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The Intermediate Sex

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2019
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“I can no longer exist without men’s love; without such I must ever remain at strife with myself.… If marriage between men existed I believe I should not be afraid of a life-long union—a thing which with a woman seems to be something impossible.… Since, however, this kind of love is reckoned criminal, by its satisfaction I can be at harmony with myself but never with the world, and necessarily in consequence must ever be somewhat out of tune; and all the more so because my character is open, and I hate lies of all kinds. This torment, to have always to conceal everything, has forced me to confess my anomaly to a few friends, of whose understanding and reticence I am sure. Although oftentimes my condition seems to me sad enough, by reason of the difficulty of satisfaction and the general contempt of manly love, yet I am often just a little proud on account of having these anomalous feelings. Naturally, I shall never marry—but this seems to me by no means a misfortune, although I am fond of family life, and up to now have passed my time only among my own relations. I live in the hope that later I shall have a permanent loved one; such indeed I must have, else would the future seem gray and drear, and every object which folk usually pursue—honour, high position, etc.—only vain and unattractive.

“Should this hope not be fulfilled, I know that I should be unable, permanently and with pleasure, to give myself to my calling, and that I should be capable of setting aside everything in order to gain the love of a man. I feel no longer any moral scruples on account of my anomalous leaning, and generally have never been troubled because I felt myself drawn to youths.… Up to now it has only seemed to me bad and immoral to do that which is injurious to another, or which I would not wish done to myself, and in this respect I can say that I try as much as possible not to infringe on the rights of others, and am capable of being violently roused by any injustice done to others.”—Ibid, p. 249, “case” No. 110 (official in a factory, age 31).

“My thoughts are by no means exclusively of the body or morbidly sensual. How often at the sight of a handsome youth does a deeply enthusiastic mood come upon me, and I offer a prayer, so to speak, in the glorious words of Heine—”Du bist wie eine Blume, so hold, so schön, so rein“.… Never has a young man yet guessed my love for him, I have never corrupted or damaged the morals of one, but for many have I here and there smoothed their pathway; and then I stick at no trouble and make sacrifices such as I can only make for them.

“When thus I have a chance to have a loved friend near me, to teach, to support and help, when my unconfest love finds a loving response (though naturally not sexual), then all the unclean images fade more and more from my mind. Then does my love become almost platonic, and lifts itself up—only to sink again in the mire, when it is deprived of its proper activity.

“For the rest, I am—and I can say it without boasting—not one of the worst of men. Mentally more sensitive than most average folk, I take interest in everything that moves mankind. I am kindly-disposed, tender, and easily moved to pity, can do no injury to any animal, certainly not to a human being, but on the contrary am active in a human-friendly way, where and however I can.

“Though then before my own conscience I cannot reproach myself, and though I must certainly reject the judgment of the world about us, yet I suffer greatly. In very truth I have injured no one; and I hold my love in its nobler activity for just as holy as that of normally disposed men, but under the unhappy fate that allows us neither sufferance nor recognition, I suffer often more than my life can bear.”—Ibid, p. 268, “case” No. 114.

“To depict all the misery, all the unfortunate situations, the constant dread of being found out in one’s peculiarity and of becoming impossible in society—to give an idea of all this is truly more than pen or words can compass. The very thought, so soon as it arises, of losing one’s social existence and of being rejected by everybody is more torment than can be imagined. In such a case, everything, everything would be forgotten that one had ever done in the way of good; in the consciousness of his lofty morality every normally disposed man would puff himself up, however frivolously he might really have acted in the matter of his love. I know many such normal folk whose unworthy conception of their love is indeed hard for me to understand.”—Ibid, p. 269.

“The torturing images of betrayed love prevent my sleeping, so that I am forced, now and again, to have recourse to chloral. My dreams are only a continuation of actual life, and just as painful. How all this will end I really know not; but I suppose these root-emotions must take their own course.… The only reasonable end of the struggle is Death.”—A. Moll, “Conträre Sexualempfindung,” 2nd edition, p. 123 (quotation from a letter).

“Weary and worn, I have passed through every tempest of anguish and despair. Years of the most racking mental agony have gone over my head without killing me. Through the long night watches I have heard the unceasing hours toll. Sleep has never been thought of by me, but I have lain on my bed trying to read some book, or have knelt by my bedside and endeavoured to raise my heart and spirit in prayer for succour or forgiveness. At last, unable to hold out any longer, with mouth tight-closed and knitted brow the Charmer has deadened my senses for one or two brief hours; but only that I may wake to a stronger and clearer perception of my hopeless condition.

