normal attitude. "And if this inclination were not natural," he makes Sarmiento say, "would the impression of it be received in childhood? … Let us study better this indulgent Nature before daring to fix her limits." Still earlier, in 1676 (as Schouten has pointed out, Sexual-Probleme, January, 1910, p. 66), an Italian priest called Carretto recognized that homosexual tendencies are innate.
[117] For some account of Ulrichs see Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. i, 1899, p. 36.
[118] Horatio Brown, John Addington Symonds, a Biography, vol. ii, p. 344.
[119] Ulrichs scarcely went so far as to assert that both homosexual and heterosexual love are equally normal and healthy; this has, however, been argued more recently.
[120] Special mention may be made of L'Inversion Sexuelle, a copious and comprehensive, though sometimes uncritical book by Dr. J. Chevalier, published in 1893, and the Perversion et Perversité Sexuelles of Dr. Saint-Paul, writing under the pseudonym of "Dr. Laupts," published in 1896 and republished in an enlarged form, under the title of L'Homosexualité et les Types Homosexuels, in 1910.
[121] Krafft-Ebing set forth his latest views in a paper read before the International Medical Congress, at Paris, in 1900 (Comptes-rendus, "Section de Psychiatrie," pp. 421, 462; also in contributions to the Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. iii, 1901).
[122] Kiernan, Detroit Lancet, 1884, Alienist and Neurologist, April, 1891; Lydston, Philadelphia Medical and Surgical Reporter, September 7, 1889, and Addresses and Essays, 1892.
[123] A summary of the conclusion of this book, of which but few copies were printed, will be found in Hirschfeld's Vierteljahrsberichte, October, 1911, pp. 78–91.
CHAPTER III.—SEXUAL INVERSION IN MEN.
Relatively Undifferentiated State of the Sexual Impulse in Early Life—The Freudian View—Homosexuality in Schools—The Question of Acquired Homosexuality—Latent Inversion—Retarded Inversion—Bisexuality—The Question of the Invert's Truthfulness—Histories.
When the sexual instinct first appears in early youth, it is much less specialized than normally it becomes later. Not only is it, at the outset, less definitely directed to a specific sexual end, but even the sex of its object is sometimes uncertain.[124] This has always been so well recognized that those in authority over young men have sometimes forced women upon them to avoid the risk of possible unnatural offenses.[125]
The institution which presents these phenomena to us in the most marked and the most important manner is, naturally, the school, in England especially the Public School. In France, where the same phenomena are noted, Tarde called attention to these relationships, "most usually Platonic in the primitive meaning of the word, which indicate a simple indecision of frontier between friendship and love, still undifferentiated in the dawn of the awakening heart," and he regretted that no one had studied them. In England we are very familiar with vague allusions to the vices of public schools. From time to time we read letters in the newspapers denouncing public schools as "hot-beds of vice" and one anonymous writer remarks that "some of our public schools almost provoke the punishment of the cities of the Plain."[126] But these allegations are rarely or never submitted to accurate investigation. The physicians and masters of public schools who are in a position to study the matter usually possess no psychological training, and appear to view homosexuality with too much disgust to care to pay any careful attention to it. What knowledge they possess they keep to themselves, for it is considered to be in the interests of public schools that these things should be hushed up. When anything very scandalous occurs one or two lads are expelled, to their own grave and, perhaps, lifelong injury, and without benefit to those who remain, whose awakening sexual life rarely receives intelligent sympathy.
In several of the Histories which follow in this chapter, as well as in Histories contained in other volumes of these Studies, details will be found concerning homosexuality as it occurs in English schools, public or private. (See also the study "Auto-erotism" in vol. i.) The prevalence of homosexual and erotic phenomena in schools varies greatly at different schools and at different times in the same school, while in small private schools such phenomena may be entirely unknown. As an English schoolboy I never myself saw or heard anything of such practices, and in Germany, Professor Gurlitt (Die Neue Generation, January, 1909), among others, testifies to similar absence of experience during his whole school life, although there was much talk and joking among the boys over sexual things. I have added some observations by a correspondent whose experiences of English public school life are still recent:—
"In the years I was a member of a public school, I saw and heard a good deal of homosexuality, though till my last two years I did not understand its meaning. As a prefect, I discussed with other prefects the methods of checking it, and of punishing it when detected. My own observations, supported by those of others, led me to think that the fault of the usual method of dealing with homosexuality in schools is that it regards all school homosexualists as being in one class together, and has only one way of dealing with them—the birch for a first offense, expulsion for a second. Now, I think we may distinguish three classes of school homosexualists:—
"(a) A very small number who are probably radically inverted, and who do not scruple to sacrifice young and innocent boys to their passions. These, and these only, are a real moral danger to others, and I believe them to be rare.
"(b) Boys of various ages who, having been initiated into the passive part in their young days, continue practices of an active or passive kind; but only with boys already known to be homosexualists; they draw the line at corrupting fresh victims. This class realize more or less what they are about, but cannot be called a danger to the morals of pure boys.
"(c) Young boys who, whether in the development of their own physical nature, or by the instruction of older boys of the class (a), find out the pleasures of masturbation or intercrural connection. (I never heard of a case of pedicatio at my school, and only once of fellatio, which was attempted on a quite young boy, who complained to his house master, and the offender was expelled). Boys in this class have probably little or no idea of what sexual morality means, and can hardly be accused of a moral offense at all.
"I submit that these three classes should receive quite different treatment. Expulsion may occasionally be necessary for class (a), but the few who belong to this class are usually too cunning to get caught. It used to be notorious at school that it was almost always the wrong people who got dropped on. I do not think a boy in the other two classes should ever be expelled, and even when expulsion is unavoidable, it should, if possible, be deferred till the end of the term, so as to make it indistinguishable from an ordinary departure. After all, there is no reason to ruin a boy's prospects because he is a little beast at sixteen; there are very few hopeless incorrigibles at that age.
"As regards the other two classes, I should begin by giving boys very much fuller enlightenment on sexual subjects than is usually done, before they go to a public school at all. Either a boy is pitchforked into the place in utter innocence and ignorance,