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Homogenic Love and Its Place in a Free Society - Edward Carpenter · Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

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  Speaker 1: Section one of Homogenic Love and its Place in a
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  Speaker 1: Free Society. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
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  Speaker 1: are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
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  Speaker 1: please visit LibriVox dot org. Homogenic Love and its Place
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  Speaker 1: in a Free Society by Edward Carpenter, Section one. Of
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  Speaker 1: all the many forms that love delights to take, perhaps
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  Speaker 1: none is more interesting, for the very reason that it
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  Speaker 1: has been so inadequately considered, than that special attachment which
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  Speaker 1: is sometimes denoted by the word comradeship. In general, we
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  Speaker 1: may say that the passion of love provides us with
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  Speaker 1: at once the deepest problems and the highest manifestations of life,
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  Speaker 1: and that to its different workings can be traced the
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  Speaker 1: farthest reaching threads of human endeavor. In one guise, as
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  Speaker 1: the mere semi conscious sex love, which runs through creation
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  Speaker 1: and is common to man and the lowest animals and plants,
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  Speaker 1: it affords a kind of organic basis for the unity
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  Speaker 1: of all creatures. In another, as for instance, the love
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  Speaker 1: of the mother for her offspring, also to be termed
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  Speaker 1: a passion, it seems to pledge itself to the care
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  Speaker 1: and guardianship of the growing race then again, in the
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  Speaker 1: marriage of man and woman, it becomes a thing of
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  Speaker 1: mystic and eternal import and one of the cornerstones of
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  Speaker 1: human society. While in the form of comrade love with
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  Speaker 1: which this paper is concerned, it has uses and functions
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  Speaker 1: which we trust will clearly appear as we proceed to
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  Speaker 1: some Perhaps it may appear a little strained to place
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  Speaker 1: this last mentioned form of attachment on a level of
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  Speaker 1: importance with the others, and such persons may be inclined
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  Speaker 1: to deny the homogenic or homosexual love, as it has
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  Speaker 1: been called, that intense, that penetrating, and at times overmastering character,
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  Speaker 1: which would entitle it to rank as a great human passion.
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  Speaker 1: Footnote Homosexual, generally used in scientific works, is of course
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  Speaker 1: a bustard word. Homogenic has been suggested as being from
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  Speaker 1: two roots, both Greek i e. Homos meaning same and
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  Speaker 1: genos meaning sex end a footnote. But in truth, this view,
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  Speaker 1: when entertained, arises from a want of acquaintance with the
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  Speaker 1: actual facts, and it may not be amiss here in
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  Speaker 1: the briefest possible way to indicate what the world's history, literature,
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  Speaker 1: and art has to say to us on the whole subject.
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  Speaker 1: Before we go on to any further considerations of our own. Certainly,
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  Speaker 1: if the confronting of danger and the endurance of pain
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  Speaker 1: and distress for the sake of the loved one, if sacrifice,
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  Speaker 1: unswerving devotion, and lifelong union constitute proofs of the reality
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  Speaker 1: and intensity, and let us say healthiness of an effect,
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  Speaker 1: then these proofs have been given in numberless cases of
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  Speaker 1: such attachment, not only as existing between men, but as
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  Speaker 1: between women, since the world began. The records of chivalric love,
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  Speaker 1: the feats of enamored knights for their ladies sakes, the
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  Speaker 1: stories of Hero and Leander, et cetera, are easily paralleled,
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  Speaker 1: if not surpassed, by the stories of the Greek comrades
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  Speaker 1: in arms and tyrannicides, of Cratinus and Aristodemus, who offered
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  Speaker 1: themselves together as a voluntary sacrifice for the purification of Athens,
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  Speaker 1: of Cariton and Melanippus, who attempted to assassinate Phalaris, the
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  Speaker 1: tyrant of Agrigentum, of Diocles who fell fighting in defense
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  Speaker 1: of his loved one, or of Cleomachus, who, in like
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  Speaker 1: manner in a battle between the Chalcidians and Eritreans, being
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  Speaker 1: entreated to charge. The latter quote asked the youth he loved,
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  Speaker 1: who was standing by, whether he would be a spectator
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  Speaker 1: of the fight, And when he said he would, and
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  Speaker 1: affectionately kissed Cleomachus and put his helmet on his head. Cleamachus,
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  Speaker 1: with a proud joy, placed himself in the front of
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  Speaker 1: the bravest of the Thessalians, and charged the enemy's cavalry
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  Speaker 1: with such impetuosity that he threw them into disorder and
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  Speaker 1: routed them, and the Eritrean cavalry fleeing. In consequence, the
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  Speaker 1: Chalcidians won a splendid victory from Plutarch's Eroticus. The annals
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  Speaker 1: of all nations contained similar records, though probably among none
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  Speaker 1: has the ideal of this love been quite so enthusiastic
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  Speaker 1: and heroic as among the post Homeric Greeks. It is
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  Speaker 1: well known that among the Polynesian islanders, for the most
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  Speaker 1: part of very gentle and affectionate people, probably inheriting the
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  Speaker 1: traditions of a higher culture than they now possess, the
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  Speaker 1: most romantic male friendships are or were in vogue. Says
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  Speaker 1: Hermann Melville in OMU chapter thirty nine, quote the really
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  Speaker 1: Curious way in which all Polynesians are in the habit
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  Speaker 1: of making bosom friends, is deserving of remark. In the
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  Speaker 1: annals of the island Tahiti are examples of extravagant friendships,
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  Speaker 1: unsurpassed by the story of Damon and Pytheas, in truth
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  Speaker 1: much more wonderful, for, notwithstanding the devotion even of life,
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  Speaker 1: in some cases to which they led, they were frequently
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  Speaker 1: entertained at first sight for some stranger from another island
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  Speaker 1: end quote. So thoroughly recognized. Indeed were these unions that
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  Speaker 1: Melville explains in Taypee chapter eighteen, that if two men
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  Speaker 1: of hostile tribes or islands became thus pledged to each other,
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  Speaker 1: then each could pass through the enemy's territory without fear
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  Speaker 1: of molestation or injury. And the passionate nature of these
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  Speaker 1: attachments is indicated by the following passage from Omu. Though
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  Speaker 1: little inclined to jealousy in ordinary love matters, the Tahitian
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  Speaker 1: will hear of no rivals in his friendship, even among
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  Speaker 1: savage races lower down than these in the scale of evolution,
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  Speaker 1: and who are generally accused of being governed in their
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  Speaker 1: love relations only by the most animal desires. We find
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  Speaker 1: a genuine sentiment of comradeship beginning to assert itself, as
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  Speaker 1: among the Ballonda and other African tribes, where regular ceremonies
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  Speaker 1: of the betrothal of comrades take place by the transfusion
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  Speaker 1: of a few drops of blood into each other's drinking balls,
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  Speaker 1: by the exchange of names, and the mutual gift of
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  Speaker 1: their most precious possessions. But, unfortunately, owing to the obtuseness
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  Speaker 1: of current European opinion on this subject, these and other
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  Speaker 1: such customs have been but little investigated, and have by
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  Speaker 1: no means received the attention that they ought. When we
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  Speaker 1: turn to the poetic and literary utterances of the more
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  Speaker 1: civilized nations on this subject, we cannot but be struck
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  Speaker 1: by the range and intensity of the emotions expressed from
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  Speaker 1: the beautiful therenity of David over his friend, whose love
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  Speaker 1: was passing the love of women, through the vast panorama
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  Speaker 1: of the Homeric Iliad, of which the heroic friendship of
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  Speaker 1: Achilles and his dear Petrocolus forms really the basic theme,
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  Speaker 1: down to the works of the Great Greek Age, the
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  Speaker 1: splendid odes of Pindar, burning with clear fire of passion,
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  Speaker 1: the lofty elegies of Theognis, full of wise precepts to
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  Speaker 1: his beloved Curnus, the sweet pastorals of Theocritus, the passionate
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  Speaker 1: lyrics of Sappho, or the more sensual raptures of Anacrian.
