CHAPTER XLIII. Homosexual Love

HOMOSEXUAL LOVE

OUR review of the moral ideas concerning sexual relations has not yet come to an end. The gratification of the sexual instinct assumes forms which fall outside the ordinary pale of nature. Of these there is one which, on account of the rôle which it has played in the moral history of mankind, cannot be passed over in silence, namely, intercourse between individuals of the same sex, what is nowadays commonly called homosexual love.

It is frequently met with among the lower animals. It probably occurs, at least sporadically, among every race of mankind. And among some peoples it has assumed such proportions as to form a true national habit.

In America homosexual customs have been observed among a great number of the native tribes. In nearly every part of the continent there seem to have been, since ancient times, men dressing themselves in the clothes and performing the functions of women, and living with other men as their concubines or wives. Moreover, between {457} young men who are comrades in arms there are liaisons d'amitié, which, according to Lafitau, "ne laissent aucun soupçon de vice apparent, quoiqu'il y ait, ou qu'il puisse y avoir, beaucoup de vice réel."

Homosexual practices are, or have been, very prominent among the peoples in the neighbourhood of Behring Sea. In Kadiak it was the custom for parents who had a girl-like son to dress and rear him as a girl, teaching him only domestic duties, keeping him at woman's work, and letting him associate only with women and girls. Arriving at the age of ten or fifteen years, he was married to some wealthy man and was then called an achnuchik or shoopan. Dr. Bogoraz gives the following account of a {458} similar practice prevalent among the Chukchi:--"It happens frequently that, under the supernatural influence of one of their shamans, or priests, a Chukchi lad at sixteen years of age will suddenly relinquish his sex and imagine himself to be a woman. He adopts a woman's attire, lets his hair grow, and devotes himself altogether to female occupation. Furthermore, this disowner of his sex takes a husband into the yurt and does all the work which is usually incumbent on the wife in most unnatural and voluntary subjection. Thus it frequently happens in a yurt that the husband is a woman, while the wife is a man! These abnormal changes of sex imply the most abject immorality in the community, and appear to be strongly encouraged by the shamans, who interpret such cases as an injunction of their individual deity." The change of sex was usually accompanied by future shamanship; indeed, nearly all the shamans were former delinquents of their sex. Among the Chukchi male shamans who are clothed in woman's attire and are believed to be transformed physically into women are still quite common; and traces of the change of a shaman's sex into that of a woman may be found among many other Siberian tribes. In some cases at least there can be no doubt that these transformations were connected with homosexual practices. In his description of the Koriaks, Krasheninnikoff makes mention of the ke'yev, that is, men occupying the position of concubines; and he compares them with the Kamchadale koe'ku, as he calls them, that is, men transformed into women. Every koe'ku, he says, is regarded as a magician and interpreter of dreams; but from his confused description Mr. Jochelson thinks it may be inferred that the most important feature of the institution of the koe'ku lay, not in their shamanistic power, but in their position with regard to the satisfaction of the {459} unnatural inclinations of the Kamchadales. The koe'ku wore women's clothes, did women's work, and were in the position of wives or concubines.

In the Malay Archipelago homosexual love is common, though not in all of the islands. It is widely spread among the Bataks of Sumatra. In Bali it is practised openly, and there are persons who make it a profession. The basir of the Dyaks are men who make their living by witchcraft and debauchery. They "are dressed as women, they are made use of at idolatrous feasts and for sodomitic abominations, and many of them are formally married to other men." Dr. Haddon says that he never heard of any unnatural offences in Torres Straits; but in the Rigo district of British New Guinea several instances of pederasty have been met with, and at Mowat in Daudai it is regularly indulged in. Homosexual love is reported as common among the Marshall Islanders and in Hawaii. From Tahiti we hear of a set of men called by the natives mahoos, who "assume the dress, attitude, and manners, of women, and affect all the fantastic oddities and coquetries of the vainest of females. They mostly associate with the women, who court their acquaintance. With the manners of the women, they adopt their peculiar employments. . . . The encouragement of this abomination is almost solely {460} confined to the chiefs." Of the New Caledonians M. Foley writes:--"La plus grande fraternité n'est pas chez eux la fraternité uterine, mais la fraternité des armes. Il en est ainsi surtout au village de Poepo. Il est vrai que cette fraternité des armes est compliquée de pédérastie."

Among the natives of the Kimberley District in West Australia, if a young man on reaching a marriageable age can find no wife, he is presented with a boy-wife, known as chookadoo. In this case, also, the ordinary exogamic rules are observed, and the "husband" has to avoid his "mother-in-law," just as if he were married to a woman. The chookadoo is a boy of five years to about ten, when he is initiated. "The relations which exist between him and his protecting billalu" says Mr. Hardman, "are somewhat doubtful. There is no doubt they have connection, but the natives repudiate with horror and disgust the idea of sodomy." Such marriages are evidently exceedingly common. As the women are generally monopolised by the older and more influential men of the tribe, it is rare to find a man under thirty or forty who has a wife; hence it is the rule that, when a boy becomes five years old, he is given as a boy-wife to one of the young men. According to Mr. Purcell's description of the natives of the same district, "every useless member of the tribe" gets a boy, about five or seven years old; and these boys, who are called mullawongahs, are used for sexual purposes. Among the Chingalee of South Australia, Northern Territory, old men are often noticed with no wives but accompanied by one or two boys, whom they jealously guard and with whom they have sodomitic intercourse. {461} That homosexual practices are not unknown among other Australian tribes may be inferred from Mr. Hewitt's statement relating to South-Eastern natives, that unnatural offences are forbidden to the novices by the old men and guardians after leaving the initiation camp.

