e; several add the proviso that there should be consent and
understanding on both sides, and no attempt at seduction. The chief regret
of 2 or 3 is the double life they are obliged to lead.

When inverts have clearly faced and realized their own nature it is not so
much, it seems, their conscience that worries them, or even the fear of
the police, as the attitude of the world. An American correspondent
writes: "It is the fear of public opinion that hangs above them like the
sword of Damocles. This fear is the heritage of all of us. It is not the
fear of conscience and is not engendered by a feeling of wrongdoing.
Rather, it is a silent submission to prejudices that meet us on every
side. The true normal attitude of the sexual invert (and I have known
hundreds) with regard to his particular passion is not essentially
different from that of the normal man with regard to his."

It is noteworthy that even when the condition is regarded as morbid, and
even when a life of chastity has, on this account, been deliberately
chosen, it is very rare to find an invert expressing any wish to change
his sexual ideals. The male invert cannot find, and has no desire to find,
any sexual charm in a woman, for he finds all possible charms united in a
man. And a woman invert writes: "I cannot conceive a sadder fate than to
be a woman--an average woman reduced to the necessity of loving a man!"

It will be seen that my conclusions under this head are in striking
contrast to those of Westphal, who believed that every invert regarded
himself as morbid, and probably show a much higher proportion of
self-approving inverts than any previous series.[224] This is largely due
to the fact that the cases were not obtained from the consulting-room, and
that they represent in some degree the intellectual aristocracy of
inversion, including individuals who, often not without severe struggles,
have found consolation in the example of the Greeks, or elsewhere, and
have succeeded in attaining a _modus vivendi_ with the moral world, as
they have come to conceive it.

FOOTNOTES:

[183] The following analysis is based on somewhat fuller versions of my
Histories than it was necessary to publish in the preceding chapters, as
well as on various other Histories which are not here published at all.
Numerous apparent discrepancies may thus be explained.

[184] This frequency of nervous symptoms is in accordance with the most
reliable observation everywhere. T