At this moment of history there is probably no individual in Europe who has not inherited some portion of a neuropathic stain. If that be granted, everybody is liable to sexual inversion, and the principle of heredity becomes purely theoretical.
That sexual inversion may be and actually is transmitted, like any other quality, appears to be proved by the history of well-known families both in England and in Germany. That it is not unfrequently exhibited by persons who have a bad ancestral record, may be taken for demonstrated. In certain cases we are justified, then, in regarding it as the sign or concomitant of nervous maladies. But the evidence of ancient Greece or Rome, of what Burton calls the "sotadic races" at the present time, of European schools and prisons, ought to make us hesitate before we commit ourselves to Krafft-Ebing's theory that hereditary affliction is a necessary predisposing cause.[24]
In like manner, masturbation may be credited with certain cases of acquired homosexual feeling. Undoubtedly the instinct is occasionally evoked in some obscure way by the depraved habit of inordinate self-abuse. Yet the autobiographies of avowed Urnings do not corroborate the view that they were originally more addicted to onanism than normal males. Ulrichs has successfully combated the theory advanced by Tarnowsky, Prager, and Krafft-Ebing, if considered as a complete explanation of the problem.[25] On the other hand, common experience shows beyond all doubt, that young men between 16 and 20 give themselves up to daily self-abuse without weakening their appetite for women. They love boys and practice mutual self-abuse with persons of their own sex; yet they crave all the while for women. Of the many who live thus during the years of adolescence, some have undoubtedly as bad a family record as the worst of Krafft-Ebing's cases show. Finally, as regards the onanism which is a marked characteristic of some adult Urnings, this must be ascribed in most cases to the repression of their abnormal instincts. They adopt the habit, as Krafft-Ebing himself says, faute de mieux.[26]
In justice to the theory I am criticising, it ought to be remarked that Krafft-Ebing does not contend that wherever hereditary taint and onanism concur, the result will be sexual inversion; but rather that wherever we have diagnosed an acquired form of sexual inversion, we shall discover hereditary taint and onanism. Considering the frequency of both hereditary taint and onanism in our civilisation, this is not risking much. Those factors are discoverable in a large percentage of male persons. What seems unwarranted by facts is the suggestion that inherited neuropathy is an indispensable condition and the fundamental cause of homosexual instincts. The evidence of ancient Greece, schools, prisons, and sotadic races, compels us to believe that normally healthy people are often born with these instincts or else acquire them by the way of custom. Again, his insinuation that onanism, regarded as the main exciting cause, is more frequent among young people of abnormal inclinations than among their normal brethren, will not bear the test of common observation and of facts communicated in the autobiographies of professed onanists and confessed Urnings.
The problem is too delicate, too complicated, also too natural and simple, to be solved by hereditary disease and self-abuse. When we shift the ground of argument from acquired to inborn sexual inversion, its puzzling character will become still more apparent. We shall hardly be able to resist the conclusion that theories of disease are incompetent to explain the phenomenon in modern Europe. Medical writers abandon the phenomenon in savage races, in classical antiquity, and in the sotadic zone. They strive to isolate it as an abnormal and specifically morbid exception in our civilisation. But facts tend to show that it is a recurring impulse of humanity, natural to some people, adopted by others, and in the majority of cases compatible with an otherwise normal and healthy temperament.
Krafft-Ebing calls attention to the phenomenon of permanent effeminatio, in males unsexed by constant riding and the exhaustion of their virility by friction of the genitals—a phenomenon observed by Herodotus among Scythians, and prevalent among some nomadic races of the Caucasus at the present day.[27] He claims this in support of his theory of masturbation; and within due limits, he has the right to do so. The destruction of the male apparatus for reproduction, whether it be by castration after puberty, or by an accident to the parts, or by a lesion of the spine, or by excessive equitation, as appears proved from the history of nomad tribes, causes men to approximate physically to the female type, and to affect feminine occupations and habits. In proportion as the masculine functions are interfered with, masculine characteristics tend to disappear; and it is curious to notice that the same result is reached upon so many divers ways.
Next he discusses a few cases in which it seems that sexual inversion displays itself episodically under the conditions of a psychopathical disturbance.[28] That is to say, three persons, two women and one man, have been observed by him, under conditions approaching mental alienation, to exchange their normal sexual inclination for abnormal appetite. In the analysis of the problem these cases cannot be regarded as wholly insignificant. The details show that the subjects were clearly morbid. Therefore they have their value for the building up of a theory of sexual inversion upon the basis of inherited and active disease.
(B) Ultimately, Krafft-Ebing attacks the problem of what he calls "the innate morbid phenomenon" of sexual inversion.[29] While giving a general description of the subjects of this class, he remarks that the males display a pronounced sexual antipathy for women, and a strongly accentuated sympathy for men. Their reproductive organs are perfectly differentiated on the masculine type; but they desire men instinctively, and are inclined to express their bias by assuming characters of femininity. Women infected by a like inversion, exhibit corresponding anomalies.
Casper, continues Krafft-Ebing, thoroughly diagnosed the phenomenon. Griesinger referred it to hereditary affliction. Westphal defined it as "a congenital inversion of the sexual feeling, together with a consciousness of its morbidity." Ulrichs explained it by the presence of a feminine soul in a male body, and gave the name Urning[30] to its subjects. Gley suggested that a female brain was combined with masculine glands of sex. Magnan hypothesised a woman's brain in a man's body.
Krafft-Ebing asserts that hardly any of these Urnings are conscious of morbidity. They look upon themselves as unfortunate mainly because law and social prejudices stand in the way of their natural indulgence.[31] He also takes for proved, together with all the authorities he cites, that the abnormal sexual appetite is constitutional and inborn.