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  Speaker 1: Some of the dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles, as the
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  Speaker 1: mermidines of the former, and the lovers of Achilles of
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  Speaker 1: the latter, appear to have had this subject for their motive. Footnote,
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  Speaker 1: though these two plays, except for some quotations, are lost
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  Speaker 1: and a footnote, and many of the prose poem dialogs
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  Speaker 1: of Plato were certainly inspired by it. Then, coming to
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  Speaker 1: the literature of the roman Age, whose materialistic spirit could
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  Speaker 1: only with difficulty seize the finer inspiration of the homogenic love,
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  Speaker 1: and which in such writers as Catullus and Marshal could only,
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  Speaker 1: for the most part, give expression to its grosser side,
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  Speaker 1: we still find in Virgil a noble and notable instance.
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  Speaker 1: His second eclogue bears the marks of a genuine passion,
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  Speaker 1: and according to some he there under the name of Alexis,
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  Speaker 1: immortalizes his own love for the youthful Alexander. Nor is
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  Speaker 1: it possible to pass over in this connection the great
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  Speaker 1: mass of Persian literature, and the poets Sadi Hafiz Jami
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  Speaker 1: and many others, whose names and works are for all time,
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  Speaker 1: and whose marvelous love songs quote Bitter and Sweet is
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  Speaker 1: the parting kiss on the lips of a friend end
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  Speaker 1: are to a large extent, if not mostly, addressed to
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  Speaker 1: those of their own sex footnote, though in translations this
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  Speaker 1: fact is often by pious fraudulence disguised end of footnote.
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  Speaker 1: Of the medieval period in Europe we have, of course,
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  Speaker 1: but few literary monuments. Towards its close. We come upon
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  Speaker 1: the interesting story of Amih and Amil thirteenth century, unearthed
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  Speaker 1: by mister W. Peter from the Bibliotheca Elzeviliana. Though there
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  Speaker 1: is historic evidence of the prevalence of the passion, we
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  Speaker 1: may say of this period that its ideal was undoubtedly
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  Speaker 1: rather the chivalric love than the love of comrades. But
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  Speaker 1: with the Renaissance in Italy and the Elizabethan period in England,
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  Speaker 1: the latter once more comes to evidence in a burst
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  Speaker 1: of poetic utterance, which culminates perhaps in the magnificent sonnets
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  Speaker 1: of Michelangelo and of Shakespeare footnote. Among prose writers of
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  Speaker 1: this period, Montigna, whose treatment of the subject is enthusiastic
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  Speaker 1: and unequivocal, should not be overlooked. End a footnote of Michelangelo,
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  Speaker 1: whose pure beauty of expression lifts the enthusiasm into the
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  Speaker 1: highest region as a direct perception of the divine in
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  Speaker 1: mortal form. Footnote. I may be excused for quoting here
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  Speaker 1: the sonnet number fifty four from J. A. Simmons translation
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  Speaker 1: of the Sonnets of Michelangelo. Quote from thy fair face,
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  Speaker 1: I learn, o, my loved Lord, that which no mortal
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  Speaker 1: tongue can rightly say. The soul imprisoned in her house
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  Speaker 1: of clay hulpen by thee to God hath often soared.
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  Speaker 1: And though the vulgar, vain, malie ignant horde attribute what
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  Speaker 1: their grosser wills obey, Yet shall this fervent homage that
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  Speaker 1: I pay, this love, this faith, pure joys for us
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  Speaker 1: afford lo all the lovely things we find on earth
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  Speaker 1: resemble for the soul that rightly sees that source of
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  Speaker 1: bliss divine which gave us birth. Nor have we first
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  Speaker 1: fruits or remembrances of Heaven elsewhere. Thus, loving loyally, I
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  Speaker 1: rise to God and make death sweet by thee end quote.
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  Speaker 1: The labours of von Scheffler, followed by J. A. Simmons,
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  Speaker 1: have now pretty conclusively established the pious frauds of the nephew,
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  Speaker 1: and the fact that the love poems of the elder
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  Speaker 1: Michelangelo were for the most part written to male friends
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  Speaker 1: end a footnote, And of Shakespeare, whose passionate words and
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  Speaker 1: amorous spirituality of friendship have for long enough been a
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  Speaker 1: perplexity to hide bound and commentators. Thence through minor writers,
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  Speaker 1: not overlooking Winckelmann in Germany, we pass to quite modern
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  Speaker 1: times in which, notwithstanding the fact that the passion has
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  Speaker 1: been much misunderstood and misinterpreted, two names stand conspicuously fourth
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  Speaker 1: those of Tennyson, whose In Memoriam is perhaps his finest work,
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  Speaker 1: and of Walt Whitman, the enthusiasm of whose poems on
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  Speaker 1: comradeship is only paralleled by the devotedness of his labours
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  Speaker 1: for his wounded brothers in the American Civil War. It
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  Speaker 1: will be noticed that here we have some of the
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  Speaker 1: very greatest names in all literature concerned, and that their
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  Speaker 1: utterances on this subject equal, if they do not surpass,
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  Speaker 1: in beauty, intensity, and humanity of sentiment whatever has been
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  Speaker 1: written in praise of the other more ordinarily recognized love.
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  Speaker 1: And when again we turn to the records of art
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  Speaker 1: and compare the way in which man's sense of love
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  Speaker 1: and beauty has expressed itself in the portrayal of the
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  Speaker 1: male form and the female form, respectively, we find exactly
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  Speaker 1: the same thing. The whole vista of Greek statuary allows
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  Speaker 1: the male passion of beauty in high degree. Yet though
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  Speaker 1: the statues of men and youths by male sculptors preponderate,
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  Speaker 1: probably considerably, both in actual number and in devotedness of execution,
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  Speaker 1: over the statues of female figures, it is, as J. A.
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  Speaker 1: Simmons says in his Life of Michelangelo, remarkable that in
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  Speaker 1: all the range of the former there are hardly two
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  Speaker 1: or three that show a base or licentious expression such
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  Speaker 1: as is not so very uncommon in the female statues. Footnote.
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  Speaker 1: I am not aware of any cases in the plastic
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  Speaker 1: arts which strongly illustrate the homogenic sentiment as between women
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  Speaker 1: by the loving portrayal of female beauty by artists of
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  Speaker 1: the same sex as by Sappho in literature, though no
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  Speaker 1: doubt there are such cases and a footnote. Knowing as
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  Speaker 1: we do the strength of the male physical passion in
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  Speaker 1: the life of the Greeks, this one fact speaks strongly
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  Speaker 1: for the sense of proportion which must have characterized his
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  Speaker 1: passion at any rate in the most productive age of
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  Speaker 1: their art. In the case of Michelangelo, we have an
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  Speaker 1: artist who, with brush and chisel, portrayed literally thousands of
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  Speaker 1: human forms. But with this peculiarity that while scores and
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  Speaker 1: scores of his male figures are obviously suffused and inspired
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  Speaker 1: by a romantic sentiment, there is hardly one of his
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  Speaker 1: female figures that is so, the latter being mostly representative
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  Speaker 1: of woman in her part as mother or sufferer, or
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  Speaker 1: prophetess or poetess, or in old age, or in any
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  Speaker 1: aspect of strength or tenderness, except that which associates itself,
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  Speaker 1: especially with passionate love. Yet, the cleanliness and dignity of
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  Speaker 1: Michelangelo's male figures are incontestable and best striking witness to
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  Speaker 1: that nobility of the sentiment in him which we have
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  Speaker 1: already seen illustrated in his sonnets. End of Section one.
