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In modern Europe we find the strongest evidence of the presence of what may fairly be called true sexual inversion when we investigate the men of the Renaissance. The intellectual independence of those days and the influence of antiquity seem to have liberated and fully developed the impulses of those abnormal individuals who would otherwise have found no clear expression, and passed unnoticed.

Muret, the Humanist, may perhaps be regarded as a typical example of the nature and fate of the superior invert of the Renaissance. Born in 1526 at Muret , of poor but noble family, he was of independent, somewhat capricious character, unable to endure professors, and consequently he was mainly his own teacher, though he often sought advice from Jules-C?sar Scaliger. Muret was universally admired in his day for his learning and his eloquence, and is still regarded not only as a great Latinist and a fine writer, but as a notable man, of high intelligence, and remarkable, moreover, for courtesy in polemics in an age when that quality was not too common. His portrait shows a somewhat coarse and rustic but intelligent face. He conquered honor and respect before he died in 1585, at the age of 59. In early life Muret wrote wanton erotic poems to women which seem based on personal experience. But in 1553 we find him imprisoned in the Ch?telet for sodomy and in danger of his life, so that he thought of starving himself to death. Friends, however, obtained his release and he settled in Toulouse. But the very next year he was burnt in effigy in Toulouse, as a Huguenot and sodomist, this being the result of a judicial sentence which had caused him to flee from the city and from France. Four years later he had to flee from Padua owing to a similar accusation. He had many friends but none of them protested against the charge, though they aided him to escape from the penalty. It is very doubtful whether he was a Huguenot, and whenever in his works he refers to pederasty it is with strong disapproval. But his writings reveal passionate friendship for men, and he seems to have expended little energy in combating a charge which, if false, was a shameful injustice to him. It was after fleeing into Italy and falling ill of a fever from fatigue and exposure that Muret is said to have made the famous retort : "Vilem animam appellas pro qua Christus non dedignatus est mori."

A greater Humanist than Muret, Erasmus himself, seems as a young man, when in the Augustinian monastery of Stein, to have had a homosexual attraction to another Brother to whom he addressed many passionately affectionate letters; his affection seems, however, to have been unrequited.

As the Renaissance developed, homosexuality seems to become more prominent among distinguished persons. Poliziano was accused of pederasty. Aretino was a pederast, as Pope Julius II seems also to have been. Ariosto wrote in his satires, no doubt too extremely:--

"Senza quel vizio son pochi umanisti."

Tasso had a homosexual strain in his nature, but he was of weak and feminine constitution, sensitively emotional and physically frail.

It is, however, among artists, at that time and later, that homosexuality may most notably be traced. Leonardo da Vinci, whose ideals as revealed in his work are so strangely bisexual, lay under homosexual suspicion in his youth. In 1476, when he was 24 years of age, charges were made against him before the Florentine officials for the control of public morality, and were repeated, though they do not appear to have been substantiated. There is, however, some ground for supposing that Leonardo was imprisoned in his youth. Throughout life he loved to surround himself with beautiful youths and his pupils were more remarkable for their attractive appearance than for their skill; to one at least of them he was strongly attached, while there is no record of any attachment to a woman. Freud, who has studied Leonardo with his usual subtlety, considers that his temperament was marked by "ideal homosexuality."

Michelangelo, one of the very chief artists of the Renaissance period, we cannot now doubt, was sexually inverted. The evidence furnished by his own letters and poems, as well as the researches of numerous recent workers,--Parlagreco, Scheffler, J.A. Symonds, etc.,--may be said to have placed this beyond question. He belonged to a family of 5 brothers, 4 of whom never married, and so far as is known left no offspring; the fifth only left 1 male heir. His biographer describes Michelangelo as "a man of peculiar, not altogether healthy, nervous temperament." He was indifferent to women; only in one case, indeed, during his long life is there evidence even of friendship with a woman, while he was very sensitive to the beauty of men, and his friendships were very tender and enthusiastic. At the same time there is no reason to suppose that he formed any physically passionate relationships with men, and even his enemies seldom or never made this accusation against him. We may probably accept the estimate of his character given by Symonds:--

Michelangelo Buonarotti was one of those exceptional, but not uncommon men who are born with sensibilities abnormally deflected from the ordinary channel. He showed no partiality for women, and a notable enthusiasm for the beauty of young men.... He was a man of physically frigid temperament, extremely sensitive to beauty of the male type, who habitually philosophized his emotions, and contemplated the living objects of his admiration as amiable, not only for their personal qualities, but also for their esthetical attractiveness.

