Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/67

 But we must point out that the Greeks themselves made at least three important distinctions as to homosexualism, during various periods of their social fabric. They did, indeed, recognize a merely spiritual passion and bond, untouched by physical desires. This type, however it was confused with a much less ideal sentiment, existed and it was much lauded; as it deserved. But it was not love, but friendship, at its highest throb. As regards it we also have reason to believe that many aspects which the idealists in Greece permitted to this psychic relationship, as details of its spirituality, were blended with physical desires. A calmer sentiment bespeaks maturity of the ages, minds and tempers in the two friends. Second, we find current in Greece the similisexual physical love confessedly, or under a veil; including high idealism, intellectual companionships, completion of the friend's existence, along with the physical passion for him, and its natural satisfaction. This is a sort of similisexual passion and love-sentiment in which the friends are relatively of equal and fairly mature ages. It needs a ripened emotionality on both sides, a harmonious and balanced union. Last, we must record the fact that as Greek social civilization developed at the expense of its heroic quality, as Greek military spirit weakened, there increased in the aesthetic Hellene his sense of merely boyish beauty, with his desire of mere physical possession of a youth. This sentiment we know today under the phases of Pederasty, or boy-love, on the part of the man. Beyond dispute, this was and is a lower, in some sense a decadent aesthetic emotion. It was probably wrought into the Greek temperament by Oriental and outside influences; at least they developed it materially. It was the surrender of the Hellene to his more superficial sense of what is. indeed, a peculiarly winning expression of human beauty; but one divorced in too large degree from the intellectual dignity and mature beauty that enters into fine similisexual love. In such a sentiment lurks