44 Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



woman clothed or half-clothed in a certain fashion. Most men 

 love a certain type and everything which approaches to it in 

 carriage or aspect acts upon them more rapidly and violently. 

 Often after an infidelity to their type they return to it with 

 the more servitude. Men have but little imagination. Some 

 of them with all their conquests, whether of women or men, 

 make the same pilgrimage, go each time docilely to the same 

 museum, to the same place in the environs of the town, 

 etc., etc. 



The difference between the classes is under certain circum- 

 stances almost tantamount to that between the sexes. It is very 

 possible that this observation which I have often had opportun- 

 ity to make will explain the sonnets of Shakespeare. An en- 

 thusiastic friendship (a passion which involves neither inversion 

 nor perversion) and the social distance between Shakespeare 

 and the young man, and the youth of one and the ripe age of 

 the other might give the clue to the enigma. The inverts and 

 perverts comprise so many celebrated men and so much glory 

 that they may give up Shakespeare. 



The child escapes none of these influences. His parents 

 have forbidden him to associate familiarly with common people ; 

 and the laborer, the valet, the butler, the coachman, seem to 

 him the more attractive. If the child is ill and if he it carried 

 by one of these men, his heart beats with fear and pleasure be- 

 fore, during and after it. He compares these sensations with 

 those which he experiences in the arms of his father or a 

 brother and the difference is so great that the child cannot be 

 deceived about it. He admits it. He does not know why. 

 He conjures up some explanations. He begins by thinking 

 that such or such a man pleases him. But it is not a man who 

 pleases him, whose embrace enraptures him, whose touch tu- 

 multously excites him ; it is the ma7i. When the child has so 

 far surmounted his ignorance as to arrive at this knowledge of 

 himself, his sentimental education progresses of itself The 

 child furtively gives way to a host of impulsive acts to attract the 

 attention of the man who interests him, without being suspected 



