CHAPTER XVII

THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASPECT OF PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS

“_I hope that in the not distant future, for the advancement of

science, physicians will be glad to ally themselves with folk-lorists

and ethnologists._”--FREDERICK S. KRAUSS.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XVII

Anthropological and clinical views of sexual anomalies -- Ubiquity and

enduring nature of psychopathia sexualis -- Secondary rôle of

civilization and degeneration -- The fable of “the good old times” --

The ungrounded fear of degeneration -- “Nervous degeneration” in

earlier times -- Recent arguments against the degeneration theory --

Metchnikoff’s book, “The Nature of Man” -- Georg Hirth’s idea of

“Hereditary Enfranchisement.”

Elements of the anthropological theory of psychopathia sexualis -- The

need for variety in sexual relationships -- Sexual perversions in

healthy persons -- The effect of external influences -- Morbid

impressions -- Artificial production of perversions (repetition,

suggestion, imitation, seduction) -- Importance of sexual

differentiation -- Congenital character of perversions -- The

diffusion of perversions among savage races -- Examples -- Immorality

in the country -- Influence of race and nationality -- Of age and sex

-- Social differences -- Influence of civilization -- Influence of

conventionality -- The unrest of the present day -- Spiritual

configuration of modern perversity.

_Appendix: Sexual Perversions due to Diseases._ -- General survey --

Epilepsy and sexual perversions -- Other mental diseases-Syphilis and

sexual perversions -- Abnormalities of the genital organs.

CHAPTER XVII

In my “Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,”

published in the years 1902 and 1903, I for the first time attempted to

deal systematically, from the standpoint of the =anthropologist= and

=ethnologist=, with the great province of the so-called “psychopathia

sexualis,” the field of sexual aberrations, degenerations, anomalies,

perversities, and perversions. I started from the point of view that, in

order to obtain new ideas regarding the nature of psychopathia sexualis,

and in order to revise the old ideas in the light of recent knowledge,

we must keep before our eyes, not one-sidedly “=the sick man=,” but

comprehensively “=man as man=,” both as =civilized man= and as =savage

man=.

Previously the doctrine of psychopathia sexualis had been dominated

exclusively by =clinical, purely medical conceptions=. Observations had

been limited to morbid phenomena, occurring in individuals with an

abnormal _vita sexualis_. Thus there had arisen a general view of the

=nature= of sexual anomalies, by which these anomalies were allotted

almost entirely to the province of the physician, and were described as

=stigmata of degeneration=. H. J. Löwenstein,[456] Häussler,[457] and

Kaan,[458] in the third and fifth decades of the nineteenth century,

were the first to adopt this medical point of view of sexual

aberrations; and finally, in the last quarter of the same century,

Richard von Krafft-Ebing[459] converted modern sexual pathology into a

comprehensive scientific system,[460] which stands and falls with the

idea of =degeneration=.

Von Krafft-Ebing is, and remains, the true founder of modern sexual

pathology. Without wishing in the slightest degree to underestimate the

value of the clinical researches he carried out in this province of

research, characterized by precision and profound scientific

zeal--without undervaluing for a moment these extraordinary services--I

am compelled to point out that his purely medical view of sexual

aberrations is one-sided, and to insist that it must be amplified and

rectified by anthropological and ethnological researches.

Let us leave the hospital and the medical consulting-room; let us make a

journey round the world; let us observe the sexual activity of the

_genus homo_ in its manifold phenomena, not as physicians, but as

ordinary observers; let us compare the sexuality of the civilized human

being with that of the savage: then we shall recognize the vast

extension of our visual field for the comprehension of psychopathia

sexualis; we shall see how the civilized and temporary phenomenon

becomes absorbed into the general human phenomenon, presenting amid all

local variations =the same fundamental lineaments=. Psychopathia

sexualis exists =everywhere= and =at all times=. Culture, civilization,

and diseases play only the parts of favouring, modifying, intensifying

factors.

I do not go so far as Freud, who, on account of the now generally

recognized wide diffusion of perverse sexual tendencies, is compelled to

adopt the view “that the rudiments of perversions are the =primeval=

general rudiments of the human sexual impulse, out of which the normal

sexual mode of behaviour is developed in the course of evolution, in

consequence of organic changes and psychical inhibitions”;[461] but I do

maintain that sexual perversities and perversions appertain to the human

race as such, and independently of civilization. I am convinced that

they are =supplementary= to normal sexual manifestations, and that their

diffusion among civilized and savage peoples =extends far more widely

than the circle of true degenerative phenomena=.

The sexual impulse, as a purely physical function, is neither an object

of comparison nor a distinctive characteristic between primitive and

civilized humanity. The “elementary ideas” of humanity return everywhere

again in the elementary manifestations of sexual aberrations.

From the investigations collected and published in the above-mentioned

work I have been led to the firm conviction, which I must now put

forward as a =scientific truth= based upon the teaching of anthropology,

folk-lore, and the history of civilization, that at the present day, in

our time so widely decried as “nervous,” “degenerate,” and

“overcivilized,” not only are there no more sexually “perverse” persons

than there were in former days--let us think only of the middle ages,

with their frightful excesses, appearing in epidemic diffusion--but,

further, that the greater part of the perversions of the present day are

not to be regarded as “degenerations” at all; and, finally, that the

factors which are to weaken and undermine the vital forces of a nation

must be something other than purely sexual factors. For sexual

aberrations alone have, taken as a whole, but a trifling influence in

effecting the decadence of a nation. They first gain such an influence

in combination with causes, which we cannot now discuss, of an economic

and political nature.

As old as humanity is the fable of the good old times, of the golden

youth of the human race, of the glorious past, to which an always

corrupt, physically and morally rotten =present= is supposed to have

succeeded.[462] The ancients held this view; it recurred at the time of

the renascence; and since the time of Rousseau’s unfortunate

condemnation of all civilization, it has been, in the hands of all

zealots, moral fanatics, backsliders, and guardians of conventional

morality, a greatly prized weapon, and one, also, of great power when

used to influence the ignorant and easily misled. Anthropology, the

history of primitive man, and the history of civilization in general,

have utterly destroyed this beautiful dream of the good old times and of

the =better= days of the past. Nothing has been left but the ever =more

beautiful= present!

The critical and far-sighted Lessing opposed Rousseau’s hypothesis of

corruption by means of “civilization.” It was true, he said, that

Athens, standing so high in civilization, and at the same time so

corrupt, passed away; but the =virtuous= Sparta, did not this also pass

away? Rousseau himself had to admit that the destruction of civilization

would be of no use, that the world would then relapse into barbarism,

and that the corruption would =none the less= persist. The philologist

Muff,[463] discussing this question, added that if civilization had not

come, vice would still have been dominant, and that civilization,

involving as it does =intellectual= progress, provides also the means

for counteracting vice.

Physicians and natural philosophers have long protested against the

theory of the corrupt and degenerate “present.” For instance, a

countryman of Rousseau’s, Dr. Delvincourt,[464] exclaimed:

“How false is the assumption of the fanatics and the pious who

attribute to the moral corruption of our century the majority of

diseases, and, above all, venereal diseases; who maintain that the

race is degenerating; and who thunder an anathema against modern young

men, whom they would gladly muzzle as we muzzle an animal.”

Must we, then, he asks, at a moment when civilization is marching

forward with giant strides, have our ears wearied with sophisms which

can no longer deceive even the ignorant masses? And he shows how =since

primeval times, everywhere=, all over the earth, vice has been diffused.

He rightly points to the innumerable _monuments de turpitude_ of all

ages.

About the same time (be it noted, more than sixty years ago) in Germany

the celebrated natural philosopher Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, in an

academic speech with the distinctive title “=The Fear that Progressive

Intellectual Development will Lead to Physical National Degeneration: A

Demonstration that this Fear is entirely devoid of Scientific and

Medical Foundation=” (Berlin, 1842), opposed the belief in the

unwholesome influence of civilization upon the popular strength and

popular morals. Of special interest to us are his remarks upon the

alleged deleterious influence of civilization upon sexuality. He says

(p. 8):

“The occurrence of puberty in warm climates at a comparatively early

age (from ten to fifteen years), in cold climates somewhat later (from

fourteen to eighteen years), is a natural measure of human

intelligence and power; and if our sexually mature youths at school,

at the time at which their development has naturally progressed to

this point, experience also sexual stimulation, this is entirely

according to the nature of things, and only imposes upon those in

charge of schools, and upon parents, the special duty of watchfulness

in these respects. Even if secret vice becomes general anywhere among

young fellows in a manner open to regret, still, this does not mean

that our schools are the cause of physical weakness, of

overstimulation, and of deterioration of the people and of the epoch;

it merely indicates a local deficiency in energetic purposive

education, and a lack of the necessary watchfulness over the youths in

the particular institution in which the trouble has occurred, or that

the family life of the children thus affected is less strictly moral

than we could wish; and the evil is only to be overcome by

counteracting its especial causes. In many cases we may compare

outbreaks of premature sexuality with epidemics of disease, which also

find entrance through lack of sufficient care. Just the same is it in

respect of the great mass of adults who, by exhortation and example on

the part of those whose business it is to give them counsel, are in

most cases so easily led in the right direction, but who, in the

absence of such judicious treatment, often give way to the most

unbridled licentiousness. The student of popular history will easily

find numerous instances of cause and effect, now of the former and now

of the latter kind.”

Ehrenberg comes to the conclusion, most encouraging to ourselves and to

our time, and one which may be unhesitatingly accepted, that the entire

history of humanity, in so far as that history is open to us, leads us

to believe, not that the progress of civilization[465] has given rise to

infirmity or to nervous overstimulation of the people, but, on the

contrary, that as the centuries pass, =our bodies are as powerfully

developed as formerly=, and that there is an ever-happier development of

all the nobler human activities, such as can only result from an

improvement in our mental faculties.

At the fifty-ninth Congress of German Natural Philosophers and

Physicians, held at Berlin in the year 1886, the celebrated physicist

Werner von Siemens, discussing the same problem in a formal speech,

proved the nullity of the hypothesis of the evil influence of

civilization upon the physical and moral nature of humanity, and

expressed himself as fully convinced that

“our activity in research and discovery conducts humanity to higher

stages of civilization, ennobles humanity, and makes ideal aims more

easily accessible; that the coming scientific age will diminish

poverty and illness, will increase the enjoyment of life, and will

make humanity better, happier, and more contented with its lot.”

“Has humanity degenerated?” asks a celebrated specialist,[466] who,

owing to the nature of his speciality, has been able to obtain

exhaustive information regarding what is often believed to be a symptom

of degeneration--namely, falling out of the hair and baldness--and he

answers:

“=Certainly not!= In the process of civilization, which has lasted for

many thousands of years, our organization has not experienced any

serious convulsion of its fundamental nature. Superficially only have

the battles we have had to fight made any mark upon us.”

To a frightful extent in earlier times the great infective epidemic

diseases decimated civilized humanity, to an extent which is hardly

realized at the present day, and those of more powerful constitution

were undoubtedly carried off quite as much as those endowed with weaker

powers of resistance. Bubonic plague, small-pox, leprosy, the sweating

sickness, scarlatina, cholera, and syphilis (which at its commencement

was a far more severe disease than it is at the present day), have often

annihilated the blossoms of youth; and yet mankind as a whole has not

suffered therefrom. Formerly there were much more violent and obstinate

nervous troubles than our modern “nervousness,” which, to a large

extent, represents merely a =phenomenon of adaptation=, not a disease in

the proper sense of the term. St. Vitus’s dance, the dancing mania, and

similar psycho-nervous epidemics, disturbed medieval humanity, without,

however, giving rise to any permanent injury, and without causing

progressive degeneration. And the most frightful sexual excesses can do

no harm to the strength of the nation.

With regard to this point, the reputed connexion between sexual excesses

and the political downfall of a nation, Carl Bleibtreu[467] rightly

remarks:

“Ancient Rome produced its greatest men during a period of moral

degeneration. The finest blossoms of Hellenic civilization coincided

with a period of fundamental immorality. We might easily urge that

after Pericles, Phidias, Aristophanes, Euripides, Alcibiades, and

Socrates, the decay of the Greek race began, notwithstanding the fact

that much later in Greek history the vital force of the nation was

proved by the appearance of men of the first rank, such as Alexander,

Aristotle, and Demosthenes. But this rejoinder does not help us much,

for in the earliest days of Greek history, in the legal codes of Solon

and Lycurgus, we find the most notable and clear indications that

precisely in respect of sexual relationship, and more especially in

regard to marriage and the procreation of children, the morals of this

fresh and youthful race were disordered to the greatest possible

extent.

“Just the same do we find it at the time of the Italian renascence and

at the time of the Hohenstaufen dynasty--a complete confusion of

sexual relationships. The eighteenth century, also, notwithstanding

all the justified jeremiads of Rousseau regarding the widespread

unnaturalness of the time, and notwithstanding all the sorrows of the

young Werther, was distinguished by the production of an incredible

abundance of men of genius; and in contemporary France, the country

which was most severely affected by this moral decay, there flourished

the generation to which such men as Mirabeau and Napoleon

belonged--men whose unparalleled vitality influences us to this

moment.”

Finally, I must refer to two leading authors of recent years, Eli

Metchnikoff and Georg Hirth, whose writings exhibit a remarkable

similarity in respect of general philosophical foundation. Both have

energetically opposed the unfounded fantasies of degeneration (there

exists also a =justified= campaign against the continuously effective

causes of degeneration in the form of alcohol, syphilis, etc.), and both

have advocated a belief in life and in the life-force.

