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A PROBLEM IN MODERN ETHICS
_Of this work only 100 copies have been printed._
_No._
A
PROBLEM IN MODERN ETHICS
BEING
_AN INQUIRY INTO THE PHENOMENON
OF SEXUAL INVERSION_
ADDRESSED ESPECIALLY TO MEDICAL PSYCHOLOGISTS
AND JURISTS
BY
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
LONDON
1896
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
LIST OF BOOKS CONSULTED vii
INTRODUCTION 1
I. CHRISTIAN OPINION FROM THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN 5
II. VULGAR ERRORS 9
III. LITERATURE: PORNOGRAPHIC AND DESCRIPTIVE:
Carlier, _Les deux Prostitutions_ 16
IV. LITERATURE: MEDICO-FORENSIC: _Tardieu_ 21
V. LITERATURE: MEDICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL: Moreau, Tarnowsky,
Krafft-Ebing, Lombroso 29
VI. LITERATURE: HISTORICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL:
Meier, "A Problem in Greek Ethics"; Rosenbaum,
Bastian, Herbert Spencer, Sir Richard Burton,
Mantegazza 75
VII. LITERATURE: POLEMICAL: Karl Heinrich Ulrichs 84
VIII. LITERATURE: IDEALISTIC: Walt Whitman 115
IX. EPILOGUE 126
X. SUGGESTIONS UPON LEGISLATION 131
BOOKS CONSULTED.
GIBBON'S =History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.= Chapter
XLIV.
F. CARLIER. =Les deux Prostitutions.= Paris, Dentu, 1889.
A. TARDIEU. =Attentats aux Moeurs.= Paris, Billière, 1878.
J. L. CASPER and CARL LIMAN. =Handbuch der Gerichtlichen Medicin.= Berlin,
Hirschwald, 1889.
J. L. CASPER. =Klinische Novellen.= Berlin, Hirschwald, 1863.
P. MORRAU. =Des Aberrations du Sens Génétique.= Paris, Asselin et Houzeau,
1887.
B. TARNOWSKY. =Die krankhaften Erscheinungen des Geschlechtssinnes.=
Berlin, Hirschwald, 1886.
LEVY-MÜNCHEN. =Die Männliche Sterilität.= Berlin, Henser, 1889.
R. VON KRAFFT-EBING. =Psychopathia Sexualis.= Stuttgart, Enke, 1889.
CESARE LOMBROSO. =Der Verbrecher in Anthropologischer, Aerztlicher und
Juristischer Beziehung.= Hamburg, Richter, 1887.
M. H. F. MEIER. =Pæderastie.= Ersch und Gruber's Allgemeine Encyclopädie.
Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1837.
=A Problem in Greek Ethics.= No name or date. "Ten Copies printed for the
Author's Use."
J. ROSENBAUM. =Geschichte der Lustseuche im Alterthume.= Halle a. S., H.
W. Schmidt, 1882.
BASTIAN. =Der Mensch in der Geschichte.= Leipzig, Wigand, 1860.
HERBERT SPENCER. =Sociological Tables.=
P. DUFOUR. =Histoire de la Prostitution.= Eight vols. Bruxelles, Rozey,
1861.
Sir R. F. BURTON. =Arabian Nights.= Vol. 10. Benares, 1885.
P. MANTEGAZZA. =Gli Amori degli Uomini.= Milano, 1886.
NUMA NUMANTIUS (K. H. ULRICHS). =Inclusa.= Anthropologische Studien über
mannmännliche Geschlechtsliebe. Leipzig, 1864.
NUMA NUMANTIUS. =Formatrix.= Anthrop. Studien über urnische Liebe.
Leipzig, 1865.
NUMA NUMANTIUS. =Vindex.= Social-juristische Studien über mannmännliche
Geschlechtsliebe. Leipzig, 1864.
NUMA NUMANTIUS. =Vindicta.= Kampf für Freiheit u.s.w. Leipzig, 1865.
NUMA NUMANTIUS. =Ara Spei.= Moralphil. und Socialphil. Studien über
urnische Liebe. Leipzig, 1865.
K. H. ULRICHS. =Gladius Furens.= Das Naturräthsel der Urningsliebe.
Kassel, Württenberger, 1868.
K. H. ULRICHS. =Memnon.= Die Geschlechtsnatur des mannliebenden Urnings.
Schleiz, H. Heyn, 1868.
K. H. ULRICHS. =Incubus.= Urningsliebe und Blutgier. Leipzig, A. Serbe,
1869.
K. H. ULRICHS. =Argonauticus.= Zastrow und die Urninge. Leipzig, A. Serbe,
1869.
K. H. ULRICHS. =Prometheus.= Beitärge zur Erforschung des Naturräthsels
des Uranismus. Leipzig, Serbe, 1870.
K. H. ULRICHS. =Araxes.= Ruf nach Befreiung der Urningsnatur vom
Strafgesetz. Schleiz, Heyn, 1870.
WALT WHITMAN. =Leaves of Grass,= in "Complete Poems and Prose." 1889-1890.
