Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/407

 of his type are accepted in such a situation as being intelligible, interesting, appropriate, excusable, even laudable; in many cases as matters of course; all of which, were he not of a distinctively artist-profession, would be remarked, questioned, satirized, or suspected of being "vicious." Uranian effeminacies and degeneracies are passed lightly by, as being mere artistic "eccentricities." Hazy scandals are smiled at, if not too frequent. Even scandals not hazy are dismissed by the public in amiable indifference, as part of the aesthetic privilege. "Artist are all such children—sometimes such naughty children!"—"Oh these musical people!—these painting people!—these sculptors! They are not like the rest of us I They really must not be judged like common mortals!" Such tolerant dicta are not misapplied to similisexuals in art-life; for, we may repeat it, the uranian in much is the Eternal Child.

Not only does absorption in the arts hide the homosexual nature from friends and from the public, not only do necessities of this or that branch of aesthetic work screen the sexual interests in the male, on the part of the homosexual man. They do more. When the homosexual is not clear as to his own nature, and cannot reconcile—with his moral conscience or religious training—his intense sensitiveness to masculine beauty, cannot analyze the dominance of the male over his emotions, then his professional art can obstruct his growing wiser as to himself—whether to his advantage or to his loss. For many intersexual men, art is a sort of psychic outlet, not necessarily enlightening. A surging idealism, whole currents of philarrhenic sexuality, spend themselves in the. studio and concert. The very body is sometimes (by no means always) "kept down," by a kindlier régime than that of a cloister—by enthusiastic art-work.

Good morals have no necessary relations to aesthetic genius. To produce the very beautiful does not mean that