Page:Symonds - A Problem in Modern Ethics.djvu/38

26 Liman, having studied the question of sexual maladies in general, and given due weight to the works of Ulrichs, call attention to the broad differences which exist between persons in whom abnormal appetites are innate and those in whom they are acquired. Their companion sketches of the two types deserve to be translated and presented in a somewhat condensed form.

"In the majority of persons who are subject to this vice, it is congenital; or at any rate the sexual inclination can be followed back into the years of childhood, like a kind of physical hermaphroditism. Sexual contact with a woman inspires them with real disgust. Their imagination delights in handsome young men, and statues or pictures of the same. In the case of this numerous class of pæderasts there is therefore no depraved fancy at work, no demoralisation through satiety of natural sexual appetite, Their congenital impulse explains the fact, moreover, that very many pæderasts are addicted to what may be termed a Platonic voluptuousness, and feel themselves drawn towards the objects of their desire with a warmth of passion more fervent than is common in the relations of the opposed sexes; that, in other cases again, they are satisfied with embracements, from which they derive a mutual pleasure. Westphal maintains that this anomalous direction of the sexual appetite is more often the symptom of a psychopathical, neuropathical condition than people commonly suppose."