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  Speaker 1: Section two of Homogenic Love and its Place in a
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  Speaker 1: Free Society by Edward Carpenter. This LibriVox recording is in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. Section two. This brief sketch may suffice
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  Speaker 1: to give the reader some idea of the place and
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  Speaker 1: position in the world of the particular sentiment which we
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  Speaker 1: are discussing. Nor can it fail to impress him if
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  Speaker 1: any reference is made to the authorities quoted with a
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  Speaker 1: sense of the dignity and solidity of the sentiment, at
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  Speaker 1: any rate, as handled by some of the world's greatest men.
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  Speaker 1: At the same time, it will be sure to arouse
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  Speaker 1: further questions. It will be evident from the instances given,
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  Speaker 1: and there would be no object in ignoring this fact
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  Speaker 1: that this kind of love, too like others, has its
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  Speaker 1: physical side, and queries will naturally arise as to the
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  Speaker 1: exact place and purport of the physical in it. This
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  Speaker 1: is a subject which we shall have occasion to consider
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  Speaker 1: more in detail in the second part of this paper,
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  Speaker 1: But here a few general remarks may be made. In
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  Speaker 1: the first place, we may say that to all love,
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  Speaker 1: and indeed to all human feeling, there must necessarily be
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  Speaker 1: a physical side. The most delicate emotion which plays through
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  Speaker 1: the mind has we cannot but perceive its corresponding subtle
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  Speaker 1: change in the body, and the great passions are accompanied
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  Speaker 1: by wide reaching disturbances and transformations of corporeal tissue and fluid.
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  Speaker 1: Who knows it may be asked how deeply the mother
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  Speaker 1: love is intertwined with the growth of the lacteal vessels
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  Speaker 1: and the need of the suckled infant, or how intimately
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  Speaker 1: even the most abs distract of desires, namely the religious,
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  Speaker 1: is rooted in the slow, hidden metamorphosis by which a
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  Speaker 1: new creature is really and physically born within the old.
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  Speaker 1: Richard Wagner, in a pregnant little passage in his Communication
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  Speaker 1: to My Friends, says that the essence of human love
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  Speaker 1: quote is the longing for utmost physical reality, for fruition
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  Speaker 1: in an object which can be grasped by all the senses,
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  Speaker 1: held fast with all the force of actual being end quote.
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  Speaker 1: And if this is a somewhat partial statement, it yet
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  Speaker 1: puts into clear language one undoubted relation between the sensuous
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  Speaker 1: and the emotional in all love, and the sweet excuse
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  Speaker 1: which this relation may be said to provide for the
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  Speaker 1: existence of the actual world, namely, that the latter is
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  Speaker 1: the means whereby we become conscious of our most intimate selves.
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  Speaker 1: But if this is true of love in general, it
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  Speaker 1: must be true of the homogenic love, and we must
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  Speaker 1: not be surprised to find that in all times this
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  Speaker 1: attachment has had some degree of physical expression. The question, however,
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  Speaker 1: as to what degree of physical intimacy may be termed
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  Speaker 1: in such a case fitting and natural, though a question
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  Speaker 1: which is sure to arise, is one not easy to answer,
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  Speaker 1: more especially as in the common mind any intimacy of
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  Speaker 1: a bodily nature between two persons of the same sex
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  Speaker 1: is so often, in the case of males, set down
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  Speaker 1: as a sexual act of the crudest and grossest kind. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: the difficulty here is that the majority of people, being
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  Speaker 1: incapable perhaps of understanding the inner feeling of the homogenic attachment,
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  Speaker 1: as indeed the majority of people have a difficulty in
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  Speaker 1: appreciating the inner feeling of most love, find it hard
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  Speaker 1: to imagine that the intimacy has any other object than
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  Speaker 1: the particular form of sensuality mentioned, i e. The venus
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  Speaker 1: of s which appears, be it said to be rare
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  Speaker 1: in all the northern countries, or that people can be
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  Speaker 1: held together by any tie except the most sheerly material one,
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  Speaker 1: a view which of course turns the whole subject upside
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  Speaker 1: down and gives rise to violent and no doubt very
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  Speaker 1: natural disapprobation, and to endless recriminations and confusion. Into this mistake.
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  Speaker 1: We need not fall without denying that sexual intimacies do exist,
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  Speaker 1: and while freely admitting that in great cities there are
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  Speaker 1: to be found associated with this form of attachment, prostitution,
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  Speaker 1: and other evils comparable with the evils associated with the
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  Speaker 1: ordinary sex attachment, we may yet say that it would
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: be a great error to suppose that the homogenic love
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  Speaker 1: takes as a rule the extreme form vulgarly supposed, and
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  Speaker 1: that it would also be a great error to overlook
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  Speaker 1: the fact that, in a large number of instances the
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  Speaker 1: relation is not distinctly sexual at all, though it may
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  Speaker 1: be said to be physical in the sense of embrace
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  Speaker 1: and endearment. While it is not my object in this
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  Speaker 1: paper to condemn special acts or familiarities between lovers, since
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  Speaker 1: these things must, no doubt be largely left to individual judgment,
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  Speaker 1: aided by whatever light science and physiology may in the
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  Speaker 1: future be able to throw upon the subject, still I
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  Speaker 1: am anxious that it should be clearly understood that the
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  Speaker 1: glow of a really human and natural love between two
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  Speaker 1: persons of the same sex may be, and often is felt,
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  Speaker 1: without implying, as is so often assumed, mere depravity of
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  Speaker 1: character or conduct. No one can read the superb sonnets
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  Speaker 1: already mentioned of Shakespeare and Michelangelo without feeling beneath the
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  Speaker 1: general mass of emotional utterance, the pulsation of a distinct
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  Speaker 1: bodily desire, and even Tennyson, somewhat tenuous and broad Churchy
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  Speaker 1: as he is, is too great master and too true
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  Speaker 1: a man not to acknowledge, in his great comrade poem
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  Speaker 1: in Memoriam see Cantos thirteen eighteen, etc. The passionateness of
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  Speaker 1: his attachment for doing, which indeed he was soundly rated
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  Speaker 1: by the Times at the time of its publication. Yet
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  Speaker 1: it would be monstrous to suppose that these men and others,
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  Speaker 1: because they were capable of this kind of feeling and
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  Speaker 1: willing to confess its sensuous side, were therefore particularly licentious.