In his work “The Nature of Man” (English translation by Chalmers

Mitchell; Heinemann, 1903), Metchnikoff advances an “optimistic

philosophy,” in opposition to the pessimistic degenerative theory of our

time, of which latter P. J. Möbius may be regarded as the chief

advocate, and he proves how the imperfections and “disharmonies” of the

human organism may give place to a further development and

perfectibility of human nature, and this =precisely in connexion with

culture and civilization. It is now that humanity first begins really to

live.=[468] Mankind has not degenerated in consequence of civilization,

but has, on the contrary, by means of civilization, first attained the

possibility of establishing “physiological old age” and “physiological

death.” Our device is not =backwards=, but =forwards=! The pessimists

cry out: “Existence has no meaning! For what purpose do we live, and for

what purpose do we die?” This dreadful “=for what purpose=” with which

Friedrich von Hellwald concludes his history of civilization, disturbs

day by day emotional minds. Metchnikoff proves that this problem is

connected with the existence of the disharmonies of human nature. But

evolution continues to transform these disharmonies into harmonies

(“orthobiosis”). Thus the aim of human existence lies in “the completion

of the entire physiological cycle of life with a normal old age, so

that, with the cessation of the instinct to live, and with the

appearance of the instinct for natural death, the cycle comes to an

end.” This is, to a certain extent, the =scientific= formulation of the

“superman” of Nietzsche, who based upon quite similar considerations his

opposition to the hypothesis of degeneration, and who, out of the

disharmonies, imperfections, and pains of life, also created the

conviction of a progressive evolution, and thus, like Metchnikoff,

thoroughly =affirmed= life. Metchnikoff’s ideal human being of the

future is realizable, but only by means of the principles of science and

intelligent culture.

Similar views to those of Metchnikoff are advanced by Georg Hirth. He,

above all, has introduced into science the most felicitous conception

of “=hereditary enfranchisement=.”[469] Thus to the pessimistic

degeneration theories and the psychical paralysis evoked by the idea of

“hereditary taint” (we now hear the expression from every mouth), Hirth

opposes a =word of power=, a word expressing “an energetic opposing

stream of tendency.” Thus the incontestable fact finds simple

expression, that

“The requirements of all individuals through millions of generations

=constitute an inalienable, progressively influential common

possession of the whole of humanity=, an =impulsive force= based upon

natural law, which marches victoriously forward over the sins and

failures of individuals.... That is to say, that in our entire

organism, so long as it continues to =live=, in addition to the

disturbing influences which we have inherited or have acquired by our

own faults, there exists also a mass of =old= and =new= constructive

influences, which work towards the =restitution of the former

condition=.... =Enfranchisement= by means of primevally old, healthy,

and strong reproductive cells is stronger than the quite recent

=tainting= by means of weakly and diseased germs. If it were not so,

the entire human race would long since have passed away, for there can

hardly exist a single family tree at the foot of which there are not

somewhere worms gnawing.”

I cannot here examine more closely the extremely interesting foundation

of this view, which rightly places in the foreground the capacity for

=self-regeneration=, for the removal of morbid vital stimuli, and their

replacement by new and healthy vital stimuli, and which notably limits

the extension of hereditary “tainting.” The conclusion which Hirth draws

from this view is identical with that of Metchnikoff--namely, =that our

life remains capable of upward progress=, a view which Hirth everywhere

happily employs in his battle “with the forces of obscurity and

degeneration.”

The theory of degeneration finds a thorough scientific refutation also

in the admirable work by Dr. William Hirsch, “Genius and Degeneration: a

Psychological Study” (Berlin and Leipzig, 1904). At the end of the book

(p. 340) the writer says:

“In view of the investigations I have made, we are necessarily led to

the conclusion that the authors mentioned have =by no means= adduced

proof of a general degeneration of the civilized nations. Humanity

need not be alarmed with regard to the alleged ‘black plague of

degeneration,’ and the world need be as little concerned by these

fables of the ‘twilight of the nations’ as by Herr Falb’s prophecies

of the approaching destruction of our planet.”

It cannot be denied that the wide diffusion of the deleterious means of

sensual gratification (alcohol, tobacco, etc.), the increase in the

number of large towns, and the rapid growth in their population, by

means of which prostitution and the spread of venereal diseases are

especially favoured, constitute important etiological factors for the

degeneration of the race. Still, the wide diffusion of public hygiene,

which is more and more brought under the notice of the individual,

affords here an effective counterpoise. “Enfranchisement” in Hirth’s

sense is here clearly manifested.

After we have seen that the “degeneration” of our time, to the medical

idea of which we shall return to speak more exactly in the next chapter,

is not greater now than it was in earlier epochs, and that sexual

anomalies have always existed, let us return to consider this point, to

the anthropological view of psychopathia sexualis.

In my “Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis” I have collected the general

human phenomena of the sexual impulse in primitive and civilized

states--that is, the everywhere recurring fundamental lineaments and

phenomena of the _vita sexualis_ peculiar to the _genus homo_ as such.

As the principal result of this inquiry, the following propositions

appear to me to be established:

=Degeneration cannot be employed, as von Krafft-Ebing has employed it in

his “Psychopathia Sexualis,” as a heuristic principle in the

investigation, recognition, and judgment of sexual aberrations and

perversions.=

At the most, degeneration is no more than a =favouring= factor of the

diffusion of sexual abnormalities, an influence which =increases the

frequency= of their appearance.

=On the contrary, the ultimate cause of all sexual perversions,

aberrations, abnormalities, and irrationalities, is the need for variety

in sexual relationships peculiar to the genus homo, which is to be

regarded as a physiological phenomenon, and the increase of which to the

degree of a sexual irritable hunger is competent to produce the most

severe sexual perversions.=

In contrast with this, “degeneration” or diseases play only a

subordinate part, and can be invoked for the explanation of only a small

number of sexual aberrations--at most for those which come to the notice

of physicians on account of pathological conditions or _in foro_. In

fact, the =majority= of cases of sexual perversions which come the way

of the physicians in clinical or forensic relationships =are=

pathological, but these constitute only a =minority of all cases=. The

large majority of cases do =not= come within the scope of

degeneration.[470]

Freud, in his “Three Essays on the Sexual Theory,” recognizes the

justice of my view, and on p. 80 he writes:

“Physicians who have first studied perversions in well-marked examples

and peculiar conditions are naturally inclined to regard them as signs

of disease or as stigmata of degeneration, just as in the case of

sexual inversion. Daily experience has shown that the majority of

these transgressions--at any rate, the less marked of them--constitute

a seldom lacking constituent of the sexual life of healthy persons. In

favourable conditions =the normal individual may exhibit such a

perversion for a considerable length of time in the place of his

normal sexual activity; or the perversion may take its place beside

the normal sexual activity. Probably there is no healthy person in

whom there does not exist, at some time or other, some kind of

supplement to his normal sexual activity, to which we should be

justified in giving the name of ‘perversity.’=”[471]

A =second= important factor in the genesis of sexual anomalies is the

=ease with which the sexual impulse is affected by external influences,

the associative inclusion of manifold external stimuli in sexual

perception itself=, the “=synæsthetic stimuli=,” as I myself have called

them, in the amatory life of mankind. In this way gradually all the

relations of art, religion, fashion, etc., to sexuality have developed,

and they offer, in conjunction with the sensory impressions and the

psychical and physical imaginative associations which accompany the

sexual act, an incredibly rich material for the manifold realizations of

the sexual need for variation.

The need for variety in sexual relationships, in conjunction with the

sexual “demand for stimulation” (Hoche),[472] plays a great part,

especially in the occurrence of sexual perversions in =adult= persons

and at a more advanced age of life. The effect of =external influences=

is most clearly noticeable in =childhood=, when it is experienced most

deeply and in a most enduring manner, and when it can become permanently

associated with sexual perception (Binet and von Schrenck-Notzing).

Alexander von Humboldt, in his “Cosmos” (vol. ii., Introduction), drew

attention to the well-known experience that “=sensual impressions and

apparently chance occurrences are, in the case of youthful emotional

individuals, often capable of determining the entire course of a human

life=.” Freud draws attention to the psychological fact that impressions

of childhood, which have apparently been forgotten, may,

notwithstanding, have left the most profound marks upon our psychical

life, and may have determined our entire subsequent development. The

impressions of childhood are often incorporated fate. For this reason,

for example, the children of criminals become criminals themselves, not

because they are “born” criminals, but because, as =children=, they grow

up in the atmosphere of crime, and the impressions they here receive

become firmly and deeply rooted in their natures. Hence the campaign

against crime must in the first place take into consideration the

=education of the children of criminals=!

From the need for variety in sexual relationships, and from the effect

of external influences, we deduce the possibility and the actual

frequency of the =acquirement= and the =artificial production= of sexual

perversions and perversities; and these, in proportion to the

=intensity= of the sexual impulse (=very variable= in strength in

different individuals, according to the ease with which it is excited),

will appear now earlier, now later, will be now transient and now

enduring.

The =third= important etiological factor in the origination of sexual

perversions is the =frequent repetition= of the =same= sexual

aberration. There can be no doubt whatever that the normal human being

can become =accustomed= to the most diverse sexual aberrations, so that

these become perversions, which appear in =healthy= human beings just as

they do in the diseased.

=Fourthly=, =suggestion= and =imitation= play an extremely important

rôle in the _vita sexualis_ alike of primitive and of civilized nations,

in accordance with which certain aberrations in the sexual sphere become

diffused with great rapidity, and make their appearance as customs,

fashions, and psychical epidemics. Those who everywhere trace

perversities from morbid rudiments underestimate the powerful influence

which =example= and =seduction= exercise in the human sexual life. This

is especially noticeable to-day in those sexual perversions which have

become =national customs=. The most celebrated example is that of

=Hellenic pæderasty=, reputedly introduced from Crete, but probably in

the first place originated by a few =genuinely= homosexual individuals,

who in their own interest transmitted artificially by suggestion their

peculiar tendencies to a few heterosexual individuals, until at last the

love of boys became a national custom which every heterosexual man

adopted. The momentous part which modern =prostitution=, and more

especially =brothels=, plays in the suggestion of perversions has

already been mentioned. It is a matter to which we shall frequently have

occasion to return. Schrank alludes (“Prostitution in Vienna,” vol. i.,

p. 285) to a prostitute who enjoyed a “European reputation” as an artist

in sexual perversities of every kind, and who enjoyed the nickname of

“the Ever-Virgin,” because she allowed men every possible kind of

enjoyment except that of regular normal intercourse (which she avoided

for fear of becoming impregnated).

=Fifthly=, the =difference= between man and woman in the essence, the

kind, and the intensity, of sexual perception (sexual activity in man,

sexual passivity in woman) constitutes a rich source of sexual

aberrations, most of which belong to the provinces of masochism and

sadism.

=Sixthly=, and lastly, in otherwise =healthy individuals there occur at

a very early age=, and probably in consequence of =congenital=

conditions, changes in the direction and the aim of sexual perception,

variations from the type of differentiated heterosexual love. =Genuine

homosexuality= is the principal phenomenon to be considered under this

head. It occurs in perfectly =healthy= individuals quite independently

of degeneration and of civilization; and it is diffused throughout the

whole world.

From all these facts may be deduced the =untenability= of a purely

=clinical and pathological= conception of sexual aberrations and

perversions. We must now accept the point of view that, although

numerous morbid degenerate and psychopathic individuals exhibit sexual

anomalies, yet these =identical= anomalies and aberrations are

extraordinarily common in =healthy= persons.

Ethnological research, for more exact details of which I may refer

to my own work already mentioned, and to the pioneer works of

Ploss-Bartels,[473] Mantegazza,[474] Friedrich S. Krauss,[475] and

Havelock Ellis,[476] has adduced stringent proof that sexual

aberrations and perversions are =ubiquitous=, diffused throughout the

entire world, just as much among primitive races as among civilized

nations, that on the psycho-physical side they are “elementary ideas” in

Bastian’s sense, that they recur everywhere in a qualitatively identical

manner as a result of similar conditions. As it is with prostitution, so

it is also with sexual perversions--a tendency to sexual aberration is

deeply rooted in human nature. It is a primitive, purely anthropological

phenomenon, which is not strengthened by civilization, but, on the

contrary, is mitigated thereby. Charles Darwin rightly points out that

the =hatred= of sexual immorality and of sexual aberrations is a “modern

virtue,” appertaining exclusively to “civilized life,” and entirely

foreign to the nature of primitive man. Primitive man revelled in wild

indecency (as Wilhelm Roscher also proves), in sexual perversions, and

libertinism.[477] The sexual aberrations of civilized mankind are for

the most part =imitations= of the examples given by primitive peoples.

Thus, the well-known “stimulating rings” of European rubber

manufacturers (_cf._ Weissenberg, in the “Transactions of the

Anthropological Society of Berlin,” 1893, p. 135) correspond to the

“stimulating stones” of the Battaks (Staudinger, _op. cit._, 1891, p.

351), to the “penis stones” of the savage Orang Sinnoi in Malacca

(Vaughan Stevens in the _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1896, pp. 181,

182), the “ampallang” of the Sunda Islands (see Miklucho-Maclay in the

“Transactions of the Anthropological Society of Berlin,” 1876, pp.

22-28). The “renifleurs” and “gamahucheurs” of the Parisian brothels and

houses of accommodation find their typical analogues in the urine

fetichists and cunnilingi of the Island of Ponape, in the Carolines

(_cf._ Ploss-Bartels), who are, in truth, far removed from the

_fin-de-siècle_ life. And what a perverse imagination have the women of

this same island! According to Otto Finsch (_Zeitschrift für

Ethnologie_, 1880, p. 316), the men of this island have all only =one=

testicle, because in boys at the age of seven or eight years the left

testicle is removed by a piece of sharpened bamboo. This is said to make

the men more desirable =to the women=! Among the Masai, for similar

reasons, circumcision is effected in such a manner that a portion of the

prepuce is left behind to form a kind of firm button of skin. “This mode

of circumcision is greatly prized by the women. Among the black races,

indeed, everything turns round the question of sensual enjoyment”

(“Medical Notes from Central Africa,” by M. C., published in the

_Deutsche Medizinische Presse_, 1902, No. 14, p. 116). And how can our

roués compete with the Tauni islanders of the South Seas? These select

certain women, who are not allowed to marry, but are reserved as simple

“objects of sensual pleasure,” and with these every kind of sexual

artifice is practised (Dempwolf, “Medical Notes on the Tauni Islanders,”

published in the _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1902, p. 335).

