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
vegetation of Peru, beside the streams of Shiraz and the waters of the
Ganges, in the cold clear air of Scandinavian winters. It throbs in our
huge cities. The pulse of it can be felt in London, Paris, Berlin,
Vienna, no less than in Constantinople, Naples, Teheran, and Moscow. It
finds a home in Alpine valleys, Albanian ravines, Californian canyons,
and gorges of Caucasian mountains. It once sat, clothed in Imperial
purple, on the throne of the Roman Caesars, crowned with the tiara on
the chair of St. Peter. It has flaunted, emblazoned with the heraldries
of France and England, in coronation ceremonies at Rheims and
Westminster. The royal palaces of Madrid and Aranjuez tell their tales
of it. So do the ruined courtyards of Granada and the castle-keep of
Avignon. It shone with clear radiance in the gymnasium of Hellas, and
nerved the dying heroes of Greek freedom for their last forlorn hope
upon the plains of Chæronea. Endowed with inextinguishable life, in
spite of all that has been done to suppress it, this passion survives at
large in modern states and towns, penetrates society, makes itself felt
in every quarter of the globe where men are brought into communion with
men.
Yet no one dares to speak of it; or if they do, they bate their breath,
and preface their remarks with maledictions.
Those who read these lines will hardly doubt what passion it is that I
am hinting at. _Quod semper ubique et ab omnibus_--surely it deserves a
name. Yet I can hardly find a name which will not seem to soil this
paper. The accomplished languages of Europe in the nineteenth century
supply no term for this persistent feature of human psychology, without
importing some implication of disgust, disgrace, vituperation. Science,
however, has recently--within the last twenty years in fact--invented a
convenient phrase, which does not prejudice the matter under
consideration. She speaks of the "inverted sexual instinct"; and with
this neutral nomenclature the investigator has good reason to be
satisfied.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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