WALT WHITMAN. =Democratic Vistas.=
=Nuova Codice Penale per il Regno d'Italia.=
A. COFFIGNON. =La Corruption à Paris.= Paris, La Librairie Illustrée. 7th
edition. No date.
INTRODUCTION.
There is a passion, or a perversion of appetite, which, like all human
passions, has played a considerable part in the world's history for good
or evil; but which has hardly yet received the philosophical attention
and the scientific investigation it deserves. The reason of this may be
that in all Christian societies the passion under consideration has been
condemned to pariahdom; consequently, philosophy and science have not
deigned to make it the subject of special enquiry. Only one great race
in past ages, the Greek race, to whom we owe the inheritance of our
ideas, succeeded in raising it to the level of chivalrous enthusiasm.
Nevertheless, we find it present everywhere and in all periods of
history. We cannot take up the religious books, the legal codes, the
annals, the descriptions of the manners of any nation, whether large or
small, powerful or feeble, civilised or savage, without meeting with
this passion in one form or other. Sometimes it assumes the calm and
dignified attitude of conscious merit, as in Sparta, Athens, Thebes.
Sometimes it skulks in holes and corners, hiding an abashed head and
shrinking from the light of day, as in the capitals of modern Europe.
It confronts us on the steppes of Asia, where hordes of nomads drink
the milk of mares; in the bivouac of Keltish warriors, lying wrapped in
wolves' skins round their camp-fires; upon the sands of Arabia, where
the Bedaween raise desert dust in flying squadrons. We discern it among
the palm-groves of the South Sea Islands, in the card-houses and
temple-gardens of Japan, under Esquimaux snow-huts, beneath the sultry
vegetation of Peru, beside the streams of Shiraz and the waters of the
Ganges, in the cold clear air of Scandinavian winters. It throbs in our
huge cities. The pulse of it can be felt in London, Paris, Berlin,
Vienna, no less than in Constantinople, Naples, Teheran, and Moscow. It
finds a home in Alpine valleys, Albanian ravines, Californian canyons,
and gorges of Caucasian mountains. It once sat, clothed in Imperial
purple, on the throne of the Roman Caesars, crowned with the tiara on
the chair of St. Peter. It has flaunted, emblazoned with the heraldries
of France and England, in coronation ceremonies at Rheims and
Westminster. The royal palaces of Madrid and Aranjuez tell their tales
of it. So do the ruined courtyards of Granada and the castle-keep of
Avignon. It shone with clear radiance in the gymnasium of Hellas, and
nerved the dying heroes of Greek freedom for their last forlorn hope
upon the plains of Chæronea. Endowed with inextinguishable life, in
spite of all that has been done to suppress it, this passion survives at
large in modern states and towns, penetrates society, makes itself felt
in every quarter of the globe where men are brought into communion with
men.
Yet no one dares to speak of it; or if they do, they bate their breath,
and preface their remarks with maledictions.
Those who read these lines will hardly doubt what passion it is that I
am hinting at. _Quod semper ubique et ab omnibus_--surely it deserves a
name. Yet I can hardly find a name which will not seem to soil this
paper. The accomplished languages of Europe in the nineteenth century
supply no term for this persistent feature of human psychology, without
importing some implication of disgust, disgrace, vituperation. Science,
however, has recently--within the last twenty years in fact--invented a
convenient phrase, which does not prejudice the matter under
consideration. She speaks of the "inverted sexual instinct"; and with
this neutral nomenclature the investigator has good reason to be
satisfied.
Inverted sexuality, the sexual instinct diverted from its normal
channel, directed (in the case of males) to males, forms the topic of
the following discourse. The study will be confined to modern times, and
to those nations which regard the phenomenon with religious detestation.
This renders the enquiry peculiarly difficult, and exposes the enquirer,
unless he be a professed expert in diseases of the mind and nervous
centres, to almost certain misconstruction. Still, there is no valid
reason why the task of statement and analysis should not be undertaken.
Indeed, one might rather wonder why candid and curious observers of
humanity have not attempted to fathom a problem which faces them at
every turn in their historical researches and in daily life. Doubtless
their neglect is due to natural or acquired repugnance, to feelings of
disgust and hatred, derived from immemorial tradition, and destructive
of the sympathies which animate a really zealous pioneer. Nevertheless,
what is human is alien to no human being. What the law punishes, but
what, in spite of law, persists and energises, ought to arrest
attention. We are all of us responsible to some extent for the
maintenance and enforcement of our laws. We are all of us, as
evolutionary science surely teaches, interested in the facts of
anthropology, however repellant some of these may be to our own
feelings. We cannot evade the conditions of _atavism_ and _heredity_.
Every family runs the risk of producing a boy or a girl whose life will
be embittered by inverted sexuality, but who in all other respects will
be no worse or better than the normal members of the home. Surely, then,
it is our duty and our interest to learn what we can about its nature,
and to arrive through comprehension at some rational method of dealing
with it.
I.
CHRISTIAN OPINION.
