l
intercourse in ancient and modern times, see Numa Praetorius, "Die
straflichen Bestimmungen gegen den gleichgeschlechtlichen Verkehr,"
_Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, vol. i, pp. 97-158. This writer
points out that Justinian, and still more clearly, Pius V, in the
sixteenth century, distinguished between occasional homosexuality and
deep-rooted inversion, habitual offenders alone, not those who had only
been guilty once or twice, being punished.

[269] The influence of the supposed connection of sodomy with unbelief,
idolatry, and heresy in arousing the horror of it among earlier religions
has been emphasized by Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of the
Moral Ideas_, vol. i, p. 486 et seq.

[270] "Any male person who in public or private commits, or is a party to
the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by
any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person,
shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, being convicted thereof, shall be
liable at the discretion of the court to be imprisoned for any term not
exceeding two years, with or without hard labor."

[271] This point is brought forward by Dr. Leon de Rode in his report on
"L'Inversion Genitale et la Legislation," prepared for the Third
(Brussels) Congress of Criminal Anthropology in 1892. The same point is
insisted on by some of my correspondents.

[272] It is a remarkable and perhaps significant fact that, while
homosexuality is today in absolute disrepute in France, it was not so
under the less tolerant law of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The Duc de Gesvres, as described by Besenval (_Memoires_, i, p. 178), was
a well-marked invert of feminine type, impotent, and publicly affecting
all the manners of women; yet he was treated with consideration. In 1687
Madame, the mother of the Regent, writes implying that "all the young men
and many of the old" practised pederasty: _il n'y a que les gens du commun
qui aiment les femmes_. The marked tendency to inversion in the French
royal family at this time is well known.

[273] A man with homosexual habits, I have been told, declared he would be
sorry to see the English law changed, as then he would find no pleasure in
his practices.

[274] Blackmailing appears to be the most serious risk which the invert
runs. Hirschfeld states in an interesting study of blackmailing (_Jahrbuch
fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, April, 1913) that his experience shows