In Madagascar there are certain boys who live like women and have intercourse with men, paying those men who please them. In an old account of that island, dating from the seventeenth century, it is said: "II y a . . . quelques hommes qu'ils appellent Tsecats, qui sont hommes effeminez et impuissans, qui recherchent les garçons, et font mine d'en estre amoureux, en contrefaisans les filles et se vestans ainsi qu'elles leurs font des presents pour dormir auec eux, et mesmes se donnent des noms de filles, en faisant les honteuses et les modestes. . . . Ils haïssent les femmes et ne les veulent point hanter." Men behaving like women have also been observed among the Ondonga in German South-West Africa and the Diakité-Sarracolese in the French Soudan, but as regards their sexual habits details are wanting. Homosexual practices are common among the Banaka and Bapuku in the Cameroons. But among the natives of Africa generally such practices seem to be comparatively rare, except among Arabic-speaking {462} peoples and in countries like Zanzibar, where there has been a strong Arab influence. In North Africa they are not restricted to the inhabitants of towns; they are frequent among the peasants of Egypt and universal among the Jbâla inhabiting the Northern mountains of Morocco. On the other hand, they are much less common or even rare among the Berbers and the nomadic Bedouins, and it is reported that the Bedouins of Arabia are quite exempt from them.

Homosexual love is spread over Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. It is very prevalent among the Tartars and Karatchai of the Caucasus, the Persians, Sikhs, and Afghans; in Kaubul a bazaar or street is set apart for it. Old travellers make reference to its enormous frequency among the Muhammedans of India, and in this respect time seems to have produced no change. In China, where it is also extremely common, there are special houses devoted to male prostitution, and boys are sold by their parents about the age of four, to be trained for this occupation. In Japan pederasty is said by some to have prevailed from the most ancient times, whereas others are of opinion that it was introduced by Buddhism about the sixth century of our era. The monks used to live with handsome youths, to whom they were often passionately devoted; and in feudal times nearly every knight had as {463} his favourite a young man with whom he entertained relations of the most intimate kind, and on behalf of whom he was always ready to fight a duel when occasion occurred. Tea-houses with male gheishas were found in Japan till the middle of the nineteenth century. Nowadays pederasty seems to be more prevalent in the Southern than in the Northern provinces of the country, but there are also districts where it is hardly known.

No reference is made to pederasty either in the Homeric poems or by Hesiod, but later on we meet with it almost as a national institution in Greece. It was known in Rome and other parts of Italy at an early period; but here also it became much more frequent in the course of time. At the close of the sixth century, Polybius tells us, many Romans paid a talent for the possession of a beautiful youth. During the Empire "il était d'usage, dans les families patriciennes, de donner au jeune homme pubère un esclave du même âge comme compagnon de lit, afin qu'il pût satisfaire . . . 'ses premiers élans' génésiques"; and formal marriages between men were introduced with all the solemnities of ordinary nuptials. Homosexual practices occurred among the Celts, and were by no means unknown to the ancient Scandinavians, who had a whole nomenclature on the subject.

Of late years a voluminous and constantly increasing literature on homosexuality has revealed its frequency in modern Europe. No country and no class of society is free from it. In certain parts of Albania it even exists as a popular custom, the young men from the age of sixteen {464} upwards regularly having boy favourites of between twelve and seventeen.

The above statements chiefly refer to homosexual practices between men, but similar practices also occur between women. Among the American aborigines there are not only men who behave like women, but women who behave like men. Thus in certain Brazilian tribes women are found who abstain from every womanly occupation and imitate the men in everything, who wear their hair in a masculine fashion, who go to war with a bow and arrows, who hunt together with the men, and who would rather allow themselves to be killed than have sexual intercourse with a man. "Each of these women has a woman who serves her and with whom she says she is married; they live together as husband and wife." So also there are among the Eastern Eskimo some women who refuse to accept husbands, preferring to adopt masculine manners, following the deer on the mountains, trapping and fishing for themselves. Homosexual practices are said to be common among Hottentot and Herero women. In Zanzibar there are women who wear men's clothes in private, show a preference for masculine occupations, and seek sexual satisfaction among women who have the same inclination, or else among normal women who are won over by presents or other means. In Egyptian harems every woman is said to have a "friend." In Bali homosexuality is almost as common among women as among men, though it is exercised more secretly; and the same seems to be the case in India. From Greek antiquity we {465} hear of "Lesbian" love. The fact that homosexuality has been much more frequently noticed in men than in women does not imply that the latter are less addicted to it. For various reasons the sexual abnormalities of women have attracted much less attention, and moral opinion has generally taken little notice of them.

Homosexual practices are due sometimes to instinctive preference, sometimes to external conditions unfavourable to normal intercourse. A frequent cause is congenital sexual inversion, that is, "sexual instinct turned by inborn constitutional abnormality toward persons of the same sex." It seems likely that the feminine men and the masculine women referred to above are, at least in many instances, sexual inverts; though, in the case of shamans, the change of sex may also result from the belief that such transformed shamans, like their female colleagues, are particularly powerful. Dr. Holder affirms the existence of congenital inversion among the North-Western tribes of the United States, Dr. Baumann among the people of Zanzibar; and in Morocco, also, I believe it is common enough. But as regards its prevalence among non-European peoples we have mostly to resort to mere conjectures; our real knowledge of congenital inversion is derived from the voluntary confessions of inverts. The large majority of travellers are totally ignorant of the psychological side of the subject, and even to an expert it must very often be impossible to decide whether a certain case of inversion is congenital or acquired. Indeed, acquired inversion itself presupposes an innate disposition which under certain circumstances develops into actual inversion. Even between inversion and normal sexuality {466} there seem to be all shades of variation. Professor James thinks that inversion is "a kind of sexual appetite, of which very likely most men possess the germinal possibility." This is certainly the case in early puberty.

