A Problem in Modern Ethics Part 4

The first of these histories is M. H. E. Meier's article on _Paederastie_ in Ersch and Gruber's "Allgemeine Encyklopadie:" Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1837.

The second is a treatise ent.i.tled "A Problem in Greek Ethics," composed by an Englishman in English. The anonymous author was not acquainted with Meier's article before he wrote, and only came across it long after he had printed his own essay. This work is extremely rare, ten copies only having been impressed for private use.

Enquirers into the psychology and morality of s.e.xual inversion should not fail to study one or other of these treatises. It will surprise many a well-read scholar, when he sees the whole list of Greek authorities and pa.s.sages collected and co-ordinated, to find how thoroughly the manners and the literature of that great people were penetrated with paederastia. The myths and heroic legends of prehistoric h.e.l.las, the educational inst.i.tutions of the Dorian state, the dialogues of Plato, the history of the Theban army, the biographies of innumerable eminent citizens--lawgivers and thinkers, governors and generals, founders of colonies and philosophers, poets and sculptors--render it impossible to maintain that this pa.s.sion was either a degraded vice or a form of inherited neuropathy in the race to whom we owe so much of our intellectual heritage. Having surveyed the picture, we may turn aside to wonder whether modern European nations, imbued with the opinions I have described above in the section on Vulgar Errors, are wise in making Greek literature a staple of the higher education. Their motto is _erasez l'infame!_ Here the infamous thing clothes itself like an angel of light, and raises its forehead unabashed to heaven among the marble peristyles and olive-groves of an unrivalled civilization.

Another book, written from a medical point of view, is valuable upon the pathology of s.e.xual inversion and cognate aberrations among the nations of antiquity. It bears the t.i.tle "Geschichte der l.u.s.tseuche im Alterthume," and is composed by Dr. Julius Rosenbaum.[41] Rosenbaum attempts to solve the problem of the existence of syphilis and other venereal diseases in the remote past. This enquiry leads him to investigate the whole of Greek and Latin literature in its bearing upon s.e.xual vice. Students will therefore expect from his pages no profound psychological speculations and no idealistic presentation of an eminently repulsive subject. One of the most interesting chapters of his work is devoted to what Herodotus called ???s?? f??e?a among the Scythians, a wide-spread effemination prevailing in a wild warlike and nomadic race. We have already alluded to Krafft-Ebing's remarks on this disease, which has curious points of resemblance with some of the facts of male prost.i.tution in modern cities.[42]

Professed anthropologists have dealt with the subject, collecting evidence from many quarters, and in some cases attempting to draw general conclusions. Bastian's "Der Mensch der Geschichte"[43] and Herbert Spencer's Tables deserve special mention for their encyclopaedic fulness of information regarding the distribution of abnormal s.e.xuality and the customs of savage tribes.

In England an Essay appended to the last volume of Sir Richard Burton's "Arabian Nights" made a considerable stir upon its first appearance.[44]

The author endeavoured to co-ordinate a large amount of miscellaneous matter, and to frame a general theory regarding the origin and prevalence of h.o.m.os.e.xual pa.s.sions. His erudition, however, is incomplete; and though he possesses a copious store of anthropological details, he is not at the proper point of view for discussing the topic philosophically.[45] For example, he takes for granted that "Pederasty,"

as he calls it, is everywhere and always what the vulgar think it. He seems to have no notion of the complicated psychology of Urnings, revealed to us by their recently published confessions in French and German medical and legal works. Still his views deserve consideration.

Burton regards the phenomenon as "geographical and climatic, not racial." He summarises the result of his investigations in the following five conclusions.[46]

"(1) There exists what I shall call a 'Sotadic Zone,' bounded westwards by the northern sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean (N. lat. 43) and by the southern (N. lat. 30). Thus the depth would be 780 to 800 miles, including meridional France, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and Greece, with the coast-regions of Africa from Morocco to Egypt.

"(2) Running eastward the Sotadic Zone narrows, embracing Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and Chaldaea, Afghanistan, Sind, the Punjab, and Kashmir.

