A Problem in Modern Ethics Part 2

How little Dr. Moreau has weighed the importance of ancient Greece in his discussion of this topic, appears from the omission of all facts supplied by Greek literature and history in the introduction to his Essay. He dilates upon the legends recorded by the Roman Emperors, because these seem to support his theory of hereditary malady. He uses Juvenal, Tacitus, Suetonius, and the Augustan Histories to support his position, although they form part of the annals of a people among whom "paederasty was accepted and admitted." He ignores the biographies of the Spartan kings, the inst.i.tutions of Crete, the Theban Sacred Band, the dialogues of Plato, the anecdotes related about Pheidias, Sophocles, Pindar, Demosthenes, Alcibiades, and so forth. Does he perhaps do so because they cannot in any way be made to square with his theory of morbidity? The truth is that ancient Greece offers insuperable difficulties to theorists who treat s.e.xual inversion exclusively from the points of view of neuropathy, tainted heredity, and masturbation.

And how incompetent Dr. Moreau is to deal with Greek matters may be seen in the grotesque synonym he has invented for paederasty-_philopodie_ (p.

173). Properly the word is compounded of f??e?? and p???; but I suppose it is meant to suggest f??e?? and _podex_.

In a chapter on Legal Medicine, Moreau starts by observing that "The facts are so monstrous, so tainted with aberration, and yet their agents offer so strong an appearance of sound reason, occupy such respectable positions in the world, are reputed to enjoy such probity, such honourable sentiments, &c., that one hesitates to utter an opinion."

Proceeding further, he considers it sufficiently established that: "Not unfrequently, under the influence of some vice of organism, generally of heredity, the moral faculties may undergo alterations, which, if they do not actually destroy the social relations of the individual, as happens in cases of declared insanity, yet modify them to a remarkable degree, and certainly demand to be taken into account, when we have to estimate the morality of these acts" (p. 301). His conclusion, therefore, is that the aberrations of the s.e.xual sense, including its inversion, are matters for the physician rather than the judge, for therapeutics rather than punishment, and that representatives of the medical faculty ought to sit upon the bench as advisers or a.s.sessors when persons accused of outrages against decency come to trial. "While we blame and stigmatise these crimes with reason, the horrified intellect seeks an explanation and a moral excuse (nothing more) for such odious acts. It insists on asking what can have brought a man honourably known in society, enjoying (apparently at least) the fulness of his mental faculties, to these base and shameful self-indulgences. We answer: Such men for the most part are abnormal intelligences, veritable candidates for lunacy, and, what is more, they are the subjects of hereditary maladies. But let us cast a veil over a subject so humiliating to the honour of humanity!"

(p. 177).

As the final result of this a.n.a.lysis, Moreau cla.s.sifies s.e.xual inversion with erotomania, nymphomania, satyriasis, b.e.s.t.i.a.lity, rape, profanation of corpses, &c., as the symptom of a grave lesion of the procreative sense. He seeks to save its victims from the prison by delivering them over to the asylum. His moral sentiments are so revolted that he does not even entertain the question whether their instincts are natural and healthy though abnormal. Lastly, he refuses to face the aspects of this psychological anomaly which are forced upon the student of ancient h.e.l.las. He does not even take into account the fact, patent to experienced observers, that simple folk not unfrequently display no greater disgust for the abnormalities of s.e.xual appet.i.te than they do for its normal manifestations.[21]

_Die krankhaften Erscheinungen des Geschlechtssinnes. B. Tarnowsky.

Berlin, Hirschwald_, 1886.

This is avowedly an attempt to distinguish the morbid kinds of s.e.xual perversion from the merely vicious, and to enforce the necessity of treating the former not as criminal but as pathological. "The forensic physician discerns corruption, oversatiated sensuality, deep-rooted vice, perverse will, &c., where the clinical observer recognises with certainty a morbid condition of the patient marked by typical steps of development and termination. Where the one wishes to punish immorality, the other pleads for the necessity of methodical therapeutic treatment."

The author is a Russian, whose practice in St. Petersburg has brought him into close professional relations with the male prost.i.tutes and habitual paederasts of that capital.