A very important cause of homosexual practices is absence of the other sex. There are many instances of this among the lower animals. Buffon long ago observed that, if male or female birds of various species were shut up together, they would soon begin to have sexual relations among themselves, the males sooner than the females. The West Australian boy-marriage is a substitute for ordinary marriage in cases when women are not obtainable. Among the Bororó of Brazil homosexual intercourse is said to occur in their men-houses only when the scarcity of accessible girls is unusually great. Its prevalence in Tahiti may perhaps be connected with the fact that there was only one woman to four or five men, owing to the habit of female infanticide. Among the Chinese in certain regions, for instance Java, the lack of accessible women is the principal cause of homosexual practices. According to some writers such practices are the results of polygamy. In Muhammedan countries they are no doubt largely due to the seclusion of women, preventing free intercourse between the sexes and compelling the unmarried people to associate almost exclusively with members of their own sex. Among the mountaineers of Northern Morocco the excessive indulgence in pederasty thus goes hand in hand with great isolation of the women {467} and a very high standard of female chastity, whereas among the Arabs of the plains, who are little addicted to boy-love, the unmarried girls enjoy considerable freedom. Both in Asia and Europe the obligatory celibacy of the monks and priests has been a cause of homosexual practices, though it must not be forgotten that a profession which imposes abstinence from marriage is likely to attract a comparatively large number of congenital inverts. The temporary separation of the sexes involved in a military mode of life no doubt accounts for the extreme prevalence of homosexual love among warlike races, like the Sikhs, Afghans, Dorians, and Normans. In Persia and Morocco it is particularly common among soldiers. In Japan it was an incident of knighthood, in New Caledonia and North America of brotherhood in arms. At least in some of the North American tribes men who were dressed as women accompanied the other men as servants in war and the chase. Among the Banaka and Bapuku in the Cameroons pederasty is practised especially by men who are long absent from their wives. In Morocco I have heard it advocated on account of the convenience it affords to persons who are travelling.

Dr. Havelock Ellis justly observes that when homosexual attraction is due simply to the absence of the other sex we are not concerned with sexual inversion, but merely with the accidental turning of the sexual instinct into an abnormal channel, the instinct being called out by an approximate substitute, or even by diffused emotional excitement, in the absence of the normal object. But it seems to me probable that in such cases the homosexual {468} attraction in the course of time quite easily develops into genuine inversion. I cannot but think that our chief authorities on homosexuality have underestimated the modifying influence which habit may exercise on the sexual instinct. Professor Krafft-Ebing and Dr. Moll deny the existence of acquired inversion except in occasional instances; and Dr. Havelock Ellis takes a similar view, if putting aside those cases of a more or less morbid character in which old men with failing sexual powers, or younger men exhausted by heterosexual debauchery, are attracted to members of their own sex. But how is it that in some parts of Morocco such a very large proportion of the men are distinctly sexual inverts, in the sense in which this word is used by Dr. Havelock Ellis, that is, persons who for the gratification of their sexual desire prefer their own sex to the opposite one? It may be that in Morocco and in Oriental countries generally, where almost every individual marries, congenital inversion, through the influence of heredity, is more frequent than in Europe, where inverts so commonly abstain from marrying. But that this could not be an adequate explanation of the fact in question becomes at once apparent when we consider the extremely unequal distribution of inverts among different neighbouring tribes of the same stock, some of which are very little or hardly at all addicted to pederasty. I take the case to be, that homosexual practices in early youth have had a lasting effect on the sexual instinct, which at its first appearance, being somewhat indefinite, is easily turned into a homosexual direction. In Morocco inversion is most prevalent among the scribes, who from childhood have lived in very close association with their fellow-students. Of course, influences of this kind "require a favourable organic predisposition to act on"; but this predisposition is probably no abnormality at all, only a {469} feature in the ordinary sexual constitution of man. It should be noticed that the most common form of inversion, at least in Muhammedan countries, is love of boys or youths not yet in the age of puberty, that is, of male individuals who are physically very like girls. Voltaire observes:--"Souvent un jeune garçon, par la fraîcheur de son teint, par l'éclat de ses couleurs, et par la douceur de ses yeux, ressemble pendant deux ou trois ans à une belle fille; si on l'aime, c'est parce que la nature se méprend." Moreover, in normal cases sexual attraction depends not only on sex, but on a youthful appearance as well; and there are persons so constituted that to them the latter factor is of chief importance, whilst the question of sex is almost a matter of indifference.