"(3) In Indo-China the belt begins to broaden, enfolding China, j.a.pan, and Turkistan.

"(4) It then embraces the South Sea Islands and the New World, where, at the time of its discovery, Sotadic love was, with some exceptions, an established racial inst.i.tution.

"(5) Within the Sotadic Zone the vice is popular and endemic, held at the worst to be a mere peccadillo, whilst the races to the North and South of the limits here defined practise it only sporadically, amid the opprobrium of their fellows, who, as a rule, are physically incapable of performing the operation, and look upon it with the liveliest disgust."

This is a curious and interesting generalisation, though it does not account for what history has transmitted regarding the customs of the Kelts, Scythians, Bulgars, Tartars, Normans, and for the acknowledged leniency of modern Slavs to this form of vice.

Burton advances an explanation of its origin. "The only physical cause for the practice which suggests itself to me, and that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that within the Sotadic Zone there is a blending of the masculine and feminine temperament, a crasis which elsewhere occurs only sporadically."[47] So far as it goes, this suggestion rests upon ground admitted to be empirically sound by the medical writers we have already examined, and vehemently declared to be indisputable as a fact of physiology by Ulrichs, whom I shall presently introduce to my readers. But Burton makes no effort to account for the occurrence of this crasis of masculine and feminine temperaments in the Sotadic Zone at large, and for its sporadic appearance in other regions.

Would it not be more philosophical to conjecture that the crasis, if that exists at all, takes place universally; but that the consequences are only tolerated in certain parts of the globe, which he defines as the Sotadic Zone? Ancient Greece and Rome permitted them. Modern Greece and Italy have excluded them to the same extent as Northern European nations. North and South America, before the Conquest, saw no harm in them. Since its colonisation by Europeans they have been discountenanced. The phenomenon cannot therefore be regarded as specifically geographical and climatic. Besides, there is one fact mentioned by Burton which ought to make him doubt his geographical theory. He says that, after the conquest of Algiers, the French troops were infected to an enormous extent by the habits they had acquired there, and from them it spread so far and wide into civilian society that "the vice may be said to have been democratised in cities and large towns."[48] This surely proves that north of the Sotadic Zone males are neither physically incapable of the acts involved in abnormal pa.s.sion, nor gifted with an insuperable disgust for them. Law, and the public opinion generated by law and religious teaching, have been deterrent causes in those regions. The problem is therefore not geographical and climatic, but social. Again, may it not be suggested that the absence of "the Vice" among the negroes and negroid races of South Africa, noticed by Burton,[49] is due to their excellent customs of s.e.xual initiation and education at the age of p.u.b.erty--customs which it is the shame of modern civilisation to have left unimitated?

However this may be, Burton regards the instinct as natural, not _contre nature_, and says that its patients "deserve, not prosecution but the pitiful care of the physician and the study of the psychologist."[50]

Another distinguished anthropologist, Paolo Mantegazza, has devoted special attention to the physiology and psychology of what he calls "I pervertimenti dell'amore."[51] Starting with the vulgar error that all s.e.xual inversion implies the unmentionable act of coition (for which, by the way, he is severely rebuked by Krafft-Ebing, Psy. s.e.x., p. 92), he explains anomalous pa.s.sions by supposing that the nerves of pleasurable sensation, which ought to be carried to the genital organs, are in some cases carried to the r.e.c.t.u.m.[52] This malformation makes its subject desire _coitum per anum_. That an intimate connection exists between the nerves of the reproductive organs and the nerves of the r.e.c.t.u.m is known to anatomists and is felt by everybody. Probably some _cinaedi_ are excited voluptuously in the mode suggested. Seneca, in his Epistles, records such cases; and it is difficult in any other way to account for the transports felt by male prost.i.tutes of the Weibling type. Finally, writers upon female prost.i.tution mention women who are incapable of deriving pleasure from any s.e.xual act except _aversa venus_.

Mantegazza's observation deserves to be remembered, and ought to be tested by investigation. But, it is obvious, he pushes the corollary he draws from it, as to the prevalence of s.e.xual inversion, too far.

