public and private, in all parts of Europe.
In these institutions not only is masturbation practised to a formidable
extent, but it is also everywhere connected with some form of sexual
inversion, either passionately 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 homosexual feelings."
Where females are absent or forbidden, males turn for sexual
gratification to males. And in certain conditions of society sexual
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 homosexual 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 sexual appetite? If
specific, that is, if the ancestors of the patient must have been
afflicted with sexual 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 sexual inversion, and the principle of
heredity becomes purely theoretical.

That sexual 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
concomitan