In ancient Greece, also, not only homosexual intercourse but actual inversion, seems to have been very common; and although this, like every form of love, must have contained a congenital element, there can be little doubt, I think, that it was largely due to external circumstances of a social character. It may, in the first place, be traced to the methods of training the youth. In Sparta it seems to have been the practice for every youth of good character to have his lover, or "inspirator," and for every well-educated man to be the lover of some youth. The relations between the "inspirator" and the "listener" were extremely intimate: at home the youth was constantly under the eyes of his lover, who was supposed to be to him a model and pattern of life; in battle they stood near one another and their fidelity and affection were often shown till death; if his relatives were absent, the youth {470} might be represented in the public assembly by his lover; and for many faults, particularly want of ambition, the lover could be punished instead of the "listener." This ancient custom prevailed with still greater force in Crete, which island was hence by many persons considered to be the place of its birth. Whatever may have been the case originally, there can be no doubt that in later times the relations between the youth and his lover implied unchaste intercourse. And in other Greek states the education of the youth was accompanied by similar consequences. At an early age the boy was taken away from his mother, and spent thenceforth all his time in the company of men, until he reached the age when marriage became for him a civic duty. According to Plato, the gymnasia and common meals among the youth "seem always to have had a tendency to degrade the ancient and natural custom of love below the level, not only of man, but of the beasts." Plato also mentions the effect which these habits had on the sexual instincts of the men: when they reached manhood they were lovers of youths and not naturally inclined to marry or beget children, but, if at all, they did so only in obedience to the law. Is not this, in all probability, an instance of acquired inversion? But besides the influence of education there was another factor which, co-operating with it, favoured the development of homosexual tendencies, namely, the great gulf which mentally separated the sexes. Nowhere else has the difference in culture between men and women been so immense as in the fully developed Greek civilisation. The lot of a wife in Greece was retirement and ignorance. She lived in almost absolute seclusion, in a separate part of the house, together with her female slaves, deprived of all the educating influence of male society, and having no place at those public spectacles {471} which were the chief means of culture. In such circumstances it is not difficult to understand that men so highly intellectual as those of Athens regarded the love of women as the offspring of the common Aphrodite, who "is of the body rather than of the soul." They had reached a stage of mental culture at which the sexual instinct normally has a craving for refinement, at which the gratification of mere physical lust appears brutal. In the eyes of the most refined among them those who were inspired by the heavenly Aphrodite loved neither women nor boys, but intelligent beings whose reason was beginning to be developed, much about the time at which their beards began to grow. In present China we meet with a parallel case. Dr. Matignon observes:--"Il y a tout lieu de supposer que certains Chinois, raffinés au point de vue intellectuel, recherchent dans la pédérastie la satisfaction des sens et de l'esprit. La femme chinoise est peu cultivée, ignorante même, quelle que soit sa condition, honnête femme ou prostituée. Or le Chinois a souvent l'âme poétique: il aime les vers, la musique, les belles sentences des philosophes, autant de choses qu'il ne peut trouver chez le beau sexe de l'Empire du Milieu." So also it seems that the ignorance and dullness of Muhammedan women, which is a result of their total lack of education and their secluded life, is a cause of homosexual practices; Moors are sometimes heard to defend pederasty on the plea that the company of boys, who have always news to tell, is so much more entertaining than the company of women.

We have hitherto dealt with homosexual love as a fact; we shall now pass to the moral valuation to which it is subject. Where it occurs as a national habit we may assume that no censure, or no severe censure, is passed on it. Among the Bataks of Sumatra there is no punishment {472} for it. Of the bazirs among the Ngajus of Pula Patak, in Borneo, Dr. Schwaner says that "in spite of their loathsome calling they escape well-merited contempt." The Society Islanders had for their homosexual practices "not only the sanction of their priests, but the direct example of their respective deities." The tsekats of Madagascar maintained that they were serving the deity by leading a feminine life; but we are told that at Ankisimane and in Nossi-Bé, opposite to it, pederasts are objects of public contempt. Father Veniaminof says of the Atkha Aleuts that "sodomy and too early cohabitation with a betrothed or intended wife are called among them grave sins"; but apart from the fact that his account of these natives in general gives the impression of being somewhat eulogistic, the details stated by him only show that the acts in question were considered to require a simple ceremony of purification. There is no indication that the North American aborigines attached any opprobrium to men who had intercourse with those members of their own sex who had assumed the dress and habits of women. In Kadiak such a companion was on the contrary regarded as a great acquisition; and the effeminate men themselves, far from being despised, were held in repute by the people, most of them being wizards. We have previously noticed the connection between homosexual practices and shamanism among various Siberian peoples; and it is said that such shamans as had changed their sex were greatly feared by the people, being regarded as very powerful. Among the Illinois and Naudowessies the {473} effeminate men assist in all the juggleries and the solemn dance in honour of the calumet, or sacred tobacco pipe, for which the Indians have such a deference that one may call it "the god of peace and war, and the arbiter of life and death"; but they are not permitted either to dance or sing. They are called into the councils of the Indians, and nothing can be decided upon without their advice; for because of their extraordinary manner of living they are looked upon as manitous, or supernatural beings, and persons of consequence. The Sioux, Sacs, and Fox Indians give once a year, or oftener if they choose, a feast to the Berdashe, or I-coo-coo-a, who is a man dressed in woman's clothes, as he has been all his life. "For extraordinary privileges which he is known to possess, he is driven to the most servile and degrading duties, which he is not allowed to escape; and he being the only one of the tribe submitting to this disgraceful degradation, is looked upon as 'medicine' and sacred, and a feast is given to him annually; and initiatory to it, a dance by those few young men of the tribe who can . . . . dance forward and publicly make their boast (without the denial of the Berdashe) . . . . Such, and such only, are allowed to enter the dance and partake of the feast." Among some American tribes, however, these effeminate men are said to be despised, especially by the women. In ancient Peru, also, homosexual practices seem to have entered in the religious cult. In some particular places, says Cieza de Leon, boys were kept as priests in the temples, with whom it was rumoured that the lords joined in company on days of festivity. They did not meditate, he adds, the committing of such sin, but only the offering of sacrifice to the demon. If the Incas by chance had some knowledge of such proceedings in the temple, they might have {474} ignored them out of religious tolerance. But the Incas themselves were not only free from such practices in their own persons, they would not even permit any one who was guilty of them to remain in the royal houses or palaces. And Cieza heard it related that, if it came to their knowledge that somebody had committed an offence of that kind, they punished it with such a severity that it was known to all. Las Casas tells us that in several of the more remote provinces of Mexico sodomy was tolerated, if not actually permitted, because the people believed that their gods were addicted to it; and it is not improbable that in earlier times the same was the case in the entire empire. But in a later age severe measures were adopted by legislators in order to suppress the practice. In Mexico people found guilty of it were killed. In Nicaragua it was punished capitally by stoning, and none of the Maya nations was without strict laws against it. Among the Chibchas of Bogota the punishment for it was the infliction of a painful death. However, it should be remembered that the ancient culture nations of America were generally extravagant in their punishments, and that their penal codes in the first place expressed rather the will of their rulers than the feelings of the people at large.

