Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/60

 with their strongest military periods. To-day it is one of the racial traits of their descendants. The Etruscans were peculiarly given to similisexualism and the Tuscans and Umbrians have inherited its passions. It was a part of the Aztec social system, and even of Aztec religions, and Central America and South America know it instinctively.

In the social life of those great past peoples, the Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian nations, similisexual love, at least between males, was more or less a recognized and even legitimate factor, physiologic and spiritual. The sexual charm of the male for the male, the influence of his beauty as an esthetic force on his own sex, appears to have been taken for granted as natural, and seldom was discountenanced. Of a prevalence of female similisexualism we have no historic record, but its existence is beyond doubt. Earliest legislation took little or no control of the, similisexual impulses and habits. In -Egypt there seems to have been no period when men were not accustomed to give free course, as by natural right, to the passion. In all dynasties, in all classes, in the army, the priesthood, in civil life, it was well-known.

Here we may notice a matter, referring to Egypt, that will be found significant; painfully so when presently we look at the attitudes of modern criminal-law toward the passion. In Egypt, at the time of Moses and the Jewish servitude, similisexualism could be easily a deterrent, of importance, to increase of population. It was especially a check of the male and "war-available". Sexual intercourse between men was a foe to normal sexual satisfaction, to heterosexual love, and so to early marriages and offspring. Undoubtedly the habit was rooted in the Hebrew people when, for generations captive to the Egyptian race, saturated