nce of the
most slender character. But it remains a demonstrable fact that
numerous highly distinguished persons, of the past and the
present, in various countries, have been inverts. I may here
refer to my own observations on this point in the preface.
Mantegazza (_Gli Amori degli Uomini_) remarks that in his own
restricted circle he is acquainted with "a French publicist, a
German poet, an Italian statesman, and a Spanish jurist, all men
of exquisite taste and highly cultivated mind," who are sexually
inverted. Krafft-Ebing, in the preface to his _Psychopathia
Sexualis_, referring to the "numberless" communications he has
received from these "step-children of nature," remarks that "the
majority of the writers are men of high intellectual and social
position, and often possess very keen emotions." Raffalovich
(_Uranisme_, p. 197) names among distinguished inverts, Alexander
the Great, Epaminondas, Virgil, the great Conde, Prince Eugene,
etc. (The question of Virgil's inversion is discussed in the
_Revista di Filologia_, 1890, fas. 7-9, but I have not been able
to see this review.) Moll, in his _Beruehmte Homosexuelle_ (1910,
in the series of _Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens_)
discusses the homosexuality of a number of eminent persons, for
the most part with his usual caution and sagacity; speaking of
the alleged homosexuality of Wagner he remarks, with entire
truth, that "the method of arguing the existence of homosexuality
from the presence of feminine traits must be decisively
rejected." Hirschfeld has more recently included in his great
work _Die Homosexualitaet_ (1913, pp. 650-674) two lists, ancient
and modern, of alleged inverts among the distinguished persons of
history, briefly stating the nature of the evidence in each case.
They amount to nearly 300. Not all of them, however, can be
properly described as distinguished. Thus we end in the list 43
English names; of these at least half a dozen were noblemen who
were concerned in homosexual prosecutions, but were of no
intellectual distinction. Others, again, are of undoubted
eminence, but there is no good reason to regard them as
homosexual; this is the case, for instance, as regards Swift, who
may have been mentally abnormal, but appears to have been
heterosexual rather than homosexual; Fletcher, of whom we