sterile. The tendency to sexual inversion in eccentric and
neurotic families seems merely to be nature's merciful method of winding
up a concern which, from her point of view, has ceased to be profitable.

As a rule, inverts have no desire to be different from what they
are, and, if they have any desire for marriage, it is usually
only momentary. Very pathetic appeals for help are, however,
sometimes made. I may quote from a letter addressed to me by a
gentleman who desired advice on this matter: "In part, I write to
you as a moralist and, in part, as to a physician. Dr. Q. has
published a book in which, without discussion, hypnotic treatment
of such cases was reported as successful. I am eager to know if
your opinion remains what it was. This new assurance comes from a
man whose moral firmness and delicacy are unquestionable, but you
will easily imagine how one might shrink from the implantation of
new impulses in the unconscious self, since newly created
inclinations might disturb the conditions of life. At any rate,
in my ignorance of hypnotism I fear that the effort to give the
normal instinct might lead to marriage without the assurance that
the normal instinct would be stable. I write, therefore, to
explain my present condition and crave your counsel. It is with
the greatest reluctance that I reveal the closely guarded secret
of my life. I have no other abnormality, and have not hitherto
betrayed my abnormal instinct. I have never made any person the
victim of passion: moral and religious feelings were too
powerful. I have found my reverence for other souls a perfect
safeguard against any approach to impurity. I have never had
sexual interest in women. Once I had a great friendship with a
beautiful and noble woman, without any mixture of sexual feeling
on my part. I was ignorant of my condition, and I have the bitter
regret of having caused in her a hopeless love--proudly and
tragically concealed to her death. My friendships with men,
younger men, have been colored by passion, against which I have
fought continually. The shame of this has made life a hell, and
the horror of this abnormality, since I came to know it as such,
has been an enemy to my religious faith. Here there could be no
case of a divinely given instinct which I was to learn to use in
a rational and chaste fashion,