Of late years a voluminous and constantly increasing literature on homosexuality52 has revealed its frequency in modern Europe. No country and no class of society is free from it. In certain parts of Albania it even exists as a popular custom, the young men from the age of sixteen upwards regularly having boy favourites of between twelve and seventeen.53

The above statements chiefly refer to homosexual practices between men, but similar practices also occur between women.54 Among the American aborigines there are not only men who behave like women, but women who behave like men. Thus in certain Brazilian tribes women are found who abstain from every womanly occupation and imitate the men in everything, who wear their hair in a masculine fashion, who go to war with a bow and arrows, who hunt together with the men, and who would rather allow themselves to be killed than have sexual intercourse with a man. “Each of these women has a woman who serves her and with whom she says she is married; they live together as husband and wife.”55 So also there are among the Eastern Eskimo some women who refuse to accept husbands, preferring to adopt masculine manners, following the deer on the mountains, trapping and fishing for themselves.56 Homosexual practices are said to be common among Hottentot57 and Herero58 women. In Zanzibar there are women who wear men’s clothes in private, show a preference for masculine occupations, and seek sexual satisfaction among women who have the same inclination, or else among normal women who are won over by presents or other means.59 In Egyptian harems every woman is said to have a “friend.”60 In Bali homosexuality is almost as common among women as among men, though it is exercised more secretly;61 and the same seems to be the case in India.62 From Greek antiquity we hear of “Lesbian” love. The fact that homosexuality has been much more frequently noticed in men than in women does not imply that the latter are less addicted to it. For various reasons the sexual abnormalities of women have attracted much less attention,63 and moral opinion has generally taken little notice of them.

Homosexual practices are due sometimes to instinctive preference, sometimes to external conditions unfavourable to normal intercourse.64 A frequent cause is congenital sexual inversion, that is, “sexual instinct turned by inborn constitutional abnormality toward persons of the same sex.”65 It seems likely that the feminine men and the masculine women referred to above are, at least in many instances, sexual inverts; though, in the case of shamans, the change of sex may also result from the belief that such transformed shamans, like their female colleagues, are particularly powerful.66 Dr. Holder affirms the existence of congenital inversion among the North-Western tribes of the United States,67 Dr. Baumann among the people of Zanzibar;68 and in Morocco, also, I believe it is common enough. But as regards its prevalence among non-European peoples we have mostly to resort to mere conjectures; our real knowledge of congenital inversion is derived from the voluntary confessions of inverts. The large majority of travellers are totally ignorant of the psychological side of the subject, and even to an expert it must very often be impossible to decide whether a certain case of inversion is congenital or acquired. Indeed, acquired inversion itself presupposes an innate disposition which under certain circumstances develops into actual inversion.69 Even between inversion and normal sexuality there seem to be all shades of variation. Professor James thinks that inversion is “a kind of sexual appetite, of which very likely most men possess the germinal possibility.”70 This is certainly the case in early puberty.71

A very important cause of homosexual practices is absence of the other sex. There are many instances of this among the lower animals.72 Buffon long ago observed that, if male or female birds of various species were shut up together, they would soon begin to have sexual relations among themselves, the males sooner than the females.73 The West Australian boy-marriage is a substitute for ordinary marriage in cases when women are not obtainable. Among the Bororó of Brazil homosexual intercourse is said to occur in their men-houses only when the scarcity of accessible girls is unusually great.74 Its prevalence in Tahiti may perhaps be connected with the fact that there was only one woman to four or five men, owing to the habit of female infanticide.75 Among the Chinese in certain regions, for instance Java, the lack of accessible women is the principal cause of homosexual practices.76 According to some writers such practices are the results of polygamy.77 In Muhammedan countries they are no doubt largely due to the seclusion of women, preventing free intercourse between the sexes and compelling the unmarried people to associate almost exclusively with members of their own sex. Among the mountaineers of Northern Morocco the excessive indulgence in pederasty thus goes hand in hand with great isolation of the women and a very high standard of female chastity, whereas among the Arabs of the plains, who are little addicted to boy-love, the unmarried girls enjoy considerable freedom. Both in Asia78 and Europe79 the obligatory celibacy of the monks and priests has been a cause of homosexual practices, though it must not be forgotten that a profession which imposes abstinence from marriage is likely to attract a comparatively large number of congenital inverts. The temporary separation of the sexes involved in a military mode of life no doubt accounts for the extreme prevalence of homosexual love among warlike races,80 like the Sikhs, Afghans, Dorians, and Normans.81 In Persia82 and Morocco it is particularly common among soldiers. In Japan it was an incident of knighthood, in New Caledonia and North America of brotherhood in arms. At least in some of the North American tribes men who were dressed as women accompanied the other men as servants in war and the chase.83 Among the Banaka and Bapuku in the Cameroons pederasty is practised especially by men who are long absent from their wives.84 In Morocco I have heard it advocated on account of the convenience it affords to persons who are travelling.