“How the days have got on I know not. How I can have lived so long through such misery I know not. But torture like this is cruelly slow, whilst it is sure. It is the nature of youth to be long-enduring where Love is put to the test and a kind of occasional flicker—a kind of mocking semblance of hope, as like to hope as the rushing meteor is to the enduring sun—helps to support the load of misery, and so to prolong it. I am hundreds of years old in this my wretchedness of every moment. I cannot battle against Love and crush it out—never! God has implanted the necessity of the sentiment in my heart; it is scarce possible not to ask oneself why has He implanted so divine an element in my nature, which is doomed to die unsatisfied, which is destined in the end to be my very death?”—From a manuscript left to the Author by an Urning.

H. Ellis, in Appendix D. of his book on “Sexual Inversion,” speaks at some length on the School-friendships of girls: what they call “Flames” and “Raves”; of love at first sight; romance; courtship; meetings despite all obstacles; long letters; jealousy; the writing the beloved’s name everywhere, etc. These alliances are sometimes sexual, but oftener not so—though full of “psychic erethism.”

In the same Appendix he quotes a woman of thirty-three, who writes, “At fourteen I had my first case of love, but it was with a girl. It was insane, intense love, but had the same quality and sensations as my first love with a man at eighteen. In neither case was the object idealized: I was perfectly aware of their faults; nevertheless, my whole being was lost, immersed, in their existence. The first lasted two years, the second seven years. No love has since been so intense, but now these two persons, though living, are no more to me than the veriest stranger.”

Another woman of thirty-five writes, “Girls between the ages of fourteen and eighteen at college or girls’ schools often fall in love with the same sex. This is not friendship. The loved one is older, more advanced, more charming or beautiful. When I was a freshman in college I knew at least thirty girls who were in love with a senior. Some sought her because it was the fashion, but I knew that my own homage and that of many others was sincere and passionate. I loved her because she was brilliant and utterly indifferent to the love shown her. She was not pretty, though at the time we thought her beautiful. One of her adorers, on being slighted, was ill for two weeks. On her return she was speaking to me when the object of our admiration came into the room. The shock was too great, and she fainted. When I reached the senior year I was the recipient of languishing glances, original verses, roses, and passionate letters written at midnight and three in the morning.”

“Passionate friendships among girls, from the most innocent to the most elaborate excursions in the direction of Lesbos, are extremely common in theatres, both among actresses, and even more among chorus and ballet-girls.”—Havelock Ellis, “Sexual Inversion,” p. 130.

“The love of homosexual women is often very passionate, as is that of Urnings. Just like these, the former often feel themselves blessed when they love happily. Nevertheless, to many of them, as to the Urning, is the circumstance very painful that in consequence of their antipathy to the touch of the male they are not in the position to found a family. Sometimes, when the love of a homosexual woman is not responded to, serious disturbances of the nerve-system may ensue, leading even to paroxysms of fury.”—A. Moll, op. cit., p. 338.

“It is noteworthy how many inverted women have, with more or less fraud, been married to the woman of their choice, the couple living happily together for long periods. I know of one case, probably unique, in which the ceremony was gone through without any deception on any side; a congenitally inverted English woman of distinguished intellectual ability, now dead, was attached to the wife of a clergyman, who, in full cognisance of all the facts of the case, privately married the two ladies in his own church.”—Havelock Ellis, op. cit., p. 146, footnote.

“Seven or eight girls, we are told (in Montaigne’s ‘Journal du Voyage en Italie,’ 1350), belonging to Chaumont, resolved to dress and to work as men; one of these came to Vitry to work as a weaver, and was looked upon as a well-conditioned young man, and liked by everyone. At Vitry she became betrothed to a woman, but, a quarrel arising, no marriage took place. Afterwards, ‘she fell in love with a woman whom she married, and with whom she lived for four or five months, to the wife’s great contentment, it is said; but having been recognised by some one from Chaumont, and brought to justice, she was condemned to be hanged. She said she would even prefer this to living again as a girl, and was hanged for using illicit inventions to supply the defects of her sex’.”—Ibid, p. 119.

“It is evident that there must be some radical causes for the frequency of homosexuality among prostitutes. One such cause doubtless lies in the character of the prostitute’s relations with men; these relations are of a professional character, and, as the business element becomes emphasized, the possibility of sexual satisfaction diminishes; at the best also there lacks the sense of social equality, the feeling of possession, and scope for the exercise of feminine affection and devotion.”—Ibid, p. 149.

