ez tell their tales
of it. So do the ruined courtyards of Granada and the castle-keep of
Avignon. It shone with clear radiance in the gymnasium of Hellas, and
nerved the dying heroes of Greek freedom for their last forlorn hope
upon the plains of Chaeronea. Endowed with inextinguishable life, in
spite of all that has been done to suppress it, this passion survives at
large in modern states and towns, penetrates society, makes itself felt
in every quarter of the globe where men are brought into communion with
men.

Yet no one dares to speak of it; or if they do, they bate their breath,
and preface their remarks with maledictions.

Those who read these lines will hardly doubt what passion it is that I
am hinting at. _Quod semper ubique et ab omnibus_--surely it deserves a
name. Yet I can hardly find a name which will not seem to soil this
paper. The accomplished languages of Europe in the nineteenth century
supply no term for this persistent feature of human psychology, without
importing some implication of disgust, disgrace, vituperation. Science,
however, has recently--within the last twenty years in fact--invented a
convenient phrase, which does not prejudice the matter under
consideration. She speaks of the "inverted sexual instinct"; and with
this neutral nomenclature the investigator has good reason to be
satisfied.

Inverted sexuality, the sexual instinct diverted from its normal
channel, directed (in the case of males) to males, forms the topic of
the following discourse. The study will be confined to modern times, and
to those nations which regard the phenomenon with religious detestation.
This renders the enquiry peculiarly difficult, and exposes the enquirer,
unless he be a professed expert in diseases of the mind and nervous
centres, to almost certain misconstruction. Still, there is no valid
reason why the task of statement and analysis should not be undertaken.
Indeed, one might rather wonder why candid and curious observers of
humanity have not attempted to fathom a problem which faces them at
every turn in their historical researches and in daily life. Doubtless
their neglect is due to natural or acquired repugnance, to feelings of
disgust and hatred, derived from immemorial tradition, and destructive
of the sympathies which animate a really zealous pioneer. Nevertheless,
what is human is alien to no human being. What the law punishes, but
what, in spite of law, persists and energises, ought to arrest