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  Speaker 1: With these few general remarks, and the conclusion so far
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  Speaker 1: that while the homogenic feeling undoubtedly demands some kind of
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  Speaker 1: physical expression, the question what degree of intimacy is in
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  Speaker 1: all cases fitting a natural may not be a very
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  Speaker 1: easy one to decide, we may pass on to consider
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  Speaker 1: what light is thrown on the whole subject by some
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  Speaker 1: recent scientific investigations that passionate attachment between two persons of
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: the same since is, as we have seen, a phenomenon
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: widespread through the human race and enduring in history, has
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: been always more or less recognized, and once, at least
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: in history in the Greek Age, the passion rose into
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: distinct consciousness and justified or even it might be said,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: glorified itself. But in later times, especially perhaps during the
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: last century or two of European life, it has generally
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: been treated by the accredited thinkers and writers as a
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: thing to be passed over in silence, as associated with
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: mere grossness and mental aberration, or as unworthy of serious attention.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: In latest times, however, that is, during the last thirty
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: years or so, a group of scientific and capable men
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: in Germany, France and Italy, among whom our doctor Albert
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: mol of Berlin craft Ebbing, one of the leading medical
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: authorities of Vienna, whose book on sexual psychopathy has passed
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: into his eighth edition. Doctor Paul Moreau des abberreschent du
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: sans genesik cesare rombrosso the author of various works in anthropology, Tanovsky, Mantegatza, k.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: H Urich and others have made a special and more
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: or less impartial study of this subject, with the result
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: that a quite altered complexion has been given to it,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: it being indeed especially noticeable that the change of view
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: among the scientists has gone on step by step with
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: the accumulation of reliable information, and that it is most
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: marked in the latest authors such as Craft, Abing and
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: mol It is not possible here to go into anything
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: like a detailed account of the works of these various authors,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: their theories, and the immense number of interesting cases and
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: observations which they have contributed, but some of the general
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: conclusions which flow from their researches may be pointed out.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: In the first place, their labours have established the fact
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: known hitherto only to individuals, that sexual inversion, that is,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: the leaning of sexual desire to one of the same sex, is,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: in a vast number of cases quite instinctive and congenital
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: mentally and physically, and therefore twined in the very roots
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: of individual life, and practically ineradicable to men or women
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: thus affected with an innate homosexual bias. Urisch gave the
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: name of earning, since pretty widely accepted by scientists. Footnote
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: from Uranos because the celestial love was the daughter of Uranos.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: See Plato's symposium speech of Pausinius and a footnote. Too
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: much emphasis cannot be laid on the distinction between these
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: born lovers of their own sex and that class of
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: persons with whom they are so often confused, who, out
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: of mere carnal curiosity or extravagance of desire, or from
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the dearth of opportunities for more normal satisfaction, as in schools, barracks, etc.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Adopt some homosexual practices. In the case of these latter,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: the attraction towards their own sex is merely superficial and temptational,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: so to speak, and is generally felt by those concerned
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: to be in some degree morbid. In the case of
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: the former, it is, as said, so deeply rooted and
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: twined with the mental and emotional life that the person
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: concerned has difficulty in imagining himself affected otherwise than he is,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: and to him at least, the homogenic love appears healthy
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: and natural, and indeed necessary to the concretion of his individuality.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: In the second place, it has become clear that the
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: number of individuals affected with sexual inversion in some degree
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: or other is very great, much greater than is generally
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: supposed to be the case. It is, however, very difficult
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: or perhaps impossible, to arrive at satisfactory figures on the subject,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: for the simple reasons that the proportions vary so greatly
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: among different peoples, and even in different sections of society
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: and in different localities, And because of course they are
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: all possible grades of sexual inversion to deal with, from
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: that in which the instinct is quite exclusively directed towards
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: the same sex, to the other extreme, in which it
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: is normally towards the opposite sex, but capable occasionally and
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: under exceptional attractions, of inversion towards its own, this last
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: condition being probably among some peoples very widespread, if not universal. Footnote.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: With regard to the number of these quite exclusive homosexuals
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: supposedly born, so estimates vary from one man in every
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: fifty to one in every five hundred end a footnote.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: In the third place, By the tabulation and comparison of
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: a great number of cases and confessions, it has become
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: pretty well established that the individual affected with inversion in
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: marked degree, do not, after all, differ from the rest
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: of mankind or womankind in any other physical or mental
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: particular which can be distinctly indicated footnote, though there is
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: no doubt a general tendency towards femininity of type in
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: the male earning and towards masculinity in the female end
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: of footnote, no congenital association with any particular physical conformation
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: or malformation has yet been discovered, nor with any distinct
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: disease of body or mind. Nor does it appear that
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: persons of this class are usually of a gross or
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: specially low type, but of anything rather the opposite, being
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: often of refined, sensitive nature, and including, as craft Abing
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: points out, a great number highly gifted in the fine arts,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: especially music and poetry, and as Matigatsa says, many persons
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: of high literature and social distinction. It is true thatt
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: Abing insists on the generally strong sexual equipment of this
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: class of persons among men, but he hastens to say
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: that their emotional love is also enthusiastic and exalted, and
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: that while bodily congress is desired, the special act with
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: which they are vulgarly credited is in most cases repugnant
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: to them. The only distinct characteristic which the scientific writers
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: claim to have established is a marked tendency to nervous
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: development in the subject, not infrequently associated with nervous maladies.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: But as I shall presently have occasion to show, there
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: is reason to think that the validity even of this
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: characteristic has been exaggerated. Taking the general case of men
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: with a marked exclusive preference for their own sex craft,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: Abing says, the sexual life of these homosexuals is mutatis
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: mutandis just the same as in the case of normal
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: sis sex love. The earning loves deifies his male beloved
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: one exactly as the woman wooing man does his beloved
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: For him, he is capable of the greatest sacrifice, experiences
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: the torments of unhappy often unrequited love, of faithlessness on
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: his beloved, part of jealousy, and so forth. His attention
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: is enchained only by the male form. The sight of
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: feminine charms is indifferent to him, if not repugnant. End quote.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Then he goes on to say that many such men,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: notwithstanding their actual aversion to intercourse with the female, do
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: ultimately marry, whether from ethical as sometimes happens or from
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: social considerations. But very remarkable as illustrating the depth and
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: tenacity of the homogenic instinct. And pathetic too, are the
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: records that he gives of these cases, for in many
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: of them, a real friendship and regard between the married
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: pers was still of no avail to overcome the distaste
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: on the part of one to sexual intercourse with the other,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: or to prevent the experience of actual physical distress after
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: such intercourse, or to check the continual flow of affection
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: to some third person of the same sex, and thus, unwillingly,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: so to speak, this bias remained a cause of suffering
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: to the end footnote how deep congenital sex inversion roots
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: may be gathered from the fact that the pleasure dream
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: of the male earning has to do with male persons
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: and of the female with females quote by craft Abing,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: end of footnote. This very brief summary of scientific conclusions
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: taken in conjunction with the fact which we have already
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: referred to, that the whole literature and life of the
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: greatest people of antiquity, the Greeks of the Periclean age,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: was saturated with the passion of homogenic or comrade love.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Must convince us that this passion cannot be lightly dismissed
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: as of no account, must convince us that it has
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: an important part to play in human affairs. On the
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: one hand, we have anathemas and execrations. On the other
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: we have the sublime enthusiasm of a man like Plato,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: one of the leaders of the world's thought for all time,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: who puts, for example, into the mouth of Phaedrus in
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: the Symposium, such a passage as this quote. I know
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: not any greater blessing to a young man beginning life
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: than a virtuous lover, or to the lover than a
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: beloved youth. For the principle which ought to be the
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: guide of men who would nobly live, that principle, I say,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: neither kindred, nor honor, nor wealth, nor any other motive
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: is able to implant so well as love. Of what
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: am I speaking of the sense of honor and dishonor,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: without which neither states nor individuals ever do any good
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: or great work. For what lover would not choose rather
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: to be seen of all mankind than by his beloved,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: he would be ready to die a thousand deaths. Rather
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: than endure this or who would desert his beloved or
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: fail him in the hour of danger, the veriest coward
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: would become an inspired hero equal to the bravest. At
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: such a time, love would inspire him that courage, which,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: as Homer says, the God breathes into the soul of heroes.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Love of his own nature inspires into the lover end quote.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: Or again in the Phadrus, Plato makes Socrates say, quote,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: in like manner, the followers of Apollo and of every
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: other God, walking in the ways of their God, seek
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: a love who is to be like their God. And
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: when they have found him, they themselves imitate their God
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: and persuade their love to do the same, and bring
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: him into harmony with the form and ways of the
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: God odd as far as they can. For they have