Thus between primitive and civilized races in these respects there are

no important differences; and according to recent researches we find the

same may be said with regard to civilized nations, that there is no

difference between =town= and =country=.[478] I quote here the account

given by an experienced author sixty years ago:

“People usually believe that in the country morals are much better

than in the towns, but this belief is quite erroneous. Brothels and

professional prostitutes naturally cannot exist in the country, but

nearly every peasant-girl in the country is equivalent to a secret

prostitute. It is incredible what sexual excesses go on between the

masculine and feminine inhabitants of the villages. Every barn, every

shed, every haystack, every copse, bears witness to this. Especially

disadvantageous to morals is it when in the heat of summer persons of

different sexes work side by side, half undressed, in remote fields

for the whole day, and lie down to rest side by side.”[479]

We may here allude to a fact that we shall have to discuss later--that

young men, after the conclusion of their term of military service, carry

back with them to the country the knowledge of sexual excesses and

perversities which they have acquired in the town, and thus diffuse

these tendencies more and more widely.

Since sexual anomalies constitute a phenomenon generally characteristic

of humanity, =race= and =nationality=, as such, have less to do with the

matter than is commonly imagined. The Mongol and the Malay are not less

voluptuous than the Semites, or than many Aryan races. Among the

Semites, the Arabs and the Turks are pre-eminently sexually perverse

nations. They seek sexual gratification indifferently in the female

harem and in the boys’ brothel (see numerous descriptions of travellers

on the moral customs of Turkey, the Levant, Cairo, Morocco, the Arabian

Soudan, the Arabs in Africa, etc.). Among the Aryan races the Aryans of

India must be considered pre-eminent as refined practitioners of

psychopathia sexualis, which they have reduced to a =system=. In

addition to recognizing forty-eight _figuræ Veneris_ (different postures

in sexual intercourse), they practise every possible variety of sexual

perversion; and they have in various textbooks[480] a systematic

introduction to sexual immorality. Here there is manifestly no trace of

morbid conditions, of degeneration, or of psychopathia; it is simply a

matter of popular manners and customs. Sexual perversion among the

Greeks and the Romans, two other Aryan nations, is too well known to

need detailed description. In modern Europe the French were at one time

believed to lead the way in sexual artifices. For a long time this has

ceased to be true, and, in fact, never was true. They do, indeed, excel,

if one may use the expression, all other nations in the outward

technique and in the elegance of their sexual excesses. To them from

very early times there has been ascribed a certain preference for the

skatological element in the sexual life; but according to the recent

researches of Friedrich S. Krauss regarding the Slavs, published in his

“Anthropophyteia,” this alleged pre-eminence is extremely doubtful. That

among the Slavs sexual perversions of every kind have an extraordinarily

wide diffusion has been shown by this investigator by the collection of

an enormous mass of material. It is also very generally known that the

English from early days have exhibited a marked tendency to sadistic

practices, and especially to flagellation. I will return later to this

remarkable phenomenon. The French accuse the Germans of an especial

tendency to homosexuality (_le vice Allemand_), but there are no

sufficient grounds for this accusation. In psychopathia sexualis, the

Germans are as cosmopolitan as they are in other respects.

With regard to the =age= of the individual in relation to sexual

perversions, the frequency of these is greater after puberty than

before,[481] and the frequency increases with advancing years. The time

at which the imagination unfolds its greatest activity, the commencement

of manhood, is extremely favourable to the origination of sexual

aberrations, and to their becoming habitual practices; and, again, the

age at which the sexual powers begin to decline, and when for their

incitation new stimuli are needed, is one at which abnormal varieties

of sexual gratification frequently originate.[482]

Which =sex= is more inclined to abnormalities of the sexual impulse, the

male or the female?

The primitively more powerful sexual impulsive life of man in

association with his greater use of alcohol makes him distinctly more

inclined to follow sexual bypaths than woman, whose sexuality at first

develops very gradually, and experiences, in consequence of motherhood,

powerful inhibitions to the development of any sexual anomalies. On the

other hand, the much =more difficult development= of voluptuous

sensations in women, by means of normal coitus, is not rarely the cause

of a tendency to perverse varieties of sexual intercourse. They often

seduce man in this direction, and excel him in the discovery of sexual

artifices. Among primitive races, where the relationships are clearest,

this is still easily recognizable, whereas by civilization the matter is

often obscured. All the artificial deformities of the male genital

organs amongst savages, which give the man much more trouble than

pleasure, but which, on the other hand, increase the voluptuous

enjoyment of the woman during the sexual act, cannot otherwise be

explained except on the ground of an original demand on the part of

women. To this category belong incisions in the glans penis, and the

implanting of small stones in the wounds until the skin has a warty

appearance (Java); perforation of the penis to enable rods beset with

bristles, feathers, rods with balls (the well-known “ampallang” of the

Dyaks of Borneo), bodkins, rings, bell-shaped apparatus, to be inserted

through these perforations; the wrapping up of the penis in strips of

fur with the hair outwards, or enveloping it in a leaden cylinder, etc.

The feminine imagination has proved inexhaustible in this direction.

Miklucho-Maclay, the great authority on the sexual psychology of the

savage races of the Malay Archipelago and the South Sea Islands,

declares it to be extremely probable =that all these customs and all

these apparatus were invented by or for women=. The women reject all men

who do not possess these stimulating apparatus on the penis. Finsch and

Kubary confirm this, and state that in most cases it is the frigidity of

the women which makes them desire such means of artificial stimulation.

Among civilized races, also, abundant material can be collected with

regard to sexual perversities among women, as has recently been done by

Paul de Régla in “Les Perversités de la Femme” (Paris, 1904), and by

René Schwaeblé in “Les Détraquées de Paris” (Paris, 1904).

The following case shows that European women sometimes demand artificial

changes in the male genital organs, in order to increase their

voluptuous sensations. Some years ago a man, fifty years of age, was

admitted into the syphilis wards of the Laibacher Hospital. The

discharge from the penis was, however, found to be due merely to

balanitis. On examination the greatly enlarged penis was found to be

perforated by rod-shaped objects, and an incision through the skin

showed that these were pins and hairpins. The pins were about two inches

long, with brass heads the size of a peppercorn, and they were at least

ten in number. One of the pins was run partly into the testicle. After

the foreign objects had been removed, the man informed us that his

mistress had stuck these in, in order that she might experience more

ardent sensations. The pins were all subcutaneous; several of them ran

right round the penis.

=Social differences= in respect of the frequency of sexual perversions

do not exist. Sexual perversions are just as widely diffused among the

lower classes as among the upper. A. Ferguson, Havelock Ellis,

Tarnowsky, and J. A. Symonds are all in agreement regarding this fact,

which, indeed, in view of the anthropological conception of psychopathia

sexualis, does not require additional explanation.

Finally, we come to the last and most important point--to the question

of the relation of =culture= and =civilization= to psychopathia

sexualis. Even though psychopathia sexualis is in its =essence=

independent of culture, is a general human phenomenon, still we cannot

fail to recognize that civilization has exercised a certain influence

upon the external mode of manifestation, and also upon the inner

psychical configuration of sexual aberrations. Especially as regards the

latter--the psychical relationships--the perversity of the civilized man

is more complicated than that of primitive man, although in =essence=

the two are identical.

The modern civilized man is in respect of his sexuality a peculiar =dual

being=. The sexuality within him leads a kind of independent existence,

notwithstanding its intimate relationship to the whole of the rest of

his spiritual life. There are moments in which, even in men of lofty

spiritual nature, pure sexuality becomes separated from love, and

manifests itself in its utterly elementary nature beyond good and evil.

I expressed earlier the idea that this frequent phenomenon reminded me

of the “monomania” of the older alienists. “Il y a en nous deux êtres,

l’être moral et la bête: l’être moral sait ce que mérite l’amour

véritable, la bête aspire à la fange où on la pousse,” we find in a

French erotic work (“Impressions d’une Fille” par Léna de Mauregard,

vol. i., pp. 57, 68; Paris, 1900).

No other human impulsive manifestation is so ill adapted as sexuality to

the =coercion= and =conventionality= which civilization necessarily

entails. Carl Hauptmann, in an interesting socio-psychological study,

“Unsere Wirklichkeit” (“Our Reality”; Munich, 1902), has described very

impressively this frightful conventionality, especially characteristic

of our own time, which so painfully represses the “reality” of love,

suppresses everything primitive in it, banishes it into the darkness of

its own interior, and only allows the conventionally sanctioned forms of

sexual love to subsist. This coercion, this outward pressure, develops a

volcano of elementary sexuality, which usually slumbers, but may

suddenly break out in eruption, and give free vent to excesses of the

wildest nature. Dingelstedt in his poem “Ein Roman,” has excellently

described this condition:

“Wenn du die =Leidenschaft= willst kennen lernen,

Musst du dich nur nicht aus der Welt entfernen.

Such’ sie nicht auf in friedlicher Idylle,

In strohgedeckter und begnügter Stille...

Da suche sie in festlich vollem Saale

Bei Spiel und Tanz, an feierlichem Mahle,

Dort, eingeschnürt =in Form und Zwang und Sitte=,

Thront sie wie Banquos Geist in ihrer Mitte.”

[“If you wish to learn to know passion,

You must, above all, not remove yourself from the world.

Do not look for it in a peaceful idyll,

In padded and satisfied quietude....

Look for it in the full festal hall,

At the game and the dance, at the brilliant banquet;

There, entrapped amid form, and coercion, and custom,

Enthroned, like Banquo’s ghost, it sits amid the throng.”]

Similarly, Charles Albert[483] remarks:

“If love nowadays so often manifests itself in the form of aberration

or passion, this is almost always to be explained by the hindrances of

every kind which have been opposed to it. No other feeling is so

hindered, opposed, detested, and loaded with material and moral

fetters. We know how education makes a beginning in this way,

declaring that love is something forbidden, and how the hardness of

economic life continues the process. Hardly has a young man or a young

girl gone out into life, hardly have they begun to feel their way

into society, but they encounter a thousand difficulties which are

opposed to their living out their life from a sexual point of view.

How would it be possible that, in the limits of such a society, love

could become anything else but a fixed idea of the individual, and how

could it fail to give rise to continuous restlessness? Nature does not

allow herself to be inhibited by our artificial social arrangements.

The need for love within us remains active; it cries out in

unsatisfied desire; and when no answer is forthcoming, beyond the echo

of its own pain, it takes a perverse form. The love which is prevented

from obtaining complete satisfaction and repose is to many an

intensely painful torment.... The over-rich imagination and the

unsatisfied longing give rise to the most horrible and abnormal forms

of love. Above all, in a society which will make no room for love, the

love-passion must give rise to the greatest devastation. The impulse

to love which is repressed by the organization of society does not

only fight violently for air--the inevitable consequence of any

pressure--but it discovers also all those artifices and corruptions

which are supposed to make the enjoyment of love more intense.

Conscious of being despised by society, it endeavours to regain by

violence what is wanting to it in sensuality.”

The struggle for reality in love, for the elementary and the primitive,

manifests itself in the search for the greatest possible =contrast= to

the conventional, to the commonly sanctioned mode of sexual activity.

Love cries out for “nature,” and comes thereby to the “unnatural,” to

the =coarsest, commonest= dissipation. This connexion has been already

explained (pp. 322-325). Certain temporary phenomena exhibit also this

fact--for example, the remarkable preference for the most brutal, the

coarsest, the commonest dances, mere limb dislocations, such as the

cancan, the croquette (machicha), the cake-walk, and other wild negro

dances, which rejoice the modern public more than the most beautiful and

gracious spiritual ballet. It was only when the above-described

connexion became clear to me that I was able to understand the

remarkable alluring power of these dances, which had hitherto been

incomprehensible to me.

An additional factor which favours the origination of sexual perversions

is the =unrest= always connected with the advance of civilization, the

haste and hurry, the more severe struggle for existence, the rapid and

frequent change of new impressions. Fifty years ago the celebrated

alienist Guislain exclaimed:

“What is it with which our thoughts are filled? Plans, novelties,

reforms. What is it that we Europeans are striving for? Movement,

excitement. What do we obtain? Stimulation, illusion, deception.”[484]

There is no longer any time for quiet, enduring love, for an inward

profundity of feeling, for the culture of the =heart=. The struggle for

life and the intellectual contest of our time leaves the possibility

only for transient sensations; the shorter they are, the more =violent=,

the more intense must they be, in order to replace the failing _grande

passion_ of former times. Love becomes a mere =sensation=, which in a

brief moment must contain within itself an entire world. Modern youth

eagerly desires such =experience= of a whole world by means of love. The

everlasting feeling of our classic period had been transformed, more

especially among our leading spirits, into a passionate yearning to

reflect within themselves truly the spirit of the time, to live through

in themselves all the unrest, all the joy, all the sorrow, of modern

civilization.

From this there results a peculiar, more spiritual configuration of

modern perversity, a distinctive spiritualization of psychopathia

sexualis, a true wandering journey, an “Odyssey” of the spirit,

throughout the wide province of sexual excesses. Without doubt the

French have gone furthest in this direction, and the names of

Baudelaire, Barbey d’Aurevilly, Verlaine, Hannon, Haraucourt, Jean

Larocque, and Guy de Maupassant, indicate nearly as many peculiar

spiritual refinements and enrichments of the purely sensual life.

