“Suppose, then, that I should seek hypnotic treatment, I still do not know what tricks an abnormal nature might play me when diverted by suggestion.  I might lose the joy of this friendship without any compensation.  I am afraid; I am afraid!  Might I not be influenced to shun the only persons who inspire unselfish feeling?

“Bear with this account of my story.  Many virtues are easy for me, and my life is spent in pursuits of culture.  Alas, that all the culture with which I am credited, all the prayers and aspirations, all the strong will and heroic resolves have not rid my nature of this evil bent!  What I long for is the right to love, not for the mere physical gratification, for the right to take another into the arms of my heart and profess all the tenderness I feel, to find my joy in planning his career with him, as one who is rightfully and naturally entitled to do so.  I crave this since I cannot have a son.  I leave the matter here.

“When I read what I have written I see how pointless it is.  It is possible, indeed, that brooding over my personal calamity magnifies in my mind the sense of danger to this friend through me, and that I only need to find the right relation of friendliness coupled with aloofness which will secure him against any too ardent attachment.  Certainly I have no fear that I shall forget myself.  Yet two things array themselves on the other side:  I rebel inwardly against the necessity of isolating myself as if I were a pestilence, and I rebel against the taint of sensuous feeling.  The normal man can feel that his instinct is no shame when the spirit is in control.  I know that to the consciousness of others my instinct itself would be a shame and a baseness, and I have no tendency to construct a moral system for myself.  I have, to be sure, moments when I declare to myself that I will have my sensuous gratification as well as other men, but, the moment I think of the wickedness of it, the rebellion is soon over.  The disesteem of self, the sense of taint, the necessity of withdrawing from happiness lest I communicate my taint, that is a spiritual malady which makes the ground-tone of my existence one of pain and melancholy.  Should you have only some moral consolation without the promise of medical assistance I should feel grateful.”

In such a case as this, one can do little more than advise the sufferer that, however painful his lot may be, it is not without its consolations, and that he would be best advised to pursue, as cheerfully as may be, the path that he has already long since marked out for himself.  The invert sometimes fails to realize that for no man with high moral ideals, however normal he may be, is the conduct of life easy, and that if the invert has to be satisfied with affection without passion, and to live a life of chastity, he is doing no more than thousands