Page:Homo-sexual Life by William John Fielding (1925).pdf/30

 that period consisted principally of cities with very limited capacity for sustenance, the problem of feeding the population was one of some concern. Aristotle, on this account, advised the men to shun their wives and to indulge in boy-love. Even before him, Socrates had already hailed pederasty as a mark of superior culture.

Diotima revealed to Socrates a new spiritual principle in erotic life—the principle which guides man beyond the pleasures of the senses and, through love, leads him to the divine. "The slave of his senses runs after women; but he who loves with his soul and strives to win immortality through virtue and wisdom, seeks a great and beautiful soul that he may surrender himself to it completely." This looks innocent enough on the surface, but as it was the opinion of the Greeks that a beautiful soul was to be found only in the body of a man, the implications are clear.

Dr. Beatrice M. Hinkle (The Re-Creating of the Individual) remarks that "The symbol of this human ideal achievement for the Greek was the psychic hermaphrodite, the blend of feminine and masculine attributes in a male form and its immortalization was attrained [sic] in Greek art. The homosexuality flourished as the natural accompaniment of man's love for himself—that is, of his own sex—was an incidental result which does not affect the real significance of the Greek achievement, nor alter the greatness of their ideal aim, the creation of the highest human values under the conception of ideal love, and the effort at its achievement in the world of reality The 'great and beau-