"What, then, is the reasonable attitude of society towards the sexual invert?" asks an acute observer and medico-legalist, with whose answer to his own question I cannot do better than finish my reflections on homosexuality: " It seems to lie in the avoidance of two extremes. On the one hand, it cannot be expected to tolerate the invert, who flouts his perversion in its face, and assumes that, because he would rather take his pleasure with a soldier or a policeman, than with their sisters, he is of finer clay than the vulgar herd. Inversion is an aberration from the usual course of nature. But the clash of contending elements, which must often mark the history of such a deviation, results now and again—by no means infrequently—in nobler activities than those yielded by the vast majority who are bom only to consume the fruits of the earth. It bears, for the most part, its penalty in the structure of its own organism" 1

Influence Of Moral Teaching

But, in concluding these brief remarks on the medico-legal portion of my theme, it is only just to recognize the influence which moral teaching exercises in repressing the criminal instinct. As all crimes are offences against moral right, so moral, rather than strictly legal standards ought to govern their measurement; and the jury, through its moral judgment, corresponding in some degree to the equity of ancient usage,* is frequently able to correct the summum jus with verdicts fairer than those of the written law. Of the two primitive faculties of our psychical nature, the intellectual and the moral, I feel no hesitancy in asserting that the latter plays by far the more important part in the reformation of the criminal. The first, comprising perception, memory, reflection, is largely acquired ; the moral faculties are instinctive; not moved by egotistical motives, but by abstract ideas of duty, ethics, obligation. Therefore, in the intelligent treatment of all criminals, but more particularly the sexual, not punitive, so much as moral and medical methods are required; for, genetically, the vitiated moral and nerve-centers stand as absolute sources of all individual, and, as a necessary corollary, all social offences.