A soldier who had left the army told a friend of mine that he and many of his comrades had taken to homosexual indulgences when abroad on foreign service in a lonely station. He kept the practice up in England 'because the women of his class were so unattractive.' The captain of an English man-of-war said that he was always glad to send his men on shore after a long cruise at sea, never feeling sure how far they might not all go if left without women for a certain space of time." I may add that A. Hamon (La France Sociale et Politique, 1891, pp. 653-55; also in his Psychologie du Militaire Professional, chapter x) gives details as to the prevalence of homosexuality in the French army, especially in Algeria; he regards it as extremely common, although the majority are free. A fragment of a letter by General Lamoricière (speaking of Marshal Changarnier) is quoted: En Afrique nous en étions tous, mais lui en est resté ici.

This primitive indifference is doubtless also a factor in the prevalence of homosexuality among criminals, although, here, it must be remembered, two other factors (congenital abnormality and the isolation of imprisonment) have to be considered. In Russia, Tarnowsky observes that all pederasts are agreed that the common people are tolerably indifferent to their sexual advances, which they call "gentlemen's games." A correspondent remarks on "the fact, patent to all observers, that simple folk not infrequently display no greater disgust for the abnormalities of sexual appetite than they do for its normal manifestations."[42] He knows of many cases in which men of lower class were flattered and pleased by the attentions of men of higher class, although not themselves inverted. And from this point of view the following case, which he mentions, is very instructive:—

A pervert whom I can trust told me that he had made advances to upward of one hundred men in the course of the last fourteen years, and that he had only once met with a refusal (in which case the man later on offered himself spontaneously) and only once with an attempt to extort money. Permanent relations of friendship sprang up in most instances. He admitted that he looked after these persons and helped them with his social influence and a certain amount of pecuniary support—setting one up in business, giving another something to marry on, and finding places for others.

Among the peasantry in Switzerland, I am informed, homosexual relationships are not uncommon before marriage, and such relationships are lightly spoken of as "Dummheiten". No doubt, similar traits might be found in the peasantry of other parts of Europe.

What may be regarded as true sexual inversion can be traced in Europe from the beginning of the Christian era (though we can scarcely demonstrate the congenital element) especially among two classes—men of exceptional ability and criminals; and also, it may be added, among those neurotic and degenerate individuals who may be said to lie between these two classes, and on or over the borders of both. Homosexuality, mingled with various other sexual abnormalities and excesses, seems to have flourished in Rome during the empire, and is well exemplified in the persons of many of the emperors.[43] Julius Cæsar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Titus, Domitian, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Commodus, and Heliogabalus—many of them men of great ability and, from a Roman standpoint, great moral worth—are all charged, on more or less solid evidence, with homosexual practices. In Julius Cæsar—"the husband of all women and the wife of all men" as he was satirically termed—excess of sexual activity seems to have accompanied, as is sometimes seen, an excess of intellectual activity. He was first accused of homosexual practices after a long stay in Bithynia with King Nikomedes, and the charge was very often renewed. Cæsar was proud of his physical beauty, and, like some modern inverts, he was accustomed carefully to shave and epilate his body to preserve the smoothness of the skin. Hadrian's love for his beautiful slave Antinoüs is well known; the love seems to have been deep and mutual, and Antinoüs has become immortalized, partly by the romance of his obscure death and partly by the new and strangely beautiful type which he has given to sculpture.[44] Heliogabalus, "the most homosexual of all the company," as he has been termed, seems to have been a true sexual invert, of feminine type; he dressed as a woman and was devoted to the men he loved.[45]

Homosexual practices everywhere flourish and abound in prisons. There is abundant evidence on this point. I will only bring forward the evidence of Dr. Wey, formerly physician to the Elmira Reformatory, New York. "Sexuality" (he wrote in a private letter) "is one of the most troublesome elements with which we have to contend. I have no data as to the number of prisoners here who are sexually perverse. In my pessimistic moments I should feel like saying that all were; but probably 80 per cent, would be a fair estimate." And, referring to the sexual influence which some men have over others, he remarks that "there are many men with features suggestive of femininity that attract others to them in a way that reminds me of a bitch in heat followed by a pack of dogs."[46] In Sing Sing prison of New York, 20 per cent, of the prisoners are said to be actively homosexual and a large number of the rest passively homosexual. These prison relationships are not always of a brutal character, McMurtrie states, the attraction sometimes being more spiritual than physical.[47]

Prison life develops and fosters the homosexual tendency of criminals; but there can be little doubt that that tendency, or else a tendency to sexual indifference or bisexuality, is a radical character of a very large number of criminals. We may also find it to a considerable extent among tramps, an allied class of undoubted degenerates, who, save for brief seasons, are less familiar with prison life. I am able to bring forward interesting evidence on this point by an acute observer who lived much among tramps in various countries, and largely devoted himself to the study of them.[48]

The fact that homosexuality is especially common among men of exceptional intellect was long since noted by Dante:—

"In somma sappi, che tutti fur cherci
 E litterati grandi, et di gran fama
 D'un medismo peccato al mondo lerci."[49]

It has often been noted since and remains a remarkable fact.

There cannot be the slightest doubt that intellectual and artistic abilities of the highest order have frequently been associated with a congenitally inverted sexual temperament. There has been a tendency among inverts themselves to discover their own temperament in many distinguished persons on evidence of the most slender character. But it remains a demonstrable fact that numerous highly distinguished persons, of the past and the present, in various countries, have been inverts. I may here refer to my own observations on this point in the preface. Mantegazza (Gli Amori degli Uomini) remarks that in his own restricted circle he is acquainted with "a French publicist, a German poet, an Italian statesman, and a Spanish jurist, all men of exquisite taste and highly cultivated mind," who are sexually inverted. Krafft-Ebing, in the preface to his Psychopathia Sexualis, referring to the "numberless" communications he has received from these "step-children of nature," remarks that "the majority of the writers are men of high intellectual and social position, and often possess very keen emotions." Raffalovich (Uranisme, p. 197) names among distinguished inverts, Alexander the Great, Epaminondas, Virgil, the great Condé, Prince Eugène, etc.