THE GROWTH OF THE TIE 25 



That Athenian society was essentially a caste, and a 

 most exclusive one, is proved by the w^ell- known 

 oration delivered by Demosthenes ^ in the case of the 

 girl Neaera, who, not being of pure Athenian birth, 

 was denied the honours of citizenship. We need only 

 add here that the comparison of Athenian society to 

 a neuropathic family, which, receiving no sufficient 

 infusion of healthy blood, wears itself out in a given 

 number of generations, is supported by the strange 

 fact of the prevalence among the most cultured 

 Greeks, including public men of the highest eminence, 

 of the vice of unnatural love. Upon this subject 

 Lecky and other modern writers have speculated 

 rather wildly, but there is now no doubt that the 

 perversion of the sexual instinct is a disease be- 

 longing to the epileptic group, and denoting a 

 considerable degree of nervous degeneration in 

 the individual.^ In the case of Greece, probably, 



^ There is some doubt as to whether Demosthenes was the orator 

 of the occasion, but the point is immaterial to the present argument. 

 The orator speaks of the license accorded to husbands in these 

 terms : "We keep mistresses for our pleasure, concubines for con- 

 stant attendance, and wives to bear us legitimate children, and to 

 be our faithful housekeepers." 



^ Cotard, "La Perversion du Sens Genital," Archives de Neuro- 

 logie, 1884. 



There is a striking passage in Ribot's Hir6dit6 Psychologique with 

 reference to the decadence of the Greeks. " The organic causes of 