We have no longer to deal with the pure love of reflection, as in the

case of Kierkegaard and Grillparzer, and in the writings of young

Germany, where, indeed, reflection predominates, but which still more

extends to the direction of =higher love=. Contrasted with this is the

=simple lust of the senses=, by means of which new psychical influences

are to be obtained. Voluptuousness becomes a cerebral phenomenon,

ethereal. In this way the most remarkable, unheard-of, sensory

associations appear in the province of sexuality--true _fin-de-siècle_

products which are, above all, specifically =modern=, and could not

possibly exist in former times. For it is always the same play of

emotion, the same effects, the same terminal results: ordinary

voluptuousness. The dream of Hermann Bahr, of “non-sexual

voluptuousness,” and the replacement of the animal impulse by means of

finer organs, is only a dream. The elemental sexual impulse resists

every attempt at dismemberment and sublimation. It returns always

unaltered, always the same. It is vain to expect new manifestations of

this impulse. Such efforts end either in bodily and mental impotence, or

else in sexual perversities. In these relationships the imagination of

civilized man is unable to create novelties in the =essence=; it can do

so only as regards the objective =manifestations=. This is confirmed by

the increase of purely ideal sexual perversities in connexion with

certain spiritual tendencies of our time. Martial d’Estoc, in his book,

“Paris Eros” (Paris, 1903), has given a clear description of these

peculiar spiritual modifications of sexual aberrations. (It is

interesting to note that Schopenhauer remarks, in his “Neue

Paralipomena,” pp. 234 and 235: “The caprices arising from the sexual

impulse resemble a will-o’-the-wisp. They deceive us most effectively;

but if we follow them, they lead us into the marsh and disappear.”)

APPENDIX

SEXUAL PERVERSIONS DUE TO DISEASE

It is the immortal service of Casper and von Krafft-Ebing to have

insisted energetically upon the fact that =numerous= individuals whose

_vita sexualis_ is abnormal are persons suffering from =disease=. This

is their _monumentum ære perennius_ in the history of medicine and of

civilization. Purely medical, anatomical, physical, and psychiatric

investigations show beyond question that there are many persons whose

abnormal sexual life is pathologically based.

I shall not here discuss the peculiar =borderland state between health

and disease=, the existence of which can be established in many sexually

perverse individuals; I shall not refer to the “abnormalities,” the

“psychopathic deficiencies,” the “unbalanced,” etc.; nor shall I discuss

the question of the significance of the stigmata of degeneration,

because these will be adequately dealt with in connexion with the

forensic consideration of punishable sexual perversions.

Here we shall speak only of actual and easily determined diseases which

possess a causal importance in the origination and activity of sexual

perversions. The great majority of these are, naturally, =mental

disorders=.

Von Krafft-Ebing, to whom we owe the most important observations

regarding the pathological etiology of sexual perversions, enumerates

the following conditions: Psychical developmental inhibitions (idiocy

and imbecility), acquired weak-mindedness (after mental disorders,

apoplexy, injuries to the head, syphilis, in consequence of general

paralysis), epilepsy, periodical insanity, mania, melancholia, hysteria,

paranoia.

Among these, =epilepsy= possesses the greatest importance.[485] It comes

into play =much more frequently= as a causal morbid influence in the

case of sexually perverse actions and offences than has hitherto been

believed. The psychiatrist Arndt maintains that wherever an abnormal

sexual life exists, we must always consider the possibility of epileptic

influence. Lombroso assumes that all premature and peculiar instances of

satyriasis are instances of larval epilepsy. He gives several examples

in support of this view, and also a case of Macdonald’s which

illustrates the connexion between epilepsy and sexual perversity.[486]

Especially in the so-called epileptic “confusional states” do we meet

with sexually perverse actions; exhibitionism and other manifestations

of sexual activity _coram publico_ are frequently referable to epileptic

disease. Similar impulsive sexual activities and similar confusional

states are seen after =injuries to the head= and in =alcoholic

intoxication=, also after =severe exhaustion=. Many cases of “=periodic

psychopathia sexualis=” are due to epilepsy.

=Senile dementia= and =paralytic dementia= (general paralysis of the

insane), also severe forms of =neurasthenia= and =hysteria=, often

change the sexual life in a morbid direction, and favour the origin of

sexual perversions.

It is a fact of great interest that Tarnowsky and Freud attribute to

=syphilis= an important rôle in the pathogenesis of sexual anomalies. In

50 % of his sexual pathological cases Freud found that the abnormal

sexual constitution was to be regarded as the last manifestation of a

syphilitic inheritance (Freud, _op. cit._, p. 74). Tarnowsky observed

that congenital syphilitics, and also persons whose parents had been

syphilitic, but who themselves had never exhibited any definite symptoms

of the disease, were apt later to show manifestations of a perverse

sexual sensibility (Tarnowsky, _op. cit._, pp. 34 and 35). =Obviously

this is to be explained by the deleterious influence upon the nervous

system (perhaps by means of toxins?) which syphilis is also supposed to

exert in the causation of tabes dorsalis and general paralysis of the

insane.= When investigating the clinical history of cases of sexual

perversion, it appears that previous syphilis is a fact to which some

importance should be attached.[487]

From syphilis we pass to consider direct =physical= abnormalities and

=morbid changes in the genital organs= as causes of sexual anomalies. In

women prolapsus uteri sometimes leads to perverse gratification of the

sexual impulse--for example, by pædication;[488] in men, shortness of

the frænum preputii plays a similar part,[489] also phimosis. Wollenmann

reports the case of a young man suffering from phimosis, who, at the

first attempt at coitus, experienced severe pain, and since that time

had an antipathy to normal sexual intercourse. He passed under the

influence of a seducer to the practice of mutual masturbation. Only

after operative treatment of the phimosis did his inclination towards

the male sex pass away, and the sexual perversion then completely

disappeared.[490]

[456] Hermann Joseph Löwenstein, “De Mentis Aberrationibus ex Partium

Sexualium Conditione Abnormi Oriundis” (Bonn, 1823).

[457] Joseph Häussler, “The Relations of the Sexual System to the

Psyche” (Würzburg, 1826).

[458] Heinrich Kaan, “Psychopathia Sexualis” (Leipzig, 1844).

[459] R. von Krafft-Ebing, “Psychopathia Sexualis” (Stuttgart, 1882).

[460] We must not omit to mention the fact that a little earlier the

French physician Moreau de Tours published a comprehensive work upon

psychopathia sexualis, entitled “Des Aberrations du Sens Génésique”

(Paris, 1880).

[461] S. Freud, “Three Essays in Contribution to the Sexual Theory,”

p. 70.

[462] _Cf._ the interesting remarks of G. H. C. Lippert, “Mankind in a

State of Nature,” p. 1 _et seq._ (Elberfeld, 1818).

[463] Christian Muff, “What is Civilization?” pp. 30, 31 (Halle,

1880).

[464] G. L. N. Delvincourt, “De la Mucite Génito-Sexuelle,” p. 64

(Paris, 1834). Apt remarks on the alleged degeneration of the French

are to be found also in the work of P. Näcko, “The Alleged

Degeneration of the Latin Races, more Especially of the French,”

published in _Archives for Racial and Social Biology_, 1906, vol. iii.

[465] As, for example, Immermann, in his work “Epigonen,” published at

the same period (1836), assumes. In the mouth of the physician he puts

the following words: “The physician has a great task to perform in the

present day. _Diseases, especially nervous troubles, to which for a

number of years the human race has been especially disposed, are a

modern product._” _Cf._ Leopold Hirschberg, “Medical Matters as dealt

with in General Literature: the Judgment of a Member of the Laity

regarding Nervousness in the Year 1876,” published in _Medizinische

Wochenschrift_, 1906, No. 41, p 428. Seventy years ago the German

people was “nervous”; thirty-four years before _Sedan_, thirty years

after _Jena_! Therefore neither Jena nor Sedan can be connected with

the nervous “degeneration.” The authors of the eighteenth century (!)

made similar complaints of the nervousness of their time, upon which

Cullen and Brown founded their medical theories.

[466] J. Pohl-Pincus, “The Diseases of the Human Hair, and the Care of

the Hair,” third edition, p. 57 (Leipzig, 1885).

[467] Carl Bleibtreu, “Paradoxes the Conventional Lies,” sixth

edition, pp. 1, 2 (Berlin, 1888).

[468] See “Nature and Man,” E. Ray Lankester’s Romanes Lecture,

1905.--TRANSLATOR.

[469] G. Hirth, “Hereditary Enfranchisement,” published in “Ways to

Freedom,” pp. 106-127 (Munich, 1903).

[470] Näcke’s thesis is in agreement with this, that “all sexual

abnormal practices in an asylum are =for the most part much more rare=

than the laity, =or even many physicians, imagine=.” _Cf._ P. Näcke,

“Some Psychologically Obscure Cases of Sexual Aberrations in the

Asylum,” published in the _Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages_,

vol. v., p. 196 (Leipzig, 1903). See also, by the same author,

“Problemi nel Campo delle Psicopatie Sessuali,” in _Archivio delle

Psicopatie Sessuali_, 1896; “Sexual Perversities in the Asylum,” in

the _Wiener klinische Rundschau_, 1899, Nos. 27-30.

[471] S. Freud, _op. cit._, pp. 19, 20.

[472] A. Hoche, “The Problem of the Forensic Condemnation of Sexual

Transgressions,” published in the _Neurologisches Centralblatt_, 1896,

p. 58.

[473] Ploss-Bartels, “Das Weib in der Natur- und Volkerkunde,” eighth

edition, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1906).

[474] Mantegazza, “Anthropological and Historical Studies on the

Sexual Relationship of Mankind.”

[475] F. S. Krauss, “Morals and Customs relating to Sexual

Reproduction among the Southern Slavs,” published in “Kryptadia,”

vols. vi.-viii. (Paris, 1899-1902); and in the larger work,

“Anthropophyteia” (Leipzig, 1904-1906).

[476] In all his works.

[477] _Cf._ Charles Darwin, “The Descent of Man, and Selection in

Relation to Sex,” vol. i., p. 182 (2 vols., London, 1898).

[478] _Cf._ the inquiry of C. Wagner, containing extremely valuable

material, “The Sexual and Moral Relationships of the Protestant

Agricultural Population of the German Empire” (3 vols., Leipzig, 1897,

1898).

[479] “Prostitution in Berlin and its Victims,” p. 27 (Berlin, 1846).

[480] _Cf._ the detailed bibliography of these works in my

“Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,” vol. i., pp.

29, 30.

[481] Typical sexual perversions have, however, been observed even in

children, and it is this fact which has chiefly given rise to the

doctrine of the “congenital” character of sexual perversions.

[482] _Cf._ the remarks of the Marquis de Sade regarding the abnormal

sexuality of elderly men, in my “New Research Concerning the Marquis

de Sade,” pp. 421, 422 (Berlin, 1904).

[483] C. Albert, “Free Love,” p. 148.

[484] Joseph Guislain, “Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases,” p. 229

(Berlin, 1854).

[485] Kowalewski, “Perversions of Sexual Sensibility in Epileptics,”

published in the _Jahrbücher für Psychiatrie_, 1887, vol. vii., No. 3.

[486] C. Lombroso, “Recent Advances in the Study of Criminology,” pp.

197-200 (Gera, 1899).--Tarnowsky has even described a form of

“epileptic pæderasty” (_cf._ B. Tarnowsky, “Morbid Phenomena of Sexual

Sensibility,” pp. 8, 51; Berlin, 1886).

[487] E. Laurent (“Morbid Love,” pp. 43-45; Leipzig, 1895) regards

tubercular inheritance as an important etiological factor of sexual

anomalies, for these occur more frequently in blonde, weakly

individuals, than in brunettes (?).

[488] Bacon, “The Effect of Developmental Anomalies and Disorders of

the Female Reproductive Organs upon the Sexual Impulse,” published in

the _American Journal of Dermatology_, 1899, vol. iii., No. 2.

[489] M. Féré, “Sexual Hyperæsthesia in Association with Shortness of

the Frænum Preputii,” published in the _Monatshefte für praktische

Dermatologie_, 1896, vol. xxiii., p. 45.

[490] A. G. Wollenmann, “Phimosis as a Cause of Perversion of Sexual

Sensibility,” published in _Der ärztliche Praktiker_, 1895, No. 23.

Matthaes has shown that morbid changes of the genital sphere or its

vicinity are apt to give rise to offences against morality (“The

Statistics of Offences against Morality,” published in the _Archiv für

Kriminalanthropologie_, 1903, vol. xii., p. 319).

CHAPTER XVIII

MISOGYNY

“_Thou priestess of the most flowery life, how is it possible that

such things should draw near to thee--one of those pale phantoms, one

of those general maxims, which philosophers and moralists have

invented in their despair of the human race?_”--G. JUNG.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XVIII

Non-identity of misogyny with homosexuality -- History of misogyny --

Misogyny among the Greeks -- Christian misogyny the true source of the

modern contempt for women -- Characteristics of modern misogyny -- De

Sade and his modern disciples (Schopenhauer, Strindberg, Weininger) --

Scientific misogyny (Möbius, Schurtz, B. Friedländer, E. von Mayer) --

Distinctions between the individual varieties -- Counteracting

tendencies -- Beginnings of a new amatory life of the sexes -- A

common share in life -- Freedom _with_, not without, woman.

CHAPTER XVIII

Before proceeding to the consideration of homosexuality I propose to

give a brief account of contemporary misogyny, in order to avoid

confusing these two distinct phenomena under one head, and also to avoid

making the male homosexuals, who are often erroneously regarded as

“woman-haters,” responsible for the momentarily prevalent spiritual

epidemic of hatred of women. This would be a gross injustice, because,

in the first place, this movement has =in no way= proceeded from the

homosexual, but rather from heterosexual individuals, such as

Schopenhauer, Strindberg, etc.; and because, in the second place, the

homosexual as such are not misogynists at all, and it is only a minority

of them who shout in chorus to the misogynist tirades of Strindberg and

Weininger.

The misogynists form to-day a kind of “=fourth sex=,”[491] to belong to

which appears to be the fashion, or rather has =once more= become the

fashion, for misogyny is an old story. There have always been times in

which men have cried out: “Woman, what have I to do with you? I belong

to the century”;[492] times in which woman was renounced as a soulless

being, and the world of men became intoxicated with itself, and was

proud of its “splendid isolation.”

