Page:Symonds - A Problem in Modern Ethics.djvu/81

Rh unable in the interest of science to accept the term morbid without qualification, and venture to suggest some further distinctions bearing on the central difficulties of the problem.

"The phenomenon is certainly anomalous; but the term morbid carries a meaning which seems to me inapplicable to the subject, or at all events to very many cases which have come under my cognisance. I will concede à priori that a far larger proportion of mental disturbance, nervous hyper-sensibility, &c., can be proved in Urnings than in normal men. But ought this excess of nervous erethism to be referred necessarily to the peculiar nature of the Urning? Is not this the true explanation, in a vast majority of cases, that the Urning, owing to present laws and social prejudices, cannot like other men obtain a simple and easy satisfaction of his inborn sexual desires?

"To begin with the years of boyhood: an Urning, when he first becomes aware of sexual stirrings in his nature, and innocently speaks about them to his comrades, soon finds that he is unintelligible. So he wraps himself within his own thoughts. Or should he attempt to tell a teacher or his parents about these feelings, the inclination, which for him is as natural as swimming to a fish, will be treated by them as corrupt and sinful; he is exhorted at any cost to overcome and trample on it. Then there begins in him a hidden conflict, a forcible suppression of the sexual impulse; and in proportion as the natural satisfaction of his craving is denied, fancy works with still more lively efforts, conjuring up those seductive pictures which he would fain expel from his imagination. The more energetic is the youth who has