He is able therefore to speak with authority, on the ground of a quite exceptional knowledge of the moral and physical disturbances connected with sodomy. I cannot but think that the very peculiarities of his experience have led him to form incomplete theories. He is too familiar with venal pathics, paedicators, and effeminates who prost.i.tute their bodies in the grossest way, to be able to appreciate the subtler bearings of the problem.

Tarnowsky makes two broad divisions of s.e.xual inversion. The first kind is inborn, dependent upon hereditary taint and neuropathic diathesis. He distinguishes three sorts of inborn perversity. In the most marked of its forms it is chronic and persistent, appearing with the earliest dawn of p.u.b.erty, unmodified by education, attaining to its maximum of intensity in manhood, manifesting, in fact, all the signs of ordinary s.e.xual inclination. In a second form it is not chronic and persistent, but periodical. The patient is subject to occasional disturbances of the nervous centres, which express themselves in violent and irresistible attacks of the perverted instinct. The third form is epileptical.

With regard to acquired s.e.xual inversion, he dwells upon the influence of bad example, the power of imitation, fashion, corrupt literature, curiosity in persons jaded with normal excesses. Extraordinary details are given concerning the state of schools in Russia (pp. 63-65); and a particular case is mentioned, in which Tarnowsky himself identified twenty-nine pa.s.sive paederasts, between the ages of nine and fifteen, in a single school. He had been called in to p.r.o.nounce upon the causes of an outbreak of syphilis among the pupils. Interesting information is also communicated regarding the prevalence of abnormal vice in St.

Petersburg, where it appears that bath-men, cab-drivers, care-takers of houses, and artisans are particularly in request (pp. 98-101). The Russian people show no repugnance for what they call "gentlemen's tricks." Tarnowsky calls attention to ships, garrisons, prisons, as milieux well calculated for the development of this vice, when it had once been introduced by some one tainted with it. His view about nations like the Greeks, the Persians, and the Afghans is that, through imitation, fashion, and social toleration, it has become endemic. But all the sorts of abnormality included under the t.i.tle of acquired Tarnowsky regards as criminal. The individual ought, he thinks, to be punished by the law. He naturally includes under this category of acquired perversion the vices of old debauchees. At this point, however, his cla.s.sification becomes confused; for he shows how senile tendencies to sodomitic pa.s.sion are frequently the symptom of approaching brain disease, to which the reason and the const.i.tution of the patient will succ.u.mb. French physicians call this "la pederastie des ramollis."

Returning to what Tarnowsky says about the inborn species of s.e.xual inversion, I may call attention to an admirable description of the type in general (pp. 11-15) I think, however, that he lays too great stress upon the pa.s.sivity of the emotions in these persons, their effeminacy of press, habits, inclinations. He is clearly speaking from large experience. So it must be supposed that he has not come across frequent instances of men who feel, look, and act like men, the only difference between them and normal males being that they love their own s.e.x. In describing a second degree of the aberration (pp. 16, 17), he still accentuates effeminacy in dress and habits beyond the point which general observation would justify. Careful study of the cases adduced in Krafft-Ebing's "Psychopathia" supplies a just measure for the criticism of Tarnowsky upon this head. From them we learn that effeminacy of physique and habit is by no means a distinctive mark of the born paederast. Next it may be noticed that Tarnowsky believes even innate and hereditary tendencies can be modified and overcome by proper moral, and physique discipline in youth, and that the subjects of them will even be brought to marry in some cases (pp. 17, 18).

It would not serve any purpose of utility here to follow Tarnowsky into further details regarding the particular forms a.s.sumed by perverted appet.i.te. But attention must be directed to his definition of hereditary predisposition (pp. 33-35). This is extraordinarily wide. He regards every disturbance of the nervous system in an ancestor as sufficient; epilepsy, brain disease, hysteria, insanity. He includes alcoholism, syphilitic affections, pneumonia, typhus, physical exhaustion, excessive anaemia, debauchery, "anything in short which is sufficient to enfeeble the nervous system and the s.e.xual potency of the parent." At this point he remarks that long residence at high alt.i.tudes tends to weaken the s.e.xual activity and to develop perversity, adducing an old belief of the Persians that paederastia originated in the high plateau of Armenia (p.