Since this enquiry is limited to actual conditions of contemporary life,
we need not discuss the various ways in which the phenomenon of sexual
inversion has been practically treated by races with whose habits and
religions we have no affinity.
On the other hand, it is of the highest importance to obtain a correct
conception of the steps whereby the Christian nations, separating
themselves from ancient paganism, introduced a new and stringent
morality into their opinion on this topic, and enforced their ethical
views by legal prohibitions of a very formidable kind.
Without prejudging or prejudicing this new morality, now almost
universally regarded as a great advance upon the ethics of the earlier
pagan world, we must observe that it arose when science was
non-existent, when the study of humanity had not emerged from the
cradle, and when theology was in the ascendant. We have therefore to
expect from it no delicate distinctions, no anthropological
investigations, no psychological analysis, and no spirit of toleration.
It simply decreed that what had hitherto been viewed as immorality at
worst should henceforth be classed among crimes against God, nature,
humanity, the state.
Opening the Bible, we find severe penalties attached to sexual inversion
by the Mosaic law, in the interests of population and in harmony with
the Jewish theory of abominations. The lesson is driven home by the
legend of two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, overwhelmed with fire because
of their addiction to abnormal sexual indulgences. Here the _vindices
flammæ_ of the Roman code appear for the first time--the stake and the
flames, which mediæval legislation appointed for offenders of this sort.
St. Paul, penetrated with Hebrew ethics, denounced the corruption of the
Gentiles in these words: "For this cause God gave them up into vile
affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that
which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural
use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men
working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that
recompence of their error which was meet."
Christ uttered no opinion upon what we now call sexual inversion.
Neither light nor leading comes from Him, except such as may be
indirectly derived from his treatment of the woman taken in adultery.
When the Empire adopted Christianity, it had therefore the traditions of
the Mosaic law and the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans to
guide its legislators on this topic. The Emperors felt obscurely that
the main pulses of human energy were slackening; population all tended
to dwindle; the territory of the empire shrank slowly year by year
before their eyes. As the depositaries of a higher religion and a
nobler morality, they felt it their duty to stamp out pagan customs, and
to unfurl the banner of social purity. The corruption of the Roman
cities had become abominable. The laziness and cowardice of Roman
citizens threatened the commonwealth with ruin. To repress sexual
appetites was not the ruler's object. It was only too apparent that
these natural desires no longer prompted the people to sufficient
procreation or fertility. The brood begotten upon Roman soil was
inadequate to cope with the inrushing tide of barbarians. Wisdom lay in
attempting to rehabilitate marriage, the family domestic life. Meanwhile
a certain vice ran riot through society, a vice for which Jehovah had
rained fire and brimstone upon Sodom, a vice which the Mosaic code
punished with death, a vice threatened by St. Paul with "that recompence
of their error which was meet."
Justinian, in 538 A.D., seems to have been terrified by famines,
earthquakes and pestilences. He saw, or professed to see, in these
visitations the avenging hand of Jehovah, the "recompence which was
meet" mysteriously prophesied by St. Paul. Thereupon he fulminated his
edict against unnatural sinners, whereby they were condemned to torments
and the supreme penalty of death. The preamble to his famous Novella 77
sets forth the principles on which it has been framed: "Lest as the
result of these impious acts whole cities should perish together with
their inhabitants; for we are taught by Holy Scripture, to wit that
through these acts cities have perished with the men in them.... It is
on account of such crimes that famines and earthquakes take place, and
also pestilences."
Before Justinian, both Constantine and Theodosius passed laws against
sexual inversion, committing the 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.
II.
VULGAR ERRORS.
Gibbon's remarks upon the legislation of Constantine, Theodosius, and
Justinian supply a fair example of the way in which men of learning and
open mind have hitherto regarded what, after all, is a phenomenon worthy
of cold and calm consideration. "I touch," he says, "with reluctance,
and despatch with impatience, a more odious vice, of which modesty
rejects the name, and nature abominates the idea." After briefly
alluding to the morals of Etruria, Greece, and Rome, he proceeds to the
enactments of Constantine: "Adultery was first declared to be a capital
offence ... the same penalties were inflicted on the passive and active
guilt of pæderasty; and all criminals, of free or servile condition,
were either drowned, or beheaded, or cast alive into the avenging
flames."[1] Then, without further comment, he observes: "The adulterers
were spared by the common sympathy of mankind; but the lovers of their
own sex were pursued by general and pious indignation." "Justinian
relaxed the punishment at least of female infidelity: the guilty spouse
was only condemned to solitude and penance, and at the end of two years
she might be recalled to the arms of a forgiving husband. But the same
Emperor declared himself the implacable enemy of unmanly lust, and the
cruelty of his persecution can scarcely be excused by the purity of his
motives. In defiance of every principle of justice he stretched to past
as well as future offences the operations of his edicts, with the
previous allowance of a short respite for confession and pardon. A
painful death was inflicted by the amputation of the sinful instrument,
or the insertion of sharp reeds into the pores and tubes of most
exquisite sensibility." One consequence of such legislation may be
easily foreseen. "A sentence of death and infamy was often founded on
the slight and suspicious evidence of a child or a servant: the guilt of
the green faction, of the rich, and of the enemies of Theodora, was
presumed by the judges, and pæderasty became the crime of those to whom
no crime could be imputed."