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: no feelings of envy or jealousy towards their beloved, but
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: they do their utmost to create in him the greatest
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: likeness of themselves and the God whom they honor. Thus,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: fair and blissful to the beloved when he is taken
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: is the desire of the inspired lover, and the initiation
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: of which I speak Into the mysteries of true love
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: if their purpose is affected. End quote. And yet Plato,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: throughout his discourses never suggests for a moment that the
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: love of which he is speaking is any other than
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: the homogenic passion, nor glosses over or conceals its strong
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: physical substructure. End of section two. Section three of Homogenic
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Love and its Place in a Free Society by Edward Carpenter.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Section three.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: We have now, I think, said enough to show, from
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: the testimony of history, literature, art, and even of modern science,
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: that the homogenic passion is capable of splendid developments, and
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: that a love and capacity of love of so intimate,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: penetrating and inspiring a kind, and which has played so
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: important a part in the life histories of some of
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: the greatest races and individuals, is well worthy of respectful
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: and thoughtful consideration. And I think it has become obvious
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: that to cast a slur upon this kind of love,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: because it may in cases lead to aberrations and extravagances,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: would be a most irrational thing to do, since exactly
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: the same charges of possible aberration and extravagance might be
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: brought and the same conclusion enforced against the ordinary sex love.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: It is, however, so often charged against the sentiment in question,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: that it is essentially unnatural and morbid in character. That
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: but it may be worthwhile, though we have already touched
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: on this point, to consider it here at greater length.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: I therefore propose to devote a few more pages to
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: the examination of the scientific position on this subject, and
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: then to pass on to a consideration of the general
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: place and purpose of the homogenic or comrade love, its
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: sanity being granted in human character and social life. It
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: might be thought that the testimonies of history, literature, and
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: art above referred to would be quite sufficient of themselves
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: to dispose of the charge of essential morbidity. But as
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: mankind in general is not in the habit of taking
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: bird's eye views of history and literature, and as it
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: finds it easy to assume that anything a little exceptional
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: is also morbid, so it is not difficult to see
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: how this charge in countries where the sentiment is exceptional
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: has arisen and maintained itself. Science, of course, is nothing
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: but common observation, organized and systematized, and so naturally find
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: that with regard to this subject, it started on its
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: investigations from the same general assumptions that possessed the public mind.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: It may safely be said that until the phenomena of
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: homogenic love began to be calmly discussed by the few
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: scientific men already mentioned, the subject had never since classical
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: times been once fairly faced in the arena of literature
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: or public discussion, and had as a rule been simply
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: dismissed with opprobious epithets well suited to give an easy
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: victory to prejudice and ignorance. But the history of even
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: these few years of scientific investigation bears with it a
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: memorable lesson. For while at the outset it was easily
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: assumed that the homogenic instinct was thoroughly morbid in itself,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: and probably always associated with distinct disease, either physical or mental,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: the progress of the inquiry has, as already pointed out,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: served more and more to dissipate this view, And it
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: is no noticeable that craft Abing and mol the latest
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: of the purely scientific authorities, are the least disposed to
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: insist upon the theory of morbidity. It is true that
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: craft Abing clings to the opinion that there is generally
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: some neurosis or degeneration of a nerve center or inherited
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: tendency in that direction associated with the instinct. See page
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: one hundred ninety seventh edition, also page two hundred and
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: twenty seven, where he speaks rather vaguely of quote an
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: hereditary neuropathic or psychopathic tendency end quote neial psychle patische belastung.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: But it is an obvious criticism on this, that there
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: are few people in modern life, perhaps none, who could
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: be pronounced absolutely free from such a belastung. And whether
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: the Dorian Greeks, or the Polynesian Islanders, or the Celts
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: spoken of by Aristotle, or the Normans or the Albanian mountaineers,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: or any of the other notably hardy races among whom
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: the passion has been developed were particularly troubled by nervous degeneration,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: we may well doubt footnote. It is interesting, too to
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: find that Walt Whitman, who certainly had the homogenic instinct
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: highly developed, was characterized by his doctor W. B. Drinkard
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: as having quote the most natural habits, bases, and organization
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: he had ever met with or ever seen quote in
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: any man. As to mol though he speaks of the
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: instinct as morbid feeling, perhaps in duty bound to do so,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: it is very noticeable that he abandons the ground of
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: its association with other morbid symptoms, as this association, he says,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: is by no means always to be observed, and is
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: fain to rest his judgment on the dictum that the
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: mere failure of the sexual instinct to propagate the species
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: is itself pathological, a dictum which in its turn obviously
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: springs from that prejudgment of some scientists that generation is
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: the sole object of love, and which if pressed, would
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: involve the good doctor in awkward dilemmas, as, for instance,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: that every worker bee is a pathological specimen. With regard
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: to the nerve degeneration theory. While it may be allowed
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: that sexual inversion is not uncommonly found in connection with
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: the specially nervous temperament, it must be remembered that its
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: occasional association with nervous troubles or disease is quite another matter,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: since such troubles ought perhaps to be looked upon as
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: the results rather than the causes, of the inversion. It
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: is difficult, of course, for outsiders not personally experienced in
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: the matter to realize the great strain and tension of
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: nerves under which those persons grow up from boyhood to manhood,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: or from girl to womanhood, who find their deepest and
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: strongest instincts under the ban of the society around them,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: who before they clearly understand the drift of their own natures,
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: discus cover that they are somehow cut off from the
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: sympathy and understanding of those nearest them, and who know
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: that they can never give expression to their tenderest yearnings
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: of affection without exposing themselves to the possible charge of
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: actions stigmatized as odious crimes. Footnote extract from a letter
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: given by Craft, aiming quote, Though then, before my own conscience,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: I cannot reproach myself, and though I must certainly reject
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: the judgment of the world about us, yet I suffer greatly.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: In very truth. I have injured no one, and I
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: hold my love in its nobler activity for just as
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: wholly as that of normally disposed men. But under the
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: unhappy fate that allows us neither sufferance nor recognition, I
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: suffer often more than my life can bear. End quote
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: end a footnote that's such a strain acting on one
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: who is perhaps already of a nervous temperament, should tend
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: to cause nervous prostration or even mental disturbance, is of
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: course obvious, And if such disturbances are really found to
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: be commoner among homogenic lovers than among ordinary folk, we
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: have in these social causes probably a sufficient explanation of
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: the fact. Then again, in this connection, it must never
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: be forgotten that the medico scientific enquirer is bound on
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: the whole to meet with those cases that are of
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: a morbid character, rather than with those that are healthy
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: in their manifestation. Since indeed it is the former that
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: he lays himself out for, and since the field of
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: his research is usually a great modern city, there is
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: little wonder if disease colours his conclusions. In the case
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: of doctor moul who carried out his researches largely under
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: the guidance of the Berlin police, whose acquaintance with the
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: subject would naturally be limited to its least satisfactory sides,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: the only marvel is that his verdict is so markedly
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: favorable as it is. As Ebing says in his own
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: preface quote, it is the sad privilege of medicine and
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: especially of psychiatry, to look always on the reverse side
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: of life, on the weakness and the wretchedness of man
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: end quote. Having regard then to the direction in which
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: science has been steadily moving in this matter, it is
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: not difficult to see that the epithet morbid will probably
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: before long be abandoned as descriptive of the homogenic bias,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: that is, of the general sentiment of love towards a
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: person of the same sex. That there are excesses of
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: the passion cases as in ordinary sex love, where mere
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: physical desire becomes a mania, we may freely admit. But
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: as it would be unfair to judge of the purity
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: of marriage by the evidence of the divorce courts, so
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: it would be monstrous to measure the truth and beauty
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: of the attachment in question by those instances which stand
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: most prominently, perhaps in the eye of the modern public.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: And after all deductions there remains we contend the vast
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: body of cases in which the manifestation of the instinct
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: has on the whole the character of normality and a healthfulness,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: sufficiently so, in fact, to constitute this a distinct variety
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: of the sexual passion. The question of course not being
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: whether the instinct is capable of morbid and extravagant manifestation,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: for this can easily be proved of any instinct, but
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: whether it is capable of a healthy and sane expression,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: and this we think it has abundantly shown itself to be. Anyhow,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: the work that science has practically done has been to
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: destroy the dogmatic attitude of the former current opinion from
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: which itself started, and to leave the whole subject freed
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: from a great deal of misunderstanding, and much more open
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: than before. Its labours, And they have been valuable in
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: this way, have been chiefly of a negative character. While unable,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: on the one hand, and to characterize the physical attraction
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: in question as definitely morbid or the result of morbid tendencies,
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: it is unable, on the other hand, to say positively
