As to Moll, though he speaks[36] of the instinct as morbid (feeling perhaps in duty bound to do so), it is very noticeable that he abandons the ground of its association with other morbid symptoms--as this association, he says, is by no means always to be observed; and is fain to rest his judgment on the _dictum_ that the mere failure of the sexual instinct to propagate the species is itself pathological--a _dictum_ which in its turn obviously springs from that pre-judgment of scientists that generation is the sole object of love,[37] and which if pressed would involve the good doctor in awkward dilemmas, as for instance that every worker-bee is a pathological specimen. Finally we find that Havelock Ellis, one of the latest writers of weight on this subject, in chapter vi. of his “Sexual Inversion,” combats the idea that this temperament is necessarily morbid; and suggests that the tendency should rather be called an anomaly than a disease. He says (2nd edition, p. 186)[38] “Thus in sexual inversion we have what may fairly be called a ‘sport’ or variation, one of those organic aberrations which we see throughout living nature in plants and in animals.”[39] With regard to the nerve-degeneration theory, while it may be allowed that sexual inversion is not uncommonly found in connection with the specially nervous temperament, it must be remembered that its occasional association with nervous troubles or disease is quite another matter; since such troubles ought perhaps to be looked upon as the results rather than the causes of the inversion. It is difficult of course for outsiders not personally experienced in the matter to realise the great strain and tension of nerves under which those persons grow up from boyhood to manhood--or from girl to womanhood--who find their deepest and strongest instincts under the ban of the society around them; who before they clearly understand the drift of their own natures discover that they are somehow cut off from the sympathy and understanding of those nearest to them; and who know that they can never give expression to their tenderest yearnings of affection without exposing themselves to the possible charge of actions stigmatised as odious crimes.[40] That such a strain, acting on one who is perhaps already of a nervous temperament, should tend to cause nervous prostration or even mental disturbance is of course obvious; and if such disturbances are really found to be commoner among homogenic lovers than among ordinary folk we have in these social causes probably a sufficient explanation of the fact.