35). It need hardly, I think, be said that these theories are contradicted to the fullest extent by the experience of those who have lived with the mountaineers of Central Europe. They are indeed capable of continence to a remarkable degree, but they are also vigorously procreative and remarkably free from s.e.xual inversion.

Finally, it must be observed that Tarnowsky discusses the physical signs of active and pa.s.sive sodomy at some length (108-135). His opportunities of physical observation in medical practice as the trusted physician of the St. Petersburg paederasts gives him the right to speak with authority. The most decisive thing he says is that Casper, through want of familiarity with the phenomena, is too contemptuous toward one point in Tardieu's theory. In short, Tarnowsky feels sure that a habitual pa.s.sive paederast will show something like the sign in question, if examined by an expert in the proper position. But that is the only deformation of the body on which he relies.

_Psychopathia s.e.xualis, mit besonderer Berucksichtigung der Contraren s.e.xualempfindung. Von Dr. R. v. Krafft-Ebing. Stuttgart, Enke, 1889._

Krafft-Ebing took the problem of s.e.xual inversion up when it had been already investigated by a number of pioneers and predecessors. They mapped the ground out, and established a kind of psychical chart. We have seen the medical system growing in the works of Moreau and Tarnowsky. If anything, Krafft-Ebing's treatment suffers from too much subdivision and parade of cla.s.sification. It is only, however, by following the author in his differentiation of the several species that we can form a conception of his general theory, and of the extent of the observations upon which this is based. He starts with (A) s.e.xual Inversion as an acquired morbid phenomenon. Then he reviews (B) s.e.xual Inversion as an inborn morbid phenomenon.

(A) "s.e.xual feeling and s.e.xual instinct," he begins, "remain latent, except in obscure foreshadowings and impulses, until the time when the organs of procreation come to be developed. During the period of latency, when s.e.x has not arrived at consciousness, is only potentially existent, and has no powerful organic bias, influences may operate, injurious to its normal and natural evolution. In that case the germinating s.e.xual sensibility runs a risk of being both qualitatively and quant.i.tatively impaired, and under certain circ.u.mstances may even be perverted into a false channel. Tarnowsky has already published this experience. I can thoroughly confirm it, and am prepared to define the conditions of this acquired, or, in other words, this cultivated perversion of the s.e.xual instinct in the following terms. The fundamental or ground predisposition is a neuropathic hereditary bias.

The exciting or efficient cause is s.e.xual abuse, and more particularly onanism. The etiological centre of gravity has to be sought in hereditary disease; _and I think it is questionable whether an untainted individual is capable of h.o.m.os.e.xual feelings at all_."[22]

Krafft-Ebing's theory seems then to be that all cases of acquired s.e.xual inversion may be ascribed in the first place to morbid predispositions inherited by the patient (_Belastung_), and in the second place to onanism as the exciting cause of the latent neuropathic ailment.

He excludes the hypothesis of a physiological and healthy deflection from the normal rule of s.e.x. "I think it questionable," he says, "whether the untainted individual (_das unbelastete Individuum_) is capable of h.o.m.os.e.xual feelings at all." The importance of this sentence will be apparent when we come to deal with Krafft-Ebing's account of congenital s.e.xual inversion, which he establishes upon a large induction of cases observed in his own practice.

For the present we have the right to a.s.sume that Krafft-Ebing regards s.e.xual inversion, whether "acquired" or "congenital," as a form of inherited neuropathy (_Belastung_). In cases where it seems to be "acquired," he lays stress upon the habit of self-pollution.

This is how he states his theory of onanism as an exciting cause of inherited neuropathy, resulting in s.e.xual inversion. The habit of self-abuse prepares the patient for abnormal appet.i.tes by weakening his nervous force, degrading his s.e.xual imagination, and inducing hyper-sensibility in his s.e.xual apparatus. Partial impotence is not unfrequently exhibited. In consequence of this sophistication of his nature, the victim of inherited neuropathy and onanism feels shy with women, and finds it convenient to frequent persons of his own s.e.x. In other words, it is supposed to be easier for an individual thus broken down at the centres of his life to defy the law and to demand s.e.xual gratification from men than to consort with venal women in a brothel.