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: at present what physiological or other purpose is attained by
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: the instinct. This question of the physiological basis of the
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: homogenic love, to which we have more than once alluded,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: is a very important one, and it seems a strange
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: oversight on the part of science that it has hitherto
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: taken so little notice of it. The desire for corporeal
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: intimacy of some kind between persons of the same sex,
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Existing as it does in such force and so widely
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: over the face of the earth, it would seem almost
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: certain that there must be some physiological basis for the desire.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: But until we know more than we do at present
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: as to what this basis may be, we are necessarily
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: unable to understand the desire itself as well as we
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: might wish. It may be hoped that this is a
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: point to which attention will be given in the future. Meanwhile,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: though the problem is a complex one, it may not
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: be amiss here to venture a suggestion or two. In
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: the first place, it may be suggested that an important
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: part of all love, union, mental or physical, is its
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: influence personally on those concerned. This influence is, of course
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: subtle and hard to define, and one can hardly be
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: surprised that science, assuming hitherto in its consideration of ordinary
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: sexual relations, that the mutual actions and reactions were directed
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: solely to the purpose of generation and the propagation of
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: the species, has almost quite neglected the question of the
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: direct influences on the lovers themselves. Yet everyone is sensible
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: practically that there is much more in an intimacy with
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: another person than the question of children alone. But even
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: setting aside the effects of actual sex intercourse, there are
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: subtile elements passing from one to another, which are sensible
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: to personal well being, and which makes some such intimacy
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: almost a necessary condition of health. It may be that
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: there are some persons for whom these necessary reactions can
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: only come from one of the same sex. In fact,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: it is obvious there are such persons. Successful love, says Maul,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: exercises a healthful influence on the earning. His mental and
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: bodily condition improves, and capacity of work increases, just as
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: it often happens in the case of a normal youth
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: with his love. And further on, in a letter from
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: a man of this kind, occur these words quote. The
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: passion is I suppose so powerful just because one looks
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: for everything in the loved man, love, friendship, ideal and
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: sense satisfaction as it is at present, I suffer the
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: agonies of a deep unresponded passion, which wake me like
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: a nightmare from sleep, and I'm conscious of physical pain
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: in the region of the heart. In such cases, the love,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: in some degree physically expressed of another person of the
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: same sex is clearly as much a necessity and a
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: condition of healthy life and activity, as in more ordinary
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: cases is the love of a person of the opposite sex.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: It has probably been the arbitrary limitation of the function
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: of love to child breeding which has unconsciously influenced the
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: popular mind against the form of love which we are
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: considering that this kind of union was not concerned with
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: the propagation of the race, was in itself enough to
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: make people look askance at it. That any kind of
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: love union could exist in which the sex act might
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: possibly not be the main object was an incredible proposition,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: and in enforcing this view, no doubt, the Hebraic and
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: Christian tradition has exercised a powerful influence, dating, as it
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: almost certainly does, from far back times when the multiplication
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: of the tribe was one of the very first duties
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: of its members and one of the first necessities of
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: corporate life. Though nowadays, when the need has swung round
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: all the other way, it is not unreasonable to suppose
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: that a similar revolution will take place in people's views
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: of the place and purpose of the non child bearing love.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: We find in some quarters that even the most naive
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: attachments between youths are stigmatized as unnatural, though inconsistently enough
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: not those between girls. And this can only well be
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: from an assumption that all familiarities are meant by nature
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: to lead up to generation and race propagation. Yet no one,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: if fairly confronted with the question, would seriously maintain that
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: the mutual stimulus physical, mental, and moral, which flows from
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: embrace and endearment is nothing, and that because these things
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: do not tend to actual race propagation, therefore they must
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: be discountenanced. If so, must even the loving association between
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: man and wife, more than necessary for the breeding of children,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: or after the period of fertility has passed, be also discountenanced.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: Such questions might be multiplied indefinitely. They only serve to
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: show how very crude as yet are all our theories
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: on these subjects, and how necessary it is, in the
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: absence of more certain knowledge, to suspend our judgment. Footnote
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: quote from Mole. The truth is that we can no
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: more explain the inverted sex feeling than we can the
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: normal impulse. All the attempts at explanation of these things
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: and of love are defective. End quote end of footnote.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: End of section three Section four of Homogenic Love and
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: its Place in a Free Society by Edward Carpenter. This
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Section four. Summarizing then,
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: some of our conclusions on this rather difficult question, we
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: may say that the homogenic love, as a distinct variety
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: of the sex passion, is in the main subject to
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: the same laws as the ordinary love, that it probably
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: demands and requires some amount of physical intimacy, that a
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: wise humanity will quite recognize this, but that the degree
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: of intimacy, in default of more certain physiological knowledge than
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: we have, is a matter which can only be left
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: to the good sense and feeling of those concerned, And
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: that while we do not deny for a moment that
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: excesses of physical appetite exist, these forms no more reason
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: for debooing all expression of the sentiment than they do
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: in the case of the more normal love. We may
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: also say that if on the side of science much
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: is obscure, there is no obscurity in the principles of
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: healthy morality involved, that there is no exception here to
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: the law that sensuality apart from love, is degrading in
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: something less than human, or to the law that love
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: true love seeks nothing which is not consistent with the
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: welfare of the loved one, and that here too the
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: principle of transmutation applies. The principle that desire in man
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: has its physical, emotional, and spiritual sides, and that when
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: its outlet is checked along one channel, it will, within limits,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: tend to flow with more vehemence along the other channels,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: and that reasonable beings perceiving this, will, again, with limits,
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: check the sensual and tend to throw the center of
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: their love attraction upwards. Probably in this, as in all love,
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: it will be felt in the end by those who
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: devote themselves to each other and to the truth. To
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: be wisest to concentrate on the real thing, on the enduring,
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: deep affection, which is the real satisfaction and outcome of
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: the relation, and which, like a young sapling, they would
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: tend with love, loving care till it grows into a
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: mighty tree which the storms of a thousand years cannot shake,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: and those who do so heartily and truly can leave
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: the physical to take care of itself. This, indeed, is
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: perhaps the only satisfactory touchstone of the rightness and fitness
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: of human relations, generally in sexual matters. People not unnaturally
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: seek for an absolute rule in such matters, and a
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: fixed line between the right and the wrong. But may
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: we not say that there is no rule except that
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: of love, love making use of course, of whatever certain
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: knowledge science may, from time to time be able to provide.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: And speaking of the law of transmutation and its importance,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: it is clear I think that in the homosexual love,
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: whether between man and man or between woman and woman,
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: the physical side, from the very nature of the case,
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: can never find expression quite so freely and perfectly as
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: in the ordinary heterosexual love, and therefore that there is
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: a natural tendency for the former love to run rather
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: more along emotional channels. And this, no doubt throws light
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: on the fact that love of the homogenic type has
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: inspired such a vast amount of heroism and romance, and
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: is indeed only paralleled in this respect. As J. Addington
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: Symonds has pointed out in his paper on Danteesque and
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Platonic ideals of love by the loves of chivalry, which,
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: of course, owing to their special character, were subject to
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: a similar transmutation. It is well known that Plato, in
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: many passages in his dialogs, gives expression to the opinion
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: that the love, which at that time was common among
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: the Greek youths, had, in its best form, a special
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: function in educational, social, and heroic work. I have already
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: quoted from a passage from the Symposium, in which Phaedrus
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: speaks of the inspiration which this love provides towards an
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: honorable and heroic life. Pausanius, in the same dialogue says quote.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: In Ionia and other places, and generally in countries which
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: are subject to the barbarians, the custom is held to
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: be dishonorable. Loves of youths share the evil repute of
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: philosophy and gymnastics because they are inimical to tyranny. For
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: the interests of rulers require that their subjects should be
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: poor in spirit, and that there should be no strong
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: bond of friendship or society between them, which love, above
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: all other motives, is likely to inspire, as our Athenian
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: tyrants learned by experience end quote. This is a pretty
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: strong statement of the political significance of this kind of love.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: Richard Wagner, in his pamphlet The Art Work of the Future,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: has some interesting passages to the same effect, showing how
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: the conception of the beauty of manhood became the formative
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: influence of the Spartan state. He says, quote, this beauteous
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: naked man is the kernel of all spartan hood. From
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: genuine delight in the beauty of the most perfect human body,
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: that of the male, arose that spirit of comradeship which
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: pervades and shapes the whole economy of the Spartan state.
