Raffalovich, Uranism. 39 



how his kind heart and his loyaHty to the race might mislead 

 him more than once. I do not think that the inverts are to be 

 pitied as Krafft-Ebbing conceives it. If they are superior in- 

 verts, they suffer only what superior men always suffer. The 

 strife between conscience, the propensities, prudence and the 

 world is no worse for the superior invert than for the superior 

 heterosexual man. Let us pity superior men if we will ; but 

 the strife against the passions is about the same whatever the 

 passions may be, and we may pity the striver if he is noble. 

 As for the ordinary or degraded inverts, they are no more to be 

 pitied and they no more expect to be pitied than drunkards 

 either from taste or habit or than the inveterate patrons of 

 prostitutes. 



I shall return to this point later. If the reader wishes to 

 get some idea of the confusion which reigns among the authors, 

 I will cite the great work of Dr. Dallemagne, Degeneres et 

 desequilibres. Not to retard my progress or cumber the 

 ground here, I refer to the second note at the end of this paper. 

 I hope that Dr. Dallemagne, who cites me without criticizing 

 me, will not acuse me of ingratitude ; I criticise him as the most 

 recent writer and certainly not the least serious. 



Persons are born more or less inverted, or they may ac- 

 quire it either during that period of sexual indifference (so 

 subtly studied by Max Dessoir) which lasts beyond puberty, or 

 perhaps long after. Circumstances, isolation and its concomi- 

 tants, bad examples and bad advice, reading and conversation, 

 a young and passionate seducer or a prudent, adroit, and ex- 

 perienced one, disgust with heterosexual sexuality, disease, 

 transitory or permanent psychoses, vanity, cupidity, or even 

 necessity may transform a heterosexual into a homosexual. 



With the congenital invert the inversion manifests itself 

 very early. We should have thorough knowledge of that of 

 which as yet we know so little, the sexuality of childhood, so 

 as to know whether the heterosexual tendencies really develop 

 so much more slowly or whether they are not observed when 

 met. Before affirming that this sexual precocity (precocity of 

 feelings, not acts) is a sign of the degeneration of the inverts, 