He distinguishes three cla.s.ses of sodomy: (1) Perpheric or anatomical, caused by an unusual distribution of the nerves pa.s.sing from the spine to the reproductive organs and the r.e.c.t.u.m; (2) psychical, which he describes as "specific to intelligent men, cultivated, and frequently neurotic," but which he does not attempt to elucidate, though he calls it "not a vice, but a pa.s.sion"; (3) luxurious or l.u.s.tful, when the _aversa venus_ is deliberately chosen on account of what Mantegazza terms "la desolante larghezza" of the female.[53]

Mantegazza winds up, like Burton, by observing that "sodomy, studied with the pitying and indulgent eye of the physician and the physiologist, is consequently a disease which claims to be cured, and can in many cases be cured."[54]

After perusing what physicians, historians, and anthropologists have to say about s.e.xual inversion, there is good reason for us to feel uneasy as to the present condition of our laws. And yet it might be argued that anomalous desires are not always maladies, not always congenital, not always psychical pa.s.sions. In some cases they must surely be vices deliberately adopted out of l.u.s.tfulness, wanton curiosity, and seeking after sensual refinements. The difficult question still remains then--how to repress vice, without acting unjustly toward the naturally abnormal, the unfortunate, and the irresponsible.

I pa.s.s now to the polemical writings of a man who maintains that h.o.m.os.e.xual pa.s.sions, even in their vicious aspects, ought not to be punished except in the same degree and under the same conditions as the normal pa.s.sions of the majority.

VII.

LITERATURE--POLEMICAL.

It can hardly be said that inverted s.e.xuality received a serious and sympathetic treatment until a German jurist, named Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, began his long warfare against what he considered to be prejudice and ignorance upon a topic of the greatest moment to himself.

A native of Hanover, and writing at first under the a.s.sumed name of Numa Numantius, he kept pouring out a series of polemical, a.n.a.lytical, theoretical, and apologetical pamphlets between the years 1864 and 1870.

The most important of these works is a lengthy and comprehensive Essay ent.i.tled "Memnon. Die Geschlechtsnatur des mannliebenden Urnings. Eine naturwissenschaftliche Darstellung. Schleiz, 1868." Memnon may be used as the text-book of its author's theories; but it is also necessary to study earlier and later treatises--Inclusa, Formatrix, Vindex, Ara Spei, Gladius Furens, Incubus, Argonauticus, Prometheus, Araxes, Kritische Pfeile--in order to obtain a complete knowledge of his opinions, and to master the whole ma.s.s of information he has brought together.

The object of Ulrichs in these miscellaneous writings is twofold. He seeks to establish a theory of s.e.xual inversion upon the basis of natural science, proving that abnormal instincts are inborn and healthy in a considerable percentage of human beings; that they do not owe their origin to bad habits of any kind, to hereditary disease, or to wilful depravity; that they are incapable in the majority of cases of being extirpated or converted into normal channels; and that the men subject to them are neither physically, intellectually, nor morally inferior to normally const.i.tuted individuals. Having demonstrated these points to his own satisfaction, and supported his views with a large induction of instances and a respectable show of erudition, he proceeds to argue that the present state of the law in many states of Europe is flagrantly unjust to a cla.s.s of innocent persons, who may indeed be regarded as unfortunate and inconvenient, but who are guilty of nothing which deserves reprobation and punishment. In this second and polemical branch of his exposition, Ulrichs a.s.sumes, for his juristic starting-point, that each human being is born with natural rights which legislation ought not to infringe but protect. He does not attempt to confute the utilitarian theory of jurisprudence, which regards laws as regulations made by the majority in the supposed interests of society. Yet a large amount of his reasoning is designed to invalidate utilitarian arguments in favour of repression, by showing that no social evil ensues in those countries which have placed abnormal s.e.xuality upon the same footing as the normal, and that the toleration of inverted pa.s.sion threatens no danger to the well-being of nations.

After this prelude, an abstract of Ulrichs' theory and his pleading may be given, deduced from the comparative study of his numerous essays.