Dr. Havelock Ellis justly observes that when homosexual attraction is due simply to the absence of the other sex we are not concerned with sexual inversion, but merely with the accidental turning of the sexual instinct into an abnormal channel, the instinct being called out by an approximate substitute, or even by diffused emotional excitement, in the absence of the normal object.85 But it seems to me probable that in such cases the homosexual attraction in the course of time quite easily develops into genuine inversion. I cannot but think that our chief authorities on homosexuality have underestimated the modifying influence which habit may exercise on the sexual instinct. Professor Krafft-Ebing86 and Dr. Moll87 deny the existence of acquired inversion except in occasional instances; and Dr. Havelock Ellis takes a similar view, if putting aside those cases of a more or less morbid character in which old men with failing sexual powers, or younger men exhausted by heterosexual debauchery, are attracted to members of their own sex.88 But how is it that in some parts of Morocco such a very large proportion of the men are distinctly sexual inverts, in the sense in which this word is used by Dr. Havelock Ellis,89 that is, persons who for the gratification of their sexual desire prefer their own sex to the opposite one? It may be that in Morocco and in Oriental countries generally, where almost every individual marries, congenital inversion, through the influence of heredity, is more frequent than in Europe, where inverts so commonly abstain from marrying. But that this could not be an adequate explanation of the fact in question becomes at once apparent when we consider the extremely unequal distribution of inverts among different neighbouring tribes of the same stock, some of which are very little or hardly at all addicted to pederasty. I take the case to be, that homosexual practices in early youth have had a lasting effect on the sexual instinct, which at its first appearance, being somewhat indefinite, is easily turned into a homosexual direction.90 In Morocco inversion is most prevalent among the scribes, who from childhood have lived in very close association with their fellow-students. Of course, influences of this kind “require a favourable organic predisposition to act on”;91 but this predisposition is probably no abnormality at all, only a feature in the ordinary sexual constitution of man.92 It should be noticed that the most common form of inversion, at least in Muhammedan countries, is love of boys or youths not yet in the age of puberty, that is, of male individuals who are physically very like girls. Voltaire observes:—“Souvent un jeune garçon, par la fraîcheur de son teint, par l’éclat de ses couleurs, et par la douceur de ses yeux, ressemble pendant deux ou trois ans à une belle fille; si on l’aime, c’est parce que la nature se méprend.”93 Moreover, in normal cases sexual attraction depends not only on sex, but on a youthful appearance as well; and there are persons so constituted that to them the latter factor is of chief importance, whilst the question of sex is almost a matter of indifference.

In ancient Greece, also, not only homosexual intercourse but actual inversion, seems to have been very common; and although this, like every form of love, must have contained a congenital element, there can be little doubt, I think, that it was largely due to external circumstances of a social character. It may, in the first place, be traced to the methods of training the youth. In Sparta it seems to have been the practice for every youth of good character to have his lover, or “inspirator,”94 and for every well-educated man to be the lover of some youth.95 The relations between the “inspirator” and the “listener” were extremely intimate: at home the youth was constantly under the eyes of his lover, who was supposed to be to him a model and pattern of life;96 in battle they stood near one another and their fidelity and affection were often shown till death;97 if his relatives were absent, the youth might be represented in the public assembly by his lover;98 and for many faults, particularly want of ambition, the lover could be punished instead of the “listener.”99 This ancient custom prevailed with still greater force in Crete, which island was hence by many persons considered to be the place of its birth.100 Whatever may have been the case originally, there can be no doubt that in later times the relations between the youth and his lover implied unchaste intercourse.101 And in other Greek states the education of the youth was accompanied by similar consequences. At an early age the boy was taken away from his mother, and spent thenceforth all his time in the company of men, until he reached the age when marriage became for him a civic duty.102 According to Plato, the gymnasia and common meals among the youth “seem always to have had a tendency to degrade the ancient and natural custom of love below the level, not only of man, but of the beasts.”103 Plato also mentions the effect which these habits had on the sexual instincts of the men: when they reached manhood they were lovers of youths and not naturally inclined to marry or beget children, but, if at all, they did so only in obedience to the law.104 Is not this, in all probability, an instance of acquired inversion? But besides the influence of education there was another factor which, co-operating with it, favoured the development of homosexual tendencies, namely, the great gulf which mentally separated the sexes. Nowhere else has the difference in culture between men and women been so immense as in the fully developed Greek civilisation. The lot of a wife in Greece was retirement and ignorance. She lived in almost absolute seclusion, in a separate part of the house, together with her female slaves, deprived of all the educating influence of male society, and having no place at those public spectacles which were the chief means of culture.105 In such circumstances it is not difficult to understand that men so highly intellectual as those of Athens regarded the love of women as the offspring of the common Aphrodite, who “is of the body rather than of the soul.”106 They had reached a stage of mental culture at which the sexual instinct normally has a craving for refinement, at which the gratification of mere physical lust appears brutal. In the eyes of the most refined among them those who were inspired by the heavenly Aphrodite loved neither women nor boys, but intelligent beings whose reason was beginning to be developed, much about the time at which their beards began to grow.107 In present China we meet with a parallel case. Dr. Matignon observes:—“Il y a tout lieu de supposer que certains Chinois, raffinés au point de vue intellectuel, recherchent dans la pédérastie la satisfaction des sens et de l’esprit. La femme chinoise est peu cultivée, ignorante même, quelle que soit sa condition, honnête femme ou prostituée. Or le Chinois a souvent l’âme poétique: il aime les vers, la musique, les belles sentences des philosophes, autant de choses qu’il ne peut trouver chez le beau sexe de l’Empire du Milieu.”108 So also it seems that the ignorance and dullness of Muhammedan women, which is a result of their total lack of education and their secluded life, is a cause of homosexual practices; Moors are sometimes heard to defend pederasty on the plea that the company of boys, who have always news to tell, is so much more entertaining than the company of women.