Krafft-Ebing a.s.sumes that males who have been born with neuropathic ailments of an indefinite kind will m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e, destroy their virility, and then embark upon a course of vice which offers incalculable dangers, inconceivable difficulties, and inexpressible repugnances. That is the theory. But whence, if not from some overwhelming appet.i.te, do the demoralised victims of self-abuse derive courage for facing the obstacles which a career of s.e.xual inversion carries with it in our civilisation? One would have thought that such people, if they could not approach a prost.i.tute in a brothel, would have been unable to solicit a healthy man upon the streets. The theory seems to be constructed in order to elude the fact that the persons designated are driven by a natural impulse into paths far more beset with difficulties than those of normal libertines.

Krafft-Ebing gives the details of five cases of "acquired" s.e.xual inversion. Three of these were the children of afflicted parents. One had no morbid strain in his ancestry, except pulmonary consumption. The fifth sprang from a strong father and a healthy mother. Masturbation entered into the history of all.

It must be observed, in criticising Krafft-Ebing's theory, that it is so constructed as to render controversy almost impossible. If we point out that a large percentage of males who practise onanism in their adolescence do not acquire s.e.xual inversion, he will answer that these were not tainted with hereditary disease. The autobiographies of onanists and pa.s.sionate woman-lovers (J. J. Rousseau, for example, who evinced a perfect horror of h.o.m.os.e.xual indulgence, and J. J. Bouchard, whose disgusting excentricities were directed toward females even in the period of his total impotence) will be dismissed with the remark that the ancestors of these writers must have shown a clean record.

It is difficult to square Krafft-Ebing's theory with the phenomena presented by schools, both public and private, in all parts of Europe.

In these inst.i.tutions not only is masturbation practised to a formidable extent, but it is also everywhere connected with some form of s.e.xual inversion, either pa.s.sionately Platonic or grossly sensual.

Nevertheless, we know that few of the boys addicted to these practices remain abnormal after they have begun to frequent women. The same may be said about convict establishments, military prisons, and the like.[23]

With such a body of facts staring us in the face, it cannot be contended that "only tainted individuals are capable of h.o.m.os.e.xual feelings."

Where females are absent or forbidden, males turn for s.e.xual gratification to males. And in certain conditions of society s.e.xual inversion may become permanently established, recognised, all but universal. It would be absurd to maintain that all the boy-lovers of ancient Greece owed their instincts to hereditary neuropathy complicated with onanism.

The invocation of heredity in problems of this kind is always hazardous.

We only throw the difficulty of explanation further back. At what point of the world's history was the morbid taste acquired? If none but tainted individuals are capable of h.o.m.os.e.xual feelings, how did these feelings first come into existence? On the supposition that neuropathy forms a necessary condition of abnormal instinct, is it generic neuropathy or a specific type of that disorder? If generic, can valid reasons be adduced for regarding nervous malady in any of its aspects (hysteria is the mother, insanity is the father) as the cause of so peculiarly differentiated an affection of the s.e.xual appet.i.te? If specific, that is, if the ancestors of the patient must have been afflicted with s.e.xual inversion, in what way did they acquire it, supposing all untainted individuals to be incapable of the feeling?

At this moment of history there is probably no individual in Europe who has not inherited some portion of a neuropathic stain. If that be granted, everybody is liable to s.e.xual inversion, and the principle of heredity becomes purely theoretical.

That s.e.xual inversion may be and actually is transmitted, like any other quality, appears to be proved by the history of well-known families both in England and in Germany. That it is not unfrequently exhibited by persons who have a bad ancestral record, may be taken for demonstrated.

In certain cases we are justified, then, in regarding it as the sign or concomitant of nervous maladies. But the evidence of ancient Greece or Rome, of what Burton calls the "sotadic races" at the present time, of European schools and prisons, ought to make us hesitate before we commit ourselves to Krafft-Ebing's theory that hereditary affliction is a necessary predisposing cause.[24]

