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
[41] Third edition. Halle a. S., 1882.
[42] Psych. Sex., p. 82.
[43] Leipzig, Wigand, 1860.
[44] Arabian Nights, 1885, vol. x., pp. 205-254.
[45] Burton's acquaintance with what he called "le Vice" was principally
confined to Oriental nations. He started on his enquiries, imbued with
vulgar errors; and he never weighed the psychical theories examined by
me in the foregoing section of this Essay. Nevertheless, he was led to
surmise a crasis of the two sexes in persons subject to sexual
inversion. Thus he came to speak of "the third sex." During
conversations I had with him less than three months before his death, he
told me that he had begun a general history of "le Vice"; and at my
suggestion he studied Ulrichs and Krafft-Ebing. It is to be lamented
that life failed before he could apply his virile and candid criticism
to those theories, and compare them with the facts and observations he
had independently collected.
[46] I give the author's own text, p. 206.
[47] P. 208.
[48] P. 251.
[49] P. 222.
[50] Pp. 204, 209.
[51] Gli amori degli Uomini, Milano, 1886, vol. i. cap. 5.
[52] _Ibid._, p. 149.
[53] Pp. 148-154.
[54] P. 154.
[55] See above, p. 55, note.
[56] The notion that human beings were originally hermaphrodite is both
ancient and wide-spread. We find it in the Book of Genesis, unless,
indeed, there be a confusion here between two separate theories of
creation. God is said to have first made man in his own image, male and
female in one body, and to have bidden them multiply. Later on he
created the woman out of part of the primitive man. The myth related by
Aristophanes in Plato's _Symposium_ has a curious bearing upon Ulrichs'
speculations. There were originally human beings of three sexes: men,
the children of the sun; women, the children of the earth; and
hermaphrodites, the children of the moon. They were round, with two
faces, four hands, four feet and two sets of reproductive organs apiece.
In the case of the third sex, one set was male, the other female. Zeus,
on account of their strength and insolence, sliced them into halves.
Since that time the halves of each sort have always striven to unite
with their corresponding halves, and have found some satisfaction in
carnal congress--males with males, females with females, and males and
females with each other: "They who are a section of the male follow the
male, and while they are young, being slices of the original man, they
hang about men and embrace them, and they are themselves the best of
boys and youths, because they have the most manly nature. And when they
reach manhood, they are lovers of youth, and are not naturally inclined
to marry or beget children, which they do, if at all, only in obedience
to the law, but they are satisfied if they may be allowed to live with
one another unwedded; and such a nature is prone to love and ready to
return love, always embracing that which is akin to him." (Symp. 191-2,
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