A Problem in Modern Ethics: Being an Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Sexual Inversion, Addressed Especially to Medical Psychologists and Jurists — John Shaqi
A Problem in Modern Ethics: Being an Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Sexual Inversion, Addressed Especially to Medical Psychologists and JuristsSymonds, John Addington
Philosophy
A Problem in Modern Ethics: Being an Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Sexual Inversion, Addressed Especially to Medical Psychologists and Jurists
Symonds, John Addington
Homosexuality
How little Dr. Moreau has weighed the importance of ancient Greece in
his discussion of this topic, appears from the omission of all facts
supplied by Greek literature and history in the introduction to his
Essay. He dilates upon the legends recorded by the Roman Emperors,
because these seem to support his theory of hereditary malady. He uses
Juvenal, Tacitus, Suetonius, and the Augustan Histories to support his
position, although they form part of the annals of a people among whom
"pæderasty was accepted and admitted." He ignores the biographies of the
Spartan kings, the institutions of Crete, the Theban Sacred Band, the
dialogues of Plato, the anecdotes related about Pheidias, Sophocles,
Pindar, Demosthenes, Alcibiades, and so forth. Does he perhaps do so
because they cannot in any way be made to square with his theory of
morbidity? The truth is that ancient Greece offers insuperable
difficulties to theorists who treat sexual inversion exclusively from
the points of view of neuropathy, tainted heredity, and masturbation.
And how incompetent Dr. Moreau is to deal with Greek matters may be seen
in the grotesque synonym he has invented for pæderasty-_philopodie_ (p.
173). Properly the word is compounded of φιλεἱν and πους; but I suppose
it is meant to suggest φιλεἱν and _podex_.
In a chapter on Legal Medicine, Moreau starts by observing that "The
facts are so monstrous, so tainted with aberration, and yet their agents
offer so strong an appearance of sound reason, occupy such respectable
positions in the world, are reputed to enjoy such probity, such
honourable sentiments, &c., that one hesitates to utter an opinion."
Proceeding further, he considers it sufficiently established that: "Not
unfrequently, under the influence of some vice of organism, generally of
heredity, the moral faculties may undergo alterations, which, if they do
not actually destroy the social relations of the individual, as happens
in cases of declared insanity, yet modify them to a remarkable degree,
and certainly demand to be taken into account, when we have to estimate
the morality of these acts" (p. 301). His conclusion, therefore, is that
the aberrations of the sexual sense, including its inversion, are
matters for the physician rather than the judge, for therapeutics rather
than punishment, and that representatives of the medical faculty ought
to sit upon the bench as advisers or assessors when persons accused of
outrages against decency come to trial. "While we blame and stigmatise
these crimes with reason, the horrified intellect seeks an explanation
and a moral excuse (nothing more) for such odious acts. It insists on
asking what can have brought a man honourably known in society,
enjoying (apparently at least) the fulness of his mental faculties, to
these base and shameful self-indulgences. We answer: Such men for the
most part are abnormal intelligences, veritable candidates for lunacy,
and, what is more, they are the subjects of hereditary maladies. But let
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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