“Among the inscribed prostitutes of Berlin there are without doubt a great number who honour the love of women. I am told from well-informed sources, that about twenty-five per cent. of the prostitutes of Berlin have relations with other women.”—A. Moll, op. cit., p. 331.

“Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (born in 1825 near Aurich), who for many years expounded and defended homosexual love, and whose views are said to have had some influence in drawing Westphal’s attention to the matter, was a Hanoverian legal official (Amts-assessor), himself sexually inverted. From 1864 onward, at first under the name of ‘Numa Numantius,’ and subsequently under his own name, Ulrichs published in various parts of Germany a long series of works dealing with this question, and made various attempts to obtain a revision of the legal position of the sexual invert in Germany.

“Although not a writer whose psychological views can carry much scientific weight, Ulrichs appears to have been a man of most brilliant ability, and his knowledge is said to have been of almost universal extent; he was not only well-versed in his own special subjects of jurisprudence and theology, but in many branches of natural science, as well as in archæology; he was also regarded by many as the best Latinist of his time. In 1880 he left Germany and settled in Naples, and afterwards at Aquila in the Abruzzi, whence he issued a Latin periodical. He died in 1895.”—Havelock Ellis, op. cit., p. 33.

Ulrichs enters into an elaborate classification of human types, with a corresponding nomenclature, which, though somewhat ponderous, has been of use. Among males, for instance, he distinguishes the quite normal man, whom he calls “Dioning,” from the invert, whom he calls “Urning.” Among Urnings, again, he distinguishes (1) those who are thoroughly manly in appearance and in mental habit and character (“Mannlings”), and who tend to love softer and younger specimens of their own sex; (2) those who are effeminate in appearance and cast of mind (“Weiblings”), and who love rougher and older men; and (3) those who are of a medium type (“Zwischen Urnings”) and love young men. Then again there is the “Urano-dioning,” who is born with a capacity of love in both directions, i.e., for women and for men. He is generally of the manly type. And besides these, some sub-species, like the “Uraniaster,” who is a normal man who has contracted the Urning habit, and the “Virilised Urning,” who is an Urning who has contracted the normal habit, though this is not really natural to him! The whole may be set out in a table as follows:—

If we add to this a corresponding table for the female we shall have an idea of the complication of Ulrichs’ system! Yet, complex as it is, and whatever criticisms we may make upon it, we must allow that it does not exceed the complexity of the real facts of Nature. (See K. H. Ulrichs’ “Memnon,” ch. iii.-v.)

Krafft-Ebing’s analysis of the subject is fully as elaborate as that of Ulrichs. It is given by J. A. Symonds in the form of a table, as follows:—

And Symonds continues:—“What is the rational explanation of the facts presented to us by the analysis which I have formulated in this table, cannot as yet be thoroughly determined. We do not know enough about the law of sex in human beings to advance a theory. Krafft-Ebing and writers of his school are at present inclined to refer them all to diseases of the nervous centres, inherited, congenital, excited by early habits of self-abuse. The inadequacy of this method I have already attempted to set forth; and I have also called attention to the fact that it does not sufficiently account for the phenomena known to us through history and through every-day experience.” [It should be noted that in later editions of his book Krafft-Ebing considerably modifies the view that these sex-variations all indicate disease.]—“A Problem in Modern Ethics,” p. 46.

Moll, speaking of the act so commonly credited to Urnings (sodomy), says:—“The common assumption is that the intercourse of Urnings consists in this. But it is a great error to suppose that this act is so frequent among them.”—A. Moll, op. cit., p. 139.

And Krafft-Ebing also speaks of it as rare among true Urnings, though not uncommon among old roués and debauchees of more normal temperament.—“Psychopathia Sexualis,” 7th edition, p. 258.

“The Urning denies not only the ‘unnaturalness’ of his leanings, but also their pathological character; he protests against comparison with the lame and the deaf. The occasional coincidence of sexual inversion with other really morbid conditions settles nothing, nor is the reminder that it is antagonistic to the purpose of race-propagation a proof; for who can assure us that Nature has intended all people for race-propagation? Even to the worker-bee Nature has not granted this function, although in her stunted female sex-organs there exists an undeniable indication or suggestion of sex-feeling.”—A. Moll, op. cit., p. 271. (From a letter by a sixty year old Urning.)

