Page:Symonds - A Problem in Modern Ethics.djvu/35

Rh For this reason he leaves the investigation of such crimes to the lawyers.

Both Casper and Tardieu discuss the topic of sexual inversion with antipathy. But there are notable points of difference in the method and in the conclusions of the two authors. Tardieu, perhaps because he is a Frenchman, educated in the school of Paris, which we have learned to know from Carlier, assumes that all subjects of the passion are criminal or vicious. He draws no psychological distinction between pæderast and pæderast. He finds no other name for them, and looks upon the whole class as voluntarily degraded beings who, for the gratification of monstrous desires, have unsexed themselves. A large part of his work is devoted to describing what he believes to be the signs of active and passive immorality in the bodies of persons addicted to these habits. It is evident that imagination has acted powerfully in the formation of his theories. But this is not the place to discuss their details.

Casper and Liman approach the subject with almost equal disgust, but with more regard for scientific truth than Tardieu. They point out that the term pæderast