A temperament of this kind seems to have had no significance for the men of those days; they were blind to all homosexual emotion which had no result in sodomy. Plato found such attraction a subject for sentimental metaphysics, but it was not until nearly our own time that it again became a subject of interest and study. Yet it undoubtedly had profound influence on Michelangelo's art, impelling him to find every kind of human beauty in the male form, and only a grave dignity or tenderness, divorced from every quality that is sexually desirable, in the female form. This deeply rooted abnormality is at once the key to the melancholy of Michelangelo and to the mystery of his art.

Michelangelo's contemporary, the painter Bazzi , seems also to have been radically inverted, and to this fact he owed his nickname Sodoma. As, however, he was married and had children, it may be that he was, as we should now say, of bisexual temperament. He was a great artist who has been dealt with unjustly, partly, perhaps, because of the prejudice of Vasari,--whose admiration for Michelangelo amounted to worship, but who is contemptuous toward Sodoma and grudging of praise,--partly because his work is little known out of Italy and not very easy of access there. Reckless, unbalanced, and eccentric in his life, Sodoma revealed in his painting a peculiar feminine softness and warmth--which indeed we seem to see also in his portrait of himself at Monte Oliveto Maggiore--and a very marked and tender feeling for masculine, but scarcely virile, beauty.

Cellini was probably homosexual. He was imprisoned on a charge of unnatural vice and is himself suspiciously silent in his autobiography concerning this imprisonment.

In the seventeenth century another notable sculptor who has been termed the Flemish Cellini, J?r?me Duquesnoy , was an invert; having finally been accused of sexual relations with a youth in a chapel of the Ghent Cathedral, where he was executing a monument for the bishop, he was strangled and burned, notwithstanding that much influence, including that of the bishop, was brought to bear in his behalf.

In more recent times Winkelmann, who was the initiator of a new Greek Renaissance and of the modern appreciation of ancient art, lies under what seems to be a well-grounded suspicion of sexual inversion. His letters to male friends are full of the most passionate expressions of love. His violent death also appears to have been due to a love-adventure with a man. The murderer was a cook, a wholly uncultivated man, a criminal who had already been condemned to death, and shortly before murdering Winkelmann for the sake of plunder he was found to be on very intimate terms with him. It is noteworthy that sexual inversion should so often be found associated with the study of antiquity. It must not, however, be too hastily concluded that this is due to suggestion and that to abolish the study of Greek literature and art would be largely to abolish sexual inversion. What has really occurred in those recent cases that may be studied, and therefore without doubt in the older cases, is that the subject of congenital sexual inversion is attracted to the study of Greek antiquity because he finds there the explanation and the apotheosis of his own obscure impulses. Undoubtedly that study tends to develop these impulses.

A few years later, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, sodomy was still regarded as very prevalent. At that time it was especially associated with the Templars who, it has been supposed, brought it from the East. Such a supposition, however, is not required to account for the existence of homosexuality in France. Nor is it necessary, at a somewhat later period, to invoke, as is frequently done, the Italian origin of Catherine de Medici, in order to explain the prevalence of homosexual practices at her court.