Of less importance is it that the Chinese since ancient times have

denied to woman a soul, and therewith a justification for

existence,[493] than that among the most highly developed civilized

races of antiquity such men as Hesiod, Simonides,[494] and, above all,

Euripides, were all fierce misogynists. In the “Ion,” the “Hippolytus,”

the “Hecuba,” and the “Cyclops” we find the most incisive attacks on

the female sex. The most celebrated passage is that in the “Hippolytus”

(verses 602-637, 650-655):

“Wherefore, O Jove, beneath the solar beams

That evil, woman, didst thou cause to dwell?

For if it was thy will the human race

Should multiply, this ought not by such means

To be effected; better in thy fane

Each votary, on presenting brass or steel,

Or massive ingots of resplendent gold,

Proportioned to his offering, might from thee

Obtain a race of sons, and under roofs

Which genuine freedom visits, unannoyed

By women, live.”[495]

In this passage we have the entire quintessence of modern misogyny. But

Euripides betrays to us also the real motive of misogyny. In a fragment

of his we read “the =most invincible= of all things is a woman”! _Hinc

illæ lacrimæ!_ It is only the men who are not a =match= for woman, who

do not allow woman as a free personality to influence them, =who are so

little sure of themselves= that they are afraid of suffering at the

hands of woman damage, limitation, or even annihilation of their own

individuality. These only are the true misogynists.

It is indisputable that this Hellenic misogyny was closely connected

with the love of boys as a popular custom. To this we shall return when

we come to describe Greek pæderasty.

Among the Romans woman occupied a far higher position than among the

Greeks--a fact which the institution of the vestal virgins alone

suffices to prove. Among the Germans, also, woman was regarded as worthy

of all honour.

The =true source= of modern misogyny is Christianity--the Christian

doctrine of the fundamentally sinful, evil, devilish nature of woman. A

Strindberg, a Weininger, even a Benedikt Friedländer, notwithstanding

his hatred of priests--all are the last offshoots of a movement against

the being and the value of woman--a movement which has persisted

throughout the Christian period of the history of the world.

“If I were asked,” says Finck,[496] “to name the most influential,

refining element of modern civilization, I should answer: ‘Woman,

beauty, love, and marriage’! If I were asked, however, to name the

most inward and peculiar essence of the early middle ages, my answer

would be: ‘Deadly hostility to everything feminine, to beauty, to

love, and to marriage.’”

The history of medieval misogyny was described by J. Michelet in his

book “The Witch.” Since woman and the contact with woman were regarded

as radically evil, it followed that in theory and practice asceticism

was the ideal; celibacy was only the natural consequence of this hatred

of woman; so also were the later witch trials the natural consequence.

Therefore to this medieval misogyny, in contrast with modern misogyny,

which represents only a weak imitation, we cannot deny a certain

justification. The misogyny of the middle ages was earnestly meant; but

it has become to-day mere phrase-making, dilettante imitation, and

ostentation. In contrast with the utterances of the modern misogynist,

the coarse abuse of women by such a writer as Abraham a Santa Clara has

a refreshing and amusing character.[497]

Modern misogyny is certainly an inheritance of Christian doctrine, and a

tradition handed down from much earlier times, but still it has its own

characteristic peculiarities. Misogyny is, however, now much more an

affair of =satiety= or =disillusion= than of =belief= or =conviction=;

whereas in the days of medieval Christianity belief and conviction were

the effective causal factors of misogyny. In addition, among our

neo-misogynists we have the factor of the =spiritual pride= of a man

who, from the standpoint of academic theoretical culture (which to men

of this kind appears the highest summit of existence), looks down upon

women, whom he regards as mentally insignificant, while he sympathizes

with her “physiological weak-mindedness.” He smiles on her with pity,

and completely overlooks the profound life of emotion and feeling

characteristic of every true woman, which forms a counterpoise to any

amount of purely theoretical knowledge--quite apart from the fact that

women of intellectual cultivation are by no means rare.

If, in fact, we regard the =lives= of those who have reduced modern

misogyny to a system, we shall be able to detect the above-mentioned

causes in their personal experiences and impressions. The first

important modern advocate of misogyny, the Marquis de Sade, lived an

extremely unhappy married life, was deceived also in a love

relationship, and nourished his hatred of women by a dissolute life and

a consequent state of satiety.

And as regards Schopenhauer, who does not recall his unhappy relations

with his mother? For he who has really loved his =mother=, he who has

experienced the unutterable tenderness and self-sacrifice of maternal

love, can never become a genuine, thoroughgoing woman-hater. But the

mutual relationship of Schopenhauer and his mother was rather =hatred=

than love. Beyond question, also, his infection with syphilis, to which

I was the first to draw attention, played a part in his subsequent

hatred of women.

Strindberg, in his “Confessions of a Fool,” has himself offered us the

proof of the causal connexion between his misogyny and his personal

experiences and disillusions; and in Weininger’s book we can read only

too clearly that he had had no good fortune with women, or had had

disagreeable experiences in his relations with them.

De Sade, who, perhaps, was not unknown to Schopenhauer,[498] was the

first advocate of consistent misogyny on principle. It is an interesting

fact, to which I have alluded in an earlier work (“Recent Researches

regarding the Marquis de Sade,” p. 433), that de Sade’s and

Schopenhauer’s opinions on the physical characteristics of women are to

some extent =verbally= identical. While Schopenhauer, in his essay “On

Women” (“Works,” ed. Grisebach, vol. v., p. 654), speaks of the

“stunted, narrow-shouldered, wide-hipped and =short-legged= sex,” which

only a masculine intellect when =clouded by sexual desire= could

possibly call “beautiful,” we find in the “Juliette” (vol. iii., pp.

187, 188) of the Marquis de Sade the following very similar remarks on

the feminine body: “Take the clothes off one of these idols of yours! Is

it these two =short= and crooked legs which have =turned your head= like

this?” This physical hatefulness of women corresponds to the mental

hatefulness of which de Sade gives a similar repellent picture

(“Juliette,” vol iii., pp. 188, 189). In all his works we find the same

fanatical hatred of women. Sarmiento, in “Aline et Valcour” (vol. ii.,

p. 115), would like to annihilate all women, and calls that man happy

who has learned to renounce completely intercourse with this “debased,

false, and noxious sex.”

Quite in the spirit of de Sade, to whom the misogynists of the Second

Empire referred as an authority, Schopenhauer, in the previously quoted

essay “On Women,” Strindberg, in the “Confessions of a Fool,” and

Weininger, in “Sex and Character,” preached contempt for the feminine

nature;[499] and this seed has fallen upon fruitful soil in modern

youth. Every young blockhead inflates himself with his “masculine

pride,” and feels himself to be the “knight of the spirit” in relation

to the inferior sex; every disillusioned and satiated debauchee

cultivates (as a rule, indeed, transiently) the fashion of misogyny,

which strengthens his sentiment of self-esteem. If we wish to speak at

all of “physiological weak-mindedness,” let us apply the term to this

disagreeable type of men. As Georg Hirth truly remarks (“Ways to

Freedom,” p. 281), such masculine =arrogance= is merely a variety of

“mental defect.”

Unfortunately, this misogyny has intruded itself also into science. The

work of P. J. Möbius,[500] notwithstanding the esteem I feel for the

valuable services of the celebrated neurologist in other departments,

can only be termed an aberration, a _lapsus calami_.[501] But he does

not stand alone. The admirable work of Heinrich Schurtz, also, upon “Age

Classes and Associations of Men” (Berlin, 1902), is permeated by this

misogynist aura; not less so is the equally stimulating work, “The Vital

Laws of Civilization” (Halle, 1904), by Eduard von Mayer. This book, in

association with the equally thoughtful and compendious work “The

Renascence of Eros Uranios” (Berlin, 1904), by Benedikt Friedländer, and

in conjunction with the efforts of Adolf Brand, the editor of the

homosexual newspaper _Der Eigene_, and Edwin Bab (_cf._ this writer’s

“The Woman’s Movement and the Love of Friends”; Berlin, 1904), to found

a special homosexual group demanding the “=emancipation of men=,” have

been the principal causes of the belief that the male homosexuals are

the true “repudiators of woman,” and that from them has proceeded the

increasing diffusion of modern misogyny. I repeat that this connexion is

true only for the above-named group; that, on the contrary, genuine

misogyny has been taught us by the world’s typically heterosexual men,

such as Schopenhauer and Strindberg. Benedikt Friedländer and Eduard von

Mayer preached, above all, a “masculine civilization,” a deepening of

the spiritual relationships between men; whereas Strindberg and

Schopenhauer, and even Weininger, really leave us in uncertainty as to

what they imagine is to take woman’s place. All five agree in this, that

the “intercourse” of man with woman is to be limited as much as

possible; but only the two first-named openly and freely advocate

homosexual relationships, or at least a “physiological friendship” (B.

Friedländer), between men. Schopenhauer, Strindberg, and Weininger did

not venture to deduce these consequences. Yet this is the =necessary=

consequence of misogyny based on principle.

To the heterosexual men--and such men form an =enormous majority=--the

noble, ideal, asexual friendship of man for man appears in quite another

light from that in which it appears to the misogynist, to whom it is to

serve to =replace= sexual love, whereas for heterosexual men friendship

for other men is a valuable treasure =additional= to the love of woman.

Is there, then, any reason for this contempt and hatred for woman? Do

not the signs increase on all hands to show us that =new= relationships

are forming between the sexes, that a number of new points of contact of

the spiritual nature are making their appearance--in a word, that =an

entirely new, nobler, most promising amatory life= is developing? I will

not fall into the contrary error to misogyny and inscribe a dithyramb of

praise to feminine nature, as Wedde, Daumer, Quensel, Groddeck, and

others, have done; but I merely indicate the signs of the times when I

say =that woman also is awakening=! Woman is awakening to the entirely

new existence of a free personality, conscious of her rights and of her

duties. Woman, also, will have her share in the content and in the tasks

of life; she will not enslave us, as the misogynists clamour, for she

wishes to see =free men= by her side. What would become of woman if men

became slaves? How could slaves give love?

Life has to-day become a difficult task both for man and for woman. Man

and woman alike must endeavour to perform that task with confidence in

their respective powers; but each, also, must have confidence in the

powers of the other--a confidence which becomes =palpable= in the form

of love or friendship, so that those who feel it have their own powers

strengthened.

Not “Free =from= woman” is the watchword of the future, but “Free =with=

woman.”

[491] V. Hoffmann, in a bad novel, “Das vierte Geschlecht” (Berlin,

1902), gives this name to the non-homosexual misogynists.

[492] Karl Gutzkow, “Säkularbilder,” vol. i., p. 55 (Frankfurt, 1846).

[493] In the Shi-king we find the following characterization of woman:

“Enough for her to avoid evil,

For what can a woman do that is good?”

Indian literature is also full of such ideas. _Cf._ H. Schurtz,

“Altersklassen und Männerbunde” (Age Classes and Associations of Men),

p. 52.

[494] Simonides considered that women were derived from various

animals. W. Schubert (“From the Berlin Collection of Papyri,”

published in the _Vossische Zeitung_, No. 23, January 15, 1907)

reproduces long fragments of a Greek anthology which collates praise

and blame of woman in the original words of the poets.

[495] I quote from “The Plays of Euripides in English,” in two

volumes, vol. ii., p. 136 (Everyman’s Library, Dent,

London).--TRANSLATOR.

[496] H. T. Finck, “Romantic Love and Personal Beauty,” vol. i., pp.

186, 187 (Breslau, 1894).

[497] Equally amusing is the misogynist “Alphabet de l’Imperfection et

Malice des Femmes,” by Jacques Olivier (Rouen, 1646), in which all the

bad qualities of woman, observed down to the year 1646, are described

with effective care and completeness.

[498] We know that Schopenhauer was a lover of erotic writings; a

fuller account of this matter will be found in Grisebach’s

“Conversations and Soliloquies of Schopenhauer.”

[499] That Nietzsche is wrongly accredited with misogyny is

convincingly proved by Helene Stocker (“Nietzsches Frauenfeindschaft,”

published in _Zukunft_, 1903; reprinted in “Love and Women,” pp.

65-74; Minden, 1906).

[500] P. J. Möbius, “The Physiological Weak-mindedness of Woman,”

fourth edition (Halle, 1902). Näcke terms the recently deceased Möbius

the “German Lombroso,” in order by this term to indicate, on the one

hand, the man’s indubitable genius, and on the other hand the

superficiality and purely hypothetical character of his scientific

deductions.

[501] The grounds for this opinion were given in the fifth chapter.

CHAPTER XIX

THE RIDDLE OF HOMOSEXUALITY

“_Through Science to Justice!_”--MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD.

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XIX

Actual existence of original congenital homosexuality -- Its

distinction from pseudo-homosexuality -- Homosexuality an

anthropological phenomenon, not a manifestation of degeneration --

Secondary origin of “homosexual neurasthenia” -- Rarity of stigmata of

degeneration among homosexuals -- Early spontaneous appearance of

homosexuality -- As an essential product of personality --

Homosexuality in the child -- Physical and mental characteristics of

completely developed homosexuality -- Effeminate and virile urnings --

Physical peculiarities of the homosexual -- Mental peculiarities --

Diffusion -- Numbers -- Ethnology of homosexuality -- Earlier history

and literature -- Celebrated homosexual individuals -- Modes of

activity of homosexual love -- Relations between homosexual and

heterosexual individuals -- Mode of sexual intercourse -- Examples --

Social relationships of the homosexual -- Places of rendezvous -- The

“Allée des Veuves” of Paris -- An adventure of Victor Hugo’s -- Urning

clubs in the Second Empire -- Urning balls at Paris -- Social

relationships of the homosexuals of Berlin -- Meeting-places of

urnings -- Men’s balls in Berlin -- Male prostitution -- Male brothels

-- Blackmail -- § 175 -- Criticism of this section -- Demonstration of

the necessity for its repeal -- Blackmail of homosexuals and suicide

-- Need for the diffusion of general enlightenment regarding

homosexuality -- Activity of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee --

Homosexuality in women -- The smaller percentage of genuine female

homosexuals -- “Thoughts of a Solitary Woman” -- Relations of

homosexual women to men -- The Woman’s Movement and homosexuality --

Sexual relationships of tribades -- The “protectrices” -- Social life

of tribades -- Lesbian prostitution.

