42 Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



It is well to remember that the effeminate inverts are the 

 best known because they have much the greater passion for 

 confidences and for boastfulness. The inverts who hold their 

 peace have not yet been found out and Krafift-Ebbing does not 

 put them upon record. They exist nevertheless and they are 

 the ones who prevent us from despairing for the race of inverts. 

 Without them the vices of the woman added to those of the 

 man would be a spectacle too disheartening. 



It is difficult to do justice to the inverts ; so also it would 

 be difficult to do justice to the heterosexuals if we were to confine 

 ourselves exclusively to their sexual life. Falsehood and sexu- 

 ality are always so intimately associated because reality belies 

 desire since expectation and realization are in glaring contradic- 

 tion. If men were bold today, if they were not under the 

 sway of an all-pervasive materialism, how differently would 

 they think of sexuality ! 



The invert thinks himself sufficiently disinterested to judge 

 of the baseness of sexuality — but he has not the courage to 

 go to the limit and to aspire to chastity ; he invents arguments 

 in favor of his own propensities. If he were the superior be- 

 ing that he imagines himself and if he had any religion, he 

 would shake off the bonds of the flesh and make himself use- 

 ful to humanity. How much celibacy and continence can do 

 for an invert they only know who are not materialists. 



The day when the invert ceases to call for the indulgence 

 of society, he will begin to justify himself in the eyes of truly 

 superior men. Because heterosexuality is not suppressed homo- 

 sexuality ought to be equally favored. Strange logic, if the 

 repression of heterosexuality is one of the problems of the fu- 

 ture, as I believe it to be. 



Along with this romancing, this platonism, these fervid 

 stories, the child feels a carnal attraction for the man and he 

 does not yet know, perhaps, that the two thoughts which inter- 

 est him are related. Every day the child may seek for oppor- 

 tunities to touch the hand or the body of a domestic, at meals, 

 for instance, or on the stairs ; and every day the same child 

 may dream of the most innocent and fantastic careers. This 