The right key to the solution of the problem is to be found in physiology, in that obscure department of natural science which deals with the evolution of s.e.x. The embryo, as we are now aware, contains an undetermined element of s.e.x during the first months of pregnancy. This is gradually worked up into male and female organs of procreation; and these, when the age of p.u.b.erty arrives, are generally accompanied by corresponding male and female appet.i.tes. That is to say, the man in an immense majority of cases desires the woman, and the woman desires the man. Nature, so to speak, aims at differentiating the undecided ftus into a human being of one or the other s.e.x, the propagation of the species being the main object of life. Still, as Aristotle puts it, and as we observe in many of her operations, "Nature wishes, but has not always the power": ? f?s?? ????eta? ?? ???' ?? d??ata?. Consequently in respect of physical structure, there come to light imperfect individuals, so-called hermaphrodites, whose s.e.xual apparatus is so far undetermined that many a real male has pa.s.sed a portion of his life under a mistake, has worn female clothes, and has cohabited by preference with men. Likewise, in respect of spiritual nature, there appear males who, notwithstanding their marked masculine organisation, feel from the earliest childhood a s.e.xual proclivity toward men, with a corresponding indifference for women. In some of these abnormal, but natural, beings, the appet.i.te for men resembles the normal appet.i.te of men for women; in others it resembles the normal appet.i.te of women for men. That is to say, some prefer effeminate males, dressed in feminine clothes and addicted to female occupations. Others prefer powerful adults of an ultra-masculine stamp. A third cla.s.s manifest their predilection for healthy young men in the bloom of adolescence, between nineteen and twenty. The att.i.tude of such persons towards women also varies. In genuine cases of inborn s.e.xual inversion a positive horror is felt when the woman has to be carnally known; and this horror is of the same sort as that which normal men experience when they think of cohabitation with a male.[55] In others the disinclination does not amount to repugnance; but the abnormal man finds considerable difficulty in stimulating himself to the s.e.xual act with females, and derives a very imperfect satisfaction from the same. A certain type of man, in the last place, seems to be indifferent, desiring males at one time and females at another.

In order to gain clearness in his exposition, Ulrichs has invented names for these several species. The so-called hermaphrodite he dismisses with the German designation of _Zwitter_. Imperfect individuals of this type are not to be considered, because it is well known that the male or female organs are never developed in one and the same body. It is also, as we shall presently discover, an essential part of his theory to regard the problem of inversion psychologically.

The normal man he calls _Dioning_, the abnormal man _Urning_. Among Urnings, those who prefer effeminate males are christened by the name of _Mannling_; those who prefer powerful and masculine adults receive the name of _Weibling_; the Urning who cares for adolescents is styled a _Zwischen-Urning_. Men who seemed to be indifferently attracted by both s.e.xes, he calls _Uranodioninge_. A genuine Dioning, who, from lack of women, or under the influence of special circ.u.mstances, consorts with persons of his own s.e.x, is denominated _Uraniaster_. A genuine Urning, who has put restraint upon his inborn impulse, who has forced himself to cohabit with women, or has perhaps contracted marriage, is said to be _Virilisirt_--a virilised Urning.

These outlandish names, though seemingly pedantic and superfluous, have their technical value, and are necessary to the understanding of Ulrichs' system. He is dealing exclusively with individuals cla.s.sified by common parlance as males without distinction. Ulrichs believes that he can establish a real natural division between men proper, whom he calls _Dioninge_, and males of an anomalous s.e.xual development, whom he calls _Urninge_. Having proceeded so far, he finds the necessity of distinguis.h.i.+ng three broad types of the Urning, and of making out the crosses between Urning and Dioning, of which he also find three species.

It will appear in the sequel that whatever may be thought about his psychological hypothesis, the nomenclature he has adopted is useful in discussion, and corresponds to well-defined phenomena, of which we have abundant information. The following table will make his a.n.a.lysis sufficiently plain:--

{ (1) Man or Dioning ... Uraniaster, when { he has acquired the { tastes of the Urning.

{ The { { Mannling.

Human { (2) Urning { Weibling.

