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
Jowett's translation.) Then follows a glowing description of Greek Love,
the whole reminding us very closely of the confessions made by Urnings
in modern times, and preserved by medical or forensic writers on sexual
inversion.
[57] Memnon, section xix.
[58] See above, p. 36, the suggestion quoted from Dr. Huggard of "a
congenital lack of balance between structures themselves healthy." It
might be queried whether this "imperfect sexual differentiation," or
this "congenital lack of balance between structures themselves healthy,"
is not the result of an evolutionary process arriving through heredity
and casual selection at an abnormal, but not of necessity a morbid,
phenomenon in certain individuals.
[59] The first two from Casper-Liman, Handbuch der gerichtlichen
Medicin, vol. i. pp. 166-169. The others from Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia
Sexualis.
[60] Memnon, section lxxiii. p. 54.
[61] Since Ulrichs left off writing, Italy (by the "Nuovo Codice Penale"
of 1889) has adopted the principles of the Code Napoleon, and has placed
sexual inversion under the same legal limitations as the normal sexual
instinct.
[62] Dr. W. Ogle, on the 18th March, 1890, read a paper before the
Statistical Society upon "Marriage Rates and Ages." The conclusion he
arrived at, with regard to the rapidly-advancing over-population of
England, was that, in order to equalise the death-rate with the
birth-rate (or in other words, to maintain the population at its present
level), we must look forward either to (1) an increase of emigration
which would involve social revolution, or (2) to the advance of the
average age at which women marry to the point of thirty years, or (3) to
an exclusion of 45 per cent. of those who now marry from matrimony at
any period of life. In the face of these calculations, after admitting
their possible exaggeration, it seems illogical to punish with severe
legal penalties those members of the male sex who do not want to marry,
and who can satisfy their natural desires in ways which involve no
detriment to the State and no violation of the rights of individuals.
[63] Psych. Sex., p. 108. I have condensed the sense of four short
paragraphs, to translate which in full would have involved a
disagreeable use of medical language.
[64] Psych. Sex., p. 107.
[65] Studies in Literature, p. 119.
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