Inversion has always been easy to trace in Germany. Ammianus Marcellinus bears witness to its prevalence among some German tribes in later Roman days. In mediaeval times, as Schultz points out, references to sodomy in Germany were far from uncommon. Various princes of the German Imperial house, and of other princely families in the Middle Ages, were noted for their intimate friendships. At a later date, attention has frequently been called to the extreme emotional warmth which has often marked German friendship, even when there has been no suspicion of any true homosexual relationship. The eighteenth century, in the full enjoyment of that abandonment to sentiment initiated by Rousseau, proved peculiarly favorable to the expansion of the tendency to sentimental friendship. On this basis a really inverted tendency, when it existed, could easily come to the surface and find expression. We find this well illustrated in the poet Heinrich von Kleist who seems to have been of bisexual temperament, and his feelings for the girl he wished to marry were, indeed, much cooler than those for his friend. To this friend, Ernst von Pfu?l , Kleist wrote in 1805 at the age of 28: "You bring the days of the Greeks back to me; I could sleep with you, dear youth, my whole soul so embraces you. When you used to bathe in the Lake of Thun I would gaze with the real feelings of a girl at your beautiful body. It would serve an artist to study from." There follows an enthusiastic account of his friend's beauty and of the Greek "idea of the love of youths," and Kleist concludes: "Go with me to Anspach, and let us enjoy the sweets of friendship.... I shall never marry; you must be wife and children to me."

In all social classes and in all fields of activity, Germany during the nineteenth century produced a long series of famous or notorious homosexual persons. At the one end we find people of the highest intellectual distinction, such as Alexander von Humboldt, whom N?cke, a cautious investigator, stated that he had good ground for regarding as an invert. At the other end we find prosperous commercial and manufacturing people who leave Germany to find solace in the free and congenial homosexual atmosphere of Capri; of these F.A. Krupp, the head of the famous Essen factory, may be regarded as the type.

Sodomy had always been an ecclesiastical offense. The Statute of 1533 made it a felony; and Pollock and Maitland consider that this "affords an almost sufficient proof that the temporal courts had not punished it, and that no one had been put to death for it, for a very long time past." The temporal law has never, however, proved very successful in repressing homosexuality. At this period the Renaissance movement was reaching England, and here as elsewhere it brought with it, if not an increase, at all events a rehabilitation and often an idealization of homosexuality.

"of the swain Whom I never could obtain."

After the age of 31 Barnfield wrote no more, but, being in easy circumstances, retired to his beautiful manor house and country estate in Shropshire, lived there for twenty years and died leaving a wife and son. It seems probable that he was of bisexual temperament, and that, as not infrequently happens in such cases, the homosexual element developed early under the influence of a classical education and university associations, while the normal heterosexual element developed later and, as may happen in bisexual persons, was associated with the more commonplace and prosaic side of life. Barnfield was only a genuine poet on the homosexual side of his nature.

During the first half of the eighteenth century we have clear evidence that homosexuality flourished in London with the features which it presents today in all large cities everywhere. There was a generally known name, "Mollies," applied to homosexual persons, evidently having reference to their frequently feminine characteristics; there were houses of private resort for them , there were special public places of rendezvous whither they went in search of adventure, exactly as there are today. A walk in Upper Moorfields was especially frequented by the homosexual about 1725. A detective employed by the police about that date gave evidence as follows at the Old Bailey; "I takes a turn that way and leans over the wall. In a little time the prisoner passes by, and looks hard at me, and at a small distance from me stands up against the wall as if he was going to make water. Then by degrees he siddles nearer and nearer to where I stood, till at last he was close to me. 'Tis a very fine night,' says he. 'Aye,' say I, 'and so it is.' Then he takes me by the hand, and after squeezing and playing with it a little, he conveys it to his breeches," whereupon the detective seizes the man by his sexual organs and holds him until the constable comes up and effects an arrest.

