Broadly speaking, the male includes two main species: Dioning and Urning, men with normal and men with abnormal instincts. What, then, constitutes the distinction between them? How are we justified in regarding them as radically divergent?
Ulrichs replies that the phenomenon of sexual inversion is to be explained by physiology, and particularly by the evolution of the embryo.[56] Nature fails to complete her work regularly and in every instance. Having succeeded in differentiating a male with full-formed sexual organs from the undecided fœtus, she does not always effect the proper differentiation of that portion of the psychical being in which resides the sexual appetite. There remains a female soul in a male body. Anima muliebris virili corpore inclusa, is the formula adopted by Ulrichs; and he quotes a passage from the "Vestiges of Creation," which suggests that a male is a more advanced product of sexual evolution than the female. The male instinct of sex is a more advanced product than the female instinct. Consequently men appear whose body has been differentiated as masculine, but whose sexual instinct has not progressed beyond the feminine stage.
Ulrichs' own words ought to be cited upon this fundamental part of his hypothesis, since he does not adopt the opinion that the Urning is a Dioning arrested at a certain point of development; but rather that there is an element of uncertainty attending the simultaneous evolution of physical and psychical factors from the indeterminate ground-stuff. "Sex," says he, "is only an affair of development. Up to a certain stage of embryonic existence all living mammals are hermaphroditic. A certain number of them advance to the condition of what I call man (Doining), others to what I call woman (Dioningin), a third class become what I call Urning (including Urningin). It ensues therefrom that between these three sexes there are no primary, but only secondary differences. And yet true differences, constituting sexual species, exist as facts."[57] Man, Woman, and Urning—the third being either a male or a female in whom we observe a real and inborn, not an acquired or a spurious, inversion of appetite—are consequently regarded by him as the three main divisions of humanity viewed from the point of view of sex. The embryonic ground-stuff in the case of each was homologous; but while the two former, Man and Woman, have been normally differentiated, the Urning's sexual instinct, owing to some imperfection in the process of development, does not correspond to his or her sexual organs.
The line of division between the sexes, even in adult life, is a subtle one; and the physical structure of men and women yields indubitable signs of their emergence from a common ground-stuff. Perfect men have rudimentary breasts. Perfect women carry a rudimentary penis in their clitoris. The raphé of the scrotum shows where the aperture, common at first to masculine and feminine beings, but afterwards only retained in the female vulva, was closed up to form a male. Other anatomical details of the same sort might be adduced. But these will suffice to make thinking persons reflect upon the mysterious dubiety of what we call sex. That gradual development, which ends in normal differentiation, goes on very slowly. It is only at the age of puberty that a boy distinguishes himself abruptly from a girl, by changing his voice and growing hair on parts of the body where it is not usually found in women. This being so, it is surely not surprising that the sexual appetite should sometimes fail to be normally determined, or in other words should be inverted.
Ulrichs maintains that the body of an Urning is masculine, his soul feminine, so far as sex is concerned. Accordingly, though physically unfitted for coition with men, he is imperatively drawn towards them by a natural impulse. Opponents meet him with this objection: "Your position is untenable. Body and soul constitute one inseparable entity." So they do, replies Ulrichs; but the way in which these factors of the person are combined in human beings differs extremely, as I can prove by indisputable facts. The body of a male is visible to the eyes, is mensurable and ponderable, is clearly marked in its specific organs. But what we call his soul—his passions, inclinations, sensibilities, emotional characteristics, sexual desires—eludes the observation of the senses. This second factor, like the first, existed in the undetermined stages of the fœtus. And when I find that the soul, this element of instinct and emotion and desire existing in a male, had been directed in its sexual appetite from earliest boyhood towards persons of the male sex, I have the right to qualify it with the attribute of femininity. You assume that soul-sex is indissolubly connected and inevitably derived from body-sex. The facts contradict you, as I can prove by referring to the veracious autobiographies of Urnings and to known phenomena regarding them.
Such is the theory of Ulrichs; and though we may not incline to his peculiar mode of explaining the want of harmony between sexual organs and sexual appetite in Urnings, there can be no doubt that in some way or other their eccentric diathesis must be referred to the obscure process of sexual differentiation.[58] Perhaps he antedates the moment at which the aberration sometimes takes its origin, not accounting sufficiently for imperative impressions made on the imagination or the senses of boys during the years which precede puberty.
