Medicine, and especially of Psychiatry, to look always on the
reverse side of life, on the weakness and wretchedness of man."
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 a distinct variety of the sexual
passion. The question, of course, not being whether the instinct
is capable of morbid and extravagant manifestation--for that can
easily be <p. 65> 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.
Anyhow the work that Science has practically done has been to
destroy the dogmatic attitude of the former current opinion from
which it 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.
"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 his 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
<p. 66> 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.
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 vice versa. Such cross-development may
take place obviously <p. 67> 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 all 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.
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 emotional channels, and <p. 68>
to find its vent in sympathies of social life and companionship.
If one studies carefully the expression of the Greek statues (see
p. 9, supra) and the lesson of the Greek literature, one sees
clearly that the ideal 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"<Note: See "In the Key of Blue,"
by J. A. Symonds (Elkin Mathews, 1893).>) 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.
In all these matters the popular opinion has <p. 69> 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.<Note: See Appendix,
pp. 162 and 163.> 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.<Note: See also "Love's
Coming-of- Age," 5th ed., pp. 173, 174.> --------
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 <p. 70> 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),<Note:
See "Das Conträre Geschlechtsgefühl," by Havelock
Ellis and J. A. Symonds (Leipzig, 1896).> 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 <p.
71> 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.
At Sparta the lover was called Eispnêlos, the inspirer,
and the younger beloved Aïtes, 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 <p. 72> 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 favourite 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"<Note: "Symposium,"
Speech of Socrates.> 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.
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 <p. 73> 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 <p. 74>
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.
For if the slaughter of tyrants is not the chief social duty now-a-days,
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
lifelong 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 <p. 75> 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.<Note: 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.">
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, <p. 76> identification, and general
prevalence of that fervid comradeship (the adhesive love at least
rivalling 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."
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
<p. 77> 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.
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
<p. 78> passion 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.
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 <p. 79> 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<Note: Though, inconsistently enough, making
no mention of females.> 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;<Note:
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.> it has opened wider than ever
before the door to a real, most serious social evil and crime--that
of blackmailing; and it <p. 80> 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.
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,<Note:
Though it is doubtful whether the marriage-laws even do this.>
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.<Note: 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, pp. 164 and 165.>
<p. 81> 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 <p. 82> following chapter,
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. 83>
IV. AFFECTION IN EDUCATION
THE 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.
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 <p. 84> 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.
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:--
"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. <p.
85> 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."
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:--
"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." It is not necessary, however, to quote <p.
86> authorities on such a subject as this.<Note: For further
instances, see Appendix, pp. 143-148.> 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.e., 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.
That such attachments may 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 <p. 87> towards the younger. He takes all
sorts of trouble to initiate his protégé 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.
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 deny it. The result was most favourable; the one
force which could really reach the boy <p. 88> had, as it
were, been found; and he developed rapidly and well. The following
extract is from a letter written by an elderly man who has had
large experience as a teacher. He says--
"It has always seemed to me that the rapport 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 rapport; not only of a merely intellectual
nature, but involving a certain physical clement, 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."
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 <p. 89>
declared 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.
In Crete, for instance,<Note: See Müller's "History
and Antiquities of the Doric Race."> 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 <p. 90> 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 valour, according
to the notions of the Cretans, by the gods of war and love."<Note:
Müller.> 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.
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 <p. 91> 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.
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 fellatio, 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 <p. 92> servant;
and the boys thus corrupted mishandled each other.
Naturally in any such atmosphere as this the chances against 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 not 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 favourites, 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.
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
<p. 93> 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.
And it is so because, after all, purity (in the sense of continence)
is of the first importance to boyhood. To prolong the period of
continence in a boy's life is to prolong the period of growth.
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.
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 <p. 94> 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.
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.<Note: 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. 95> 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, will in
some shape or another get to satisfy it.
The process is really a mental 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.<Note: For a useful little manual
on this subject, see "How We are Born," by Mrs. N. J.
(Daniel, London). 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).> In almost
all human societies except, <p. 96> 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.<Note:
See J. G. Wood's "Natural History of Man," vol. "Africa,"
p. 324 (the Bechuanas); also vol. "Australia," p. 75.>
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 <p. 97> a subject which
should, by rights, only just be rising over the mental horizon.
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.e., later on, and at the matrimonial
age. Under the most favourable 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, and 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.
Not long ago the head-master 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 <p. 98> 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 what such things meant,
and what they led to, 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 honourable 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 honourable, 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 honourable 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 kind 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 <p. 99> 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.