Homosexual practices are said to be taken little notice of even by some uncivilised peoples who are not addicted to them. In the Pelew Islands, where such practices occur only sporadically, they are not punished, although, if I understand Herr Kubary rightly, the persons committing them may be put to shame. The Ossetes of the Caucasus, {475} among whom pederasty is very rare, do not generally prosecute persons for committing it, but ignore the act. The East African Masai do not punish sodomy. But we also meet with statements of a contrary nature. In a Kafir tribe Mr. Warner heard of a case of it--the only one during a residence of twenty-five years--which was punished with a fine of some cattle claimed by the chief. Among the Ondonga pederasts are hated, and the men who behave like women are detested, most of them being wizards. The Washambala consider pederasty a grave moral aberration and subject it to severe punishment. Among the Waganda homosexual practices, which have been introduced by the Arabs and are of rare occurrence, "are intensely abhorred," the stake being the punishment. The Negroes of Accra, who are not addicted to such practices, are said to detest them. In Nubia pederasty is held in abhorrence, except by the Kashefs and their relations, who endeavour to imitate the Mamelukes in everything.

Muhammed forbade sodomy, and the general opinion of his followers is that it should be punished like fornication--for which the punishment is, theoretically, severe enough--unless the offenders make a public act of penitence. In order to convict, however, the law requires that four reliable persons shall swear to have been eye-witnesses, and this alone would make the law a dead letter, even if it had the support of popular feelings; but such support is certainly wanting. In Morocco active {476} pederasty is regarded with almost complete indifference, whilst the passive sodomite, if a grown-up individual, is spoken of with scorn. Dr. Polak says the same of the Persians. In Zanzibar a clear distinction is made between male congenital inverts and male prostitutes; the latter are looked upon with contempt, whereas the former, as being what they are "by the will of God," are tolerated. The Muhammedans of India and other Asiatic countries regard pederasty, at most, as a mere peccadillo. Among the Hindus it is said to be held in abhorrence, but their sacred books deal with it leniently. According to the 'Laws of Manu,' "a twice-born man who commits an unnatural offence with a male, or has intercourse with a female in a cart drawn by oxen, in water, or in the day-time, shall bathe, dressed in his clothes"; and all these are reckoned as minor offences.

Chinese law makes little distinction between unnatural and other sexual offences. An unnatural offence is variously considered according to the age of the patient, and whether or not consent was given. If the patient be an adult, or a boy over the age of twelve, and consent, the case is treated as a slightly aggravated form of fornication, both parties being punished with a hundred blows and one month's cangue, whilst ordinary fornication is punished with eighty blows. If the adult or boy over twelve resist, the offence is considered as rape; and if the boy be under twelve, the offence is rape irrespective of consent or resistance, unless the boy has previously gone astray. But, as a matter of fact, unnatural offences are regarded as less hurtful to the community than ordinary immorality, and pederasty is not looked down upon. "L'opinion publique reste tout à fait indifférente à ce genre de distraction et la {477} morale ne s'en émeut en rien: puisque cela plaît à l'opérateur et que l'opéré est consentant, tout est pour le mieux; la loi chinoise n'aime guère à s'occuper des affaires trop intimes. La pédérastie est même considérée comme une chose de bon ton, une fantaisie dispendieuse et partout un plaisir élégant. . . . La pédérastie a une consécration officielle en Chine. Il existe, en effet, des pédérés pour l'Empereur." Indeed, the only objection which Dr. Matignon has heard to be raised to pederasty by public opinion in China is that it has a bad influence on the eyesight. In Japan there was no law against homosexual intercourse till the revolution of 1868. In the period of Japanese chivalry it was considered more heroic if a man loved a person of his own sex than if he loved a woman; and nowadays people are heard to say that in those provinces of the country where pederasty is widely spread the men are more manly and robust than in those where it does not prevail.