In like manner, masturbation may be credited with certain cases of acquired h.o.m.os.e.xual feeling. Undoubtedly the instinct is occasionally evoked in some obscure way by the depraved habit of inordinate self-abuse. Yet the autobiographies of avowed Urnings do not corroborate the view that they were originally more addicted to onanism than normal males. Ulrichs has successfully combated the theory advanced by Tarnowsky, Prager, and Krafft-Ebing, if considered as a complete explanation of the problem.[25] On the other hand, common experience shows beyond all doubt, that young men between 16 and 20 give themselves up to daily self-abuse without weakening their appet.i.te for women. They love boys and practice mutual self-abuse with persons of their own s.e.x; yet they crave all the while for women. Of the many who live thus during the years of adolescence, some have undoubtedly as bad a family record as the worst of Krafft-Ebing's cases show. Finally, as regards the onanism which is a marked characteristic of some adult Urnings, this must be ascribed in most cases to the repression of their abnormal instincts. They adopt the habit, as Krafft-Ebing himself says, _faute de mieux_.[26]

In justice to the theory I am criticising, it ought to be remarked that Krafft-Ebing does not contend that wherever hereditary taint and onanism concur, the result will be s.e.xual inversion; but rather that wherever we have diagnosed an acquired form of s.e.xual inversion, we shall discover hereditary taint and onanism. Considering the frequency of both hereditary taint and onanism in our civilisation, this is not risking much. Those factors are discoverable in a large percentage of male persons. What seems unwarranted by facts is the suggestion that inherited neuropathy is an indispensable condition and the fundamental cause of h.o.m.os.e.xual instincts. The evidence of ancient Greece, schools, prisons, and sotadic races, compels us to believe that normally healthy people are often born with these instincts or else acquire them by the way of custom. Again, his insinuation that onanism, regarded as the main exciting cause, is more frequent among young people of abnormal inclinations than among their normal brethren, will not bear the test of common observation and of facts communicated in the autobiographies of professed onanists and confessed Urnings.

The problem is too delicate, too complicated, also too natural and simple, to be solved by hereditary disease and self-abuse. When we shift the ground of argument from acquired to inborn s.e.xual inversion, its puzzling character will become still more apparent. We shall hardly be able to resist the conclusion that theories of disease are incompetent to explain the phenomenon in modern Europe. Medical writers abandon the phenomenon in savage races, in cla.s.sical antiquity, and in the sotadic zone. They strive to isolate it as an abnormal and specifically morbid exception in our civilisation. But facts tend to show that it is a recurring impulse of humanity, natural to some people, adopted by others, and in the majority of cases compatible with an otherwise normal and healthy temperament.

Krafft-Ebing calls attention to the phenomenon of permanent _effeminatio_, in males uns.e.xed by constant riding and the exhaustion of their virility by friction of the genitals--a phenomenon observed by Herodotus among Scythians, and prevalent among some nomadic races of the Caucasus at the present day.[27] He claims this in support of his theory of masturbation; and within due limits, he has the right to do so. The destruction of the male apparatus for reproduction, whether it be by castration after p.u.b.erty, or by an accident to the parts, or by a lesion of the spine, or by excessive equitation, as appears proved from the history of nomad tribes, causes men to approximate physically to the female type, and to affect feminine occupations and habits. In proportion as the masculine functions are interfered with, masculine characteristics tend to disappear; and it is curious to notice that the same result is reached upon so many divers ways.

Next he discusses a few cases in which it seems that s.e.xual inversion displays itself episodically under the conditions of a psychopathical disturbance.[28] That is to say, three persons, two women and one man, have been observed by him, under conditions approaching mental alienation, to exchange their normal s.e.xual inclination for abnormal appet.i.te. In the a.n.a.lysis of the problem these cases cannot be regarded as wholly insignificant. The details show that the subjects were clearly morbid. Therefore they have their value for the building up of a theory of s.e.xual inversion upon the basis of inherited and active disease.

(B) Ultimately, Krafft-Ebing attacks the problem of what he calls "the innate morbid phenomenon" of s.e.xual inversion.[29] While giving a general description of the subjects of this cla.s.s, he remarks that the males display a p.r.o.nounced s.e.xual antipathy for women, and a strongly accentuated sympathy for men. Their reproductive organs are perfectly differentiated on the masculine type; but they desire men instinctively, and are inclined to express their bias by a.s.suming characters of femininity. Women infected by a like inversion, exhibit corresponding anomalies.

