Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/41

 We shall be obliged also to question, even more sharply in the close study of the Uranian and Uraniad life, the character of many similisexual ties, whether between men and men, or women and women; and our conventional ideas of them are likely to be changed before the analysis of this study will be finished. The whole theory of so-called Platonic friendships, of psychic ties of heterosexual kind, is ill-sustained by realities in human-nature and social history. The finest, most unalloyed friendship must be similisexual; even if we admit presently, in a sort of paradox that many relationships seeming precisely friendship are not so; many that seem not so being precisely such.

There is no grossening of human-nature, no injustice to the finer psychic qualities in us, when we accept the idea that love from one human being toward another must include the wish to possess physically, and the yearning to give oneself, physically. Even if such a rule seems to accentuate the merely animal-nature in man, we cannot get far away from the conclusion. If we are honest with ourselves and humanity we ought not to try to get away from it. Love must contain the sexual desire, the wish for physical possession of beauty. So long as we cannot descry clearer than we do the place of the brute-world in the mysterious general scheme of Nature we need not be too conservative about admitting ourselves as animals in many instincts. Here may be noted, à-propos of the brute-world, that friendship between beasts is a sentiment much less often marked than is one or other degree of sexual admiration and attraction. Interesting examples of friendships between brutes, wild or domestic, are often met; but they are disproportionate to the tendency of animals toward companionship through heterosexual love, or similisexual love: as will be touched on later.