Male { { Zwischen-Urning.

{ { Virilised Urning.

{ { (3) Uranodioning.

{ (4) Hermaphrodite.

Broadly speaking, the male includes two main species: Dioning and Urning, men with normal and men with abnormal instincts. What, then, const.i.tutes the distinction between them? How are we justified in regarding them as radically divergent?

Ulrichs replies that the phenomenon of s.e.xual inversion is to be explained by physiology, and particularly by the evolution of the embryo.[56] Nature fails to complete her work regularly and in every instance. Having succeeded in differentiating a male with full-formed s.e.xual organs from the undecided ftus, she does not always effect the proper differentiation of that portion of the psychical being in which resides the s.e.xual appet.i.te. There remains a female soul in a male body.

_Anima muliebris virili corpore inclusa_, is the formula adopted by Ulrichs; and he quotes a pa.s.sage from the "Vestiges of Creation," which suggests that a male is a more advanced product of s.e.xual evolution than the female. The male instinct of s.e.x is a more advanced product than the female instinct. Consequently men appear whose body has been differentiated as masculine, but whose s.e.xual instinct has not progressed beyond the feminine stage.

Ulrichs' own words ought to be cited upon this fundamental part of his hypothesis, since he does not adopt the opinion that the Urning is a Dioning arrested at a certain point of development; but rather that there is an element of uncertainty attending the simultaneous evolution of physical and psychical factors from the indeterminate ground-stuff.

"s.e.x," says he, "is only an affair of development. Up to a certain stage of embryonic existence all living mammals are hermaphroditic. A certain number of them advance to the condition of what I call man (Doining), others to what I call woman (Dioningin), a third cla.s.s become what I call _Urning_ (including _Urningin_). It ensues therefrom that between these three s.e.xes there are no primary, but only secondary differences.

And yet true differences, const.i.tuting s.e.xual species, exist as facts."[57] Man, Woman, and Urning--the third being either a male or a female in whom we observe a real and inborn, not an acquired or a spurious, inversion of appet.i.te--are consequently regarded by him as the three main divisions of humanity viewed from the point of view of s.e.x.

The embryonic ground-stuff in the case of each was h.o.m.ologous; but while the two former, Man and Woman, have been normally differentiated, the Urning's s.e.xual instinct, owing to some imperfection in the process of development, does not correspond to his or her s.e.xual organs.

The line of division between the s.e.xes, even in adult life, is a subtle one; and the physical structure of men and women yields indubitable signs of their emergence from a common ground-stuff. Perfect men have rudimentary b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Perfect women carry a rudimentary p.e.n.i.s in their c.l.i.toris. The raphe of the s.c.r.o.t.u.m shows where the aperture, common at first to masculine and feminine beings, but afterwards only retained in the female v.u.l.v.a, was closed up to form a male. Other anatomical details of the same sort might be adduced. But these will suffice to make thinking persons reflect upon the mysterious dubiety of what we call s.e.x. That gradual development, which ends in normal differentiation, goes on very slowly. It is only at the age of p.u.b.erty that a boy distinguishes himself abruptly from a girl, by changing his voice and growing hair on parts of the body where it is not usually found in women. This being so, it is surely not surprising that the s.e.xual appet.i.te should sometimes fail to be normally determined, or in other words should be inverted.

Ulrichs maintains that the body of an Urning is masculine, his soul feminine, so far as s.e.x is concerned. Accordingly, though physically unfitted for coition with men, he is imperatively drawn towards them by a natural impulse. Opponents meet him with this objection: "Your position is untenable. Body and soul const.i.tute one inseparable ent.i.ty."

So they do, replies Ulrichs; but the way in which these factors of the person are combined in human beings differs extremely, as I can prove by indisputable facts. The body of a male is visible to the eyes, is mensurable and ponderable, is clearly marked in its specific organs. But what we call his soul--his pa.s.sions, inclinations, sensibilities, emotional characteristics, s.e.xual desires--eludes the observation of the senses. This second factor, like the first, existed in the undetermined stages of the ftus. And when I find that the soul, this element of instinct and emotion and desire existing in a male, had been directed in its s.e.xual appet.i.te from earliest boyhood towards persons of the male s.e.x, I have the right to qualify it with the attribute of femininity.

