Page:Symonds - A Problem in Modern Ethics.djvu/69

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Literature—Medicine
57

number of individuals. He presents eleven detailed autobiographies of male Urnings, in whom the vita sexualis alone is abnormal, and who are differentiated to common observation from normal men by nothing but the nature of their amorous proclivities. The class includes powerfully developed masculine beings, who are unsexed in no particular except that they possess an inordinate appetite for males, and will not look at females.

As regards the family history of the eleven selected cases, five could show a clear bill of health, some were decidedly bad, a small minority were uncertain.

One of these Urnings, a physician, informed Krafft-Ebing that he had consorted with at least six hundred men of his own stamp; many of them in high positions of respectability. In none had he observed an abnormal formation of the sexual organs; but frequently some approximation to the feminine type of body—hair sparingly distributed[1], tender complexion, and high tone of voice. About ten per cent. eventually adopted love for women. Not ten per cent. exhibited any sign of the habitus muliebris in their occupations, dress, and so forth. A large majority felt like men in their relations to men, and were even inclined toward active pæderasty. From the unmentionable act they were deterred by æsthetical repulsion and fear of the law.

The second of these sub-species embraces the individuals with whom the reader of Carlier is familiar,

  1. A sign, by the way, which may be observed in the most masculine of athletes. This is very noticeable in the nude photographs of Sandow.