This state of things has prevailed wherever the edicts of Justinian have
been adopted into the laws of nations. The Cathari, the Paterini, the
heretics of Provence, the Templars, the Fraticelli, were all accused of
unnatural crimes, tortured into confession, and put to death. Where
nothing else could be adduced against an unpopular sect, a political
antagonist, a wealthy corporation, a rival in literature, a powerful
party-leader, unnatural crime was insinuated, and a cry of "Down with
the pests of society" prepared the populace for a crusade.
It is the common belief that all subjects of sexual inversion have
originally loved women, but that, through monstrous debauchery and
superfluity of naughtiness, tiring of normal pleasure, they have
wilfully turned their appetites into other channels. This is true about
a certain number. But the sequel of this Essay will prove that it does
not meet by far the larger proportion of cases, in whom such instincts
are inborn, and a considerable percentage in whom they are also
inconvertible. Medical jurists and physicians have recently agreed to
accept this as a fact.
It is the common belief that a male who loves 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. But people will not take this trouble about a
matter, which, like Gibbon, they "touch with reluctance and despatch
with impatience." Those who are obliged to do so find to their surprise
that "among the men who are subject to this deplorable vice there are
even quite intelligent, talented, and highly-placed persons, of
excellent and even noble character."[2] The vulgar expect to discover
the objects of their outraged animosity in the scum of humanity. But
these may be met with every day in drawing-rooms, law-courts, banks,
universities, mess-rooms; on the bench, the throne, the chair of the
professor; under the blouse of the workman, the cassock of the priest,
the epaulettes of the officer, the smock-frock of the ploughman, the wig
of the barrister, the mantle of the peer, the costume of the actor, the
tights of the athlete, the gown of the academician.
It is the common belief that one, and only one, unmentionable act is
what the lovers seek as the source of their unnatural gratification, and
that this produces spinal disease, epilepsy, consumption, dropsy, and
the like.[3] Nothing can be more mistaken, as the scientifically
reported cases of avowed and adult sinners amply demonstrate. Neither do
they invariably or even usually prefer the _aversa Venus_; nor, when
this happens, do they exhibit peculiar signs of suffering in health.[4]
Excess in any venereal pleasure will produce diseases of nervous
exhaustion and imperfect nutrition. But the indulgence of inverted
sexual instincts within due limits, cannot be proved to be especially
pernicious. Were it so, the Dorians and Athenians, including Sophocles,
Pindar, Æschines, Epaminondas, all the Spartan kings and generals, the
Theban legion, Pheidias, Plato, would have been one nation of rickety,
phthisical, dropsical paralytics. The grain of truth contained in this
vulgar error is that, under the prevalent laws and hostilities of modern
society, the inverted passion has to be indulged furtively,
spasmodically, hysterically; that the repression of it through fear and
shame frequently leads to habits of self-abuse; and that its
unconquerable solicitations sometimes convert it from a healthy outlet
of the sexual nature into a morbid monomania.[5] It is also true that
professional male prostitutes, like their female counterparts, suffer
from local and constitutional disorders, as is only natural.[6]
It is the common belief that boys under age are specially liable to
corruption. This error need not be confuted here. Anyone who chooses to
read the cases recorded by Casper-Liman, Casper in his Novellen,
Krafft-Ebing, and Ulrichs, or to follow the developments of the present
treatise, or to watch the manners of London after dark, will be
convicted of its absurdity. Young boys are less exposed to dangers from
abnormal than young girls from normal voluptuaries.
It is the common belief that all subjects from inverted instinct carry
their lusts written in their faces; that they are pale, languid,
scented, effeminate, painted, timid, oblique in expression. This vulgar
error rests upon imperfect observation. A certain class of such people
are undoubtedly feminine. From their earliest youth they have shown
marked inclination for the habits and the dress of women; and when they
are adult, they do everything in their power to obliterate their
manhood. It is equally true that such unsexed males possess a strong
attraction for some abnormal individuals. But it is a gross mistake to
suppose that all the tribe betray these attributes. The majority differ
in no detail of their outward appearance, their physique, or their dress
from normal men. They are athletic, masculine in habits, frank in
manner, passing through society year after year without arousing a
suspicion of their inner temperament. Were it not so, society would long
ago have had its eyes opened to the amount of perverted sexuality it
harbours.
The upshot of this discourse on vulgar errors is that popular opinion is
made up of a number of contradictory misconceptions and confusions.
Moreover, it has been taken for granted that "to investigate the
depraved instincts of humanity is unprofitable and disgusting."
Consequently the subject has been imperfectly studied; and individuals
belonging to radically different species are confounded in one vague
sentiment of reprobation. Assuming that they are all abominable, society
is content to punish them indiscriminately. The depraved debauchee who
abuses boys receives the same treatment as the young man who loves a
comrade. The male prostitute who earns his money by extortion is
scarcely more contemned than a man of birth and breeding who has been
seen walking with soldiers.
