In the social sphere also, the place of this aspect of homosexuality is obvious. The homosexual must, and does in fact, exist in the most honoured offices of the community. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to declare that few men can be successful in educational or philanthropic work unless they have some homogenic temperament in their nature. Without this they may compel discipline but they are powerless to attract sympathetic co-operation. The testimony in favour of this assertion is overwhelming.
But when we admit that sex tends to find a physical expression, and we come therefore face to face with the physical problem, the difficulty I admit to be considerable. And I can only re-emphasize that this feature is numerically and potentially the least important, but that there can be no religious countenance for any physical sex-act outside the sacrament of matrimony.
Rape, and seduction without consent, are obviously evils calling for legal prosecution, as being an infringement of personal liberty. And in this connexion it must be remembered that homosexual practices tend to seduction, inasmuch as the attraction is frequently towards those who have not attained intellectual manhood. For the rest, I am inclined only to re-affirm the general principle which I have already attempted to define—namely, that sex becomes a sin where the main objective becomes the physical gratification. Once the proportion is weighed on the side of physical expression, love is prostituted. The purity of true love is known by the fact that its face is turned not to mere physical functions, but beyond the emotional and even mental, to the spiritual ideal. Indeed, a lover, whatever his temperament happens to be, loves even if his beloved is removed from all physical reach. That is the test.
I do not look for salvation to the arms of mere criminal legislation. This seems to me to be almost powerless as a moral force, and indeed, to encourage the hideous apparatus of blackmail.[18] Gradual and unsensational as it may be, I believe that morals can only be improved by educational and religious influences.
And so far as theoretical solutions are concerned I believe that Mr. Edward Carpenter[19] comes nearest to the truth. Nature is deliberate in creating not uniformity but variety, and I doubt if the world would continue if there were only normal men in it. The homosexual has his place, within restrictions, as has the celibate or the sexless type. The real truth, I feel to be, is that few men are wholly masculine or women feminine, and that somewhere, in comparative degrees, homosexuality is in us all. It may become so excessive as to be a disease, or so feeble as to create that unæsthetic, bourgeoise type, which is an unpleasant symptom of super-normality.
We enter the realm of pure conjecture if we attempt to inquire the purpose for which this type has been deliberately created. And I can only record my own entirely unproveable, but definite opinion, that the human race, in the far ages ahead, will return, by a spiral process, to the bisexual species from which I believe it has come. If this is so, the homosexual is apparently a prototype, a preliminary attempt of nature to combine both sex-natures in one individual. And with all his present imperfections, I believe that there are evidences which go strongly to support this conjecture.