Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/534

 as pectsaspects [sic] of the Uranian when indeed decadent, criminal or victim. He is a human being, first of all. No social station, no philosophy, no statutes, no dangers, will hold his sexual physique in check when the passionate appetite is awake. Happy or unhappy, evil or good, he is a human fact. Intersex is intersex. King, prince, pope, cardinal, duke, statesman, tradesman, soldier, sailor, man of letters, of science, of art, of religion, workman in field or factory, nature has given to him his sexual organs and those tastes that command their use. They must be pacified, or mischief and misery result. One might as well require the Uranian to be stone, as not to yield; even if a life of cruel and unjust expiation is to be met, or death faced—as the price.

It is in view of aspects of this practical kind, that countries whose Legislation has not till now shown due interest philosophically in the mystery of homosexuality, or humane willingness to study it legally in new lights, agitate considerable changes of paragraphs in their criminal Codes; advances on Napoleonic models or even beyond them. Such movement has received in Germany and Austria favourable popular attention. A long array of eminent physicians, psychiatric-observers high jurists, criminologists, and the general intelligent public are all alert. The recognition of the homosexual instincts as a thing to be regulated, as a troublous instinct not naturally more disgraceful than heterosexualism, has gained—vastly. Pressure on popular sentiment and legal thought has been particularly the work of Dr. Richard von Krafft-Ebing of Vienna (lately deceased); of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld of Berlin, conspicuous as an indefatigable and self-sacrificing scientist for humanity; of Dr. A. Aletrino, of the University of Amsterdam; of Dr. Havelock Ellis and of Edward Carpenter in England; of Dr. Albert Moll, of Berlin; of many other psychiaters' of the first rank, and of world-wide