the force of quite unusual circumstances, very friendly and intimate with a young woman of considerable charm. He confided to her his abnormality, and was not repulsed. To others their relation probably appeared that of lovers, and a painful situation was created by the slander of a jealous woman. M. O. felt that in honor he must propose marriage to her. The young woman was non-committal, but invited M. O. to spend several months at her home. Shortly after his arrival a sad occurrence in his own family compelled him to go away, and they did not meet again for four years. They corresponded, but less and less often. His relations with boys continued.
Before his final meeting with her he became acquainted with a woman whom he has since married. The acquaintance began in a wholly non-sentimental community of interests in certain practical affairs, and very gradually widened into an intellectual and sympathetic friendship. M. O. had no secrets from this woman. After a full and prolonged consideration of all sides of the matter they married. Since that event he has had no sexual relations except with his wife. With her they are not passionate, but they are animated by the strong desire for children. Of the parental instinct he had become aware several years before this.
M. O. believes that no moral stigma should be attached to homosexuality until it can be proved to result from the vicious life of a free moral agent—and of this he has no expectation. He believes that much of its danger and unhappiness would be prevented by a thorough yet discreet sex-education, such as should be given to all children, whether normal or abnormal.
[124] Thus Godard described the little boys in Cairo as amusing themselves indifferently either with boys or girls in sexual play. (Egypte et Palestine, 1867, p. 105.) The same thing may be observed in England and elsewhere.
[125] Thus, of the Duc d'Orleans, in the seventeenth century, as described in Bouchard's Confessions, one of my correspondents writes: "This prince was of the same mind as Campanella, who, in the Città del Sole, laid it down that young men ought to be freely admitted to women for the avoidance of sexual aberrations. Aretino and Berni enable us to comprehend the sexual immorality of males congregated together in the courts of Roman prelates." The homosexuality of youth was also well recognized among the Romans, but they adopted the contrary course and provided means to gratify it, as the existence of the concubinus, referred to by Catullus, clearly shows.
[126] "Our Public Schools: their Methods and Morals." New Review, July, 1893.
[127] Max Dessoir, "Zür Psychologie der Vita Sexualis," Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, 1894, H. 5.
[128] F. H. A. Marshall, The Physiology of Reproduction, 1910, pp. 650–8.
[129] Iwan Bloch, in The Sexual Life of Our Time, makes this distinction as between "homosexuality" (corresponding to inversion) and "pseudo-homosexuality." According to the terminology I have accepted, the term "pseudo-homosexuality" would be unnecessary and incorrect. More recently (Die Prostitution, Bd. i, 1912, p. 103) Bloch has preferred, in place of pseudo-homosexuality, the more satisfactory term, "secondary homosexuality."
[130] See, for instance, Hirschfeld's reasonable discussion of the matter, Die Homosexualität, ch. xvii.
[131] Alfred Fuchs, who edited Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis after the latter's death, distinguishes between congenital homosexuality, manifesting itself from the first without external stimulation, and homosexuality on a basis of inborn disposition needing special external influences to arouse it (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. iv, 1902, p. 181).
[132] Krafft-Ebing, "Ueber tardive Homosexualität," Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. iii, 1901, p. 7; Näcke, "Probleme auf den Gebiete der Homosexualität," Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, 1902, p. 805; ib., "Ueber tardive Homosexualität," Sexual-Probleme, September, 1911. Numa Praetorius (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, January, 1913, p. 228) considers that retarded cases should not be regarded as bisexual, but as genuine inverts who had acquired a pseudoheterosexuality which at last falls away; at the most, he believes such cases merely represent a prolongation of the youthful undifferentiated period.
[133] Moll, Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis, 1897, pp, 458–8.
[134] Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, ch. viii.
[135] This was the term used in the earlier editions of the present Study. I willingly reject it in favor of the simpler and fairly clear term now more generally employed. It is true that by bisexuality it is possible to understand not only the double direction of the sexual instinct, but also the presence of both sexes in the same individual, which in French is more accurately distinguished as "bisexuation."
[136] J. Van Biervliet, "L'Homme Droit et l'Homme Gauche," Revue Philosophique, October, 1901. It is here shown that in the constitution of their nervous system the ambidextrous are demonstrably left-sided persons; their optic, acoustic, olfactory, and muscular sensitivity is preponderant on the left side.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