At the same period Margaret Clap, commonly called Mother Clap, kept a house in Field Lane, Holborn, which was a noted resort of the homosexual. To Mother Clap's Molly-house 30 or 40 clients would resort every night; on Sunday there might be as many as 50, for, as in Berlin and other cities today, that was the great homosexual gala night; there were beds in every room in this house. We are told that the "men would sit in one another's laps, kissing in a lewd manner and using their hands indecently. Then they would get up, dance and make curtsies, and mimic the voices of women, 'Oh, fie, sir,'--'Pray, sir,'--'Dear sir,'--'Lord, how can you serve me so?'--'I swear I'll cry out,'--'You're a wicked devil,'--'And you're a bold face,'--'Eh, ye dear little toad,'--'Come, bus.' They'd hug and play and toy and go out by couples into another room, on the same floor, to be 'married,' as they called it."

On the whole one gains the impression that homosexual practices were more prevalent in London in the eighteenth century, bearing in mind its population at that time, than they are today. It must not, however, be supposed that the law was indulgent and its administration lax. The very reverse was the case. The punishment for sodomy, when completely effected, was death, and it was frequently inflicted. Homosexual intercourse, without evidence of penetration, was regarded as "attempt" and was usually punished by the pillory and a heavy fine, followed by two years' imprisonment. Moreover, it would appear that more activity was shown by the police in prosecution than is nowadays the case; this is, for instance, suggested by the evidence of the detective already quoted.

To keep a homosexual resort was also a severely punishable offense. Mother Clap was charged at the Old Bailey in 1726 with "keeping a sodomitical house"; she protested that she could not herself have taken part in these practices, but that availed her nothing; she could bring forward no witnesses on her behalf and was condemned to pay a fine, to stand in the pillory, and to undergo imprisonment for two years. The cases were dealt with in a matter-of-fact way which seems to bear further witness to the frequency of the offense, and with no effort to expend any specially vindictive harshness on this class of offenders. If there was the slightest doubt as to the facts, even though the balance of evidence was against the accused, he was usually acquitted, and the man who could bring witnesses to his general good character might often thereby escape. In 1721 a religious young man, married, was convicted of attempting sodomy with two young men he slept with; he was fined, placed in the pillory and imprisoned for two months. Next year a man was acquitted on a similar charge, and another man, of decent aspect, although the evidence indicated that he might have been guilty of sodomy, was only convicted of attempt, and sentenced to fine, pillory, and two years' imprisonment. In 1723, again, a schoolmaster was acquitted, on account of his good reputation, of the charge of attempt on a boy of 15, his pupil, though the evidence seemed decidedly against him. In 1730 a man was sentenced to death for sodomy effected on his young apprentice; this was a bad case and the surgeon's evidence indicated laceration of the perineum. Homosexuality of all kinds flourished, it will be seen, notwithstanding the fearless yet fair application of a very severe law.

In more recent times Byron has frequently been referred to as experiencing homosexual affections, and I have been informed that some of his poems nominally addressed to women were really inspired by men. It is certain that he experienced very strong emotions toward his male friends. "My school-friendships," he wrote, "were with me passions." When he afterward met one of these friends, Lord Clare, in Italy, he was painfully agitated; and could never hear the name without a beating of the heart. At the age of 22 he formed one of his strong attachments for a youth to whom he left ?7000 in his will. It is probable, however, that here, as well as in the case of Shakespeare, and in that of Tennyson's love for his youthful friend, Arthur Hallam, as well as of Montaigne for Etienne de la Bo?tie, although such strong friendships may involve an element of sexual emotion, we have no true and definite homosexual impulse; homosexuality is merely simulated by the ardent and hyperesthetic emotions of the poet. The same quality of the poet's emotional temperament may doubtless, also, be invoked in the case of Goethe, who is said to have written elegies which, on account of their homosexual character, still remain unpublished.