III.
LITERATURE--DESCRIPTIVE.
Sexual inversion can boast a voluminous modern literature, little known
to general readers. A considerable part of this is pornographic, and
need not arrest our attention.[7] A good deal is descriptive,
scientific, historical, anthropological, apologetical and polemical.
With a few books in each of these kinds I propose to deal now.
The first which falls under my hand is written by a French official, who
was formerly Chief of the Police Department for Morals in Paris.[8] M.
Carlier, during ten years, had excellent opportunities for studying the
habits of professional male prostitutes and their frequenters. He had
condensed the results of his experience in seven very disagreeable
chapters, which offer a revolting picture of vice and systematised
extortion in the great metropolis.
"In the numerous books," says M. Carlier, "which treat of prostitution,
the antiphysical passions have hitherto been always deliberately
omitted. Officially, public opinion does not recognise them, the
legislature will take no notice of them. The police are left alone to
react against them; and the unequal combat may some day cease, since it
is supported by no text of the code and no regulation of the state. When
that happens, pæderasty will become a calamity far more dangerous, more
scandalous, than female prostitution, the organisation of which it
shares in full. A magistrate once declared that 'in Paris it is the
school where the cleverest and boldest criminals are formed; and as a
matter of fact, it produces associations of special scoundrels, who use
it as the means of theft and _chantage_, not stopping short of murder in
the execution of their plots.'"
It will be seen from this exordium that M. Carlier regards the subject
wholly from the point of view of prostitution. He has proved abundantly
that male prostitution is organised in Paris upon the same system as its
female counterpart, and he has demonstrated that this system is attended
with the same dangers to society.
A violent animus against antiphysical passions makes him exaggerate
these dangers, for it is clear that normal vice is no less free from
sordid demoralisation and crimes of violence than its abnormal
twin-brother. Both are fornication; and everywhere, in Corinth as in
Sodom, the prostitute goes hand in hand with the bully, the robber, and
the cut-throat.
With reference to the legal position of these passions in France, he
says: "Pæderasty is not punished by our laws. It can only come within
the reach of the code by virtue of circumstances under which it may be
practised. If the facts take place in the presence of witnesses, or in a
place open to public observation, there will be an outrage to decency.
If minors are seduced, there may be proof of the habitual incitement of
minors to debauch, corruption, or even rape. But the passion itself is
not subject to penalty; it is only a vice arising from one of the seven
deadly sins. We have no intention of analysing this perverted instinct.
Since the law does not regard it, we will do like the law. We will pass
in silence all its private details, occupying ourselves only with what
meets the eye, with what may be called a veritable prostitution."
M. Carlier proceeds to describe the two main classes, which in France
are known as _tantes_ and _amateurs_. The former are subdivided into
minor branches, under the names of _jésus_, _petits jésus_, _corvettes_
(naval), soldiers. The latter, called also _rivettes_, are distinguished
by their tastes for different sorts of _tantes_.
Those who are interested in such matters may turn to M. Carlier's pages
for minute information regarding the habits, coteries, houses of
debauch, bullies, earnings, methods of extortion, dwellings, balls,
banquets, and even wedding-parties of these people. A peculiar world of
clandestine vice in a great city is revealed; and the authentic
documents, abundantly presented, render the picture vivid in its
details. From the official papers which passed through M. Carlier's
bureau during ten years (1860-70), he compiles a list of 6,342 pæderasts
who came within the cognisance of the police: 2,049 Parisians, 3,709
provincials, 484 foreigners. Of these 3,532, or more than the half,
could not be convicted of illegal acts.
While devoting most of his attention to professionals who dress like
women, and have become exactly similar to the effeminated youth
described in _Monsieur Vénus_,[9] Carlier gives some curious details
about the French army. Soldiers are no less sought after in France than
in England or in Germany, and special houses exist for military
prostitution both in Paris and the garrison towns.[10] Upon this point
it should be remarked that Carlier expresses a very strong opinion
regarding the contagiousness of antiphysical passion. And certainly many
facts known about the French army go to prove that these habits have
been contracted in Algeria, and have spread to a formidable extent
through whole regiments.[11]
In conclusion, M. Carlier, though he so strongly deplores the impunity
extended by French law to sexual inversion, admits that this has not
augmented the evil. Speaking about England, where legal penalties are
heavy enough, he says; "Though they call it the _nameless crime_ there,
it has in England at least as many votaries as in France, and they are
quite as depraved."[12]
IV.
LITERATURE--MEDICO-FORENSIC.
Carlier's book deals with the external aspects of inverted sexuality, as
this exists in Paris under the special form of prostitution. The author
professes to know nothing more about the subject than what came beneath
his notice in the daily practice of his trade as a policeman. He writes
with excusable animosity. We see at once that he is neither a
philosopher by nature, nor a man of science, but only a citizen, endowed
with the normal citizen's antipathy for passions alien to his own.