_Appendix: Theory of Homosexuality._ -- Homosexuality a heterogeneous

sexuality -- Insufficiency of the theory of intermediate stages -- My

own theory of homosexuality -- The significance of homosexuality in

relation to civilization.

CHAPTER XIX

Homosexuality--=love between man and man= (uranism), or =between woman

and woman= (tribadism), a =congenital state=, or =one spontaneously

appearing in very early childhood=--I consider “a riddle,” because, in

fact, the more closely in recent years I have come to know it, the more

I have endeavoured to study it scientifically, the more enigmatical, the

more obscure, the more incomprehensible, it has become to me. But it

=exists=. About that there is no doubt.

In the years 1905 and 1906 I was occupied almost exclusively with the

problem of homosexuality, and I had the opportunity of seeing and

examining a very large number of genuine homosexual individuals, both

men and women. I was able to observe them during long periods, both at

home and in public life. I learnt to know them--their mode of life,

their habits, their opinions, their whole activity, not only in relation

to one another, but also in relation to other non-homosexual individuals

and to persons of the opposite sex. This experience taught me the

indubitable fact that the diffusion of true homosexuality as a

congenital natural phenomenon is =far greater= than I had earlier

assumed;[502] so that I find myself now compelled to separate from true

homosexuality the other category of =acquired, apparent, occasional

homosexuality=, of the existence of which I am now, as formerly, =firmly

convinced=. I denote this latter by the term “=pseudo-homosexuality=,”

and treat of it in a separate chapter.

Formerly I believed that true homosexuality was only a variety of

pseudo-homosexuality--in a sense larval pseudo-homosexuality. Now,

however, I must recognize that true homosexuality constitutes a =special

well-defined group=, sharply distinguishable from all forms of

pseudo-homosexuality. From my medical observations, which have been as

exact and objective as possible, I must draw the conclusion that among

=thoroughly healthy individuals= of both sexes, not to be distinguished

from other normal human beings, there appears =in very early childhood=,

and certainly not evoked by any kind of external influence, an

=inclination=, and after puberty a =sexual impulse, towards persons of

the same sex=; and that this inclination and this impulse are =as

little to be altered= as it is possible to expel from a heterosexual man

the impulse towards woman.

Above all, in this definition of true original homosexuality I lay the

stress upon the word “=healthy=”; for von Krafft-Ebing, though he admits

the existence of congenital homosexuality yet regards it as a morbid

degenerative phenomenon, as the expression of severe hereditary taint

and of a neuro-psychopathic constitution; and this view is shared by

many alienists.[503] Now, we must admit that a =portion= of genuine

homosexuals--just as is the case with a portion of heterosexual

individuals--possess such a morbid constitution; and we must acknowledge

that yet =another portion= exhibit =manifestations of nervousness= and

neurasthenia, which, beyond doubt, have developed during life out of an

originally healthy state, in consequence of the struggle for life, the

painful experience of being “different” from the great mass of people,

etc.; but we ascertain that a =third=, and, in fact, the =largest,

section= of original homosexuals are thoroughly =healthy, free from

hereditary taint, physically and psychically normal=.

I have observed a great number of homosexuals belonging to all ages and

occupations in whom not the slightest trace of morbidity was to be

detected. They were just as healthy and normal as are heterosexuals. At

an earlier date, though I was not yet aware of the relatively great

frequency of true original homosexuality, it had become clear to me, on

the ground of my own anthropological theory of sexual anomalies, that

homosexuality might just as well appear in healthy human beings as in

diseased. Therein I have always agreed with Magnus Hirschfeld, the

principal advocate of this view, in opposition to the theory of the

degenerative nature of homosexuality. For me there is no longer any

doubt =that homosexuality is compatible with complete mental and

physical health=.

It is very interesting to note that von Krafft-Ebing himself later came

to the same view, and thus formally abandoned the degenerative

hypothesis. In his “New Studies in the Domain of Homosexuality” he

writes:[504]

“In view of the experience that contrary sexuality is a congenital

anomaly, that it represents a disturbance in the evolution of the

sexual life, and of the physical and mental development, in normal

relationship to the kind of reproductive glands which the individual

possesses, =it has become impossible to maintain in this connexion the

idea of ‘disease.’= Rather, in such a case we must speak of a

malformation, and treat the anomaly as parallel with physical

malformation--for example, anatomical deviations from the structural

type. At the same time, the assumption of a simultaneous psychopathia

is not prejudiced, for persons who exhibit such an anatomical

differentiation from type (_stigmata degenerationis_) =may remain

physically healthy throughout life, and even be above the average in

this respect=. Of course, a difference from the generality so

important as contrary sexual sensation must have a much greater

importance to the psyche than the majority of other anatomical or

functional variations. In this way it is to be explained that a

disturbance in the development in the normal sexual life may often be

antagonistic to the development of a harmonious psychical personality.

“Not infrequently in the case of those with contrary sexuality do we

find neuropathic and psychopathic predispositions, as, for example,

predisposition to constitutional neurasthenia and hysteria, to the

milder forms of periodic psychosis, to the inhibition of the

development of psychical energy (intelligence, moral sense), and in

some of these cases the ethical deficiency (especially when

hypersexuality is associated with the contrary sexuality) may lead to

the most severe aberrations of the sexual impulse. And yet we can

always prove that, relatively speaking, the heterosexual are apt to be

much more depraved than the homosexual.

“Moreover, other manifestations of degeneration in the sexual spheres,

in the form of sadism, masochism, and fetichism, are relatively much

commoner among the former.

“That contrary sexual sensation =cannot= thus be necessarily regarded

as =psychical= degeneration, or even as a manifestation of disease, is

shown by various considerations, one of the principal of which is

=that these variations of the sexual life may actually be associated

with mental superiority=.... The proof of this is the existence of men

of all nations whose contrary sexuality is an established fact, and

who, none the less, are the pride of their nation as authors, poets,

artists, leaders of armies, and statesmen.

“A further proof of the fact that contrary sexual sensation is =not

necessarily disease, nor necessarily a vicious self-surrender to the

immoral=, is to be found in the fact that all the noble activities of

the heart which can be associated with heterosexual love can equally

be associated with homosexual love... in the form of noble-mindedness,

self-sacrifice, philanthropy, artistic sense, poietic activity, etc.,

but also the passions and defects of love (jealousy, suicide, murder,

unhappy love, with its deleterious influence on soul and body, etc.).”

According to my own investigations and observations, the =relationship

between health and disease= is among homosexuals =originally identical

with that among heterosexuals=, and only in the course of life, in

consequence of the social and individual isolation of the homosexual,

which acts on them as a =psychical trauma=, is this relationship

somewhat altered in favour of the predominance of disease. Here,

however, we have, as a rule, to do chiefly with =acquired= nervous

troubles and disorders, with the development of a peculiar type of

“=homosexual neurasthenia=,” and in these cases by superficial observers

there may easily be a confusion between _post hoc_ and _propter hoc_.

Magnus Hirschfeld, who unquestionably possesses, relatively and

absolutely, the greatest experience in the domain of homosexuality,

maintains[505] that, according to his material of investigation--and

this is of gigantic extent--at least 75 % of homosexuals are born of

healthy parents and of happy marriages, often prolific marriages, and

that nervous or mental anomalies, alcoholism, blood-relationship, and

syphilis are no more frequent among the ancestors of homosexuals than

among the ancestors of those endowed with normal sexuality. Only among

from 20 to 25 % of homosexuals was he able, in conjunction with E.

Burchard, to find hereditary taint. Only in 16 % could they find

well-developed “stigmata of degeneration”; and, indeed, those with

stigmata were throughout hereditarily tainted. This view is supported

also by the facts (to which I already alluded in my “Etiology of

Psychopathia Sexualis”) that homosexuality is universally diffused in

space and time; that it is independent of civilization, occurs among

savage races who are not exposed to the conditions giving rise to

degeneration in the same degree as civilized races; and that it is

prevalent in the country, where the degenerative influence of life in

large towns is not operative.

The most important characteristic of genuine homosexuality, its

=spontaneous appearance very early in life=, which can only be referred

to natural inheritance, appears to me to be a fact proved altogether

beyond dispute. Men of the highest and most respected professions--above

all, =judges=, =practising physicians=, =men of science=, =theologians=,

and =scholars=--have described themselves to me as having been through

and through homosexual from early childhood, so that I am thoroughly

convinced that primary homosexuality makes its appearance at any rate

very early in life.

The reports of physicians are of especially great importance. Hirschfeld

(_op. cit._, p. 12) quotes the utterance of a leading alienist, himself

homosexual: “I can and must declare that I have never known a case of

homosexuality which I could regard as other than congenital,” and the

accuracy of this statement has been confirmed to me personally by

several homosexual physicians. The idea “congenital” harmonizes very

well with the demonstrable casual =objective= cause of the first

homosexual tendencies, which we are able to learn in almost every case

of homosexuality. These can, as is well known, also occur transiently in

heterosexual individuals--a matter which is discussed in the chapter

“Pseudo-Homosexuality.” In the case of genuine homosexuality, however,

these homosexual activities play from the very beginning a predominant

rôle, and =remain permanent=, because they result from a natural

inheritance, from a deeply rooted impulse. This is shown in the

following interesting autobiography of a man of letters thirty years of

age:

“From my earliest childhood there was something girlish in my whole

nature, both outwardly and (more especially) inwardly. I was very

quiet, obedient, diligent, sensitive to praise and blame, rather

bright. I associated chiefly with adults, and was generally beloved.

Sexual activity began in me unusually early. When I was about six

years of age a tutor sat down on my bed, in which I was lying in a

fever. He caressed me, and with his hand _membrum meum tetigit_. The

voluptuous sensation which resulted was so intense that it has never

disappeared from my memory. At school, where I always distinguished

myself by my application and success, I sometimes enjoyed mutual

‘feeling’ with several other boys. From which side I inherited the

unusual intensity of the sexual impulse I do not know, but I remember

that when I was about twelve years old I already suffered a good deal

from sexual desire, and that it came to me as a solution of a great

difficulty when a comrade instructed me in the practice of

masturbation. It is remarkable that for some time afterwards there was

no evacuation of semen. When this first appeared I was very much

alarmed and disquieted, but I soon became accustomed to it, and this

the more readily because I had no doubt whatever that all men

regularly indulged in the same pleasure. This ‘paradisaical’ state did

not, however, last for long; and after a time, when I recognized the

unnatural and dangerous nature of my conduct, I conducted a severe and

unsuccessful contest against my desires. In my life generally I had a

good deal to bear, and I can say that I have hardly preserved a single

really pleasant memory of my past; and yet I could look back to this

past with a certain pride and satisfaction if it had not been that the

sexual side of my life has left such gloomy shadows in my soul.

“I remember that from very early days my eyes involuntarily turned

with longing towards elderly vigorous men, but I did not pay much

attention to this fact. I believed that I only practised masturbation

(the influence of which I doubtless exaggerate in memory to some

extent) because it was not possible for me to have sexual intercourse

with women. I was accustomed sometimes to have friendly association

with young girls, who appeared to be extremely attracted towards me. I

always took care, however, that such love tendencies were nipped in

the bud, because I felt that it was impossible for me to go any

further with them. Ultimately I determined to seek salvation in

intercourse with prostitutes, although they were disagreeable to my

æsthetic and moral feelings; but I got no help here: either I was

unable to complete the normal sexual act, or in other cases it was

completed without any particular pleasure, and I was always consumed

with anxiety with respect to infection. I had, indeed, often the

opportunity of forming an ‘intimacy’ with a woman, but I did not do

it, and always supposed that my failure to do so depended upon my

ridiculous bashfulness and upon the excessive sensitiveness of my

conscience. But though there is some truth in both of these

suggestions, I have not taken into account the principal

grounds--namely, that I am congenitally homosexual, and that I feel no

physical attraction, or almost none, towards the other sex. This

suffices to explain the fact (which can be explained in no other way)

that when masturbating I almost always represented in imagination

handsome elderly men. In my lascivious dreams, also, such men play the

principal rôle. These longings were so powerful that it was impossible

that I should not soon have my attention directed to them; but as I

could not understand them and would not take the matter seriously (I

knew, indeed, that man =must= feel drawn towards woman, and not

towards man), I continued unceasingly and despairingly to fight

against these fixed ideas, while at the same time with varying success

I endeavoured to cure myself of masturbation; for in the first place

it now gave very little satisfaction, and in the second place it

destroyed my hopes of eventually procreating healthy children. I had

almost come to believe myself no longer competent for the sexual life

when I noticed one day that the view of a _membrum virile_ set my

blood flowing fiercely. I then remembered that this had sometimes

happened before, although to a less marked extent. I was now compelled

to recognize that I was not the same as every one else. This fact,

which I had before suspected, and of which I now became more and more

firmly convinced, reduced me to despair, which was all the greater

because in other ways I felt extremely unhappy, and because I did not

dare to speak of it to any human being. Sometimes I still thought that

there must be some ‘misunderstanding,’ and that there must be some

salvation for me. Then it happened that a simple girl fell in love

with me, and I went so far as to enter into an intimacy with her,

although I openly assured her that as far as I was concerned it was

simply a matter of physical enjoyment, and that I could not in any way

make myself responsible for her future, for which reason care must be

taken that there should be no offspring. During this intimacy, which

lasted several months, I sometimes overcame my enduring inclinations

towards men, but completely to suppress them was impossible. My

association with the girl was still continuing, when one day in a

public lavatory I saw an elderly gentleman whose appearance greatly

pleased me. He looked at me tentatively. Cautiously he leaned over, in

order _membrum meum videre_; he gradually drew near to me, moved his

shaking hand and ... _membrum meum tetigit_. I was so much surprised

and alarmed that I ran away, and avoided for some time afterwards

passing by the same place. All the stronger, however, was the impulse

to find this remarkable man once more, and this was not at all

difficult. What an enigma such a man seemed to me! How could it

happen that he dared to do that of which I had always been able only

to think, to dream, with heart-quaking and horror? Could there,

perhaps, be another man like this--perhaps several such exceptional

beings? A short period convinced me that I was not quite alone in my

way of feeling; but this was a weak consolation. Rather, since that

time--that is to say, during the last five years--my inward battle has

become more unbearable, for earlier my only battle was to reject

homosexual ideas, and to overcome the habit of solitary self-abuse.