The most famous homosexual trial of recent times in England was that of Oscar Wilde, a writer whose literary reputation may be said to be still growing, not only in England but throughout the world. Wilde was the son of parents who were both of unusual ability and somewhat eccentric. Both these tendencies became in him more concentrated. He was born with, as it were, a congenital antipathy to the commonplace, a natural love of paradox, and he possessed the skill to embody the characteristic in finished literary form. At the same time, it must not be forgotten, beneath this natural attitude of paradox, his essential judgments on life and literature were usually sound and reasonable. His essay on "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" witnessed to his large and enlightened conception of life, and his profound admiration for Flaubert to the sanity and solidity of his literary taste. In early life he revealed no homosexual tendencies; he married and had children. After he had begun to outgrow his youthful esthetic extravagances, however, and to acquire success and fame, he developed what was at first a simply inquisitive interest in inversion. Such inquisitive interest is sometimes the sign of an emerging homosexual impulse. It proved to be so in Wilde's case and ultimately he was found to be cultivating the acquaintance of youths of low class and doubtful character. Although this development occurred comparatively late in life, we must hesitate to describe Wilde's homosexuality as acquired. If we consider his constitution and his history, it is not difficult to suppose that homosexual germs were present in a latent form from the first, and it may quite well be that Wilde's inversion was of that kind which is now described as retarded, though still congenital.

As is usual in England, no active efforts were made to implicate Wilde in any criminal charge. It was his own action, as even he himself seems to have vaguely realized beforehand, which brought the storm about his head. He was arrested, tried, condemned, and at once there arose a general howl of execration, joined in even by the judge, whose attitude compared unfavorably with the more impartial attitude of the eighteenth century judges in similar cases. Wilde came out of prison ambitious to retrieve his reputation by the quality of his literary work. But he left Reading gaol merely to enter a larger and colder prison. He soon realized that his spirit was broken even more than his health. He drifted at last to Paris, where he shortly after died, shunned by all but a few of his friends.

I should add that some friends and admirers of Whitman are not prepared to accept the evidence of the letter to Symonds. I am indebted to "Q." for the following statement of the objections:--

"I think myself that it is a mistake to give much weight to this letter--perhaps a mistake to introduce it at all, since if introduced it will, of course, carry weight. And this for three or four reasons:--

"2. That the letter is in hopeless conflict with the 'Calamus' section of poems. For, whatever moral lines Whitman may have drawn at the time of writing these poems, it seems to me quite incredible that the possibility of certain inferences, morbid or other, was undreamed of.

"3. That the letter was written only a few months before his last illness and death, and is the only expression of the kind that he appears to have given utterance to.

"4. That Symonds's letter, to which this was a reply, is not forth coming; and we consequently do not know what rash expressions it may have contained--leading Whitman to hedge his name from possible use to justify dubious practices."

I may add that I endeavored to obtain Symonds's letter, but he was unable to produce it, nor has any copy of it been found among his papers.

It should be said that Whitman's attitude toward Symonds was marked by high regard and admiration. "A wonderful man is Addington Symonds," he remarked shortly before his own death; "some ways the most indicative and penetrating and significant man of our time. Symonds is a curious fellow; I love him dearly. He is of college breed and education, horribly literary and suspicious, and enjoys things. A great fellow for delving into persons and into the concrete, and even into the physiological and the gastric, and wonderfully cute." But on this occasion he delved in vain.

Whitman talked to Traubel much about Symonds from the twenty-seventh of April, 1888 , onward. Symonds had written to him repeatedly, it seems, concerning the "passional relations of men with men," as Whitman expressed it. "He is always driving at me about that: is that what Calamus means?--because of me or in spite of me, is that what it means? I have said no, but no does not satisfy him. But read this letter--read the whole of it: it is very shrewd, very cute, in deadliest earnest: it drives me hard, almost compels me--it is urgent, persistent: he sort of stands in the road and says 'I won't move till you answer my question.' You see, this is an old letter--sixteen years old--and he is still asking the question: he refers to it in one of his latest notes. He is surely a wonderful man--a rare, cleaned-up man--a white-souled, heroic character.... You will be writing something about Calamus some day," said W. , "and this letter, and what I say, may help to clear your ideas. Calamus needs clear ideas; it may be easily, innocently distorted from its natural, its motive, body of doctrine."

