ose a train of thought and feeling which resulted in complete sexual
inversion. In two of the cases I have reported we have parallel incidents,
and here we see clearly that the homosexual tendency already existed. I do
not question the occurrence of such incidents, but I refuse to accept them
as supplying the causation of inversion, and in so doing I am supported by
all the evidence I am able to obtain. I am in agreement with a
correspondent who wrote:--

"Considering that all boys are exposed to the same order of
suggestions (sight of a man's naked organs, sleeping with a man,
being handled by a man), and that only a few of them become
sexually perverted, I think it reasonable to conclude that those
few were previously constituted to receive the suggestion. In
fact, suggestion seems to play exactly the same part in the
normal and abnormal awakening of sex."

I would go so far as to assert that for normal boys and girls the
developed sexual organs of the adult man or woman--from their size,
hairiness, and the mystery which envelops them--nearly always exert a
certain fascination, whether of attraction or horror.[187] But this has no
connection with homosexuality, and scarcely with sexuality at all. Thus,
in one case known to me, a boy of 6 or 7 took pleasure in caressing the
organs of another boy, twice his own age, who remained passive and
indifferent; yet this child grew up without ever manifesting any
homosexual instinct. The seed of suggestion can only develop when it falls
on a suitable soil. If it is to act on a fairly normal nature the
perverted suggestion must be very powerful or iterated, and even then its
influence will probably only be temporary, disappearing in the presence of
the normal stimulus.[188]

Not only is "suggestion" unnecessary to develop a sexual impulse already
rooted in the organism, but when exerted in an opposite direction it is
powerless to divert that impulse. We see this illustrated in several of
the cases whose histories I have presented. Thus in one case a boy was
seduced by the housemaid at the age of 14 and even derived pleasure from
the girl, yet none the less the native homosexual instinct asserted itself
a year later. In another case heterosexual suggestions were offered and
accepted in early life, yet, notwithstanding, the homosexual attraction
was slowly evolved from within.

I have, therefore, but little to say of the influence of suggestion, which