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
Inverted sexuality, the sexual instinct diverted from its normal
channel, directed (in the case of males) to males, forms the topic of
the following discourse. The study will be confined to modern times, and
to those nations which regard the phenomenon with religious detestation.
This renders the enquiry peculiarly difficult, and exposes the enquirer,
unless he be a professed expert in diseases of the mind and nervous
centres, to almost certain misconstruction. Still, there is no valid
reason why the task of statement and analysis should not be undertaken.
Indeed, one might rather wonder why candid and curious observers of
humanity have not attempted to fathom a problem which faces them at
every turn in their historical researches and in daily life. Doubtless
their neglect is due to natural or acquired repugnance, to feelings of
disgust and hatred, derived from immemorial tradition, and destructive
of the sympathies which animate a really zealous pioneer. Nevertheless,
what is human is alien to no human being. What the law punishes, but
what, in spite of law, persists and energises, ought to arrest
attention. We are all of us responsible to some extent for the
maintenance and enforcement of our laws. We are all of us, as
evolutionary science surely teaches, interested in the facts of
anthropology, however repellant some of these may be to our own
feelings. We cannot evade the conditions of _atavism_ and _heredity_.
Every family runs the risk of producing a boy or a girl whose life will
be embittered by inverted sexuality, but who in all other respects will
be no worse or better than the normal members of the home. Surely, then,
it is our duty and our interest to learn what we can about its nature,
and to arrive through comprehension at some rational method of dealing
with it.
I.
CHRISTIAN OPINION.
Since this enquiry is limited to actual conditions of contemporary life,
we need not discuss the various ways in which the phenomenon of sexual
inversion has been practically treated by races with whose habits and
religions we have no affinity.
On the other hand, it is of the highest importance to obtain a correct
conception of the steps whereby the Christian nations, separating
themselves from ancient paganism, introduced a new and stringent
morality into their opinion on this topic, and enforced their ethical
views by legal prohibitions of a very formidable kind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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