account of the various manifestations of sexual disease. The greater
part of these have no relation to the subject of my work. But what he
says in passing about "pæderasts, sodomites, saphists," has to be
resumed. He reckons them among "A class of individuals who cannot and
ought not to be confounded either with men enjoying the fulness of their
intellectual faculties, or yet with madmen properly so called. They form
an intermediate class, a mixed class, constituting a real link of union
between reason and madness, the nature and existence of which can most
frequently be explained only by one word: Heredity" (p. 159). It is
surprising, after this announcement, to discover that what he has to say
about sexual inversion is limited to Europe and its moral system,
"having nothing to do with the morals of other countries where pæderasty
is accepted and admitted" (p. 172, note). Literally, then, he regards
sexual inversion in modern Christian Europe as a form of hereditary
neuropathy, a link between reason and madness; but in ancient Greece, in
modern Persia and Turkey, he regards the same psychological anomaly from
the point of view, not of disease, but of custom. In other words, an
Englishman or a Frenchman who loves the male sex must be diagnosed as
tainted with disease; while Sophocles, Pindar, Pheidias, Epaminondas,
Plato, are credited with yielding to an instinct which was healthy in
their times because society accepted it. The inefficiency of this
distinction in a treatise of analytical science ought to be indicated.
The bare fact that ancient Greece tolerated, and that modern Europe
refuses to tolerate sexual inversion, can have nothing to do with the
etiology, the pathology, the psychological definition of the phenomenon
in its essence. What has to be faced is that a certain type of passion
flourished under the light of day and bore good fruits for society in
Hellas; that the same type of passion flourishes in the shade and is the
source of misery and shame in Europe. The passion has not altered; but
the way of regarding it morally and legally is changed. A scientific
investigator ought not to take changes of public opinion into account
when he is analysing a psychological peculiarity.
This point on which I am insisting--namely, that it is illogical to
treat sexual inversion among the modern European races as a malady, when
you refer its prevalence among Oriental peoples and the ancient Hellenes
to custom--is so important that I shall illustrate it by a passage from
one of Dr. W. R. Huggard's Essays.[20] "It may be said that the
difference between the delusion of the overpowering impulse in the
Fijian and in the insane Englishman is that, in the savage, the mental
characters are due to education and surroundings; while, in the lunatic
they are due to disease. In a twofold manner, however, would this
explanation fail. On the one hand, even if in the Fijian there were
disease, the question of insanity could not arise in regard to a matter
considered by his society to be one of indifference. It would be absurd
to talk of homicidal mania, of nymphomania, and of kleptomania, as forms
of insanity, where murder, promiscuous intercourse, and stealing are not
condemned. On the other hand, the assumption that insanity is always due
to disease is not merely an unproved, but an improbable supposition.
There must, of course, be some defect of organism; but there is every
reason to think that, in many cases, the defect is of the nature of a
congenital lack of balance between structures themselves healthy; and
that many cases of insanity might properly be regarded as a kind of
'throwback' to a type of organisation now common among the lower races
of mankind." Substitute any term to indicate sexual inversion for
"nymphomania" in this paragraph, and the reasoning precisely suits my
argument. It is interesting, by the way, to find this writer agreeing
with Ulrichs in his suggestion of a "congenital lack of balance between
structures themselves healthy," and with Lombroso in his supposition of
atavistic reversion to savagery. Lombroso, we shall see, ultimately
identifies congenital criminality (one form of which is sexual
aberration in this theory) with moral insanity; and here Dr. Huggard is,
unconsciously perhaps, in agreement with him; for he defines insanity to
be "any mental defect that renders a person unable (and not capable of
being made able by punishment) to conform to the requirements of
society"--a definition which is no less applicable to the born criminal
than to the madman.
How little Dr. Moreau has weighed the importance of ancient Greece in
his discussion of this topic, appears from the omission of all facts
supplied by Greek literature and history in the introduction to his
Essay. He dilates upon the legends recorded by the Roman Emperors,
because these seem to support his theory of hereditary malady. He uses
Juvenal, Tacitus, Suetonius, and the Augustan Histories to support his
position, although they form part of the annals of a people among whom
"pæderasty was accepted and admitted." He ignores the biographies of the
Spartan kings, the institutions of Crete, the Theban Sacred Band, the
dialogues of Plato, the anecdotes related about Pheidias, Sophocles,
Pindar, Demosthenes, Alcibiades, and so forth. Does he perhaps do so
because they cannot in any way be made to square with his theory of
morbidity? The truth is that ancient Greece offers insuperable
difficulties to theorists who treat sexual inversion exclusively from
the points of view of neuropathy, tainted heredity, and masturbation.