"Said W: 'Well, what do you think of that? Do you think that could be answered?' 'I don't see why you call that letter driving you hard. It's quiet enough--it only asks questions, and asks the questions mildly enough,' 'I suppose you are right--"drive" is not exactly the word: yet you know how I hate to be catechised. Symonds is right, no doubt, to ask the questions: I am just as much right if I do not answer them: just as much right if I do answer them. I often say to myself about Calamus--perhaps it means more or less than what I thought myself--means different: perhaps I don't know what it all means--perhaps never did know. My first instinct about all that Symonds writes is violently reactionary--is strong and brutal for no, no, no. Then the thought intervenes that I maybe do not know all my own meanings: I say to myself: "You, too, go away, come back, study your own book--as alien or stranger, study your own book, see what it amounts to." Some time or other I will have to write to him definitely about Calamus--give him my word for it what I meant or mean it to mean.'"

Again, a month later , Whitman speaks to Traubel of a "beautiful letter" from Symonds. "You will see that he harps on the Calamus poems again. I don't see why it should, but his recurrence to that subject irritates me a little. I suppose you might say--why don't you shut him up by answering him? There is no logical answer to that I suppose: but I may ask in my turn: 'What right has he to ask questions anyway?'" W. laughed a bit. "Anyway the question comes back to me almost every time he writes. He is courteous enough about it--that is the reason I do not resent him. I suppose the whole thing will end in an answer some day."

The letter follows. The chief point in it is that the writer hopes he has not been importunate in the question he had asked about Calamus three years before.

It is clear that these conversations considerably diminish the force of the declaration in Whitman's letter. We see that the letter which, on the face of it, might have represented the swift and indignant reaction of a man who, suddenly faced by the possibility that his work may be interpreted in a perverse sense, emphatically repudiates that interpretation, was really nothing of the kind. Symonds for at least eighteen years had been gently, considerately, even humbly, yet persistently, asking the same perfectly legitimate question. If the answer was really an emphatic no, it would more naturally have been made in 1872 than 1890. Moreover, in the face of this ever-recurring question, Whitman constantly speaks to his friends of his great affection for Symonds and his admiration for his intellectual cuteness, feelings that would both be singularly out of place if applied to a man who was all the time suggesting the possibility that his writings contained inferences that were "terrible," "morbid," and "damnable." Evidently, during all those years, Whitman could not decide what to reply. On the one hand he was moved by his horror of being questioned, by his caution, by his natural aversion to express approval of anything that could be called unnatural or abnormal. On the other hand, he was moved by the desire to let his work speak for itself, by his declared determination to leave everything open, and possibly by a more or less conscious sympathy with the inferences presented to him. It was not until the last years of his life, when his sexual life belonged to the past, when weakness was gaining on him, when he wished to put aside every drain on his energies, that--being constitutionally incapable of a balanced scientific statement--he chose the simplest and easiest solution of the difficulty.

In this brief glance at some of the ethnographical, historical, religious, and literary aspects of homosexual passion there is one other phenomenon which may be mentioned. This is the alleged fact that, while the phenomena exist to some extent everywhere, we seem to find a special proclivity to homosexuality among certain races and in certain regions. In Europe this would be best illustrated by the case of southern Italy, which in this respect is held to be distinct from northern Italy, although Italians generally are franker than men of northern race in admitting their sexual practices. How far the supposed greater homosexuality of southern Italy may be due to Greek influence and Greek blood it is not very easy to say.

