3. That specific brain structure is brought about through a peculiar mixed condition of male and female hereditary plasm.
4. That ambisexual state is found frequently associated with pronounced instability of the nervous system.
5. Between the specific and the nervous constitution there exists an intimate relationship.
6. All external causes are operative only in the presence of the inner homosexual constitution.
7. External causes—provocative—are so common that in 99 per cent. of cases the innate homosexual disposition breaks forth sooner or later and becomes clearly manifest in consciousness.
8. Homosexuality is neither a morbidity nor a degeneration; it is neither a taint nor a criminal trait, representing merely an aspect of natural development, a sexual variant, like many analogous sexual modifications in the animal and vegetal world. (Hirschfeld, Homosexualität, p. 394.)
Our data do not uphold these contentions. How can Hirschfeld speak of an innate homosexual constitution when elsewhere in his work he admits the constant presence of heterosexual instincts? How can he maintain that homosexuality is a trait reaching back to the very roots of individuality when every careful investigation proves the contrary?
The following statements show his contradictions on the subject:
“Here too it has been contended that all these deviations from the sexual type during childhood and puberty do not conclusively lead to the diagnosis of homosexuality, that the earlier periods of life are undifferentiated with respect to sex, that boys as well as girls, young men as well as young women, often become eventually fully heterosexual in spite of pronounced androgyny and sexual incongruities; even the transvestites of both sexes show early traits inharmonious with their respective sex, and certainly many passivists, succubists, or masochists show themselves already as boys somewhat lacking in ‘mannish’ traits while female activists, incubists and sadists lack certain womanly traits already in their girlhood, though all retain the capacity to love the opposite sex and therefore prove themselves later heterosexual....
“At any rate one thing is certain. If a child is a urning, it grows up a heterosexual person with the same unconditional certainty with which the ‘normal’ child becomes heterosexual. Thus the special character of the urning looms forth as something fundamental having its roots in the depths of personality.” (Hirschfeld, Homosexualität, p. 121.)