A Problem in Modern Ethics Part 7

II.

A belief that s.e.xual inversion is a crime against G.o.d, nature, and the State pervades all subsequent legislation on the subject. This belief rests on (1) theological conceptions derived from the Scriptures; (2) a dread of decreasing the population; (3) the antipathy of the majority for the tastes of the minority; (4) the vulgar error that antiphysical desires are invariably voluntary, and the result either of inordinate l.u.s.t or of satiated appet.i.tes.

III.

Scientific investigation has proved in recent years that a very large proportion of persons in whom abnormal s.e.xual inclinations are manifested possess them from their earliest childhood, that they cannot divert them into normal channels, and that they are powerless to get rid of them. In these cases, then, legislation is interfering with the liberty of individuals, under a certain misconception regarding the nature of their offence.

IV.

Those who support the present laws are therefore bound to prove that the coercion, punishment, and defamation of such persons are justified either (1) by any injury which these persons suffer in health of body or mind, or (2) by any serious danger arising from them to the social organism.

V.

Experience, confirmed by scientific observation, proves that the temperate indulgence of abnormal s.e.xuality is no more injurious to the individual than a similar indulgence of normal s.e.xuality.

VI.

In the present state of over-population, it is not to be apprehended that a small minority of men exercising sterile and abnormal s.e.xual inclinations should seriously injure society by limiting the increase of the human race.

VII.

Legislation does not interfere with various forms of sterile intercourse between men and women: (1) prost.i.tution, (2) cohabitation in marriage during the period of pregnancy, (3) artificial precautions against impregnation, and (4) some abnormal modes of congress with the consent of the female. It is therefore in an illogical position, when it interferes with the action of those who are naturally sterile, on the ground of maintaining the numerical standard of the population.

VIII.

The danger that unnatural vices, if tolerated by the law, would increase until whole nations acquired them, does not seem to be formidable. The position of women in our civilisation renders s.e.xual relations among us occidentals different from those of any country--ancient Greece and Rome, modern Turkey and Persia--where antiphysical habits have hitherto become endemic.

IX.

In modern France, since the promulgation of the Code Napoleon, s.e.xual inversion has been tolerated under the same restrictions as normal s.e.xuality. That is to say, violence and outrages to public decency are punished, and minors are protected, but adults are allowed to dispose as they like of their own persons. The experience of nearly a century shows that in France, where s.e.xual inversion is not criminal _per se_, there has been no extension of it through society. Competent observers, like agents of police, declare that London, in spite of our penal legislation, is no less notorious for abnormal vice than Paris.

X.

Italy, by the Penal Code of 1889, adopted the principles of the Code Napoleon on this point. It would be interesting to know what led to this alteration of the Italian law. But it cannot be supposed that the results of the Code Napoleon in France were not fully considered.

XI.

The severity of the English statutes render them almost incapable of being put in force. In consequence of this the law is not unfrequently evaded, and crimes are winked at.

XII.

At the same time our laws encourage blackmailing upon false accusation; and the presumed evasion of their execution places from time to time a vile weapon in the hands of unscrupulous politicians, to attack the Government in office. Examples: the Dublin Castle Scandals of 1884, the Cleveland Street Scandals of 1889.

XIII.

Those who hold that our penal laws are required by the interests of society must turn their attention to the higher education. This still rests on the study of the Greek and Latin cla.s.sics, a literature impregnated with paederastia. It is carried on at public schools, where young men are kept apart from females, and where h.o.m.os.e.xual vices are frequent. The best minds of our youth are therefore exposed to the influences of a paederastic literature at the same time that they acquire the knowledge and experience of unnatural practices. Nor is any trouble taken to correct these adverse influences by physiological instruction in the laws of s.e.x.

XIV.

The points suggested for consideration are whether England is still justified in restricting the freedom of adult persons, and rendering certain abnormal forms of s.e.xuality criminal, by any real dangers to society: after it has been shown (1) that abnormal inclinations are congenital, natural, and ineradicable in a large percentage of individuals; (2) that we tolerate sterile intercourse of various types between the two s.e.xes; (3) that our legislation has not suppressed the immorality in question; (4) that the operation of the Code Napoleon for nearly a century has not increased this immorality in France; (5) that Italy, with the experience of the Code Napoleon to guide her, adopted its principles in 1889; (6) that the English penalties are rarely inflicted to their full extent; (7) that their existence encourages blackmailing, and their non-enforcement gives occasion for base political agitation; (8) that our higher education is in open contradiction to the spirit of our laws.[80]

FINIS.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Vindices Flammae.

[2] Stieber, "Practisches Lehrbuch der Criminal-Polizei," 1860, cap. 19, quoted by Ulrichs, "Araxes," p. 9. It is not necessary to multiply evidences upon a point so patent to every man of the world. But I will nevertheless translate a striking pa.s.sage from Mantegazza (_op. cit._, p. 148). "Nor is this infamous abomination confined to the vilest cla.s.ses of our society. It soars into the highest spheres of wealth and intelligence. Within the narrow range of my own experience I have known among the most scandalous sodomites a French journalist, a German poet, an Italian statesman, and a Spanish jurist; all of these men of exquisite taste and profound culture!" It would not be difficult to draw up a list of English kings, bishops, deans, n.o.bles of the highest rank, poets, historians, dramatists, officers in the army and navy, civil servants, schoolmasters in the most fas.h.i.+onable schools, physicians, members of Parliament, journalists, barristers, who in their lifetime were, as Dante says, "d'un medesmo peccato al mondo lerci." Many belonging to the past are notorious; and no good could come of mentioning the names of the living.

