Page:Symonds - A Problem in Modern Ethics.djvu/123

Rh studies the psychology of Urnings is aware that this involves a grave injustice to the latter.

"But, after all," continues the objector, "you cannot show that inverted sexuality is capable of any moral elevation." Without appealing to antiquity, the records of which confute this objection overwhelmingly, one might refer to the numerous passages in Ulrich's writings where he relates the fidelity, loyalty, self-sacrifice, and romantic enthusiasm which frequently accompany such loves, and raises them above baseness. But, since here again he may be considered a suspicious witness, it will suffice, as before, to translate a brief passage from Krafft-Ebing. "The Urning loves, idolizes his friend, quite as much as the normal man loves and idolizes his girl. He is capable of making for him the greatest sacrifices. He suffers the pangs of unhappy, often unreturned, affection; feels jealousy, mourns under the fear of his friend's infidelity." When the time comes for speaking about Walt Whitman's treatment of this topic, it will appear that the passion of a man for his comrade has been idealised in fact and deed, as well as in poetry. For the present it is enough to remark that a kind of love, however spontaneous and powerful, which is scouted, despised, tabooed, banned, punished, relegated to holes and corners, cannot be expected to show its best side to the world. The sense of sin and crime and danger, the humiliation and repression and distress to which the unfortunate pariahs of inverted sexuality are daily and hourly exposed must inevitably deteriorate the nobler elements in their emotion. Give