We have hitherto dealt with homosexual love as a fact; we shall now pass to the moral valuation to which it is subject. Where it occurs as a national habit we may assume that no censure, or no severe censure, is passed on it. Among the Bataks of Sumatra there is no punishment for it.109 Of the bazirs among the Ngajus of Pula Patak, in Borneo, Dr. Schwaner says that “in spite of their loathsome calling they escape well-merited contempt.”110 The Society Islanders had for their homosexual practices “not only the sanction of their priests, but the direct example of their respective deities.”111 The tsekats of Madagascar maintained that they were serving the deity by leading a feminine life;112 but we are told that at Ankisimane and in Nossi-Bé, opposite to it, pederasts are objects of public contempt.113 Father Veniaminof says of the Atkha Aleuts that “sodomy and too early cohabitation with a betrothed or intended wife are called among them grave sins”;114 but apart from the fact that his account of these natives in general gives the impression of being somewhat eulogistic, the details stated by him only show that the acts in question were considered to require a simple ceremony of purification.115 There is no indication that the North American aborigines attached any opprobrium to men who had intercourse with those members of their own sex who had assumed the dress and habits of women. In Kadiak such a companion was on the contrary regarded as a great acquisition; and the effeminate men themselves, far from being despised, were held in repute by the people, most of them being wizards.116 We have previously noticed the connection between homosexual practices and shamanism among various Siberian peoples; and it is said that such shamans as had changed their sex were greatly feared by the people, being regarded as very powerful.117 Among the Illinois and Naudowessies the effeminate men assist in all the juggleries and the solemn dance in honour of the calumet, or sacred tobacco pipe, for which the Indians have such a deference that one may call it “the god of peace and war, and the arbiter of life and death”; but they are not permitted either to dance or sing. They are called into the councils of the Indians, and nothing can be decided upon without their advice; for because of their extraordinary manner of living they are looked upon as manitous, or supernatural beings, and persons of consequence.118 The Sioux, Sacs, and Fox Indians give once a year, or oftener if they choose, a feast to the Berdashe, or I-coo-coo-a, who is a man dressed in woman’s clothes, as he has been all his life. “For extraordinary privileges which he is known to possess, he is driven to the most servile and degrading duties, which he is not allowed to escape; and he being the only one of the tribe submitting to this disgraceful degradation, is looked upon as ‘medicine’ and sacred, and a feast is given to him annually; and initiatory to it, a dance by those few young men of the tribe who can … dance forward and publicly make their boast (without the denial of the Berdashe)…. Such, and such only, are allowed to enter the dance and partake of the feast.”119 Among some American tribes, however, these effeminate men are said to be despised, especially by the women.120 In ancient Peru, also, homosexual practices seem to have entered in the religious cult. In some particular places, says Cieza de Leon, boys were kept as priests in the temples, with whom it was rumoured that the lords joined in company on days of festivity. They did not meditate, he adds, the committing of such sin, but only the offering of sacrifice to the demon. If the Incas by chance had some knowledge of such proceedings in the temple, they might have ignored them out of religious tolerance.121 But the Incas themselves were not only free from such practices in their own persons, they would not even permit any one who was guilty of them to remain in the royal houses or palaces. And Cieza heard it related that, if it came to their knowledge that somebody had committed an offence of that kind, they punished it with such a severity that it was known to all.122 Las Casas tells us that in several of the more remote provinces of Mexico sodomy was tolerated, if not actually permitted, because the people believed that their gods were addicted to it; and it is not improbable that in earlier times the same was the case in the entire empire.123 But in a later age severe measures were adopted by legislators in order to suppress the practice. In Mexico people found guilty of it were killed.124 In Nicaragua it was punished capitally by stoning,125 and none of the Maya nations was without strict laws against it.126 Among the Chibchas of Bogota the punishment for it was the infliction of a painful death.127 However, it should be remembered that the ancient culture nations of America were generally extravagant in their punishments, and that their penal codes in the first place expressed rather the will of their rulers than the feelings of the people at large.128