And how incompetent Dr. Moreau is to deal with Greek matters may be seen
in the grotesque synonym he has invented for pæderasty-_philopodie_ (p.
173). Properly the word is compounded of [Greek: philein] and [Greek:
pous]; but I suppose it is meant to suggest [Greek: philein] and
_podex_.
In a chapter on Legal Medicine, Moreau starts by observing that "The
facts are so monstrous, so tainted with aberration, and yet their agents
offer so strong an appearance of sound reason, occupy such respectable
positions in the world, are reputed to enjoy such probity, such
honourable sentiments, &c., that one hesitates to utter an opinion."
Proceeding further, he considers it sufficiently established that: "Not
unfrequently, under the influence of some vice of organism, generally of
heredity, the moral faculties may undergo alterations, which, if they do
not actually destroy the social relations of the individual, as happens
in cases of declared insanity, yet modify them to a remarkable degree,
and certainly demand to be taken into account, when we have to estimate
the morality of these acts" (p. 301). His conclusion, therefore, is that
the aberrations of the sexual sense, including its inversion, are
matters for the physician rather than the judge, for therapeutics rather
than punishment, and that representatives of the medical faculty ought
to sit upon the bench as advisers or assessors when persons accused of
outrages against decency come to trial. "While we blame and stigmatise
these crimes with reason, the horrified intellect seeks an explanation
and a moral excuse (nothing more) for such odious acts. It insists on
asking what can have brought a man honourably known in society,
enjoying (apparently at least) the fulness of his mental faculties, to
these base and shameful self-indulgences. We answer: Such men for the
most part are abnormal intelligences, veritable candidates for lunacy,
and, what is more, they are the subjects of hereditary maladies. But let
us cast a veil over a subject so humiliating to the honour of humanity!"
(p. 177).
As the final result of this analysis, Moreau classifies sexual inversion
with erotomania, nymphomania, satyriasis, bestiality, rape, profanation
of corpses, &c., as the symptom of a grave lesion of the procreative
sense. He seeks to save its victims from the prison by delivering them
over to the asylum. His moral sentiments are so revolted that he does
not even entertain the question whether their instincts are natural and
healthy though abnormal. Lastly, he refuses to face the aspects of this
psychological anomaly which are forced upon the student of ancient
Hellas. He does not even take into account the fact, patent to
experienced observers, that simple folk not unfrequently display no
greater disgust for the abnormalities of sexual appetite than they do
for its normal manifestations.[21]
_Die krankhaften Erscheinungen des Geschlechtssinnes. B. Tarnowsky.
Berlin, Hirschwald_, 1886.
This is avowedly an attempt to distinguish the morbid kinds of sexual
perversion from the merely vicious, and to enforce the necessity of
treating the former not as criminal but as pathological. "The forensic
physician discerns corruption, oversatiated sensuality, deep-rooted
vice, perverse will, &c., where the clinical observer recognises with
certainty a morbid condition of the patient marked by typical steps of
development and termination. Where the one wishes to punish immorality,
the other pleads for the necessity of methodical therapeutic treatment."
The author is a Russian, whose practice in St. Petersburg has brought
him into close professional relations with the male prostitutes and
habitual pæderasts of that capital.
He is able therefore to speak with authority, on the ground of a quite
exceptional knowledge of the moral and physical disturbances connected
with sodomy. I cannot but think that the very peculiarities of his
experience have led him to form incomplete theories. He is too familiar
with venal pathics, pædicators, and effeminates who prostitute their
bodies in the grossest way, to be able to appreciate the subtler
bearings of the problem.
