Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/191

, purest pleasure in sight of a beautiful boy. Sexual connection with a young man, on the other hand, gives me a shudder. I cannot understand how anybody can tolerate the mere idea of that. Nevertheless, something ever impels me toward a blooming lad, far more than to a girl, although I also feel sexual desire for the latter. For girls I have now and then been in a state of enthusiasm, but never so sensitively as for a boy. I grow indifferent in course of time to the girls I may have loved. I seldom think of them later, and then without any special interest. On the other hand, a boy that I have loved is unforgettable. Women find me good-looking. I have received many a love-letter … I never dance, and I have not the least desire to marry. The only thing that disturbs my illusion is when the the handsome boy grows older, so that the beard develops; then my passion lessens … I am fascinated only by quite young, graceful, girlish lads, not muscular or robust, and only if of clean and pure mind. How often would I like to press such a boy to my heart, to cover his pure eyes with hot kisses. But I cannot!" …

An appreciable influence in developing Uranism is the fact that the tutor to whom the boy is committed may be an Uranian of pederastic inclinations. With all sympathy for his nature, there is too often a conscienceless failure to his trust. But the tutor's situation can be terribly trying to self-control. Sensitive to boyish beauty of mind and body, a twentieth-century instructor of lads can fall in love with them as ardently as any Greek academician. But in these days such an "unnatural" sentiment easily can be social ruin. Not only does the unhappy Uranian nourish the instinct in similisexual youth; he undoes himself by the surrender to it. Particularly in monastic gymnasiums and boarding-schools, directed by a celibate clergy, many of them young priests, is the atmosphere of uranism latent, whether in type