When inverts have clearly faced and realized their own nature it is not so much, it seems, their conscience that worries them, or even the fear of the police, as the attitude of the world. An American correspondent writes: "It is the fear of public opinion that hangs above them like the sword of Damocles. This fear is the heritage of all of us. It is not the fear of conscience and is not engendered by a feeling of wrongdoing. Rather, it is a silent submission to prejudices that meet us on every side. The true normal attitude of the sexual invert (and I have known hundreds) with regard to his particular passion is not essentially different from that of the normal man with regard to his."
It is noteworthy that even when the condition is regarded as morbid, and even when a life of chastity has, on this account, been deliberately chosen, it is very rare to find an invert expressing any wish to change his sexual ideals. The male invert cannot find, and has no desire to find, any sexual charm in a woman, for he finds all possible charms united in a man. And a woman invert writes: "I cannot conceive a sadder fate than to be a woman—an average woman reduced to the necessity of loving a man!"
It will be seen that my conclusions under this head are in striking contrast to those of Westphal, who believed that every invert regarded himself as morbid, and probably show a much higher proportion of self-approving inverts than any previous series.[[224]] This is largely due to the fact that the cases were not obtained from the consulting-room, and that they represent in some degree the intellectual aristocracy of inversion, including individuals who, often not without severe struggles, have found consolation in the example of the Greeks, or elsewhere, and have succeeded in attaining a modus vivendi with the moral world, as they have come to conceive it.
[183] The following analysis is based on somewhat fuller versions of my Histories than it was necessary to publish in the preceding chapters, as well as on various other Histories which are not here published at all. Numerous apparent discrepancies may thus be explained.
[184] This frequency of nervous symptoms is in accordance with the most reliable observation everywhere. Thus, Hirschfeld (Die Homosexualität, p. 177) states that of 500 inverts, 62 per cent. showed nervous symptoms of one kind or another: sleeplessness, sleepiness, tremors, stammering, etc.
[185] Hirschfeld finds that 54 per cent, of inverts become conscious of their anomaly under the age of 14. The anomaly may, however, be present at this early age, but not consciously until later. Hence the larger percentage recorded above.
[186] In this connection I may quote an observation by Raffalovich: "It is natural that the invert should very clearly recall the precocity of his inclinations. In the existence of every invert a moment arrives when he discovers the enigma of his homosexual tastes. He then classes all his recollections, and to justify himself in his own eyes he remembers that he has been what he is from his earliest childhood. Homosexuality has colored all his young life; he has thought over it, dreamed over it, reflected over it—very often in perfect innocence. When he was quite small he imagined that he had been carried off by brigands, by savages; at 5 or 6 he dreamed of the warmth of their chests and of their naked arms. He dreamed that he was their slave and he loved his slavery and his masters. He has had not the least thought that is crudely sexual, but he has discovered his sentimental vocation."
[187] Leppmann mentions a case (certainly extreme and abnormal) of a little girl of 8 who spent the night hidden on the roof, merely in order to be able to observe in the morning the sexual organs of an adult male cousin (Bulletin de l'Union Internationale de Droit Pénal, 1896, p. 118).
[188] I fully admit, as all investigators must, the difficulty of tracing the influence of early suggestions, especially in dealing with persons who are unaccustomed to self-analysis. Sometimes it happens, especially in regard to erotic fetichism, that, while direct questioning fails to reach any early formative suggestion, such influence is casually elicited on a subsequent occasion.