but
he himself elsewhere states (p. 175) that 98 per cent, of male
inverts are greatly attracted to music, the women being decidedly
less attracted. Oppenheim (in a paper summarized in the
_Neurologische Centralblatt_ for June 1, 1910, and the _Alienist
and Neurologist_ for Nov., 1910) well remarks that the musical
disposition is marked by a great emotional instability, and this
instability is a disposition to nervousness. It is thus that
neurasthenia is so common among musicians. The musician has not
been rendered nervous by the music, but he owes his nervousness
(as also, it may be added, his disposition to homosexuality) to
the same disposition to which he owes his musical aptitude.
Moreover, the musician is frequently one-sided in his gifts, and
the possession of a single hypertrophied aptitude is itself
closely related to the neuropathic and psychopathic diathesis.

The tendency to dramatic aptitude--found among a large proportion of my
subjects who have never been professional actors--has attracted the
attention of previous investigators in this field.[221] Thus, Moll refers
to the frequency of artistic, and especially dramatic, talent among
inverts, and remarks that the cause is doubtful. After pointing out that
the lie which they have to be perpetually living renders inverts always
actors, he goes on to say:--

Apart from this, it seems to me that the capacity and the
inclination to conceive situations and to represent them in a
masterly manner corresponds to an abnormal predisposition of the
nervous system, just as does sexual inversion; so that both
phenomena are due to the same source.

I am in agreement with this statement; the congenitally inverted may, I
believe, be looked upon as a class of individuals exhibiting nervous
characters which, to some extent, approximate them to persons of artistic
genius. The dramatic and artistic aptitudes of inverts are, therefore,
partly due to the circumstances of the invert's life, which render him
necessarily an actor,--and in some few cases lead him into a love of
deception comparable with that of a hysterical woman,--and partly, it is
probable, to a congenital nervous predisposition allied to the
predisposition to dramatic aptitude.

One of my correspondents has long been interested in the
frequency of inversion among actors and actresses. He knew an
inverted actor who told h