In England an Essay appended to the last volume of Sir Richard Burton's "Arabian Nights" made a considerable stir upon its first appearance.[1] The author endeavoured to co-ordinate a large amount of miscellaneous matter, and to frame a general theory regarding the origin and prevalence of homosexual passions. His erudition, however, is incomplete; and though he possesses a copious store of anthropological details, he is not at the proper point of view for discussing the topic philosophically.[2] For example, he takes for granted that "Pederasty," as he calls it, is everywhere and always what the vulgar think it. He seems to have no notion of the complicated psychology of Urnings, revealed to us by their recently published confessions in French and German medical and legal works. Still his views deserve consideration.
Burton regards the phenomenon as "geographical and climatic, not racial." He summarises the result of his investigations in the following five conclusions.[3]
- ↑ Arabian Nights, 1885, vol. x., pp. 205-254
- ↑ Burton's acquaintance with what he called "le Vice" was principally confined to Oriental nations. He started on his enquiries, imbued with vulgar errors; and he never weighed the psychical theories examined by me in the foregoing section of this Essay. Nevertheless, he was led to surmise a crasis of the two sexes in persons subject to sexual inversion. Thus he came to speak of "the third sex." During conversations I had with him less than three months before his death, he told me that he had begun a general history of "le Vice"; and at my suggestion he studied Ulrichs and Krafft-Ebing. It is to be lamented that life failed before he could apply his virile and candid criticism to those theories, and compare them with the facts and observations he had independently collected.
- ↑ I give the author's own text, p. 206.