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.
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.
But (2) although some rudimentary teaching <p. 100> 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 can 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 <p. 101> 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.
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?
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 <p. 102> 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.<Note:
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. 103> 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 <p. 104> 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.<Note: It should
be also said, in fairness, that the fear of showing undue partiality,
often comes in as a paralysing influence.>
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 suspecting 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 <p. 105> 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.
* * * * * *
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.
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, <p. 106> 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
pari passu with other changes that are taking place in society
at large.
<p. 107>
V. THE PLACE OF THE URANIAN IN SOCIETY
WHATEVER 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.
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
who are the Uranians, the world would be astonished to find so
many of its great or leading men among them.
<p. 108> 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--just as there are of normal people. 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 <p. 109> 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.
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,"<Note:
"Studies in the Psychology of Sex," vol. ii., p. 173.>
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 <p. 110> 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."
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 <p. 111> myself already spoken.<Note: See ch.
ii. supra, also Ioläus, an Anthology of Friendship, by E.
Carpenter.> 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 Greek 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.
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, Leonardo,
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 indulge 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.
Another direction along which the temperament very naturally finds
an outlet is the important <p. 112> 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 <p. 113> 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.
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 <p. 114>
affection 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. 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.
Eros is a great leveller. Perhaps the true Democracy rests, more
firmly than anywhere else, on a sentiment which easily passes
the bounds <p. 115> 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.
The "Letters of Love and Labour" written by <p. 116>
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.<Note: Mr. Jones became Mayor of Toledo;
but died at the early age of 53. See also "Workshop Reconstruction,"
by C. R. Ashbee, Appendix, intra, p. 146.> 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 <p. 117>
investigation are clearly tending that way--to confirm that it
does so exist.
Dr. E. Bertz in his late study of Whitman as a person of strongly
homogenic temperament<Note: "Whitman: ein Charakterbild,"
by Edward Bertz (Leipzig, Max Spohr).> 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 may
be true, even as far as his Uranian temperament is concerned,
that while this was specially developed in him the germs of it
are 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. 118>
These things shall be! A loftier race,
Than e'er the world hath known, shall rise
With flame of freedom in their souls,
And light of science in their eyes.
Nation with nation, land with land,
In-armed shall live as comrades free;
In every heart and brain shall throb
The pulse of one fraternity.
<Note: John Addington Symonds.>
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,
<p. 119> and the answering enthusiasm so elicited, have
made their armies well-nigh invincible.
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 politics (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.
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 <p. 120> sovereigns 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.
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.
It is hard to imagine human beings more skilled in these matters
than are the Intermediates. For <p. 121> 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 character in the former; but merely that with his double outlook
he necessarily discerns things which the other misses.]
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
<p. 122> 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.
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 <p. 123> 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 favour 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.
From this fact--i.e., 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.
For one thing, the question is constantly arising as to how Society
would shape itself if free: 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 <p. 124>
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.
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 <p. 125> 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.
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, <p. 126> sometimes quiescent and vanishing
almost to nil. 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.
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 <p. 127> 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.
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 against 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 honour 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 <p. 128> circles are so
well-conducted on the whole as they are. 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 sure 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.<Note: See Appendix, pp. 172-174.> 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 a priori,
and it can be noticed at once by those who have any acquaintance
with the Urning <p. 129> world. Much of the current misunderstanding
with regard to the character and habits of the Urning arises from
his confusion with the ordinary roué 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. 133>
APPENDIX
"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 vice-versa. 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. JAMES BURNET, The Medical Times and Hospital
Gazette, vol. xxxiv., No. 1497, 10th November, 1906. London.
______
"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 <p. 134> 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."--M. A. RAFFALOVICH,
"Uranisme et Unisexualité." Paris, 1896.
______
"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."--A.
MOLL, "Die Konträre Sexualempfindung," 2nd Edition,
p. 15. Berlin, 1893.
______
"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 deep-seated."--HAVELOCK
ELLIS, "Psychology of <p. 135> Sex," vol. Sexual
Inversion, pp. 29, 30. Philadelphia, 1901.
______
"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.
"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."--NORBERT GRABOWSKY, "Die verkehrte
Geschlechtsempfindung," p. 16. Leipzig, 1894.
______
Dr. HIRSCHFELD, 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 know 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
various 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 <p.
136> 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."
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 predominantly 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."
______
"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."--O. WEININGER, "Sex and Character,"
ch. iv. Heinemann, London, 1906.