Placed at the head of the Bureau of Morals, Carlier was brought into
collision with a tribe of people whom he could not legally arrest, but
whom he cordially hated. They were patently vicious; and (what was
peculiarly odious to the normal man) these degraded beings were all
males. He saw that the public intolerance of "antiphysical passions,"
which he warmly shared, encouraged an organised system of _chantage_.
Without entertaining the question whether public opinion might be
modified, he denounced the noxious gang as pests of society. The fact
that England, with her legal prohibitions, suffered to the same extent
as France from the curse of "pæderasty," did not make him pause.
Consequently, the light which he has thrown upon the subject of this
treatise only illuminates the dark dens of male vice in a big city. He
leaves us where we were about the psychological and ethical problem. He
shows what deep roots the passion strikes in the centres of modern
civilisation, and how it thrives under conditions at once painful to its
victims and embarrassing to an agent of police.
Writers on forensic medicine take the next place in the row of literary
witnesses. It is not their business to investigate the psychological
condition of persons submitted to the action of the laws. They are
concerned with the law itself, and with those physical circumstances
which may bring the accused within its operation, or may dismiss him
free from punishment.
Yet their function, by importing the quality of the physician into the
sphere of jurisprudence, renders them more apprehensive of the
underlying problem than a mere agent of police. We expect impartial
scientific scrutiny in such authorities, and to some extent we find it.
The leading writers on forensic medicine at the present time in Europe
are Casper (edited by Liman) for Germany, Tardieu for France, and Taylor
for England. Taylor is so reticent upon the subject of unnatural crime
that his handbook on "The Principles and Practice of Medical
Jurisprudence" does not demand minute examination. It may, however, be
remarked that he believes false accusations to be even commoner in this
matter than in the case of rape, since they are only too frequently made
the means of blackmailing. For this reason he leaves the investigation
of such crimes to the lawyers.
Both Casper and Tardieu discuss the topic of sexual inversion with
antipathy. But there are notable points of difference in the method and
in the conclusions of the two authors. Tardieu, perhaps because he is a
Frenchman, educated in the school of Paris, which we have learned to
know from Carlier, assumes that all subjects of the passion are criminal
or vicious. He draws no psychological distinction between pæderast and
pæderast. He finds no other name for them, and looks upon the whole
class as voluntarily degraded beings who, for the gratification of
monstrous desires, have unsexed themselves. A large part of his work is
devoted to describing what he believes to be the signs of active and
passive immorality in the bodies of persons addicted to these
habits.[13] It is evident that imagination has acted powerfully in the
formation of his theories. But this is not the place to discuss their
details.[14]
Casper and Liman approach the subject with almost equal disgust, but
with more regard for scientific truth than Tardieu. They point out that
the term pæderast is wholly inadequate to describe the several classes
of male persons afflicted with sexual inversion. They clearly expect, in
course of time, a general mitigation of the penalties in force against
such individuals. According to them, the penal laws of North Germany, on
the occasion of their last revision, would probably have been altered,
had not the jurists felt that the popular belief in the criminality of
pæderasts ought to be considered.[15] Consequently, a large number of
irresponsible persons, in the opinion of experts like Casper and Liman,
are still exposed to punishment by laws enacted under the influence of
vulgar errors.
These writers are not concerned with the framing of codes, nor again
with the psychological diagnosis of accused persons. It is their
business to lay down rules whereby a medical authority, consulted in a
doubtful case, may form his own view as to the guilt or innocence of the
accused. Their attention is therefore mainly directed to the detection
of signs upon the bodies of incriminated individuals.
This question of physical diagnosis leads them into a severe critique of
Tardieu. Their polemic attacks each of the points which he attempted to
establish. I must content myself by referring to the passage of their
work which deals with the important topic.[16] Suffice it here to say
that they reject all signs as worse than doubtful, except a certain
deformation of one part of the body, which may possibly be taken as the
proof of habitual prostitution, when it occurs in quite young persons.
Of course they admit that wounds, violent abrasions of the skin, in
certain places, and some syphilitic affections strongly favour the
presumption of a criminal act. Finally, after insisting on the
insecurity of Tardieu's alleged signs, and pointing out the
responsibility assumed by physicians who base a judgment on them, the
two Germans sum up their conclusions in the following words (p. 178):
"It is extremely remarkable that while Tardieu mentions 206 cases, and
communicates a select list of 19, which appear to him to exhibit these
peculiar conformations of the organs, he can only produce one single
instance where the formation seemed indubitable. Let anyone peruse his
19 cases, and he will be horrified at the unhesitating condemnations
pronounced by Tardieu." The two notes of exclamation which close this
sentence in the original are fully justified. It is indeed horrifying to
think that a person, implicated in some foul accusation, may have his
doom fixed by a doctrinaire like Tardieu. Antipathy and ignorance in
judges and the public, combined with erroneous canons of evidence in the
expert, cannot fail to lead in such cases to some serious miscarriage of
justice.