Tarnowsky makes two broad divisions of sexual inversion. The first kind
is inborn, dependent upon hereditary taint and neuropathic diathesis. He
distinguishes three sorts of inborn perversity. In the most marked of
its forms it is chronic and persistent, appearing with the earliest
dawn of puberty, unmodified by education, attaining to its maximum of
intensity in manhood, manifesting, in fact, all the signs of ordinary
sexual inclination. In a second form it is not chronic and persistent,
but periodical. The patient is subject to occasional disturbances of the
nervous centres, which express themselves in violent and irresistible
attacks of the perverted instinct. The third form is epileptical.
With regard to acquired sexual inversion, he dwells upon the influence
of bad example, the power of imitation, fashion, corrupt literature,
curiosity in persons jaded with normal excesses. Extraordinary details
are given concerning the state of schools in Russia (pp. 63-65); and a
particular case is mentioned, in which Tarnowsky himself identified
twenty-nine passive pæderasts, between the ages of nine and fifteen, in
a single school. He had been called in to pronounce upon the causes of
an outbreak of syphilis among the pupils. Interesting information is
also communicated regarding the prevalence of abnormal vice in St.
Petersburg, where it appears that bath-men, cab-drivers, care-takers of
houses, and artisans are particularly in request (pp. 98-101). The
Russian people show no repugnance for what they call "gentlemen's
tricks." Tarnowsky calls attention to ships, garrisons, prisons, as
milieux well calculated for the development of this vice, when it had
once been introduced by some one tainted with it. His view about nations
like the Greeks, the Persians, and the Afghans is that, through
imitation, fashion, and social toleration, it has become endemic. But
all the sorts of abnormality included under the title of acquired
Tarnowsky regards as criminal. The individual ought, he thinks, to be
punished by the law. He naturally includes under this category of
acquired perversion the vices of old debauchees. At this point, however,
his classification becomes confused; for he shows how senile tendencies
to sodomitic passion are frequently the symptom of approaching brain
disease, to which the reason and the constitution of the patient will
succumb. French physicians call this "la pédérastie des ramollis."
Returning to what Tarnowsky says about the inborn species of sexual
inversion, I may call attention to an admirable description of the type
in general (pp. 11-15) I think, however, that he lays too great stress
upon the passivity of the emotions in these persons, their effeminacy of
press, habits, inclinations. He is clearly speaking from large
experience. So it must be supposed that he has not come across frequent
instances of men who feel, look, and act like men, the only difference
between them and normal males being that they love their own sex. In
describing a second degree of the aberration (pp. 16, 17), he still
accentuates effeminacy in dress and habits beyond the point which
general observation would justify. Careful study of the cases adduced in
Krafft-Ebing's "Psychopathia" supplies a just measure for the criticism
of Tarnowsky upon this head. From them we learn that effeminacy of
physique and habit is by no means a distinctive mark of the born
pæderast. Next it may be noticed that Tarnowsky believes even innate and
hereditary tendencies can be modified and overcome by proper moral, and
physique discipline in youth, and that the subjects of them will even be
brought to marry in some cases (pp. 17, 18).
It would not serve any purpose of utility here to follow Tarnowsky into
further details regarding the particular forms assumed by perverted
appetite. But attention must be directed to his definition of hereditary
predisposition (pp. 33-35). This is extraordinarily wide. He regards
every disturbance of the nervous system in an ancestor as sufficient;
epilepsy, brain disease, hysteria, insanity. He includes alcoholism,
syphilitic affections, pneumonia, typhus, physical exhaustion, excessive
anæmia, debauchery, "anything in short which is sufficient to enfeeble
the nervous system and the sexual potency of the parent." At this point
he remarks that long residence at high altitudes tends to weaken the
sexual activity and to develop perversity, adducing an old belief of the
Persians that pæderastia originated in the high plateau of Armenia (p.
35). It need hardly, I think, be said that these theories are
contradicted to the fullest extent by the experience of those who have
lived with the mountaineers of Central Europe. They are indeed capable
of continence to a remarkable degree, but they are also vigorously
procreative and remarkably free from sexual inversion.
Finally, it must be observed that Tarnowsky discusses the physical signs
of active and passive sodomy at some length (108-135). His opportunities
of physical observation in medical practice as the trusted physician of
the St. Petersburg pæderasts gives him the right to speak with
authority. The most decisive thing he says is that Casper, through want
of familiarity with the phenomena, is too contemptuous toward one point
in Tardieu's theory. In short, Tarnowsky feels sure that a habitual
passive pæderast will show something like the sign in question, if
examined by an expert in the proper position. But that is the only
deformation of the body on which he relies.