The laws of the ancient Scandinavians ignored homosexual practices; but passive pederasts were much despised by them. They were identified with cowards and regarded as sorcerers. The epithets applied to them--argr, ragr, blandr, and others assumed the meaning of "poltroon" in general, and there are instances of the word arg being used in the sense of "practising witchcraft." This connection between pederasty and sorcery, as a Norwegian scholar justly points out, helps us to understand Tacitus' statement that among the ancient Teutons individuals whom he describes as corpore infames were buried alive in a morass. Considering that drowning was a common penalty for sorcery, it seems probable that this punishment was inflicted upon them not, in the first place, on account of their sexual practices, but in their capacity of wizards. It is certain that the opprobrium which the pagan Scandinavians attached to homosexual love was chiefly restricted to him who played the woman's part. In one of the poems {478} the hero even boasts of being the father of offspring borne by another man.

In Greece pederasty in its baser forms was censured, though generally, it seems, with no great severity, and in some states it was legally prohibited. According to an Athenian law, a youth who prostituted himself for money lost his rights as a free citizen and was liable to the punishment of death if he took part in a public feast or entered the agora. In Sparta it was necessary that the "listener" should accept the "inspirator" from real affection; he who did so out of pecuniary considerations was punished by the ephors. We are even told that among the Spartans the relations between the lover and his friend were truly innocent, and that if anything unlawful happened both must forsake either their country or their lives. But the universal rule in Greece seems to have been that when decorum was observed in the friendship between a man and a youth, no inquiries were made into the details of the relationship. And this attachment was not only regarded as permissible, but was praised as the highest and purest form of love, as the offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite, as a path leading to virtue, as a weapon against tyranny, as a safeguard of civic liberty, as a source of national greatness and glory. Phaedrus said that he knew no greater blessing to a young man who is beginning life than a virtuous lover, or to the lover than a beloved youth; for the principle which ought to be the guide of men who would lead a noble life cannot be implanted by any other motive so well as by love. The Platonic Pausanias argued that if love of youths is held in ill repute it is so only because it is inimical to tyranny; "the interests of rulers require that their subjects should {479} be poor in spirit, and that there should be no strong bond of friendship or society among them, which love, above all other motives, is likely to inspire." The power of the Athenian tyrants was broken by the love of Aristogeiton and the constancy of Harmodius; at Agrigentum in Sicily the mutual love of Chariton and Melanippus produced a similar result; and the greatness of Thebes was due to the Sacred Band established by Epaminondas. For "in the presence of his favourite, a man would choose to do anything rather than to get the character of a coward." It was pointed out that the greatest heroes and the most warlike nations were those who were most addicted to the love of youths; and it was said that an army consisting of lovers and their beloved ones, fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, would overcome the whole world.

Herodotus asserts that the love of boys was introduced from Greece into Persia. Whether his statement be correct or not, such love could certainly not have been a habit of the Mazda worshippers. In the Zoroastrian books "unnatural sin" is treated with a severity to which there is a parallel only in Hebrewism and Christianity. According to the Vendîdâd, there is no atonement for it. It is punished with torments in the other world, and is capital here below. Even he who committed it involuntarily, by force, is subject to corporal punishment. Indeed, it is a more heinous sin than the slaying of a righteous man. "There is no worse sin than this in the good religion, and it is proper to call those who commit it worthy of death in reality. If any one comes forth to them, and shall see {480} them in the act, and is working with an axe, it is requisite for him to cut off the heads or to rip up the bellies of both, and it is no sin for him. But it is not proper to kill any person without the authority of high-priests and kings, except on account of committing or permitting unnatural intercourse."

Nor are unnatural sins allowed to defile the land of the Lord. Whosoever shall commit such abominations, be he Israelite or stranger dwelling among the Israelites, shall be put to death, the souls that do them shall be cut off from their people. By unnatural sins of lust the Canaanites polluted their land, so that God visited their guilt, and the land spued out its inhabitants.

This horror of homosexual practices was shared by Christianity. According to St. Paul, they form the climax of the moral corruption to which God gave over the heathen because of their apostasy from him. Tertullian says that they are banished "not only from the threshold, but from all shelter of the church, because they are not sins, but monstrosities." St. Basil maintains that they deserve the same punishment as murder, idolatry, and witchcraft. According to a decree of the Council of Elvira, those who abuse boys to satisfy their lusts are denied communion even at their last hour. In no other point of morals was the contrast between the teachings of Christianity and the habits and opinions of the world over which it spread more radical than in this. In Rome there was an old law of unknown date, called Lex Scantinia (or Scatinia), which imposed a mulct on him who committed pederasty with a free person; but this law, of which {481} very little is known, had lain dormant for ages, and the subject of ordinary homosexual intercourse had never afterwards attracted the attention of the pagan legislators. But when Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, a veritable crusade was opened against it. Constantius and Constans made it a capital crime, punishable with the sword. Valentinian went further still and ordered that those who were found guilty of it should be burned alive in the presence of all the people. Justinian, terrified by certain famines, earthquakes, and pestilences, issued an edict which again condemned persons guilty of unnatural offences to the sword, "lest, as the result of these impious acts, whole cities should perish together with their inhabitants," as we are taught by Holy Scripture that through such acts cities have perished with the men in them. "A sentence of death and infamy," says Gibbon, "was often founded on the slight and suspicious evidence of a child or a servant, . . . and pederasty became the crime of those to whom no crime could be imputed."

