o be regarded as morbid or degenerate, and not
diminishing the value of the individual as a member of society
(Loewenfeld, _Ueber die sexuelle Konstitution_, 1911, p. 166; also
_Zeitschrift fuer Sexualwissenschaft_, Feb., 1908, and
_Sexual-Probleme_, April, 1908). Aletrino of Amsterdam pushes the
view that inversion is a non-morbid abnormality to an undue
extreme by asserting that "the uranist is a normal variety of the
species _Homo sapiens_" ("Uranisme et Degenerescence," _Archives
d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, Aug.-Sept., 1908); inversion may be
regarded as (in the correct sense of the word here adopted) a
pathological abnormality, but not as an anthropological human
variety comparable to the Negro or the Mongolian man. (For
further opinions in favor of inversion as an anomaly, see
Hirschfeld, _Die Homosexualitaet_, p. 388 et seq.)

Sexual inversion, therefore, remains a congenital anomaly, to be classed
with other congenital abnormalities which have psychic concomitants. At
the very least such congenital abnormality usually exists as a
predisposition to inversion. It is probable that many persons go through
the world with a congenital predisposition to inversion which always
remains latent and unroused; in others the instinct is so strong that it
forces its own way in spite of all obstacles; in others, again, the
predisposition is weaker, and a powerful exciting cause plays the
predominant part.

We are thus led to the consideration of the causes that excite the latent
predisposition. A great variety of causes has been held to excite to
sexual inversion. It is only necessary to mention those which I have found
influential. The first to come before us is our school-system, with its
segregation of boys and girls apart from each other during the periods of
puberty and adolescence. Many inverts have not been to school at all, and
many who have been pass through school-life without forming any passionate
or sexual relationship; but there remain a large number who date the
development of homosexuality from the influences and examples of
school-life. The impressions received at the time are not less potent
because they are often purely sentimental and without any obvious sensual
admixture. Whether they are sufficiently potent to generate permanent
inversion alone may be doubtful, but, if it is true that in early life the
sexual instincts are less definitely determined tha