______
<p. 137>
"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."--J. ADDINGTON
SYMONDS, "A Problem in Modern Ethics," p. 10.
______
"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."--A.
MOLL, op. cit., p. 76.
______
"In no rank are there so many Urnings as among servants.
One may say that every third male domestic is an Urning."--DE
JOUX, "Die Enterbten des Liebesglückes," p. 193.
Leipzig, 1893.
______
"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 all 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 <p. 138> prove a tendency
to nervous or mental maladies in almost everybody."--A. MOLL,
op. cit., p. 221.
______
"The truth is that we can no more explain the inverted sex-feeling
than we can the normal impulse; all attempts at explanation of
these things, and of Love, are defective."--Ibid, p. 253.
______
"Among the penchants 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."--Ibid, p. 80.
______
"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."--HAVELOCK ELLIS, "Sexual Inversion,"
p. 173.
______
"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 <p.
139> important, 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."--A. MOLL, op. cit., p. 200.
______
"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."--Ibid, p.
118.
______
"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."--O.
WEININGER, "Sex and Character," ch. v.
______
"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
<p. 140> 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."--WEININGER,
Ibid, introduction, p. 2.
______
"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.'"--ANATOLE
FRANCE, "Sur la Pierre Blanche," p. 301.
______
"In every 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.
ARDUIN, "Die Frauenfrage," <p. 141> in Jahrbuch
der Sexuellen Zwischenstufen, vol. ii., p. 217. Leipzig, 1900.
______
"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.)--HAVELOCK
ELLIS, "Sexual Inversion," p. 229.
______
"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."
Ibid, p. 44.
______
"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 favourites as half-devil and
half-angel. When I was <p. 142> 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."--Ibid,
"case" ix., p. 62.
______
"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 `Saülenordnungen,' 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 cause 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 <p.
143> 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."--K. H. ULRICHS,
"Memnon," 77. Leipzig, 1898. See also "A Problem
in Modern Ethics," p. 73.
______
"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.
"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. <p. 144> 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.
"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 teaching him
anything. Otherwise you do not really teach him at all."--Private
letter.
______
"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 <p. 145> 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
immense good accrued to us both."--Ibid.
______
"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.
"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. <p. 146> 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. . . .
"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."--Private letter.
______
"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 <p. 147> Workshop." --C. R. ASHBEE,
"Workshop Reconstruction and Citizenship," p. 160.
______
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.
______
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."--HAVELOCK ELLIS, op. cit., "case"
xiii., p. 71.
______
<p. 148>
"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."--Same case,
p. 73.
______
"At the age of twenty-one I began gradually to remark that
I was somehow not 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 <p.
149> 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."--KRAFFT-EBING,
"Psychopathia Sexualis," 7th edition, "case"
No. 122, p. 291. Stuttgart, 1892.
______
"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 lifelong 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 <p. 150>
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.
"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."--Ibid,
p. 249, "case" No. 110 (official in a factory, age 31).
______
"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 <p. 151>
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.
"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.
"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.
"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."--Ibid, p. 268, "case" No.
114.
______
<p. 152>
"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."--Ibid,
p. 269.
______
"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."--A. MOLL, "Conträre
Sexualempfindung," 2nd edition, p. 123 (quotation from a
letter).
"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 <p.
153> 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.
"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?"--From a manuscript left
to the Author by an Urning.
______
H. ELLIS, 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; <p. 154> the writing the beloved's
name everywhere, etc. These alliances are sometimes sexual, but
oftener not so --though full of "psychic erethism."
______
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."
______
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, <p. 155> 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."
______
"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."--HAVELOCK ELLIS, "Sexual
Inversion," p. 130.
______
"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."--A. MOLL,
op. cit., p. 338.
______
"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 <p. 156> cognisance
of all the facts of the case, privately married the two ladies
in his own church."-- HAVELOCK ELLIS, op. cit., p. 146, footnote.
______
"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'."--Ibid, p. 119.
______
"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."--Ibid,
p. 149.
______
<p. 157>
"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."--A.
MOLL, op. cit., p. 331.
______
"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 (Amtsassessor),
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.
"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."--HAVELOCK ELLIS, op. cit., p. 33.
______
<p. 158>
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.e., 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:--
The Human Male:
(a) Normal Man or Dioning--called
Uraniaster when he acquires Urning
tendencies.
(b) Urning:
1. Mannling.
2. Zwischen-Urning.
3. Weibling.
4. Also called Virilised Urning when
he acquires the normal habit.