[3] This accusation against men who feel a s.e.xual inclination for males loses some of its significance when we consider how common the practice of _Venus aversa_ is among libertines who love women. Parent-Duchatelet a.s.serts that no prost.i.tute after a certain age has escaped it.

Coffignon, in his book on, "La Corruption a Paris" (p. 324), says: "Chaque annee, il pa.s.se en traitement a l'hopital de Lourcine une centaine de femmes sodomistes.... Je suis persuade qu'a l'hopital de St.

Lazare la proportion des sodomistes est encore beaucoup plus grande....

Les maitresses de maison, professant cet odieux principe que la clientele doit etre satisfaite, ne permettent pas a une fille de se refuser a une acte de sodomie." Tardieu (Attentats, &c., p. 198) observes: "Chose singuliere! c'est princ.i.p.alement des rapports conjugaux que se sont produits les faits de cette nature."

[4] See Casper-Liman, vol. i., p. 182, at the end of Case 71.

[5] While studying what Germans call the _Casuistik_ of this question in medical, forensic, and anthropological works, we often meet with cases where inverted s.e.xuality exhibits extraordinary symptoms of apparent craziness--strange partialities for particular kinds of dress, occupations in the beloved object, nastinesses, and so forth. But it must be remarked first that the same symptoms are exhibited by s.e.xually normal natures (Krafft-Ebing, Observations 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, and the cases recorded in footnote to page 90); and, secondly, that if they should appear to be more frequent in the abnormal, this can in a great measure be ascribed to the fact that these latter cases only come under the observation of medical men and judges when the patients have already for many years been suffering from all the pangs of a coerced and defrauded instinct. There is nothing in the copious history of Greece and Rome upon this subject to lead us to suppose that in a society which tolerated s.e.xual inversion, its subjects were more conspicuous for filthy and degrading or insane proclivities than ordinary men and women were. Those who can bring themselves to enquire into such matters may convince themselves by reading Forberg's annotations to "Hermaphroditus," Rosenbaum's "l.u.s.tseuche," the pseudo-Meursius, and the p.o.r.nographical dialogues of Aretino. It will appear conclusively that both in ancient and in modern times the normal s.e.xual instinct has been subject to the wildest freaks and aberrations; not in actually diseased persons, but simply in l.u.s.tful wantons and the epicures of new sensations. The curious things we know about flagellation and cruelty in connection with the ordinary appet.i.te should also be remembered. As a final note on this topic, I will refer to a pa.s.sage quoted by Tarnowsky from a work of Taxil, describing a peculiarly repulsive cla.s.s of fas.h.i.+onable libertines in Paris called "les stercoraires" (_op. cit._, p. 70). Compare what Mantegazza reports of a "gentile ufficiale francese" (Gli amore degli uomini, vol. i. p.

117).

[6] See upon this point Tardieu, "Attentats aux Murs," Rosenbaum, "Die l.u.s.tseuche."

[7] Ancient literature abounds in prose and poetry which are both of them concerned with h.o.m.os.e.xual love. Only a portion of this can be called p.o.r.nographic: among the Greeks, the ???sa ?a?d???, parts of Lucian, and occasional hints in Athenaeus and Aristophanes perhaps deserve the name; among the Romans, the Priapeia, the Satyricon of Petronius, some elegies and satires, certainly do so. Italian literature can show the Rime Burlesche, Beccadelli's Hermaphroditus, the Canti Carnascialeschi, the maccaronic poems of Fidentius, and the remarkably outspoken romance ent.i.tled "Alcibiade fanciullo a scolla." Balzac has treated the theme, but with reserve and delicacy. Mirabeau's "Erotika Biblion" is a kind of cla.s.sic on the subject. In English literature, if we except Shakespeare's Sonnets, George Barnfield's Poems, parts of Marlowe, "Roderick Random," Churchill's Satire "The Times," h.o.m.os.e.xual pa.s.sions have been rarely handled, and none of these works are p.o.r.nographic. In Germany, Count von Platen, Heine's victim, was certainly an Urning; but his h.o.m.os.e.xual imitations of Persian poetry are pure, though pa.s.sionate. I am not acquainted with more than the t.i.tles of some distinctly p.o.r.nographic German books. The following appears to be of this sort: "Mannesliebe, oder drei Jahre aus dem Leben eines jungen Mannes."

[8] Les Deux Prost.i.tutions, par F. Carlier, Ancien Chef du Service actif des Murs a la Prefecture de Police. Paris. Dentu. 1889.

[9] Paris, Brossier, 1889.

[10] In the recently published military novel "Sous Offs." (by Lucien Descaves, Paris, Tresse et Stock, 1890) some details are given regarding establishments of this nature. See pp. 322, 412, 417, for a description of the drinking-shop called "Aux Amis de l'Armee," where a few maids were kept for show, and also of its frequenters, including in particular the adjutant Laprevotte (cp. 44).

[11] On the morals of the Foreign Legions, see Ulrichs, Ara Spei, p. 20; Memnon, p. 27. Also General Brossier's report, quoted by Burton, Arabian Nights, vol. x. p. 251

[12] P. 459.