This attitude towards homosexual practices had a profound and lasting influence on European legislation. Throughout the Middle Ages and later, Christian lawgivers thought that nothing but a painful death in the flames could atone for the sinful act. In England Fleta {482} speaks of the offender being buried alive; but we are elsewhere told that burning was the due punishment. As unnatural intercourse, however, was a subject for ecclesiastical cognizance, capital punishment could not be inflicted on the criminal unless the Church relinquished him to the secular arm; and it seems very doubtful whether she did relinquish him. Sir Frederick Pollock and Professor Maitland consider that the statute of 1533, which makes sodomy felony, affords an almost sufficient proof that the temporal courts had not punished it, and that no one had been put to death for it for a very long time past. It was said that the punishment for this crime--which the English law, in its very indictments, treats as a crime not fit to be named--was determined to be capital by "the voice of nature and of reason, and the express law of God"; and it remained so till 1861, although in practice the extreme punishment was not inflicted. In France persons were actually burned for this crime in the middle and latter part of the eighteenth century. But in this, as in so many other respects, the rationalistic movement of that age brought about a change. To punish sodomy with death, it was said, is atrocious; when unconnected with violence, the law ought to take no notice of it at all. It does not violate any other person's right, its influence on society is merely indirect, like that of drunkenness and free love; it is a disgusting vice, but its only proper punishment is contempt. This view was adopted by the French 'Code pénal,' according to which homosexual practices in private, between two consenting adult parties, whether men or women, are absolutely {483} unpunished. The homosexual act is treated as a crime only when it implies an outrage on public decency, or when there is violence or absence of consent, or when one of the parties is under age or unable to give valid consent. This method of dealing with homosexuality has been followed by the legislators of various European countries, and in those where the law still treats the act in question per se as a penal offence, notably in Germany, a propaganda in favour of its alteration is carried on with the support of many men of scientific eminence. This changed attitude of the law towards homosexual intercourse undoubtedly indicates a change of moral opinions. Though it is impossible to measure exactly the degree of moral condemnation, I suppose that few persons nowadays attach to it the same enormity of guilt as did our forefathers. And the question has even been put whether morality has anything at all to do with a sexual act, committed by the mutual consent of two adult individuals, which is productive of no offspring, and which on the whole concerns the welfare of nobody but the parties themselves.

From this review of the moral ideas on the subject, incomplete though it be, it appears that homosexual practices are very frequently subject to some degree of censure, though the degree varies extremely. This censure is no doubt, in the first place, due to that feeling of aversion or disgust which the idea of homosexual intercourse tends to call forth in normally constituted adult individuals whose sexual instincts have developed under normal conditions. I presume that nobody will deny the general prevalence of such a tendency. It corresponds to that instinctive repugnance to sexual connections with women which is so frequently found in congenital inverts; whilst that particular form of it with which legislators have chiefly busied themselves evokes, in addition, a physical disgust of its own. And in a society where the {484} large majority of people are endowed with normal sexual desires their aversion to homosexuality easily develops into moral censure and finds a lasting expression in custom, law, or religious tenets. On the other hand, where special circumstances have given rise to widely spread homosexual practices, there will be no general feeling of disgust even in the adults, and the moral opinion of the society will be modified accordingly. The act may still be condemned, in consequence of a moral doctrine formed under different conditions, or of the vain attempts of legislators to check sexual irregularities, or out of utilitarian considerations; but such a condemnation would in most people be rather theoretical than genuine. At the same time the baser forms of homosexual love may be strongly disapproved of for the same reasons as the baser forms of intercourse between men and women; and the passive pederast may be an object of contempt on account of the feminine practices to which he lends himself, as also an object of hatred on account of his reputation for sorcery. We have seen that the effeminate men are frequently believed to be versed in magic; their abnormalities readily suggest that they are endowed with supernatural power, and they may resort to witchcraft as a substitute for their lack of manliness and physical strength. But the supernatural qualities or skill in magic ascribed to men who behave like women may also, instead of causing hatred, make them honoured or reverenced.

It has been suggested that the popular attitude towards homosexuality was originally an aspect of economics, a question of under- or over-population, and that it was forbidden or allowed accordingly. Dr. Havelock Ellis thinks it probable that there is a certain relationship {485} between the social reaction against homosexuality and against infanticide:--"Where the one is regarded leniently and favourably, there generally the other is also; where the one is stamped out, the other is usually stamped out." But our defective knowledge of the opinions of the various savage races concerning homosexuality hardly warrants such a conclusion; and if a connection really does exist between homosexual practices and infanticide it may be simply due to the numerical disproportion between the sexes resulting from the destruction of a multitude of female infants. On the other hand we are acquainted with several facts which are quite at variance with Dr. Ellis's suggestion. Among many Hindu castes female infanticide has for ages been a genuine custom, and yet pederasty is remarkably rare among the Hindus. The ancient Arabs were addicted to infanticide, but not to homosexual love, whereas among modern Arabs the case is exactly the reverse. And if the early Christians deemed infanticide and pederasty equally heinous sins, they did so certainly not because they were anxious that the population should increase; if this had been their motive they would hardly have glorified celibacy. It is true that in a few cases the unproductiveness of homosexual love has been given by indigenous writers as a reason for its encouragement or condemnation. It was said that the Cretan law on the subject had in view to check the growth of population; but, like Döllinger, I do not believe that this assertion touches the real root of the matter. More importance may be attached to the following passage in one of the Pahlavi texts:--"He who is wasting seed makes a practice of causing the death of progeny; when the custom is completely continuous, which produces an evil stoppage of the progress of the race, the creatures have become annihilated; and certainly, that action, from which, when it is universally proceeding, the depopulation {486} of the world must arise, has become and furthered the greatest wish of Aharman." I am, however, of opinion that considerations of this kind have generally played only a subordinate, if any, part in the formation of the moral opinions concerning homosexual practices. And it can certainly not be admitted that the severe Jewish law against sodomy was simply due to the fact that the enlargement of the population was a strongly felt social need among the Jews. However much they condemned celibacy, they did not put it on a par with the abominations of Sodom. The excessive sinfulness which was attached to homosexual love by Zoroastrianism, Hebrewism, and Christianity, had quite a special foundation. It cannot be sufficiently accounted for either by utilitarian considerations or instinctive disgust. The abhorrence of incest is generally a much stronger feeling than the aversion to homosexuality. Yet in the very same chapter of Genesis which describes the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah we read of the incest committed by the daughters of Lot with their father; and, according to the Roman Catholic doctrine, unnatural intercourse is an even more heinous sin than incest and adultery. The fact is that homosexual practices were intimately associated with the gravest of all sins: unbelief, idolatry, or heresy.