However this may be, the tendency to such inversion is certainly inborn in an extremely large percentage of cases. That can be demonstrated from the reports of persons whose instincts were directed to the male before they knew what sex meant. It is worth extracting passages from these confessions.[59] (1) "As a schoolboy of eight years, I sat near a comrade rather older than myself; and how happy was I, when he touched me. That was the first indefinite perception of an inclination which remained a secret for me till my nineteenth year." (2) "Going back to my seventh year, I had a lively feeling for a schoolfellow, two years older than myself; I was happy when I could be as close as possible to him, and in our games could place my head near to his private parts." (3) "At ten years of age he had a romantic attachment for a comrade; and the passion for people of his own sex became always more and more marked." (4) Another confessed that "already at the age of four he used to dream of handsome grooms." (5) A fifth said: "My passion for people of my own sex awoke at the age of eight. I used to enjoy my brother's nakedness; while bathing with other children, I took no interest at all in girls, but felt the liveliest attraction toward boys." (6) A sixth dates his experience from his sixth or seventh year. (7) A seventh remembers that "while yet a boy, before the age of puberty, sleeping in the company of a male agitated him to such an extent that he lay for hours awake." (8) An eighth relates that "while three years old, I got possession of a fashion book, cut out the pictures of men, and kissed them to tatters. The pictures of women I did not care to look at." (9) A ninth goes back to his thirteenth year, and a school friendship. (10) A tenth records the same about his seventh year. (11) An eleventh says that his inverted instincts awoke in early childhood, and that from his ninth year onward he fell over and over again in love with adult men. (12) A twelfth spoke as follows: "So far back as I can remember, I was always subject to this passion. Quite as a child, young men made deeper impression on me than women or girls. The earliest sensual perturbation of which I have any recollection was excited by a tutor, when I was nine or ten, and my greatest pleasure was to be allowed to ride astride upon his leg." (13) A thirteenth: "From the earliest childhood I have been haunted by visions of men, and only of men; never has a woman exercised the least influence over me. At school I kept these instincts to myself, and lived quite retired." (14) A fourteenth can recollect "receiving a distinctly sensual impression at the age of four, when the man-servants caressed him." (15) A fifteenth says that at the age of thirteen, together with puberty, the inversion of appetite awoke in him. (16) A sixteenth confesses that he felt an unconquerable desire for soldiers in his thirteenth year. (17) A seventeenth remembers having always dreamed only of men; and at school, he says, "when my comrades looked at pretty girls and criticised them during our daily promenades, I could not comprehend how they found anything to admire in such creatures." On the other hand, the sight and touch of soldiers and strong fellows excited him enormously. (18) An eighteenth dates the awakening of passion in him at the age of eleven, when he saw a handsome man in church; and from that time forward his instinct never altered. (19) A nineteenth fell in love with an officer at the age of thirteen, and since then always desired vigorous adult males. (20) A twentieth confessed to have begun to love boys of his own age, sensually, while only eight years of age. (21) A twenty-first records that, when he was eight, he began to crave after the sight of naked men.
In addition to these cases a great many might be culled from the writings of Ulrichs, who has published a full account from his own early experience.[60] "I was fifteen years and ten and a half months old," he says, "when the first erotic dream announced the arrival of puberty. Never before that period had I known sexual gratification of any kind whatever. The occurrence was therefore wholly normal. From a much earlier time, however, I had been subject to emotions, partly romantic, partly sensual, without any definite desire, and never for one and the same young man. These aimless yearnings of the senses plagued me in my solitary hours, and I could not overcome them. During my fifteenth year, while at school at Detmold, the vague longing took a twofold shape. First, I came across Norman's 'Säulenordnungen,' and there I was vehemently attracted by the figure of a Greek god or hero, standing in naked beauty. Secondly, while studying in my little room, or before going to sleep, the thought used suddenly and irresistibly to rise up in my mind—If only a soldier would clamber through the window and come into my room! I then painted in my fancy the picture of a splendid soldier of twenty to twenty-two years old. And yet I had no definite idea of why I wanted him; nor had I ever come in contact with soldiers. About two years after this, I happened to sit next a soldier in a post-carriage. The contact with his thigh excited me to the highest degree." Ulrichs also relates that in his tenth year he conceived an enthusiastic and romantic friendship for a boy two years his senior.
That experiences of the kind are very common, every one who has at all conversed with Urnings knows well. From private sources of unquestionable veracity, these may be added. A relates that, before eight years old, reverie occurred to him during the day, and dreams at night, of naked sailors. When he began to study Latin and Greek, he dreamed of young gods, and at the age of fourteen, became deeply enamoured of the photograph of the Praxitelian Erôs in the Vatican. He had a great dislike for physical contact with girls; and with boys was shy and reserved, indulging in no acts of sense. B says that during his tenderest boyhood, long before the age of puberty, he fell in love with a young shepherd on one of his father's farms, for whom he was so enthusiastic that the man had to be sent to a distant moor. C at the same early age, conceived a violent affection for a footman; D for an officer, who came to stay at his home; E for the bridegroom of his eldest sister.
In nearly all the cases here cited, the inverted sexual instinct sprang up spontaneously. Only a few of the autobiographies record seduction by an elder man as the origin of the affection. In none of them was it ever wholly overcome. Only five out of the twenty-seven men married. Twenty declare that, tortured by the sense of their dissimilarity to other males, haunted by shame and fear, they forced themselves to frequent public women soon after the age of puberty. Some found themselves impotent. Others succeeded in accomplishing their object with difficulty, or by means of evoking the images of men on whom their affections were set. All, except one, concur in emphatically asserting the superior attraction which men have always exercised for them over women. Women leave them, if not altogether disgusted, yet cold and indifferent. Men rouse their strongest sympathies and instincts. The one exception just alluded to is what Ulrichs would call an Uranodioning. The others are capable of friendship with women, some even of æsthetic admiration, and the tenderest regard for them, but not of genuine sexual desire. Their case is literally an inversion of the ordinary.