_Psychopathia Sexualis, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Conträren
Sexualempfindung. Von Dr. R. v. Krafft-Ebing. Stuttgart, Enke, 1889._
Krafft-Ebing took the problem of sexual inversion up when it had been
already investigated by a number of pioneers and predecessors. They
mapped the ground out, and established a kind of psychical chart. We
have seen the medical system growing in the works of Moreau and
Tarnowsky. If anything, Krafft-Ebing's treatment suffers from too much
subdivision and parade of classification. It is only, however, by
following the author in his differentiation of the several species that
we can form a conception of his general theory, and of the extent of the
observations upon which this is based. He starts with (A) Sexual
Inversion as an acquired morbid phenomenon. Then he reviews (B) Sexual
Inversion as an inborn morbid phenomenon.
(A) "Sexual feeling and sexual instinct," he begins, "remain latent,
except in obscure foreshadowings and impulses, until the time when the
organs of procreation come to be developed. During the period of
latency, when sex has not arrived at consciousness, is only potentially
existent, and has no powerful organic bias, influences may operate,
injurious to its normal and natural evolution. In that case the
germinating sexual sensibility runs a risk of being both qualitatively
and quantitatively impaired, and under certain circumstances may even
be perverted into a false channel. Tarnowsky has already published this
experience. I can thoroughly confirm it, and am prepared to define the
conditions of this acquired, or, in other words, this cultivated
perversion of the sexual instinct in the following terms. The
fundamental or ground predisposition is a neuropathic hereditary bias.
The exciting or efficient cause is sexual abuse, and more particularly
onanism. The etiological centre of gravity has to be sought in
hereditary disease; _and I think it is questionable whether an untainted
individual is capable of homosexual feelings at all_."[22]
Krafft-Ebing's theory seems then to be that all cases of acquired sexual
inversion may be ascribed in the first place to morbid predispositions
inherited by the patient (_Belastung_), and in the second place to
onanism as the exciting cause of the latent neuropathic ailment.
He excludes the hypothesis of a physiological and healthy deflection
from the normal rule of sex. "I think it questionable," he says,
"whether the untainted individual (_das unbelastete Individuum_) is
capable of homosexual feelings at all." The importance of this sentence
will be apparent when we come to deal with Krafft-Ebing's account of
congenital sexual inversion, which he establishes upon a large induction
of cases observed in his own practice.
For the present we have the right to assume that Krafft-Ebing regards
sexual inversion, whether "acquired" or "congenital," as a form of
inherited neuropathy (_Belastung_). In cases where it seems to be
"acquired," he lays stress upon the habit of self-pollution.
This is how he states his theory of onanism as an exciting cause of
inherited neuropathy, resulting in sexual inversion. The habit of
self-abuse prepares the patient for abnormal appetites by weakening his
nervous force, degrading his sexual imagination, and inducing
hyper-sensibility in his sexual apparatus. Partial impotence is not
unfrequently exhibited. In consequence of this sophistication of his
nature, the victim of inherited neuropathy and onanism feels shy with
women, and finds it convenient to frequent persons of his own sex. In
other words, it is supposed to be easier for an individual thus broken
down at the centres of his life to defy the law and to demand sexual
gratification from men than to consort with venal women in a brothel.
Krafft-Ebing assumes that males who have been born with neuropathic
ailments of an indefinite kind will masturbate, destroy their virility,
and then embark upon a course of vice which offers incalculable dangers,
inconceivable difficulties, and inexpressible repugnances. That is the
theory. But whence, if not from some overwhelming appetite, do the
demoralised victims of self-abuse derive courage for facing the
obstacles which a career of sexual inversion carries with it in our
civilisation? One would have thought that such people, if they could not
approach a prostitute in a brothel, would have been unable to solicit a
healthy man upon the streets. The theory seems to be constructed in
order to elude the fact that the persons designated are driven by a
natural impulse into paths far more beset with difficulties than those
of normal libertines.
