ch crimes to the lawyers.

Both Casper and Tardieu discuss the topic of sexual inversion with
antipathy. But there are notable points of difference in the method and
in the conclusions of the two authors. Tardieu, perhaps because he is a
Frenchman, educated in the school of Paris, which we have learned to
know from Carlier, assumes that all subjects of the passion are criminal
or vicious. He draws no psychological distinction between paederast and
paederast. He finds no other name for them, and looks upon the whole
class as voluntarily degraded beings who, for the gratification of
monstrous desires, have unsexed themselves. A large part of his work is
devoted to describing what he believes to be the signs of active and
passive immorality in the bodies of persons addicted to these
habits.[13] It is evident that imagination has acted powerfully in the
formation of his theories. But this is not the place to discuss their
details.[14]

Casper and Liman approach the subject with almost equal disgust, but
with more regard for scientific truth than Tardieu. They point out that
the term paederast is wholly inadequate to describe the several classes
of male persons afflicted with sexual inversion. They clearly expect, in
course of time, a general mitigation of the penalties in force against
such individuals. According to them, the penal laws of North Germany, on
the occasion of their last revision, would probably have been altered,
had not the jurists felt that the popular belief in the criminality of
paederasts ought to be considered.[15] Consequently, a large number of
irresponsible persons, in the opinion of experts like Casper and Liman,
are still exposed to punishment by laws enacted under the influence of
vulgar errors.

These writers are not concerned with the framing of codes, nor again
with the psychological diagnosis of accused persons. It is their
business to lay down rules whereby a medical authority, consulted in a
doubtful case, may form his own view as to the guilt or innocence of the
accused. Their attention is therefore mainly directed to the detection
of signs upon the bodies of incriminated individuals.

This question of physical diagnosis leads them into a severe critique of
Tardieu. Their polemic attacks each of the points which he attempted to
establish. I must content myself by referring to the passage of their
work which deals with the important topic.[16] Suffice it here to say
that they reject all s