Now sometimes I practise with another mutual onanism (to me the proper

‘natural’ mode of sexual gratification), and yet I cannot forgive

myself for doing it because it is effected in so unæsthetic a manner,

and is associated with such dangers. Notwithstanding all my

endeavours, however, I have never been able to resist the temptation

for a long time together; and thus I am hunted always by my impulse as

by a wild animal, and can nowhere and in nothing find repose and

forgetfulness. I have frequently changed my place of residence, but I

always before long form new ‘relationships.’ The tortures which I

suffer in consequence of the incomparable power of the impulse are

greater them I can possibly express in words. I can only wonder that I

did not lose my reason, and that in the eyes of my friends and

acquaintances I am now, as before, ‘the most normal of all human

beings.’ In the senseless and utterly unsuccessful contest with an

impulse which, as far as I am concerned, is wholly, or almost wholly,

congenital, I have lost the best of my powers, although I have long

recognized the fact that this impulse in and by itself is neither

morbid nor sinful, for a divergence from the norm is not a disease,

and the gratification of a natural impulse, which in no respect and

for no human being leads to evil consequences, cannot be regarded as

sinful. Why, then, must I continue to strive against this impulse like

a madman? Because it is very generally misunderstood, so unpardonably

condemned. What help is it that I am now surrounded by love and

respect? I know that so many would turn away from me with horror if

they were to learn my sexual constitution, although it is a matter

which does not concern them at all. Scorn and contempt would then be

my lot. I should be regarded by the majority of human beings as a

libertine; whereas I feel and know that, notwithstanding all the

sensuality of my nature, I have been created for some other purpose

than simply to follow my lustful desire. Who will believe that I

suffer in the struggle with myself? Who will have compassion upon me?

This idea is intolerable. I am condemned to eternal solitude. I have

not the moral right to found a home, to embrace a child who would give

me the name of ‘father.’ Is not this punishment sufficiently severe

for God knows what sins? Why, then, should the consciousness be

superadded that I am a pariah, an outcast from society? Owing to the

opinion of society regarding the homosexual--an opinion based upon

ignorance, stupidity, and ill-nature--society drives these unhappy

beings to death (or to a marriage which in their case is criminal),

and then triumphantly exclaims: ‘Look what degenerate beings they

are!’ No, they are not degenerates, those whose lives you have made

unbearable; they are for the most part spiritually and morally very

healthy human beings. I will speak of myself. Why do I long for death?

Certainly not because I am mentally abnormal. I am no morbid

pessimist, and I know well enough that life can be very beautiful.

But, unfortunately, it cannot be so for me; for my life is a hell; I

am intolerably weary of my internal conflict; it has become horribly

difficult to me to play the hypocrite, to pretend continually to be a

happy man rejoicing in life; I am bending beneath the burden of my

heavy iron mask. Recently I had myself hypnotized, in order to have my

thoughts turned away as far as possible from sexual matters. My

hypnotist said to me: ‘You see, you will be at rest now,’ and

involuntarily in sleep I had to swallow these words, ‘Be at rest’!

Good God, is that possible? Does the ‘normal’ man know how this word

sounds in our ears? Who will understand my intolerable pain? Perhaps

my dear parents could have done so, as they loved me above all, as if

they had a presentiment that I should be the most unhappy of their

children; but they have been dead for several years, and so,

notwithstanding my numerous relatives and friends, I stand quite alone

in this world, and vainly seek an answer to the questions ‘Why?’ and

‘Wherefore?’”

Genuine homosexuality exhibits, like heterosexuality, the character of

an impulse arising from the =very nature= of the personality, which, in

activity from the cradle to the grave, expresses the =continuity of the

individual= in respect also of this peculiar sexual tendency. Thus there

does not exist a homosexuality =limited= merely to a certain age of

life, as to childhood or youth, to maturity, or even to old age. Hence

we must distinguish from genuine homosexuality the pæderasty of old men

described by Schopenhauer, which does not begin till old age appears. We

must distinguish, also, the love of Greek boys for elderly men; these

must be included in the category of =pseudo-homosexuality=. An

inclination which, like original homosexuality, is an =outflow of the

essential nature= of the individual concerned, cannot disappear so long

as the individual himself persists, cannot begin or end except with the

beginning or end of his life. Homosexuality extends throughout the

lifetime, and if by any cause whatever--for example, enforced

marriage--it is apparently temporarily suppressed, it always reappears.

It seems very doubtful if there really exists, as von Krafft-Ebing[506]

assumes, a genuine =retarded= homosexuality--that is, original

homosexuality which does not manifest itself until a comparatively

advanced age. There do, doubtless, exist transient cases of

pseudo-homosexuality, which have in some cases developed in those

previously heterosexual, and which in other cases are superimposed upon

a bisexual basis. These belong to the category of “=acquired=”

homosexuality, which is always a pseudo-homosexuality.

The course of life of genuine homosexuals is a complete expression of

the results of simple inversion of the sexual impulse, and the

homosexual type makes its appearance in childhood. The fact of the

“=difference=” between the homosexual and others is not experienced

merely by the person himself, but is also noticed =very early= by those

who have care of him. The “girlish” (in the case of female

homosexuality, “boyish”) and “peculiar” nature is often observed by

members of the family, by comrades, and by tutors, and gives rise to the

use of nicknames. These manifestations and perceptions are a valuable

objective confirmation of the subjective sensations of homosexual

children. A Protestant clergyman whose homosexual son also studied

theology remarked to M. Hirschfeld: “He was from the very beginning

different from my five other sons.” The physical and moral peculiarities

presently to be described are often manifested in very early childhood.

Hirschfeld has frequently been able to diagnose “homosexuality” in

children from ten to fourteen years of age. He alludes, among others, to

a very timid boy, twelve years of age, who suffered from migraine, who

cried frequently, who kept himself apart from his schoolfellows, and

corresponded daily with a boy friend. He was fond of flowers and music;

he had very little inclination to mathematics (according to Hirschfeld,

a somewhat characteristic phenomenon in cases of homosexuality). The

examination of the boy, who was extremely bashful, showed that =the

genital organs were still completely undeveloped=, the penis resembling

that of a boy of four years, whilst the breasts were markedly developed

like those of a girl at the commencement of puberty.

I doubt whether the fondness on the part of boys for girls’ games, or on

the part of girls for boys’ games, can be regarded as a symptom of

diagnostic importance in regard to the existence of homosexuality, for a

fondness for playing with girls and for cooking may often be observed in

boys who later prove thoroughly heterosexual. Still, these things do

play a great part in the autobiography of homosexuals, and have, in

fact, great importance in cases in which these tendencies persist

=after= puberty, when the heterosexually differentiated psyche would,

after the transitory episode of these youthful games, display activities

now corresponding to the fully developed sexual sensibility.

Puberty is the most important period with regard to the final

=determination= of homosexuality by means of particular =physical= and

=mental= characteristics.

The consideration of the physical and mental characters of male

homosexuals leads clearly to the distinction of two different types--the

=effeminate= and the =virile= urnings. With regard to the relative

numbers of these two types there exist no definite data. Hirschfeld, in

his “Urnings,” describes chiefly the type of the more or less effeminate

urnings--that is, of those who show the greatest resemblance to the

feminine nature--and does not express an opinion as to whether the

number of effeminate homosexuals is greater than the number of virile

homosexuals--that is, of those whose nature is predominantly masculine.

Another experienced observer of urnings, Dr. J. E. Meisner,[507] is of

opinion that in the =majority= of cases the male type of homosexuals is

encountered rather than the female. According to my own observations, it

appears to me that the number of virile and of effeminate urnings is

about identical.[508] There are certainly numerous virile homosexuals,

or rather homosexuals of a thoroughly =masculine= build of body, without

great deviations from the normal type, who yet have a more or less

feminine mode of sensibility. The distinction between effeminate and

virile homosexuals would appear therefore to be only relative, and for

the majority of cases Hirschfeld’s remarks (“Urnings,” p. 86) apply:

“A homosexual who was not distinguishable physically and mentally from

the complete man is a being I have not yet encountered among fifteen

hundred cases, and I am therefore unable to believe in the existence

of such until I personally encounter one.”

More especially after removing any beard or moustache that may be

present, we sometimes see much more clearly the feminine expression of

face in a male homosexual, whilst before the hair was removed they

appeared quite man-like. Still more important for the determination of a

feminine habitus are direct physical characteristics. Among these there

must be mentioned a =considerable deposit of fat=, by which the

resemblance to the feminine type is produced, the contours of the body

being more rounded than in the case of the normal male. In

correspondence with this the =muscular system= is less powerfully

developed than it is in heterosexual men, the skin is delicate and soft,

and the complexion is much clearer than is usual in men. Last winter I

attended an urnings’ ball, and I was much impressed, when looking at the

_décolleté_ men, with the remarkable whiteness of their skin on the

shoulders, neck, and back--also in those who had not applied powder--and

by the fact that the little acne spots almost always present in normal

men were absent in these. The peculiar rounding of the shoulders was

also remarkable, from its resemblance to what one sees in women.

According to Hirschfeld, the skin of the urning almost always feels

warmer than his environment. He refers the expression commonly used

among the people (in Germany), “warm brothers,” to this circumstance,

and derives the Latin _homo mollis_ (“soft man”) from the softness of

the skin and of the muscular system (though in my opinion this term is

applied rather to the =entire= effeminate, soft nature of the urning).

Of great interest is the relation =between the breadth of the shoulders

and the width of the pelvis= in homosexual men. Whilst the breadth of

the shoulders of heterosexual men is several centimetres in excess of

the width of the pelvis, and in women the width of the pelvis is greater

than the breadth of the shoulders, according to Hirschfeld in the urning

there is little or no difference between these two measurements. This,

in respect of the bodily structure, would completely justify the

expression “intermediate stage,” and would give the homosexual man a

position between the heterosexual man and the heterosexual woman. Still,

there are, without doubt, numerous virile homosexual men in whom this

great width of the pelvis is not present. Investigations regarding the

corresponding relationships among homosexual women have not to my

knowledge hitherto been made. Very striking is the =often luxuriant

growth of hair=, especially in the effeminate types, whereas the virile

homosexuals are in this respect more approximate to normal men, baldness

being common among them.

Our attention having been recently directed by the investigation of H.

Swoboda to the existence of =equivalents of menstruation= in men, the

occurrence of such equivalents among urnings is of interest. Hirschfeld

reports the case of an effeminate homosexual who since the age of

fourteen had suffered at intervals of twenty-eight days from migraine,

associated with severe pains in the back and loins, so that his

stepmother said to him: “It is with you just as it is with us.”

The =gait= and the =movements= of effeminate urnings also have a

somewhat womanly appearance, and attract the attention even of one who

is not in the secret. Short, tripping paces and elegant movements are

characteristic of the effeminate.

In an earlier chapter we came to the conclusion that the fully adult

normal woman was approximate in physical characteristics rather to the

child and to the youthful human being than to the adult man; and in this

connexion it is of interest that we must describe as a distinctively

=feminine= characteristic the peculiarity of many male homosexuals,

which enables them =for a long time to preserve a youthful appearance

and demeanour=.

Very remarkable is the behaviour of the voice. The change in the voice

may not occur at all, or does not occur till very late. The capacity for

singing soprano or falsetto is also long preserved. Others, in whom the

change of voice had failed to occur, were able to lower the pitch

considerably by practice. A typical and well-known example is that of

the baritone singer Willibald von Sadler-Grün, whom I had the

opportunity of hearing recently, when, under the name of “Urany Verde,”

he made a professional journey through Germany, and sang his songs

dressed as a woman. He said of himself: “My voice has never cracked in a

definite way. At twenty-three years of age I could sing soprano, and can

still do so to-day, at the age of thirty. The deeper tones for speech

and singing I acquired only by instruction and practice” (Hirschfeld,

“Urnings,” p. 65). In this typical effeminate, the breasts also had a

completely feminine character, as, according to Hirschfeld, is by no

means rare in boy urnings, who at puberty experience swelling of the

breasts, associated with painful sensations.[509] I must, however,

maintain, in opposition to Hirschfeld, that abnormally marked

development of the breasts is by no means rare in perfectly normal

heterosexual men. For the diagnosis of homosexuality, the imperfect

development of the larynx, and the failure of the voice to crack, are

more important than the marked development of the breasts. I remember

distinctly that in the case of a fellow-student of mine years ago his

high voice used greatly to strike me. To-day I am able to understand how

this fact was associated with his complete disinclination to sexual

intercourse with women and his insensibility to feminine charms in

general; and I am able in his case to diagnose homosexuality with

absolute certainty.

In the case of =virile= homosexuals, all the above-mentioned physical

peculiarities are far less noticeable. In their outward appearance they

much more nearly resemble heterosexual men, but still they always have

=comparatively= more of the feminine in their nature than the latter.

