Behüt Dich Gott, es hat nicht sollen sein!’[[116]]
“I have never independently revealed my love to a young man, and have never spoiled or injured one morally; but I have, now and then, made the way easy for many. Under such circumstances, nothing is too much trouble, and I obtain victims as only I can.
“When I have an opportunity to have such a beloved friend about me, to educate, protect, and help, if my recognized love find a (natural, unsexual) return, then all my disgusting mental imagery grows less and less intense; then my love becomes almost platonic and ennobled, to sink again into the mire when this worthy satisfaction is removed.
“As for the rest, and without over-estimating myself, I may say that I am not one of the worst of men. Brighter mentally than the average man, I take interest in all that moves humanity. I am amiable, and easily moved to pity, and am incapable of doing any animal, much less a man, an injury; but, on the contrary, do good wherever I can.
“When I have nothing to reproach myself with in my own conscience, and must, at the same time, set myself in opposition to the judgment of the world, I suffer very much. Indeed, I have done no one harm, and I consider my love, in its noblest activity, to be quite as holy as that of a normal man; but, with the unhappy lot which impatience and ignorance cast upon us, I suffer even to the extent of tædium vitæ.
“No pen, no tongue can describe all the misery, all the unhappy situations, the constant fear of having this peculiarity recognized, and of being cast from society. The one thought that, as soon as recognized, one’s existence would be lost, and he would be cast away from all, is as terrible as any thought can be. Then all the good that one had ever done would be forgotten; then, in the pride of his great morality, every normal man would be moved to scorn, even though he himself had been never so frivolous in his own love.
“Then what does our misery amount to? We may, cursing man, end our unhappy lives. Truly, I often long for the quiet of an asylum. My life may end when it will, the quicker the better; I am ready.
“To refer to one more point: I also believe, like the others that have written to you, that our nervousness is first acquired as a result of our unhappy, unspeakably miserable life among our fellow-creatures.
“And still another: You write, at the conclusion of your work, concerning the repeal of the legal enactments concerned. Indeed, humanity would not be destroyed if they were repealed. In Italy there is no such law, as far as I know; and Italy is not a wilderness, but a cultivated nation.
“As for myself, compelled as I am to undermine my life by onanism, the law could not touch me; for I have never sinned against it in a letter. But, at the same time, I suffer under the accursed scorn to which we are subjected. How can the ideas of society be changed, so long as there is a law which strengthens it in its immorality? The law must, of course, correspond with public opinion; but it should not be in harmony with the erroneous opinion of ignorance, but only in accord with the ideas of the best and most scientific thinkers,—not with the wish and prejudice of the vulgar. True thinking minds cannot much longer be satisfied with the old idea.