“Homosexuality, therefore, might be described as an abnormal variety of the sex-impulse, but hardly as a morbid variety. If you like, it might be termed an arrest of development or a kind of reversion. And this is quite in accord with the fact that the best experts in the subject have so far not discovered more psychic abnormalities among homosexuals than among heterosexuals—nor more degeneracy or signs of degeneracy.”—Consulting-Physician Dr. Paul Naecke, in Der Tag, 26th Oct., 1907.

“As a result of these considerations Ulrichs concludes that there is no real ground for the persecution of Urnings except such as may be found in the repugnance felt by the vast numerical majority for an insignificant minority. The majority encourages matrimony, condones seduction, sanctions prostitution, legalises divorce, in the interest of its own sexual proclivities. It makes temporary or permanent unions illegal for the minority whose inversion of instinct it abhors. And this persecution, in the popular mind at any rate, is justified, like many other inequitable acts of prejudice or ignorance, by theological assumptions and the so-called mandates of revelation.”—“A Problem in Modern Ethics,” p. 83.

“We understand by ‘homosexual’ a person who feels himself drawn to individuals of the same sex by feelings of real love. Whether or not he acts in accordance with this homosexual feeling is, from the scientific standpoint, beside the question. Just as there are normal folk who live chastely, so there are homosexual persons whose love bears a distinctly psychic, ideal and ‘platonic’ character.…

“The feminine impress, in the case of homosexual men, is in general best indicated by the presence of greater sensitiveness and receptivity, also by the dominance of the emotional life, by a strong artistic sense, especially in the direction of music, often too by a tendency to mysticism, and by various inclinations and habits feminine in the good or less good sense of the word. This blending of temperament, however, does not make the homosexual as such a less worthy person. He is indeed not of the same nature as the heterosexual, but he is of equal worth.”—Dr M. Hirschfeld’s evidence as medical specialist in the Moltké-Harden trial.

“One serious objection to recognising and tolerating sexual inversion has always been that it tends to check the population. This was a sound political and social argument in the time of Moses, when a small militant tribe needed to multiply to the full extent of its procreative capacity. It is by no means so valid in our age, when the habitable portions of the globe are rapidly becoming overcrowded. Moreover, we must bear in mind that society under the existing order sanctions female prostitution, whereby men and women, though normally procreative, are sterilized to an indefinite extent.”—J. A. Symonds, “A Problem in Modern Ethics,” p. 82.

“Before Justinian, both Constantine and Theodosius passed laws against sexual inversion, committing the offenders to ‘avenging flames.’ But these statutes were not rigidly enforced, and modern opinion on the subject may be said to flow from Justinian’s legislation. Opinion, in matters of custom and manners, always follows law. Though Imperial edicts could not eradicate a passion which is inherent in human nature, they had the effect of stereotyping extreme punishments in all the codes of Christian nations, and of creating a permanent social antipathy.”—Ibid, p. 13.

“Our modern attitude is sometimes traced back to the Jewish Law and its survival in St. Paul’s opinion on this matter. But the Jewish Law itself had a foundation. Wherever the enlargement of the population becomes a strongly-felt social need—as it was among the Jews in their exaltation of family life, and as it was when the European populations were constituted—there homosexuality has been regarded as a crime, even punishable with death.… It was in the fourth century at Rome that the strong modern opposition to it was formulated in law. The Roman race had long been decaying; sexual perversions of all kinds flourished; the population was dwindling. At the same time Christianity with its Judaic-Pauline antagonism to homosexuality was rapidly spreading. The statesmen of the day, anxious to quicken the failing pulses of national life, utilised this powerful Christian feeling. Constantine, Theodosius, Valentinian, all passed laws against homosexuality—the last, at all events, ordaining as a penalty the vindices flammæ.” Havelock Ellis, op. cit., p. 206.

“At the present time, shoemakers, who make shoes to measure, deal more rationally with individuals than our teachers and school-masters do, in their application to moral principles. The sexually intermediate forms of individuals are treated exactly as if they were good examples of the ideal male or female types. There is wanted an ‘orthopædic’ treatment of the soul, instead of the torture caused by the application of ready-made conventional shapes. The present system stamps out much that is original, uproots much that is truly natural, and distorts much into artificial and unnatural forms.”—O. Weininger, “Sex and Character,” ch. v.