It must be remembered that, in dealing with a northern country like England, homosexual phenomena do not present themselves in the same way as they do in southern Italy today, or in ancient Greece. In Greece the homosexual impulse was recognized and idealized; a man could be an open homosexual lover, and yet, like Epaminondas, be a great and honored citizen of his country. There was no reason whatever why a man, who in mental and physical constitution was perfectly normal, should not adopt a custom that was regarded as respectable, and sometimes as even specially honorable. But it is quite otherwise today in a country like England or the United States. In these countries all our traditions and all our moral ideals, as well as the law, are energetically opposed to every manifestation of homosexual passion. It requires a very strong impetus to go against this compact social force which, on every side, constrains the individual into the paths of heterosexual love. That impetus, in a well-bred individual who leads the normal life of his fellow-men and who feels the ordinary degree of respect for the social feeling surrounding him, can only be supplied by a fundamental--usually, it is probable, inborn--perversion of the sexual instinct, rendering the individual organically abnormal. It is with this fundamental abnormality, usually called sexual inversion, that we shall here be concerned. There is no evidence to show that homosexuality in Greece was a congenital perversion, although it appears that Coelius Aurelianus affirms that in the opinion of Parmenides it was hereditary. Aristotle also, in his fragment on physical love, though treating the whole matter with indulgence, seems to have distinguished abnormal congenital homosexuality from acquired homosexual vice. Doubtless in a certain proportion of cases the impulse was organic, and it may well be that there was an organic and racial predisposition to homosexuality among the Greeks, or, at all events, the Dorians. But the state of social feeling, however it originated, induced a large proportion of the ordinary population to adopt homosexuality as a fashion, or, it may be said, the environment was peculiarly favorable to the development of latent homosexual tendencies. So that any given number of homosexual persons among the Greeks would have presented a far smaller proportion of constitutionally abnormal individuals than a like number in England. In a similar manner--though I do not regard the analogy as complete--infanticide or the exposition of children was practised in some of the early Greek States by parents who were completely healthy and normal; in England a married woman who destroys her child is in nearly every case demonstrably diseased or abnormal. For this reason I am unable to see that homosexuality in ancient Greece--while of great interest as a social and psychological problem--throws light on sexual inversion as we know it in England or the United States.

Concerning the wide prevalence of sexual inversion and of homosexual phenomena generally, there can be no manner of doubt. This question has been most fully investigated in Germany. In Berlin, Moll states that he has himself seen between 600 and 700 homosexual persons and heard of some 250 to 350 others. Hirschfeld states that he has known over 10,000 homosexual persons.

There is some reason for believing that homosexuality is especially prominent in Germany and among Germans. I have elsewhere referred to the highly emotional and sentimental traits which have frequently marked German friendships. Germany is the only country in which there is a definite and well-supported movement for the defense and social rehabilitation of inverts. The study of sexual inversion began in Germany, and the scientific and literary publications dealing with homosexuality issued from the German press probably surpass in quantity and importance those issued from all other countries put together. The homosexual tendencies of Germans outside Germany have been noted in various countries. Among my English cases I have found that a strain of German blood occurs much more frequently than we are entitled to expect; Parisian prostitutes are said to be aware of the homosexual tastes of Germans; it is significant that , at Constantinople, the procurers, who naturally supply girls as well as youths, regard Germans and Austrians as more tending to homosexuality than the foreigners from any other land. Germans usually deny, however, that there is any special German proclivity to inversion, and it would not appear that such statistics as are available show any pronounced predominance of inversion among Germans. It is to Hirschfeld that we owe the chief attempt to gain some notion of the percentage of homosexual persons among the general population. It may be said to vary in different regions and more especially in different occupations, from 1 to 10 per cent. But the average when the individuals belonging to a large number of groups are combined is generally found to be rather over 2 per cent. So that there are about a million and a half inverted persons in Germany. This would be a minimum which can scarcely fail to be below the actual proportion, as no one can be certain that he is acquainted with the real proclivities of all the persons comprising a larger group of acquaintances. It is not found in the estimates which have reached Hirschfeld that the French groups show a smaller proportion of homosexual persons than the German groups, and a Japanese group comes out near to the general average for the whole. Various authorities, especially Germans, believe that homosexuality is just as common in France as in Germany. Saint-Paul , on the other hand, is unable to accept this view. As an army surgeon who has long served in Africa he can bear witness to the frequency of homosexuality among the African battalions of the French army, especially in the cavalry, less so in the infantry; in the French army generally he finds it rare, as also in the general population. N?cke is also inclined to believe that homosexuality is rarer in Celtic lands, and in the Latin countries generally, than in Teutonic and Slavonic lands, and believes that it may be a question of race. The question is still undecided. It is possible that the undoubted fact that homosexuality is less conspicuous in France and the other Latin countries than in Teutonic lands, may be due not to the occurrence of a smaller proportion of congenital inverts in the former lands, but mainly to general difference in temperament and in the social reaction. The French idealize and emphasize the place of women to a much greater degree than the Germans, while at the same time inverts in France have much less occasion than in Germany to proclaim their legal grievances. Apart from such considerations as these it seems very doubtful whether inborn inversion is in any considerable degree rarer in France than in Germany.