According to Zoroastrianism, unnatural sin had been created by Angra Mainyu. "Aharman, the wicked, miscreated the demons and fiends, and also the remaining corrupted ones, by his own unnatural intercourse." Such intercourse is on a par with Afrâsiyâb, a Turanian king who conquered the Iranians for twelve years; with Dahâk, a king or dynasty who is said to have conquered Yim and reigned for a thousand years; with Tûr-i Brâdar-vakhsh, {487} a heterodox wizard by whom the best men were put to death. He who commits unnatural sin is "in his whole being a Daêva"; and a Daêva-worshipper is not a bad Zoroastrian, but a man who does not belong to the Zoroastrian system, a foreigner, a non-Aryan. In the Vendîdâd, after the statement that the voluntary commission of unnatural sin is a trespass for which there is no atonement for ever and ever, the question is put, When is it so? And the answer given is:--If the sinner be a professor of the religion of Mazda, or one who has been taught in it. If not, his sin is taken from him, in case he makes confession of the religion of Mazda and resolves never to commit again such forbidden deeds. This is to say, the sin is inexpiable if it involves a downright defiance of the true religion, it is forgiven if it is committed in ignorance of it and is followed by submission. From all this it appears that Zoroastrianism stigmatised unnatural intercourse as a practice of infidels, as a sign of unbelief. And I think that certain facts referred to above help us to understand why it did so. Not only have homosexual practices been commonly associated with sorcery, but such an association has formed, and partly still forms, an incident of the shamanistic system prevalent among the Asiatic peoples of Turanian stock, and that it did so already in remote antiquity is made extremely probable by statements which I have just quoted from Zoroastrian texts. To this system Zoroastrianism was naturally furiously opposed, and the "change of sex" therefore appeared to the Mazda worshipper as a devilish abomination.

So also the Hebrews abhorrence of sodomy was largely due to their hatred of a foreign cult. According to Genesis, unnatural vice was the sin of a people who were not the Lord's people, and the Levitical legislation represents Canaanitish abominations as the chief reason {488} why the Canaanites were exterminated. Now we know that sodomy entered as an element in their religion. Besides [k.]ed[=e]sh[=o]th, or female prostitutes, there were [k.]ed[=e]sh[=i]m, or male prostitutes, attached to their temples. The word [k.]ad[=e]sh, translated "sodomite," properly denotes a man dedicated to a deity; and it appears that such men were consecrated to the mother of the gods, the famous Dea Syria, whose priests or devotees they were considered to be. The male devotees of this and other goddesses were probably in a position analogous to that occupied by the female devotees of certain gods, who also, as we have seen, have developed into libertines; and the sodomitic acts committed with these temple prostitutes may, like the connections with priestesses, have had in view to transfer blessings to the worshippers. In Morocco supernatural benefits are expected not only from heterosexual, but also from homosexual intercourse with a holy person. The [k.]ed[=e]sh[=i]m are frequently alluded to in the Old Testament, especially in the period of the monarchy, when rites of foreign origin made their way into both Israel and Judah. And it is natural that the Yahveh worshipper should regard their practices with the utmost horror as forming part of an idolatrous cult.

The Hebrew conception of homosexual love to some extent affected Muhammedanism, and passed into Christianity. The notion that it is a form of sacrilege was here strengthened by the habits of the gentiles. St. Paul found the abominations of Sodom prevalent among nations who had "changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the {489} Creator." During the Middle Ages heretics were accused of unnatural vice as a matter of course. Indeed, so closely was sodomy associated with heresy that the same name was applied to both. In 'La Coutume de Touraine-Anjou' the word herite, which is the ancient form of hérétique, seems to be used in the sense of "sodomite"; and the French bougre (from the Latin Bulgarus, Bulgarian), as also its English synonym, was originally a name given to a sect of heretics who came from Bulgaria in the eleventh century, and was afterwards applied to other heretics, but at the same time it became the regular expression for a person guilty of unnatural intercourse. In mediæval laws sodomy was also repeatedly mentioned together with heresy, and the punishment was the same for both. It thus remained a religious offence of the first order. It was not only a "vitium nefandum et super omnia detestandum," but it was one of the four "clamantia peccata," or crying sins, a "crime de Majestie, vers le Roy celestre." Very naturally, therefore, it has come to be regarded with somewhat greater leniency by law and public opinion in proportion as they have emancipated themselves from theological doctrines. And the fresh light which the scientific study of the sexual impulse has lately thrown upon the subject of homosexuality must also necessarily influence the moral ideas relating to it, in so far as no scrutinising judge can fail to take into account the pressure which a powerful non-volitional desire exercises upon an agent's will.