“What is new in my view is that according to it homosexuality cannot be regarded as an atavism or as due to arrested embryonic development, or to incomplete differentiation of sex; it cannot be regarded as an anomaly of rare occurrence interpolating itself in customary complete separation of the sexes. Homosexuality is merely the sexual condition of those intermediate sexual forms that stretch from one ideal sexual condition to the other ideal sexual condition. In my view, all actual organisms have both homosexuality and heterosexuality.”—O. Weininger, “Sex and Character,” ch. iv.

“How is it then that in our age reputed so philanthropic, whole classes of men, on account of inborn mental abnormalities, are marked down and banned, frantically persecuted, publicly branded, and threatened with the severest legal penalties? Any one would hardly believe what gross cases of justiciary murder, morally speaking, still take place in this matter even at the end of the nineteenth century. To the pitiful ignorance of the judges, to the thousand inherited prejudices of public opinion, as well as to the mental slavery of legislative bodies, must it be ascribed that the penal code of most civilised states is still in great measure formulated in the gloomy spirit of the Middle Ages.”—O. de Joux, “Die Enterbten des Liebesglückes,” p. 16.

“Up till now homosexual humanity has found itself in a peculiar position. Its mouth was closed, it could not speak. It was bound hand and foot and could not move. But now there has come an important change. Science has taken the part of these folk and defended their honour … I protest therefore earnestly that these men, whether by means of the Law or any other means, should no longer be branded in the name of Christianity.”—From a letter written by a Catholic priest in reply to a circular sent by the Humane-Science Committee of Berlin. (See “Jahrbuch der Sexuellen Zwischenstufen,” vol. ii., p. 177.)

“Thus the very basest of all trades, that of chantage [blackmailing] is encouraged by the law.… The miserable persecuted wretch, placed between the alternative of paying money down or of becoming socially impossible, losing a valued position, and seeing dishonour burst upon himself and family, pays; and still the more he pays the greedier becomes the vampire who sucks his life-blood, until at last there lies nothing else before him except total financial ruin or disgrace. Who will be astonished if the nerves of an individual in this position are not equal to the horrid strain? In some cases the nerves give way altogether.… Alter the law and instead of increasing vice you will diminish it. The temptation to ply a disgraceful profession with the object of extorting money would be removed.”—“A Problem in Modern Ethics,” pp. 56 and 86.

“You will rightly infer that it is difficult for me to say exactly how I regard (morally) the homosexual tendency. Of this much, however, I am certain that even if it were possible I would not exchange my inverted nature for a normal one. I suspect that the sexual emotions and even inverted ones have a more subtle significance than is generally attributed to them; but modern moralists either fight shy of transcendental interpretations or see none, and I am ignorant and unable to solve the mystery these feelings seem to imply.”—Havelock Ellis, op. cit., p. 65, “case” ix.

“I cannot regard my sexual feelings as unnatural or abnormal, since they have disclosed themselves so perfectly naturally and spontaneously within me. All that I have read in books or heard spoken about the ordinary sexual love, its intensity and passion, life-long devotion, love at first sight, etc., seems to me to be easily matched by my own experiences in homosexual form; and with regard to the morality of this complex subject, my feeling is that it is the same as should prevail in love between man and woman, namely: that no bodily satisfaction should be sought at the cost of another person’s distress or degradation. I am sure that this kind of love is, notwithstanding the physical difficulties that attend it, as deeply stirring and ennobling as the other kind, if not more so; and I think that for a perfect relationship the actual sex-gratifications (whatever they may be) probably hold a less important place in this love than in the other.”—Ibid, “case” vii., p. 58.

“I grew older, I entered my professional studies, and I was very diligent with them. I lived in a great capital, I moved much in general society. I had a large and lively group of friends. But always, over and over, I realised that, in the kernel, at the very root and fibre of myself, there was the throb and glow, the ebb and the surge, the seeking as in a vain dream to realise again that passion of friendship which could so far transcend the cold modern idea of the tie; the Over-Friendship, the Love-Friendship of Hellas, which meant that between man and man could exist—the sexual-psychic love. That was still possible! I knew that now. I had read it in the verses or the prose of the Greek or Latin or Oriental authors who have written out every shade of its beauty or unloveliness, its worth or debasement—from Theokritos to Martial, or Abu-Nuwas, to Platen, Michel-Angelo, Shakespeare. I had learned it from the statues of sculptors—in those lines so often vivid with a merely physical male beauty—works which beget, which sprang from, the sense of it in a race. I had half-divined it in the music of a Beethoven and a Tschaikowsky before knowing facts in the life-stories of either of them—or of an hundred other tone-autobiographists. And I had recognised what it all meant to most people to-day—from the disgust, scorn, and laughter of my fellow-men when such an emotion was hinted at.”—Imre: a memorandum, by Xavier Mayne, p. 110. Naples, R. Rispoli, 1906.