As to the frequency of homosexuality in England and the United States there is much evidence. In England its manifestations are well marked for those whose eyes have once been opened. The manifestations are of the same character as those in Germany, modified by social and national differences, and especially by the greater reserve, Puritanism, and prudery of England. In the United States these same influences exert a still greater effect in restraining the outward manifestations of homosexuality. Hirschfeld, though so acute and experienced in the investigation of homosexuality, states that when visiting Philadelphia and Boston he could scarcely detect any evidence of homosexuality, though he was afterward assured by those acquainted with local conditions that its extension in both cities is "colossal." There have been numerous criminal cases and scandals in the United States in which homosexuality has come to the surface, and the very frequently occurring cases of transvestism or cross-dressing in the States seem to be in a large proportion associated with homosexuality.

In the opinion of some, English homosexuality has become much more conspicuous during recent years, and this is sometimes attributed to the Oscar Wilde case. No doubt, the celebrity of Oscar Wilde and the universal publicity given to the facts of the case by the newspapers may have brought conviction of their perversion to many inverts who were before only vaguely conscious of their abnormality, and, paradoxical though it may seem, have imparted greater courage to others; but it can scarcely have sufficed to increase the number of inverts. Rather, one may say, the development of urban life renders easier the exhibition and satisfaction of this as of all other forms of perversion. Regarding the proportion of inverts among the general population, it is very difficult to speak positively. The invert himself is a misleading guide because he has formed round himself a special coterie of homosexual persons, and, moreover, he is sometimes apt to overestimate the number of inverts through the misinterpretation of small indications that are not always conclusive. The estimate of the ordinary normal person, feeling the ordinary disgust toward abnormal phenomena, is also misleading, because his homosexual acquaintances are careful not to inform him concerning their proclivities. A writer who has studied the phenomena of homosexuality is apt to be misguided in the same way as the invert himself, and to overestimate the prevalence of the perversion. Striving to put aside this source of fallacy, and only considering those individuals with whom I have been brought in contact by the ordinary circumstances of life, and with whose modes of feeling I am acquainted, I am still led to the conclusion that the proportion is considerable. Among the professional and most cultured element of the middle class in England, there must be a distinct percentage of inverts which may sometimes be as much as 5 per cent., though such estimates must always be hazardous. Among women of the same class the percentage seems to be at least double, though here the phenomena are less definite and deep-seated. This seems to be a moderate estimate for this class, which includes, however, it must be remembered, a considerable proportion of individuals who are somewhat abnormal in other respects. As we descend the scale the phenomena are doubtless less common, though when we reach the working class we come to that comparative indifference to which allusion has already been made. Taken altogether we may probably conclude that the proportion of inverts is the same as in other related and neighboring lands, that is to say, slightly over 2 per cent. That would give the homosexual population of Great Britain as somewhere about a million.

FOOTNOTES:

Beardmore also notes that sodomy is "regularly indulged in" in New Guinea on this account.

I have been told by medical men in India that it is specially common among the Sikhs, the finest soldier-race in India.

Bethe, op. cit., p. 440. In old Japan also, however, according to F.S. Krauss , the homosexual relations between knights and their pages resembled those of ancient Greece.

Among the Papuans of German New Guinea, where the women have great power, marriage is late, and the young men are compelled to live separated from the women in communal houses. Here, says Moskowski , homosexual orgies are openly carried on.

See Appendix A: "Homosexuality among Tramps," by "Josiah Flynt."

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