Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/46

 is involved. If one argue with them against classifying all homosexual impulses with barbarism, pointing out that precisely this instinct of similisexual love between man and man has always existed, side by side, with the finest social life, with the most virile militarism, with the highest moral and aesthetic civilizations of the past, even to being recognized as a great factor for social good, the argument is not accepted for a moment.

For, one is assured that no ancient civilizations obeyed the Christian Dispensation, or compare well with it; that Christian morals as the basis of all sound social and moral law, abhor the homosexual impulse; that the Christian Scriptures have placed it in the category of gravest sins and felonies: and that homosexualism entered into the decadence of races and nations, as an essential factor. We are also informed that similisexual love "has relatively disappeared"; is more and more forgotten, has become vagabond a moral perversion from humanity to-day, in all "high civilizations" and all "superior moral life". We are assured that human nature has emphatically "changed," in this respect as in others thanks to especially the powerful influence of the contemporary Judaic-Christian basis of social ethics. To all such replies, or to others equally without foundation in fact, one can quote only Christopher Sly, and exclaim that for the sake of those who believe possible such an atrophy of human nature, and who ignore plain and too-often distressing facts—"'Tis an excellent piece of work; would it were done!" We shall in another chapter estimate more minutely this matter.

Let us now turn to what is generally accepted as friendship between men and men. We will revert to what has been termed "similisexual friendship as distinguished from love; and will narrow