flight from them to take place.  Moreover, while most authorities have rarely been able to find any clear evidence of the sexual attraction of male inverts in childhood to mother or sister,[228] an attraction of this kind to father or brother seems less difficult to find, and if found it is incompatible with the typical Freudian process.  In my own observation, among the Histories here recorded, there are at least two clear examples of such an attraction in childhood.  It must further be said that any theory of the etiology of homosexuality which leaves out of account the hereditary factor in inversion cannot be admitted.  The evidence for the frequency of homosexuality among the near relatives of the inverted is now indisputable.  I have traced it in a considerable proportion of cases, and in many of these the evidence is unquestionable and altogether independent of the statement of the subject himself, whose opinion may be held to be possibly biased or unreliable.[229] This hereditary factor seems indeed to be called for by the Freudian theory itself.  On that theory we need to know how it is that the subject passes through psychic phases, and reaches an emotional disposition, so unlike that of normal persona.  The existence of a definite hereditary tendency in a homosexual direction removes that difficulty.  Freud himself recognizes this and clearly asserts congenital psycho-sexual constitution, which must involve predisposition.  On a general survey, therefore, it would appear that, on the psychic side, we may accept the reality of unconscious dynamic processes which in particular cases may be of the Freudian or similar type.  But while the study of such mechanisms may illuminate the psychology of homosexuality, they leave untouched the fundamental organic factors now accepted by most authorities.[230]

The rational way of regarding the normal sexual instinct is as an inborn organic impulse, reaching full development about the time of puberty.[231] During the period of development suggestion and association may come in to play a part in defining the object of the emotion; the soil is now ready, but the variety of seeds likely to thrive in it is limited.  That there is a greater indefiniteness in the aim of the sexual impulse at this period we may well believe.  This is shown not only by occasional tentative signs of sexual emotion directed toward the same sex in childhood, but by the frequently ideal and unlocalized character of the normal passion even at puberty.  But the channel of sexual emotion is not thereby turned into an abnormal path.  Whenever this happens we are bound to believe—­and we have many grounds for believing—­that we are dealing with an organism which from the beginning is abnormal.  The same seed of suggestion is sown in various soils; in the many it dies out; in the few it flourishes.  The cause can only be a difference in the soil.