Krafft-Ebing gives the details of five cases of "acquired" sexual
inversion. Three of these were the children of afflicted parents. One
had no morbid strain in his ancestry, except pulmonary consumption. The
fifth sprang from a strong father and a healthy mother. Masturbation
entered into the history of all.
It must be observed, in criticising Krafft-Ebing's theory, that it is so
constructed as to render controversy almost impossible. If we point out
that a large percentage of males who practise onanism in their
adolescence do not acquire sexual inversion, he will answer that these
were not tainted with hereditary disease. The autobiographies of
onanists and passionate woman-lovers (J. J. Rousseau, for example, who
evinced a perfect horror of homosexual indulgence, and J. J. Bouchard,
whose disgusting excentricities were directed toward females even in the
period of his total impotence) will be dismissed with the remark that
the ancestors of these writers must have shown a clean record.
It is difficult to square Krafft-Ebing's theory with the phenomena
presented by schools, both public and private, in all parts of Europe.
In these institutions not only is masturbation practised to a formidable
extent, but it is also everywhere connected with some form of sexual
inversion, either passionately Platonic or grossly sensual.
Nevertheless, we know that few of the boys addicted to these practices
remain abnormal after they have begun to frequent women. The same may be
said about convict establishments, military prisons, and the like.[23]
With such a body of facts staring us in the face, it cannot be contended
that "only tainted individuals are capable of homosexual feelings."
Where females are absent or forbidden, males turn for sexual
gratification to males. And in certain conditions of society sexual
inversion may become permanently established, recognised, all but
universal. It would be absurd to maintain that all the boy-lovers of
ancient Greece owed their instincts to hereditary neuropathy complicated
with onanism.
The invocation of heredity in problems of this kind is always hazardous.
We only throw the difficulty of explanation further back. At what point
of the world's history was the morbid taste acquired? If none but
tainted individuals are capable of homosexual feelings, how did these
feelings first come into existence? On the supposition that neuropathy
forms a necessary condition of abnormal instinct, is it generic
neuropathy or a specific type of that disorder? If generic, can valid
reasons be adduced for regarding nervous malady in any of its aspects
(hysteria is the mother, insanity is the father) as the cause of so
peculiarly differentiated an affection of the sexual appetite? If
specific, that is, if the ancestors of the patient must have been
afflicted with sexual inversion, in what way did they acquire it,
supposing all untainted individuals to be incapable of the feeling?
At this moment of history there is probably no individual in Europe who
has not inherited some portion of a neuropathic stain. If that be
granted, everybody is liable to sexual inversion, and the principle of
heredity becomes purely theoretical.
That sexual inversion may be and actually is transmitted, like any other
quality, appears to be proved by the history of well-known families both
in England and in Germany. That it is not unfrequently exhibited by
persons who have a bad ancestral record, may be taken for demonstrated.
In certain cases we are justified, then, in regarding it as the sign or
concomitant of nervous maladies. But the evidence of ancient Greece or
Rome, of what Burton calls the "sotadic races" at the present time, of
European schools and prisons, ought to make us hesitate before we commit
ourselves to Krafft-Ebing's theory that hereditary affliction is a
necessary predisposing cause.[24]
In like manner, masturbation may be credited with certain cases of
acquired homosexual feeling. Undoubtedly the instinct is occasionally
evoked in some obscure way by the depraved habit of inordinate
self-abuse. Yet the autobiographies of avowed Urnings do not corroborate
the view that they were originally more addicted to onanism than normal
males. Ulrichs has successfully combated the theory advanced by
Tarnowsky, Prager, and Krafft-Ebing, if considered as a complete
explanation of the problem.[25] On the other hand, common experience
shows beyond all doubt, that young men between 16 and 20 give
themselves up to daily self-abuse without weakening their appetite for
women. They love boys and practice mutual self-abuse with persons of
their own sex; yet they crave all the while for women. Of the many who
live thus during the years of adolescence, some have undoubtedly as bad
a family record as the worst of Krafft-Ebing's cases show. Finally, as
regards the onanism which is a marked characteristic of some adult
Urnings, this must be ascribed in most cases to the repression of their
abnormal instincts. They adopt the habit, as Krafft-Ebing himself says,
_faute de mieux_.[26]