50 Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



he has any strength he will not allow himself to be degraded by 

 the errors of a youth without moral direction. 



The superior invert has equal chances with the heterosex- 

 ual and analogous dangers. He can grow up into a moral and 

 worthy being such as a man ought to be, or he can sink into 

 frivolity, luxury and falsehood. 



This moral education will have cost him dear and if he has 

 cursed the father who begot him and the mother who conceived 

 him, as well as society which has misunderstood him, he will 

 find himself some day superior to his jeremiads, and if he ex- 

 amines his complaisance this is what he will find : his com- 

 plaisance and its moral and social value rest upon the check im- 

 posed upon his proclivities ; I do not say upon the contradic- 

 tion imposed upon his proclivities. 



Inverts of the same grade do not often meet and they do 

 not always love each other. Our invert has probably either 

 loved only inferior inverts and now he has the same disgust for 

 them which a frivolous and disreputable woman inspires in a 

 sober and upright man, or else he has loved heterosexuals who 

 were more or less attractive, weak and interested. In all cases 

 his experience has not been very happy. If he has made con- 

 quest of heterosexuals of good character his victory has been 

 difficult and of rather short duration, (if he has committed the 

 fault — for him — of falling in love with a woman, it has not been 

 for long), and he sees that sexuality cannot be the gOal of ex- 

 istence for a superior person whether homosexual or hetero- 

 sexual. 



The great men claimed for homosexuality have been great 

 only because they have not allowed themselves to be overmas- 

 tered by their sexuality. The grand inverts have been grand in 

 spite of their inversion or because they raised themselves above 

 it and so above humanity. The man without family, without 

 wife, without children, who is kept by continence or by chastity 

 from so many annoyances, vexations and falsehoods and whose 

 heart is not barren and withered, may be a Michael Angelo or 

 a Newton. (Newton is classed here only for his chastity). The 

 list of historic inverts given by Moll might be indefinitely in- 