Such a typically virile homosexual, in whose appearance the impression

of femininity was entirely absent, I was able recently to recognize

during a railway journey, in the course of which he confided to me

misogynous opinions against other fellow-travellers, and also said that

in the whole of his life--he was a man of a little over thirty--he had

not had intercourse with women more than three or four times. During the

long wait of the train at a station I took the opportunity, having

mentioned that I was a physician by profession, to ask him if he was not

homosexual, a fact which he at once admitted. Already in very early

childhood he had felt himself distinctly drawn only towards masculine

beings, and had =never= experienced the least inclination towards women.

In this case also any kind of outward influence was excluded, because he

had grown up at home and chiefly in a =feminine= environment. As I have

already said, in appearance he was masculine, and he himself stated that

he had no physical characteristics which suggested a feminine

impression. That this is the case in numerous virile homosexuals is

proved by the distinctive fact that many of them are =professional

soldiers=, especially officers, in respect of whose appearance virility

is very strongly insisted on.

The =mental= qualities of male homosexuals correspond fully to the

physical, and occupy a middle region between the psyche of the

heterosexual man and that of woman. But every =emotional element= is in

them more prominent than energetic will-power and clear-sighted reason.

Something soft and pliable is characteristic of the majority of urnings.

This adaptability manifests itself in good-humouredness, in inclination

to self-sacrifice, but, above all, in a most astonishing =mobility of

the imaginative life=, which seems to be something characteristic of the

homosexual, and to explain his frequent artistic capacity, above all his

talents for =music=, for which vocation, indeed, his less fixed and more

sketchy nature especially fits him, but also for poetry, painting,

acting, and sculpture. “For all the fine arts,” says Hirschfeld, “from

cooking and artistic needlework to sculpture, we find that urnings have

exceptional talent.” The inclination to intellectual occupation is

distinctly greater among homosexuals than the inclination to bodily

work. Associated with this is the ambition to distinguish themselves

mentally above those by whom they are surrounded. Hirschfeld’s assertion

that homosexuals belonging to the lower classes exhibit intellectual

predominance over their environment, I am able emphatically to confirm,

after frequent conversations with homosexual workmen and menservants.

The peculiarity of their congenital tendencies has here early given rise

to a certain intellectual profundity, has early taught these men to

=reflect= about the world and about human existence. Every homosexual is

a philosopher for himself. Most heterosexuals, especially those of the

lower classes, never arrive at thinking so much about themselves and

about their relations to the external world, as is a matter of course

among homosexuals. The =imaginative=, the =dreamy=, is much more

predominant in the homosexual than a crude sense of reality. This

expresses itself particularly in his love, which far less frequently and

exclusively than among the heterosexual takes the form of a gross and

material sensuality. On the contrary, it permits us to recognize the

inward need for tenderness and delicacy, for a peculiar ideal colouring.

Goethe has contrasted this latter with the more sensual heterosexual

love; he speaks of the

“remarkable phenomenon of the love of men for each other. Let it be

admitted that this love is seldom pushed to the highest degree of

sensuality, but rather occupies the intermediate region between

inclination and passion. I am able to say that I have seen with my own

eyes the most beautiful manifestations of this love, such as we have

handed down to us from the days of Greek antiquity; and as an

observant student of human nature I was able to observe the

intellectual and moral elements of this love.”[510]

The ideal conception of Platonic--that is, of homosexual--love was a

non-sensual, assexual love. The psychical element also plays an

important part in modern uranism--a part overlooked or underestimated,

whereas the sensual side is exaggerated.

Homosexuality as an anthropological phenomenon is diffused throughout

all classes of the population. We find it among workmen just as much as

among aristocrats, princely personalities, and intellectual heroes.

Physicians, lawyers, theologians, philosophers, merchants, artists,

etc., all contribute their contingents to uranism. If the

extraordinarily frequent occurrence of homosexuality in the highest

classes of society, especially in the leaders of the aristocracy, may

possibly be brought into relationship with the processes of

“degeneration,” still, on the other hand, numerous homosexuals are

derived from healthy families, such as have not transmitted hereditary

taint through a long series of ancestors. Recently G. Merzbach[511] has

studied the relationship between homosexuality and the choice of a

profession, and has proved that this choice is usually a consequence of

the natural tendency. Thus we find an especially large number of

homosexuals engaged in the production of ready-made clothing and in

other manufacturing trades; others become music-hall comedians playing

women’s parts, actors, dancers. Actors and singers appearing on the

stage as women are to a large extent original homosexuals.[512] Among

hairdressers and waiters we find also a relatively large number of

urnings.

As regards the =diffusion= of homosexuality, the data obtainable up to

the most recent times have been extremely contradictory. The first exact

information is to be found in the work of a physician, published under

the name of M. Kertbeny,[513] on Ҥ 143 of the Prussian Criminal Code of

April 14, 1851, and its Continuance as § 152 in the Proposal for a

Criminal Code for the North German Bund” (Leipzig, 1869). The author

enumerates in Berlin 10,000 homosexuals among 700,000 inhabitants (equal

to 1·425 %). A patient of von Krafft-Ebing, living in a town of 13,000

inhabitants, was acquainted with 14 urnings; and in another town of

60,000 he knew of at least 80. Many other equally uncertain estimates

are recorded by Magnus Hirschfeld. They vary between 2 % and

0·1 %--vary, that is to say, within very wide limits. In view,

therefore, of the importance of the exact determination of the number of

homosexuals, which I myself had earlier declared to be desirable, we owe

great thanks to Magnus Hirschfeld for having made an attempt[514] to

obtain some exact data regarding this matter. He deduces from a

compilation of thirty test investigations (reports regarding homosexuals

in various classes of the population), and by means of an inquiry made

with sealed letters, that the proportion of male homosexuals to the

population =is about= 1·5 %. That is a very much =greater= percentage

than has hitherto been assumed to exist. Formerly I doubted the accuracy

of this figure, but since numerous respected, honourable, well-behaved

persons, of whom I had not suspected it, have assured me that they have

been homosexual since childhood, I have no longer any doubt regarding

the approximate accuracy of Hirschfeld’s statistics. The enquiry made by

Dr. von Römer in Amsterdam gave similar results, for he found the

proportion of homosexuals to be 1·9 %. A third enquiry made by

Hirschfeld among the metal-workers of Berlin gave a proportion of 1·1 %.

=Normal heterosexual= love was reported in about 94 to 96 % of the three

inquiries.

“An imposing recognition of the love of man for woman, a powerful

manifestation of the provision for the preservation of the species,

and a contradiction to the fear that the uranian element in the

population could ever seriously impair the well-being of the great

majority” (Hirschfeld).

As “=bisexual=”--that is, as exhibiting tendencies towards both

sexes--the average of the three enquiries reported 3·9 %, of whom,

however, 0·8 % were mainly homosexual.

The total number of the purely and mainly homosexual was thus 2·2 %.

Hence, according to the results of the last census of 1900, in the total

population of the German Empire, numbering 56,367,178, there would be

about 1,200,000 =homosexuals=; whilst of the population of Berlin,

numbering 2,500,000, 56,000 would be homosexual.

In the interest of the scientific and social study of homosexuality, it

is urgently necessary that these statistical investigations should be

pursued, for if it should appear that the above estimates really apply

to the whole Empire--which I do not feel justified in assuming without

further evidence, since it is naturally possible that Berlin might

contain a relatively greater number of homosexuals--uranism would, in

fact, have a greater social importance than it has hitherto been assumed

to possess. In any case, the number of urnings is large enough to make

them appear a remarkable anthropological variety of our race.

The truth of this assertion is supported by the fact of the ubiquitous

diffusion of uranism in time and space. In addition to homosexuality as

a popular custom, genuine homosexuality also played a part in antiquity;

and F. Karsch[515] has proved in an admirable book its occurrence among

all savage races, although unquestionably numerous cases of non-genuine

homosexuality must have been included. That homosexuality is in no

way a sign of “degeneration” is proved also by the fact that it is

more widely diffused among the still thoroughly vigorous Germans and

Anglo-Saxons than it is among the Latin peoples. It is especially

frequent in the German Ostsee provinces. It existed among the ancient

Scandinavians.[516] Recently F. Karsch has announced the publication of

ethnological researches on homosexuality, the first volume of which

has already been issued, under the title “Homosexual Life among

the Inhabitants of Eastern Asia: the Chinese, the Japanese, and

the Koreans”[517] (Munich, 1906). In the preface he states expressly

that he treats not only of original homosexuality, but also of

artificially produced or acquired homosexuality--that which I call

“pseudo-homosexuality.”

My earlier view, that true homosexuality is rare among the =Jews=, I

find it necessary to revise, for recently I have made the acquaintance

of numerous Jewish homosexuals.

For the =earlier history and literature of homosexuality= the most

important, and, in fact, nearly exhaustive, sources are the article

“Pæderasty,” by Meier, in Ersch and Gruber’s “General Encyclopædia,”

section iii., part 9, pp. 149-189 (Leipzig, 1837); Rosenbaum’s “History

of Syphilis in Antiquity,” pp. 119-227[518] (Halle, 1893); and, finally,

the writings of the earliest German student of homosexuality, containing

numerous interesting data, the Hanoverian official Karl Heinrich

Ulrichs,[519] who, under the pseudonym “Numa Numantius,” published

numerous works devoted to the emancipation of homosexuals, and to the

proof of the congenital nature of homosexuality. The general title of

these works is “Anthropological Studies on the Sexual Love of Man for

Man.” They were published under various peculiar separate titles, such

as: “Vindex” (Leipzig, 1864); “Inclusa” (Leipzig, 1864); “Vindicta”

(Leipzig, 1865); “Formatrix” (Leipzig, 1865); “Ara Spei” (Leipzig,

1865); “Gladius Furens” (Kassel, 1868); “Memnon” (Schleiz, 1868);

“Incubus” (Leipzig, 1869); “Argonauticus” (Leipzig, 1869); “Araxes”

(Schleiz, 1870); “Uranus” (Leipzig, 1870); “Kritische Pfeile”

(Stuttgart, 1879). In addition, Ulrichs, whose lifetime extended from

1825 to 1895, published uranian poetry under the title of “Auf Bienchens

Flügeln” (“On the Wings of the Bee”); Leipzig, 1875. These writings,

most of which are very rare in their original editions (although many

were reprinted in the year 1898), contained a number of new points of

view for the consideration of homosexuality, which have been recognized

as sound by recent investigators.

Important contributions to the knowledge of homosexuality are afforded

us by the studies of the life and works of celebrated and intellectually

distinguished urnings. As unquestionably homosexual we may mention the

poet Platen,[520] Michael Angelo,[521] Heinrich Hössli,[522] Heinrich

Bulthaupt,[523] Johannes von Müller (the historian),[524] King Henry

III. of France,[525] the musician Franz von Holstein,[526] Peter

Tschaikowsky,[527] the authors Count Emmerich von Stadion and Emil Mario

Vacano,[528] Duke August von Gotha,[529] George Eekhoud,[530] and the

Belgian sculptor Jérôme Duquesnoy (1602-1654).[531] The following

celebrated persons have also been regarded as urnings, but, as it

appears to me, on insufficient proofs: Frederick the Great; J. J.

Winkelmann, who at most was bisexual, since we know of passionate

letters written by him to a woman; and Alexander von Sternberg,[532] of

whom the same is true; the reformers Beza[533] and Calvin,[534] who have

unquestionably been wrongfully accused; and finally Byron and

Grillparzer,[535] without troubling to enumerate hypotheses utterly

without foundation. It is unquestionably a fact that a large number of

intellectually prominent men were genuine homosexuals, and that their

abnormal congenital tendencies did not prevent their doing important

work in other spheres of activity. But this happened =notwithstanding=,

and =not=, as many talented apologists wish to prove, =because of= their

uranism.

When we pass to consider the =activity= of homosexual love, we find that

homosexuals may, and actually do, love either other homosexual or

heterosexual individuals. According to the account given by Meisner

(“Uranism,” pp. 19, 20), the amatory ideal of most homosexual men is a

heterosexual man, and intercourse between two urnings is, properly

speaking, only a matter of necessity. But by several homosexuals with

whom I discussed the matter this view was declared to be erroneous; in

the majority of cases the attraction between two homosexuals plays the

principal rôle. Ulrichs endeavoured to provide a theoretical

justification for the sexual relationship between two homosexuals, and

maintained (_cf._, for example, “Inclusa,” pp. 64, 65) that Nature

destined the heterosexual, or “dioning,” as he calls them, by no means

for woman alone, but also for the urning, for the “fulfilment of the

sexual purposes of Nature, not directed towards reproduction.” According

to Hirschfeld (“Urnings,” pp. 22, 23), it is unquestionable that, whilst

many homosexuals greatly prefer to associate with those who also feel in

a uranian manner, and whilst to many also it is a matter of indifference

whether or not those with whom they have sexual relations are themselves

endowed with contrary sexuality, quite a number of urnings feel

attracted =exclusively= to normal, sexually powerful natures. As a rule,

it is not difficult for homosexuals to gratify their inclinations in

intercourse with heterosexual individuals. A middle-aged urning informed

me that young heterosexual men =almost always= acceded in this matter

to the expressed wish of homosexuals--in the first place from simple

curiosity, and in the second place by no means rarely from sexual

excitement. Indeed, according to this authority, effeminate homosexual

men often produce in powerfully sensual heterosexual men the impression

of femininity, and are seduced by the latter to mutual masturbation,

especially in a state of alcoholic intoxication. Not infrequently does

it happen--a striking example having come to my knowledge--that a young

heterosexual has a love intimacy with a girl, and yet occasionally, when

he is for any reason unable to have sexual intercourse with her, he

=very willingly= transfers his affections to a homosexual man. Male

prostitutes are also, to a large extent, heterosexual men who give

themselves to homosexuals for pecuniary reward. Occasionally, moreover,

heterosexual men mistake very effeminate urnings going about in women’s

clothing for genuine women, and have intercourse with them in this

belief--a belief which these latter are clever enough to keep up until

the last possible moment.