38 Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



Platen. In Latin, in German, in French, more rarely in Eng- 

 lish, with circumlocutions or without (but, alas ! not frankly 

 and simply), they repeat, one after the other, the habits which 

 have always been known to the inverts, the perverts or the 

 well-informed. I think the time has come for this to stop ; and 

 I imagine that the readers of scientific or psychological works 

 can dispense with a detailed report of vices which upon the 

 whole are rather rare. The plurality of homosexual vices once 

 established (this has been necessary in order to establish the 

 comparative rarity of sodomy, technically so-called), I do not 

 see that science gains by their repetition. I should not com- 

 plain, possibly, if inversion or perversion were treated with less 

 frankness. The writers and their readers are so little conver- 

 sant, it would seem, with very wide-spread vices (which, too, 

 are spreading more and more) that they can neither understand 

 them nor speak of them without apology and reserve. Why 

 not speak of that which they see with their own eyes instead of 

 recounting the errors of their predecessors or the indecencies dis- 

 cussed by them ? If they cannot or will not see for themselves 

 if they lack sufficient penetration or courage, then why attack 

 so important a question which requires a penetrating scientific 

 insight and a knowledge of the world as it is ? Men of intelli- 

 gence, excellent I have no doubt, seem to me to slip over this 

 ground superficially and almost all in the same way. Have 

 they really known or identified inverts or perverts ? If not, 

 they ought not to talk of them. If they have known or iden- 

 tified them, why do they not help them on a little ? 



Notably in Germany and Austria, Moll and Max Dessoir 

 (who has contributed so much to the psychology of sexual in- 

 version) and Krafft-Ebbing (author of the vast Psychopathia 

 Sexualis, a valuable book which, however, brings together again 

 rather too many of the falsehoods of that most deceitful race, 

 the inverts and perverts) are free from this reproach. But 

 Krafft-Ebbing seems to me to put too much confidence in the 

 protestations of his patients. It is natural that the inverts 

 should be eager to win over to their cause a man of the reputa- 

 tion and merit of Krafft-Ebbing, and it is easily comprehensible 