You a.s.sume that soul-s.e.x is indissolubly connected and inevitably derived from body-s.e.x. The facts contradict you, as I can prove by referring to the veracious autobiographies of Urnings and to known phenomena regarding them.

Such is the theory of Ulrichs; and though we may not incline to his peculiar mode of explaining the want of harmony between s.e.xual organs and s.e.xual appet.i.te in Urnings, there can be no doubt that in some way or other their eccentric diathesis must be referred to the obscure process of s.e.xual differentiation.[58] Perhaps he antedates the moment at which the aberration sometimes takes its origin, not accounting sufficiently for imperative impressions made on the imagination or the senses of boys during the years which precede p.u.b.erty.

However this may be, the tendency to such inversion is certainly inborn in an extremely large percentage of cases. That can be demonstrated from the reports of persons whose instincts were directed to the male before they knew what s.e.x meant. It is worth extracting pa.s.sages from these confessions.[59] (1) "As a schoolboy of eight years, I sat near a comrade rather older than myself; and how happy was I, when he touched me. That was the first indefinite perception of an inclination which remained a secret for me till my nineteenth year." (2) "Going back to my seventh year, I had a lively feeling for a schoolfellow, two years older than myself; I was happy when I could be as close as possible to him, and in our games could place my head near to his private parts." (3) "At ten years of age he had a romantic attachment for a comrade; and the pa.s.sion for people of his own s.e.x became always more and more marked."

(4) Another confessed that "already at the age of four he used to dream of handsome grooms." (5) A fifth said: "My pa.s.sion for people of my own s.e.x awoke at the age of eight. I used to enjoy my brother's nakedness; while bathing with other children, I took no interest at all in girls, but felt the liveliest attraction toward boys." (6) A sixth dates his experience from his sixth or seventh year. (7) A seventh remembers that "while yet a boy, before the age of p.u.b.erty, sleeping in the company of a male agitated him to such an extent that he lay for hours awake." (8) An eighth relates that "while three years old, I got possession of a fas.h.i.+on book, cut out the pictures of men, and kissed them to tatters.

The pictures of women I did not care to look at." (9) A ninth goes back to his thirteenth year, and a school friends.h.i.+p. (10) A tenth records the same about his seventh year. (11) An eleventh says that his inverted instincts awoke in early childhood, and that from his ninth year onward he fell over and over again in love with adult men. (12) A twelfth spoke as follows: "So far back as I can remember, I was always subject to this pa.s.sion. Quite as a child, young men made deeper impression on me than women or girls. The earliest sensual perturbation of which I have any recollection was excited by a tutor, when I was nine or ten, and my greatest pleasure was to be allowed to ride astride upon his leg." (13) A thirteenth: "From the earliest childhood I have been haunted by visions of men, and only of men; never has a woman exercised the least influence over me. At school I kept these instincts to myself, and lived quite retired." (14) A fourteenth can recollect "receiving a distinctly sensual impression at the age of four, when the man-servants caressed him." (15) A fifteenth says that at the age of thirteen, together with p.u.b.erty, the inversion of appet.i.te awoke in him. (16) A sixteenth confesses that he felt an unconquerable desire for soldiers in his thirteenth year. (17) A seventeenth remembers having always dreamed only of men; and at school, he says, "when my comrades looked at pretty girls and criticised them during our daily promenades, I could not comprehend how they found anything to admire in such creatures." On the other hand, the sight and touch of soldiers and strong fellows excited him enormously. (18) An eighteenth dates the awakening of pa.s.sion in him at the age of eleven, when he saw a handsome man in church; and from that time forward his instinct never altered. (19) A nineteenth fell in love with an officer at the age of thirteen, and since then always desired vigorous adult males. (20) A twentieth confessed to have begun to love boys of his own age, sensually, while only eight years of age. (21) A twenty-first records that, when he was eight, he began to crave after the sight of naked men.