[56] Dall, op. cit. p. 139.
[57] Fritsch, quoted by Karsch, in Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, iii. 87 sq.
[58] Fritsch, Die Eingeborenen Süd-Afrika’s, p. 227. Cf. Schinz, Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika, pp. 173, 177.
[59] Baumann, in Verhandl. Berliner Gesellsch. Anthrop. 1899, p. 668 sq.
[60] Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 123.
[61] Jacobs, Eenigen tijd onder de Baliërs, p. 134 sq.
[62] Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 124 sq.
[63] See ibid. p. 121 sq.
Homosexual practices are due sometimes to instinctive preference, sometimes to external conditions unfavourable to normal intercourse.[64] A frequent cause is congenital sexual inversion, that is, “sexual instinct turned by inborn constitutional abnormality toward persons of the same sex.”[65] 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.[66] Dr. Holder affirms the existence of congenital inversion among the North-Western tribes of the United States,[67] Dr. Baumann among the people of Zanzibar;[68] 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.[69] Even between inversion and normal sexuality 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.”[70] This is certainly the case in early puberty.[71]
[64] Another reason for such practices is given by Mr. Beardmore (in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xix. 464), with reference to the Papuans of Mowat. He says that they indulge in sodomy because too great increase of population is undesired amongst the younger portion of the married people. Cf. infra, [p. 484 sqq.]