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: This love of man to man, in its primitive purity,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: proclaims itself as the noblest and least selfish utterance of
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: man's sense of beauty, For it teaches man to sink
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: and merge his entire self in the object of his affection.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: End quote and again quote. The higher element of that
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: love of man to man consisted even in this that
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: it excluded the motive of egoistic physicalism. Nevertheless, it not
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: only included a purely spiritual bond of friendship. But this
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: spiritual friendship was the blossom and the crown of the
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: physical friendship. The latter sprang directly from the delight in
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: the beauty i in the material bodily beauty of the
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: beloved comrade. Yet this delight was no egoistic yearning but
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: a thorough stepping out of self into unreserved sympathy with
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: the comrade's joy in himself, involuntarily betrayed by his life.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: Glad beauty prompted bearing this love, which had its basis
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: in the noblest pleasures of both eye and soul. Not
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: like our modern postal correspondence of sober friendship, half business like,
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: half sentimental, was the spartan's only tutoress of youth, the
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: never aging instructress alike of boy and man, the ordainer
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: of common feasts and valiant enterprises, nay, the inspiring help
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: meet on the battlefield. For this it was that knit
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: the fellowship of love into battalions of war. And four
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: wrote the tactics of death, daring in rescue of the
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: imperiled or vengeance for the slaughtered comrade by the infrangible
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: law of the soul's most natural necessity end quote. The
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: last sense in this quotation is well illustrated by a
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: passage from a privately printed pamphlet entitled A Problem in
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: Greek Ethics, in which the author endeavors to reconstruct, as
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: it were, the genesis of comrade love among the Dorians
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: in early Greek times, thus quote, without sufficiency of women,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: without the sanctities of established domestic life. Inspired by the
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: memory of Achilles, and venerating their ancestor Heracles, whose tomb,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: on account of his attachment to Iolauus, was a place
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: where comrades swore troth to each other. The Dorian warriors
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: had special opportunity for elevating comradeship to the rank of
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: an enthusiasm. The incidence of emigration into a distant country,
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: perils of the sea, passages of rivers and mountains, assorts
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: of fortresses and cities, landings on a hostile shore, night
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: vigils by the side of blazing beacons, foragings for food,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: picket service in the front of watchful foes, involved adventures
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: capable of shedding the luster of romance on friendship. These circumstances,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: by bringing the virtues of sympathy with the weak tenderness
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: for the beautiful, protection for the young, together with corresponding
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: qualities of gratitude, self devotion and admiring attachment into play,
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: may have tended to cement unions between man and man
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: no less firm than that of marriage. On such connections,
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: a wise captain would have relied for giving strength to
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: his battalions and for keeping alive the flames of enterprise
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: and daring. The author then goes on to suggest that
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: though in such relations as those indicated, the physical probably
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: had its share, yet it did not at that time
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: overbalance the emotional and spiritual elements, or lead to the
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: corruption and effeminacy of a later age. At Sparta, the
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: lover was called Auspnilos the inspirer, and the younger beloved
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: Aetes the hearer. This alone would show the partly educational
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: aspects in which comradeship was conceived, and a hundred passages
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: from classic literature might be quoted to prove how deeply
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: it had entered into the Greek mind, that this love
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: was the cradle of social chivalry and heroic life. Finally,
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: it seems to have been Plato's favorite doctrine, that the relation,
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: if properly conducted, led up to the disclosure of true
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: philosophy in the mind, to the divine vision or mania,
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: and to the remembrance or rekindling within the soul of
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: all the forms of celestial beauty. He speaks of this
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: kind of love as causing a generation in the beautiful
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: within the souls of the lovers. The image of the
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: beloved one, passing into the mind of the lover, and
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: upward through the deepest recesses, reaches and unites itself to
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: the essential forms of divine beauty, their long hidden the originals,
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: as it were, of all creation, and stirring them to
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: life excites a kind of generative descent of noble thoughts
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: and impulses, which thenceforward modify the whole caste of thought
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: and life of the one so affected. I have now
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: said enough, I think to show that though science has
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: not as yet been able to give any decisive utterance
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: on the import of the physical and physiological side of
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: the homogenic passion, and it must be remembered that its
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: real understanding of this side of the ordinary sex love
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: is very limited yet on its ethical and social sides,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: which cannot, of course, in the last resort, be separated
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: from the physiological. The passion is pregnant with meaning and
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: has received at various times in history abundant justification, and
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: in truth it seems the most natural thing in the
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: world that, just as the ordinary sex love has a
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: special function in the propagation of the race, so the
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: other love should have its special function in social and
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: her heroic work, and in the generation not of bodily children,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: but of those children of the mind, the philosophical conceptions
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: and ideals which transform our lives and those of society.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: This without limiting too closely. In each case, the main
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: object may be said to be union. But as all
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: love is also essentially creative, we naturally look for the
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: creative activities of different kinds of love in different directions,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: and seem to find them. So if there is any truth,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: even only a grain or two, in these speculations, it
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: is easy to see that the love with which we
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: are specially dealing is a very important factor in society,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: and that its neglect, or its repression, or its vulgar
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: misapprehension may be matters of considerable danger or damage to
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: the common weal. It is easy to see that, while
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: on the one hand, the ordinary marriage is of indispensable
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: importance to the state, as providing the workshop, as it were,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: for the breeding and rearing of children, another form of
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: union is almost equally indispensable to supply the basis for
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: social activities of other kinds. Everyone is conscious that without
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: a close affectional tie of some kind. His life is
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: not complete, his powers are crippled, and his energies are
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: inadequately spent. Yet it is not to be expected, though
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: it may, of course happen, that the man or woman
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: who have dedicated themselves to each other and to family life,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: should leave the care of their children and the work
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: they have to do at home in order to perform
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: social duties of a remote and less obvious, though maybe
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: more arduous character. Nor is it to be expected that
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: a man or woman, single handed, without the counsel of
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: a helpmate in the hour of difficulty, or his or
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: her love in the hour of need, should feel equal
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: to these wider activities. If, to refer once more to
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: classic story, the love of Harmodious had been for a
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: wife and children at home, he would probably not have cared,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: and it would hardly have been his business to slay
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: the tyrant. And unless, on the other hand, each of
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: the friends had had the love of his comrade to
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: support him, the two could hardly have nerved themselves to
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: this audacious and ever memorable exploit. So it is difficult
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: to believe that anything except that kind of comrade union
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: which satisfies and invigorates the two lovers, and yet leaves
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: them free from the responsibilities and IMPEDIMENTA of family life
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: can supply the force and liberate the energies required for
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: social and mental activities of the most necessary kind. For
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: if the slaughter of tyrants is not the chief social duty,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: nowadays we have with us hydra headed monsters at least
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: as numerous as the tyrants of old, and more difficult
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: to deal with and requiring no little courage to encounter.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: And beyond the extirpation of evils, we have solid work
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: waiting to be done in the patient and lifelong building
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: up of new forms of society, new orders of thought,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: and new institutions of human solidarity, all of which, in
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: their genesis will meet with opposition, ridicule, hatred, and even violence.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: Such campaigns as these, though different in kind from those
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: of the Dorian mountaineers described above, will call for equal
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: hardihood and courage, and will stand in need of a
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: comradeship as true and valiant. It may indeed be doubted
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: whether the higher, heroic and spiritual life of a nation
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: is ever quite possible without the sanction of this attachment
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: in its institutions, And it is not unlikely that the
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: markedly materialistic and commercial character of the last age of
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: European civilized life is largely to be connected with the
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: fact that the only form of love and love union
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: that it has recognized has been one founded on the
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: quite necessary but comparatively materialistic basis of matrim commennial sex