Passing from the problem of diagnosis and the polemic against Tardieu,
it must be remarked that Casper was the first writer of this class to
lay down the distinction between inborn and acquired perversion of the
sexual instinct. The law does not recognise this distinction. If a
criminal act be proved, the psychological condition of the agent is
legally indifferent--unless it can be shown that he was clearly mad and
irresponsible, in which case he may be consigned to a lunatic asylum
instead of a jail. But Casper and Liman, having studied the question of
sexual maladies in general, and given due weight to the works of
Ulrichs, call attention to the broad differences which exist between
persons in whom abnormal appetites are innate and those in whom they are
acquired. Their companion sketches of the two types deserve to be
translated and presented in a somewhat condensed form.[17]
"In the majority of persons who are subject to this vice, it is
congenital; or at any rate the sexual inclination can be followed back
into the years of childhood, like a kind of physical hermaphroditism.
Sexual contact with a woman inspires them with real disgust. Their
imagination delights in handsome young men, and statues or pictures of
the same. In the case of this numerous class of pæderasts there is
therefore no depraved fancy at work, no demoralisation through satiety
of natural sexual appetite,[18] Their congenital impulse explains the
fact, moreover, that very many pæderasts are addicted to what may be
termed a Platonic voluptuousness, and feel themselves drawn towards the
objects of their desire with a warmth of passion more fervent than is
common in the relations of the opposed sexes; that, in other cases
again, they are satisfied with embracements, from which they derive a
mutual pleasure. Westphal maintains that this anomalous direction of the
sexual appetite is more often the symptom of a psychopathical,
neuropathical condition than people commonly suppose."[19]
"In the case of another class of men, upon the contrary, the taste for
this vice has been acquired in life, and is the result of over-satiety
with natural pleasures. People of this stamp sometimes indulge their
gross appetites alternately with either sex. I once observed a man,
after contracting a venereal disease with women, adopt pæderasty out of
fear of another infection; but he was, it must be admitted, a
weak-minded individual. In all the great towns of Europe the vice goes
creeping around, unobserved by the uninitiated. It appears that there is
no inhabited spot of the globe where it may not be discovered. I said,
unobserved by the uninitiated, advisedly. In antiquity the members of
the sect had their own means of mutual recognition. And at the present
time, these men know each other at first sight; moreover, they are found
everywhere, in every station of society, without a single exception. 'We
recognise each other at once,' says the writer of a report which I shall
communicate below: 'A mere glance of the eye suffices; and I have never
been deceived. On the Rigi, at Palermo, in the Louvre, in the Highlands
of Scotland, in Petersburg, on disembarking at the port of Barcelona, I
have found people, never seen by me before, and whom I discriminated in
a second.' Several men of this sort whom I have known (continues Casper)
are certainly accustomed to dress and adorn themselves in a rather
feminine way. Nevertheless, there are indisputable pæderasts, who
present an entirely different aspect, some of them elderly and negligent
in their attire, and people of the lower classes, distinguished by
absolutely nothing in their exterior from other persons of the same
rank."
Medico-juristic science made a considerable step when Casper adopted
this distinction of two types of sexual inversion. But, as is always the
case in the analysis of hitherto neglected phenomena, his classification
falls far short of the necessities of the problem. While treating of
acquired sexual inversion, he only thinks of debauchees. He does not
seem to have considered a deeper question--deeper in its bearing upon
the way in which society will have to deal with the whole problem--the
question of how far these instincts are capable of being communicated by
contagion to persons in their fullest exercise of sexual vigour. Taste,
fashion, preference, as factors in the dissemination of anomalous
passions, he has left out of his account. It is also, but this is a
minor matter, singular that he should have restricted his observations
on the freemasonry among pæderasts to those in whom the instinct is
acquired. That exists quite as much or even more among those in whom it
is congenital.
The upshot of the whole matter, however, is that the best book on
medical jurisprudence now extant repudiates the enormities of Tardieu's
method, and lays it down for proved that "the majority of persons who
are subject" to sexual inversion come into the world, or issue from the
cradle, with their inclination clearly marked.
V.
LITERATURE--MEDICINE.
Medical writers upon this subject are comparatively numerous in French
and German literature, and they have been multiplying rapidly of late
years. The phenomenon of sexual inversion is usually regarded in these
books from the point of view of psychopathic or neuropathic derangement,
inherited from morbid ancestors, and developed in the patient by early
habits of self-abuse.
What is the exact distinction between "psychopathic" and "neuropathic" I
do not know. The former term seems intelligible in the theologian's
mouth, the latter in a physician's. But I cannot understand both being
used together to indicate different kinds of pathological diathesis.
What is the soul, what are the nerves? We have probably to take the two
terms as indicating two ways of considering the same phenomenon; the one
subjective, the other objective; "psychopathic" pointing to the
derangement as observed in the mind emotions of its subject;
"neuropathic" to the derangement as observed in anomalies of the nervous
system.
