ed, the
temperamental gamut of inversion is itself broad enough to
embrace the most widely divergent ideals. As my furthest-reaching
demands attain fruition in the gentle and pretty boy, so his own
robuster affinity resides in me. If inverts were actually women,
then indeed the normal male would be their ideal. But inverts are
not women. Inverts are males capable of passionate friendship,
and their ideal is the male who will give them passionate
friendship in return."

In at least 24, probably many more, of my male cases there is a marked
contrast, and in a still larger number a less-marked contrast, between the
subject and the individuals he is attracted to; either he is of somewhat
feminine and sensitive nature, and admires more simple and virile natures,
or he is fairly vigorous and admires boys who are often of lower social
class. Inverted women also are attracted to more clinging feminine
persons.[203] A sexual attraction for boys is, no doubt, as Moll points
out, that form of inversion which comes nearest to normal sexuality, for
the subject of it usually approaches nearer to the average man in physical
and mental disposition. The reason of this is obvious: boys resemble
women, and therefore it requires a less profound organic twist to become
sexually attracted to them. Anyone who has watched private theatricals in
boys' schools will have observed how easy it is for boys to personate
women successfully, and it is well known that until the middle of the
seventeenth century women's parts on the stage were always taken by boys,
whether or not with injury to their own or other people's morals.[204] It
is also worthy of note that in Greece, where homosexuality flourished so
extensively, and apparently with so little accompaniment of neurotic
degeneration, it was often held that only boys under 18 should be loved;
so that the love of boys merged into love of women. About 18 of my cases
are most strongly attracted to youths,--preferably of about the age of 18
to 20,--and they are, for the most part, among the more normal and healthy
of the cases. A preference for older men, or else a considerable degree of
indifference to age alone, is more common, and perhaps indicates a deeper
degree of perversion.

Putting aside the age of the object desired, it must be said that there is
a distinctly general, though not universal, tendency for sexual inverts to
approach the feminine type, either in ps