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: intercourse and child breeding. Footnote. It is interesting in this
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: connection to notice the extreme fervor, almost of romance, of
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: the bond which often unites lovers of like sex over
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: a long period of years, in an unfailing tenderness of
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: treatment and consideration towards each other equal to that shown
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: in the most successful marriages. The love of many such men,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: says Mole quote developed in youth, lasts at times the
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: whole life through I know of such men who had
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: not seen their first love for years, even decades, and
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: who yet, on meeting, showed the old fire of their
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: first passion. In other cases, a close love intimacy will
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: last unbroken for many years end quote, end a footnote.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: Walt Whitman, the inaugurator, it may almost be said of
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: a new world of democratic ideals and literature, and as
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: one of the best of our critics has remarked, the
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: most Greek in spirit and in performance of modern writers
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: insists continually on this social function of intense and loving comradeship,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: the personal and passionate attachment of man to man. I
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: will make, he says, the most splendid race the sun
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: ever shone upon. I will make divine, magnetic lands. I
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other's necks,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: by the love of comrades And again, in democratic vistas,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: it is to the development, identification, and general prevalence of
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: that fervid comradeship, the adhesive love, at least rivaling the
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: amateive love, hitherto possessing imaginative literature, if not going beyond it.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: But I look for the counterbalance, an offset of materialistic
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: and vulgar American democracy, and for the spiritualization thereof. I
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: say democracy infers such loving comradeship as its most inevitable
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: twin or counterpart, without which it will be incomplete, in vain,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: and incapable of perpetuating itself. Yet Whitman could not have
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: spoken as he did with a kind of authority on
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: this subject if he had not been fully aware that
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: through the masses of the people, this attachment was already
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: alive and working, though doubtless in a somewhat suppressed and
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: unself conscious form. And if he had not had ample
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: knowledge of its effects and influence in himself and others
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: around him, Like all great artists, he could but give
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: form and light to that which already existed, dim and
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: incoet in the heart of the people. To those who
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: have dived at all below the surface in this direction,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: it will be familiar enough that the homogenic passion ramifies
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: widely through all modern society, and that among the masses
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: of the people, as among the classes below the stolid
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: surface and reserve of British manners, letters, pass and enduring
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: attachments are formed, differing in no very obvious respect from
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: those correspondences which per lessons of opposite sexes knit with
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: each other under similar circumstances. But that hitherto, while this
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: passion has occasionally come into public notice through the police reports, etc.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: In its grosser and cruder forms, its more sane and
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: spiritual manifestations, though really a moving force in the body politic,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: have remained unrecognized. It is hardly needful in these days
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: when social questions loom so large upon us to emphasize
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: the importance of a bond which, by the most passionate
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: and lasting compulsion may draw members of the different classes together, and,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: as it often seems to do, nonetheless strongly because they
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: are members of different classes. A moment's consideration must convince
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: us that such a comradeship may, as Whitman says, have
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: deepest relations to general politics. It is noticeable, too, in
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: this deepest relation to politics, that the movement among women
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: towards their own liberation and emancipation, which is taking place
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: all over the civilized world, has been accompanied by a
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: marked development of the homogenic passion among the female sex.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: It may be said that a certain strain in the
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: relations between the opposite sexes, which has come about owing
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: to a growing consciousness among women that they have been
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: oppressed and unfairly treated by men, and a growing unwillingness
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: to ally themselves unequally in marriage, that this strain has
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: caused the womenkind to draw more closely together and to
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: cement alliances of their own. But whatever the cause may be,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: it is pretty certain that such comrade alliances, and of
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: a quite passionate kind, are becoming increasingly common, and especially
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: perhaps among the more cultured classes of women who are
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: working out the great cause of their sexes liberation. Nor
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: is it difficult to see the importance of such alliances
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: in such a campaign. In the United States, where the
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: battle of women's independence has been fought more more vehemently,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: perhaps than here, the tendency mentioned is even more strongly marked.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: In conclusion, there are a few words to be said
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: about the legal aspect of this important question. It has
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: to be remarked that the present state of the law,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: arising as it does, partly out of some of the
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: misapprehensions above alluded to, and partly out of the sheer
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: unwillingness of legislators to discuss the question, is really quite
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: impracticable and unjustifiable, and will no doubt have to be altered.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: The law, of course, can only deal, and can only
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: be expected to deal with the outward and visible. It
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: cannot control feeling, but it tries in those cases where
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: it is concerned to control the expression of feeling. It
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: has been insisted on in this essay that the homogenic
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: love is a valuable social force, and in cases an
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: indispensable factor of the noblest human character. Also that it
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: has a necessary root in the physical and sexual organism.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: This last is the point where the law steps in.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: We know nothing, it says of what may be valuable
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: social forces or factors of character, or of what may
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: be the relation of physical things to things spiritual. But
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: when you speak of a sexual element being present in
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: this kind of love, we can quite understand that. And
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: that is just what we mean to suppress. That sexual
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: element is nothing but gross indecency, any form of which,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: by our Act of eighteen eighty five, we make criminal.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: Whatever substantial ground the law may have had for previous
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: statutes on this subject dealing with a specific act, sodomy,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: it has surely quite lost it In passing so wide
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: sweeping a condemnation on all relations between male persons, though
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: inconsistently enough making no mention of females. It has undertaken
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: a censorship over private morals entirely apart from social results,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: which is beyond its province, and which even if it
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: were its province, it could not possibly fulfill. It has
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: opened wider than ever before the door to a real
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: social evil and crime, that of blackmailing. And it has
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: shown a shadow over even the simplest and most natural
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: expressions of an attachment, which may, as we have seen,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: be of the greatest value in national life. Footnote. Doctor
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: Mole maintains that if familiarities between those of the same
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: sex are made illegal as immoral, self abuse ought much
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: more to be so made end a footnote that the
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: homosexual passion may be improperly indulged in that it may lead,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: like the heterosexual to public abuses of liberty and decency,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: we of course do not deny. But as in the
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: case of persons of opposite sex, the law limits itself
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: on the whole to the maintenance of public order, the
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: protection of the weak from violence and insult, though it
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: is doubtful whether the marriage laws even do this, and
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: of the young from their inexperience. So it should be
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: here whatever teaching may be thought desirable on the general
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: principles of morality concerned must be given, as it can
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: only be given by the spread of proper education and ideas,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: and not by the clumsy bludgeon of the statute book footnote.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: In France, since the adoption of the Code Napoleon, sexual
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: inversion is tolerated under the same restrictions as normal sexuality,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: and according to Carlier former chief of the French Police,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: Paris is not more depraved in this matter than London.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: Italy in eighteen eighty nine also adopted the principles of
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: the Code Napoleon on this point. End of footnote. We
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: have shown the special functions and really indispensable imports of
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: the homogenet or comrade love in some form in national life,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: and it is high time now that the modern states
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: should recognize this in their institutions, instead of as is
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: also done in schools and places of education, by repression
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: and disallowance, perverting the passion into its least satisfactory channels.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: If the dedication of love were a matter of mere
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: choice or whim, it still would not be the business
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: of the state to compel that choice. But since no
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: amount of compulsion can ever change the homogenic instinct in
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: a person where it is innate, the state, in trying
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: to effect such a change, is only kicking vainly against
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: the pricks of its own advantage, and trying, in view
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: perhaps of the conduct of a licentious few, to cripple
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: and damage a respectable and valuable class of its own citizens.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: End of Section four. End of Homogenic Love and its
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: Place in a Free Society by Edward Carpenter