(c) Urano-Dioning.
<p. 159> 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 K. H. ULRICHS' "Memnon,"
ch. iii.-v.)
______
Krafft-Ebing's analysis of the subject is fully as elaborate as
that of Ulrichs. It is given by J. A. SYMONDS in the form of a
table, as follows:-- Sexual Inversion
1. Acquired:
a) Persistent.
b) Episodical.
2. Congenital:
a) Psychic Hermaphrodites.
b) Urnings
i) Male Habitus (Mannlings).
ii) Female Habitus (Weiblings).
c) Androgyni.
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 <p. 160> sex-variations all
indicate disease.]--"A Problem in Modern Ethics," p.
46.
______
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."--A. MOLL, op. cit.,
p. 139.
______
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.
______
"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."--A. MOLL, op. cit., p. 271. (From a letter
by a sixty year old Urning.)
______
"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 <p. 161> 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. PAUL NAECKE, in Der Tag, 26th Oct., 1907.
______
"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
______
"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. 162>"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 M. HIRSCHFELD'S
evidence as medical specialist in the Moltké-Harden trial.
______
"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."--J. A. SYMONDS, "A Problem in
Modern Ethics," p. 82.
______
"Before Justinian, both Constantine and Theodosius passed
laws against sexual inversion, committing the <p. 163> 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."--Ibid, p. 13.
______
"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 vindices flammæ."--HAVELOCK
ELLIS, op. cit., p. 206.
______
<p. 164>
"At the present time, shoemakers, who make shoes to measure,
deal more rationally with individuals than our teachers and schoolmasters
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." --O. WEININGER, "Sex and Character," ch.
v.
______
"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."--O. WEININGER, "Sex and Character,"
ch. iv.
______
"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
<p. 165> 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 Joux, "Die Enterbten des Liebesglückes,"
p. 16.
______
"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.)
______
"Thus the very basest of all trades, that of chantage [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 <p. 166> 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.
______
"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."--HAVELOCK ELLIS, op. cit., p. 65,
"case" ix.
______
"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 <p. 167>
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."--
Ibid, "case" vii., p. 58.
______
"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 <p.
168> 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."--Imre: a memorandum, by XAVIER MAYNE, p. 110. Naples,
R. Rispoli, 1906.
______
"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. <p. 169> 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."--Ibid, pp. 134, 135.
______
"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."--HAVELOCK ELLIS, op. cit.,
p. 186.
______
"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 <p. 170> the
barrier of sex too, on his way to become the complete Human--the
Universal."--From a private letter.
______
"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, male . . . 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."-- CHARLES G. LELAND, "The Alternate Sex,"
pp. 41 and 57. London, 1904.
______
"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."--
Communicated by Professor ---- in Appendix to HAVELOCK ELLIS'S
"Sexual Inversion," p. 240.
______
"What from the beginning struck me most, but <p. 171>
now appears perfectly clear and indeed necessary is that among
the homosexuals there is found the most remarkable class of men,
namely, those whom I call supervirile. 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 be a man's
hero, if in any way he has the stuff for it.
"Consequently the German penal code, in stamping homosexuality
as a crime, puts the highest blossoms of humanity on the proscription
list."--Professor Dr. JAEGER, "Die Entdeckung der Seele,"
pp. 268, 269.
______
"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, <p. 172> 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."--M. A. RAFFALOVICH, "Uranisme
et Unisexualité," p. 74.
______
"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."--DE JOUX, "Die
Enterbten des Liebesglückes," p. 46.
______
"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."--
Ibid, p. 41.
______
"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."--Ibid,
p. 63.
______
<p. 173>
"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."--Ibid, p. 97.
______
"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 love 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 <p.
174> towards whatever is good, and more capable of genuine
enthusiasm and love of their fellows, than the latter."--Ibid,
p. 204.
______
"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."-- Ibid,
p. 253.
______
"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
paiderastia of the best Greek days, and the dignity, temperance,
even chastity, which it involved, will sometimes find a ready
response in the emotional enthusiastic nature of the congenital
invert. <p. 175> The `manly' love celebrated by Walt Whitman
in `Leaves of Grass,' although it may be of more doubtful value
for general use, furnishes a wholesome and robust ideal to the
invert who is insensitive to normal ideals. 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."--HAVELOCK
ELLIS, "Sexual Inversion," p. 202.
______
"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 <p. 176> 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."--Ibid, p. 213.
THE END.
Source.
From: Edward Carpenter: The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional
Types of Men and Women 1908
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