It would be impossible, in an essay of this kind, to review the whole
mass of medical observation, inference and speculation which we have at
our command. Nor is a layman, perhaps, well qualified for the task of
criticism and comparison in a matter of delicacy where doctors differ as
to details. I shall therefore content myself with giving an account of
four of the most recent, most authoritative, and, as it seems to me,
upon the whole most sensible studies. Moreau, Tarnowsky, Krafft-Ebing
and Lombroso take very nearly similar views of the phenomenon; and
between them they are gradually forming a theory which is likely to
become widely accepted.
_Des Aberrations du Sens Génésique, par le Dr. Paul Moreau_, 4th
edition, 1887.
Moreau starts with the proposition that there is a sixth sense, "le sens
génital," which, like other senses, can be injured psychically and
physically without the mental functions, whether affective or
intellectual, suffering thereby. His book is therefore a treatise on the
diseases of the sexual sense. These diseases are by no means of recent
origin, he says. They have always and everywhere existed.
He begins with a historical survey, which, so far as antiquity is
concerned, is very defective. Having quoted with approval the following
passage about Greek society:--
"La sodomie se répand dans toute la Grèce; les écoles des philosophes
deviennent des maisons de débauche, et les grands exemples d'amitié
légués par le paganisme ne sont, pour la plupart, qu'une infâme
turpitude voilée par une sainte apparence": having quoted these words
of Dr. Descuret, Moreau leaves Greece alone, and goes on to Rome. The
state of morals in Rome under the empire he describes as "une
dépravation maladive, devenue par la force des choses héréditaire,
endémique, épidémique." Then follows a short account of the emperors and
their female relatives. "Cet éréthisme génésique qui, pendant près de
deux siècles, régna a l'état épidémique dans Rome" he ascribes mainly to
heredity. Of Julia, the daughter of Augustus, he says, "Peut-on lutter
contre un état morbide héréditaire?" The union of unrestrained
debauchery and ferocity with great mental gifts strikes him as a note of
disease; and he winds up with this sentence: "Parmi les causes les plus
fréquentes des aberrations du sens génital, l'hérédité tient la première
place."
Then he passes to the middle ages, and dwells upon the popular belief in
_incubi_ and _succubi_. It is curious to find him placing Leo X.,
François I., Henri IV., Louis XIV., among the neuropathics. When it
comes to this, everybody with strong sexual instincts, and the
opportunity of indulging them, is a nervous invalid. Modern times are
illustrated by the debaucheries of the Regency, the reign of Louis XV.,
Russian ladies, the Marquis de Sade. The House of Orleans seems in truth
to have been tainted with hereditary impudicity of a morbid kind. But if
it was so at the end of the last century, it has since the Revolution
remarkably recovered health--by what miracle?
Moreau now formulates the thesis he wishes to prove: "L'aberration
pathologique des sentiments génésiques doit être assimilée complètement
à une névrose, et, comme telle, son existence est compatible avec les
plus hautes intelligences." He discovers hereditary taint universally
present in these cases. "Hérédité directe, hérédité indirecte, hérédité
transformée, se trouve chez les génésiaques."
Passing to etiology, he rests mainly upon an organism predisposed by
ancestry, and placed in a milieu favourable to its morbid development.
Provocative causes are not sufficient to awake the aberration in healthy
organisms, but the least thing will set a predisposed organism on the
track. This, I may observe, seems to preclude simple imitation, upon
which Moreau afterwards lays considerable stress; for if none but the
already tainted can be influenced by their milieu, none but the tainted
will imitate.
What he calls "General Physical Causes" are (1) Extreme Poverty, (2)
Age, (3) Constitution, (4) Temperament, (5) Seasons of the Year, (6)
Climate, (7) Food.
Extreme poverty leads to indiscriminate vice, incest, sodomy, &c. That
is true, and we know that our city poor and the peasants of some
countries are habitually immoral. Yet Moreau proves too much here. For,
according to his principles, hereditary neurosis ought by this time to
have become chronic, epidemic, endemic, in all the city poor and in all
the peasants of all countries; which is notably not the fact. Puberty
and the approach of senility are pointed out as times when genesiac
symptoms manifest themselves. His observations upon the other points are
commonplace enough; and he repeats the current notion that inhabitants
of hot climates are more lascivious than those of the North.
Among "Individual Physical Causes," Moreau treats of malformation of the
sexual organs, diseases of those organs, injuries to the organism by
wounds, blows, poisons, masturbation, excessive indulgence in venery,
and exaggerated continence.
When we come to "General Moral Causes," heredity plays the first part.
This may be direct, i.e., the son of a genesiac will have the same
tastes as his father, or transformed; what is phthisis in one generation
assuming the form of sexual aberration in another. Bad education and
exposure to bad examples, together with imitation, are insisted on more
vaguely.
The "Individual Moral Causes" include impressions received in early
youth, on which I think perhaps Moreau does not lay sufficient stress,
and certain tendencies to subjective preoccupations with ideal ideas,
certain abnormal physical conditions which disturb the whole moral
sensibility.
Passing to Pathological Anatomy, Moreau declares that it is as yet
impossible to localise the sexual sense. The brain, the cerebellum, the
spinal marrow? We do not know. He seems to incline toward the
cerebellum.