Casper, continues Krafft-Ebing, thoroughly diagnosed the phenomenon.

Griesinger referred it to hereditary affliction. Westphal defined it as "a congenital inversion of the s.e.xual feeling, together with a consciousness of its morbidity." Ulrichs explained it by the presence of a feminine soul in a male body, and gave the name _Urning_[30] to its subjects. Gley suggested that a female brain was combined with masculine glands of s.e.x. Magnan hypothesised a woman's brain in a man's body.

Krafft-Ebing a.s.serts that hardly any of these Urnings are conscious of morbidity. They look upon themselves as unfortunate mainly because law and social prejudices stand in the way of their natural indulgence.[31]

He also takes for proved, together with all the authorities he cites, that the abnormal s.e.xual appet.i.te is const.i.tutional and inborn.

Krafft-Ebing, as might have been expected, refers the phenomenon to functional degeneration, dependent upon neuropathical conditions in the patient, which are mainly derived from hereditary affliction.

He confirms the account reported above from Casper as to the platonic or semi-platonic relations of the Urning with the men he likes, his abhorrence of coition, and his s.e.xual gratification through acts of mutual embracement. The number of Urnings in the world, he says, is far greater than we can form the least conception of from present means of calculation.

At this point he begins to subdivide the subjects of congenital inversion. The first cla.s.s he const.i.tutes are called by him "Psychical Hermaphrodites." Born with a predominant inclination towards persons of their own s.e.x, they possess rudimentary feelings of a semi-s.e.xual nature for the opposite. These people not unfrequently marry; and Krafft-Ebing supposes that many cases of frigidity in matrimony, unhappy unions, and so forth, are attributable to the peculiar diathesis of the male--or it may be, of the female--in these marriages. They are distinguished from his previous cla.s.s of "acquired" inversion by the fact that the latter start with instincts for the other s.e.x, which are gradually obliterated; whereas the psychical hermaphrodites commence life with an attraction towards their own s.e.x, which they attempt to overcome by making demands upon their rudimentary normal instincts. Five cases are given of such persons.[32]

In the next place he comes to true h.o.m.os.e.xual individuals, or Urnings in the strict sense of that phrase. With them there is no rudimentary appet.i.te for the other s.e.x apparent. They present a "grotesque" parallel to normal men and women, inverting or caricaturing natural appet.i.tes.

The male of this cla.s.s shrinks from the female, and the female from the male.[33] Each is vehemently attracted from earliest childhood to persons of the same s.e.x. But they, in their turn, have to be subdivided into two sub-species. In the first of these, the s.e.xual life alone is implicate; the persons who compose it do not differ in any marked or external characteristics from the type of their own s.e.x; their habits and outward appearance remain unchanged. With the second sub-species the case is different. Here the character, the mental const.i.tution, the habits, and the occupations of the subject have been altered by his or her predominant s.e.xual inversion; so that a male addicts himself to a woman's work, a.s.sumes female clothes, acquires a shriller key of voice, and expresses the inversion of his s.e.xual instinct in every act and gesture of his daily life.

It appears from Krafft-Ebing's recorded cases that the first of these sub-species yields nearly the largest number of individuals. He presents eleven detailed autobiographies of male Urnings, in whom the _vita s.e.xualis_ alone is abnormal, and who are differentiated to common observation from normal men by nothing but the nature of their amorous proclivities. The cla.s.s includes powerfully developed masculine beings, who are uns.e.xed in no particular except that they possess an inordinate appet.i.te for males, and will not look at females.

As regards the family history of the eleven selected cases, five could show a clear bill of health, some were decidedly bad, a small minority were uncertain.

One of these Urnings, a physician, informed Krafft-Ebing that he had consorted with at least six hundred men of his own stamp; many of them in high positions of respectability. In none had he observed an abnormal formation of the s.e.xual organs; but frequently some approximation to the feminine type of body--hair sparingly distributed[34], tender complexion, and high tone of voice. About ten per cent. eventually adopted love for women. Not ten per cent. exhibited any sign of the _habitus muliebris_ in their occupations, dress, and so forth. A large majority felt like men in their relations to men, and were even inclined toward active paederasty. From the unmentionable act they were deterred by aesthetical repulsion and fear of the law.