“Presently, during that same winter, accident opened my eyes wider to myself. Since then, I have needed no further knowledge from the Tree of my Good and Evil. I met with a mass of serious studies, German, Italian, French, English, from the chief European specialists and theorists on the similisexual topic; many of them with quite other views than those of my well-meaning but far too conclusive Yankee doctor (who had recommended marriage as a cure). I learned of the much-discussed theories of ‘secondary sexes’ and ‘intersexes.’ I learned of the theories and facts of homosexualism, of the Uranian Love, of the Uranian race, of the ‘Sex within a Sex.’ … I came to know their enormous distribution all over the world to-day; and of the grave attention that European scientists and jurists have been devoting to problems concerned with homosexualism. I could pursue intelligently the growing efforts to set right the public mind as to so ineradicable and misunderstood a phase of humanity. I realised that I had always been a member of that hidden brotherhood and Sub-Sex, or Super-Sex. In wonder too I informed myself of its deep instinctive freemasonries—even to organised ones—in every social class, every land, and every civilisation.”—Ibid, pp. 134, 135.

“Thus in sexual inversion we have what may be fairly called a ‘sport’ or variation, one of those organic aberrations which we see throughout living nature, in plants and in animals.”… “All these organic variations which I have here mentioned to illustrate sexual inversion, are abnormalities. It is important that we should have a clear idea as to what abnormality is. Many people imagine that what is abnormal is necessarily diseased. That is not the case, unless we give the word disease an inconveniently and illegitimately wide extension. It is both inconvenient and inexact to speak of colour-blindness, criminality and genius as diseases in the same sense as we speak of scarlet fever, tuberculosis, or general paralysis as diseases.”—Havelock Ellis, op. cit., p. 186.

“I have had for some time past a theory about this ‘Homogenic’ business—I do not suppose it is new—but it is that when man reaches a certain stage of development and approaches the totality of Human Nature, there gets to exist in him, though subordinately at first, a female element as well as a male. That is to say that as he passes the various barriers, he passes the barrier of sex too, on his way to become the complete Human—the Universal.”—From a private letter.

“Great geniuses, men like Goethe, Shakespeare, Shelley, Byron, Darwin, all had the feminine soul very strongly developed in them.… As we are continually meeting in cities women who are one-quarter, or one-eighth, or so on, male … so there are in the Inner Self similar half-breeds, all adapting themselves to circumstances with perfect ease. The Greeks recognised that such a being could exist even in harmony with Nature, and so beautified and idealised it as Sappho.”—Charles G. Leland, “The Alternate Sex,” pp. 41, and 57. London, 1904.

“I have considered and inquired into this question for many years; and it has long been my settled conviction that no breach of morality is involved in homosexual love; that, like every other passion, it tends, when duly understood and controlled by spiritual feeling, to the physical and moral health of the individual and the race, and that it is only its brutal perversions which are immoral. I have known many persons more or less the subjects of this passion, and I have found them a particularly high-minded, upright, refined, and (I must add) pure-minded class of men.”—Communicated by Professor – in Appendix to Havelock Ellis’s “Sexual Inversion,” p. 240.

“What from the beginning struck me most, but now appears perfectly clear and indeed necessary is that among the homosexuals there is found the most remarkable class of men, namely, those whom I call supervirile. These men stand by virtue of the special variation of their soul-material, just as much above Man, as the normal sex man does above Woman. Such an individual is able to bewitch men by his soul-aroma, as they—though passively—bewitch him. But as he always lives in men’s society, and men, so to speak, sit at his feet, it comes about that such a supervirile often climbs the very highest steps of spiritual evolution, of social position, and of manly capacity. Hence it arises that the most famous names of the world and the history of culture stand rightly or wrongly on the list of homosexuals. Names like Alexander the Great, Socrates, Plato, Julius Cæsar, Michel Angelo, Charles XII. of Sweden, William of Orange, and so forth. Not only is this so, but it must be so. As certainly as a woman’s hero remains a spiritually inferior man, must a man’s hero—well be a man’s hero, if in any way he has the stuff for it.

“Consequently the German penal code, in stamping homosexuality as a crime, puts the highest blossoms of humanity on the proscription list.”—Professor Dr. Jaeger, “Die Entdeckung der Seele,” pp. 268, 269.

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