legal term “sodomy” (sodomia) because it is still the most popular term for this perversion, though, it must be remembered, it has become attached to the physical act of intercourse per anum, even when carried out heterosexually, and has little reference to psychic sexual proclivity.  This term has its origin in the story (narrated in Genesis, ch. xix) of Lot’s visitors whom the men of Sodom desired to have intercourse with, and of the subsequent destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  This story furnishes a sufficiently good ground for the use of the term, though the Jews do not regard sodomy as the sin of Sodom, but rather inhospitality and hardness of heart to the poor (J.  Preuss, Biblisch-Talmudische Medizin, pp. 579-81), and Christian theologians also, both Catholic and Protestant (see, e.g., Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. iv, p. 199, and Hirschfeld, Homosexualitaet, p. 742), have argued that it was not homosexuality, but their other offenses, which provoked the destruction of the Cities of the Plain.  In Germany “sodomy” has long been used to denote bestiality, or sexual intercourse with animals, but this use of the term is quite unjustified.  In English there is another term, “buggery,” identical in meaning with sodomy, and equally familiar.  “Bugger” (in French, bougre) is a corruption of “Bulgar,” the ancient Bulgarian heretics having been popularly supposed to practise this perversion.  The people of every country have always been eager to associate sexual perversions with some other country than their own.

The terms usually adopted in the present volume are “sexual inversion” and “homosexuality.”  The first is used more especially to indicate that the sexual impulse is organically and innately turned toward individuals of the same sex.  The second is used more comprehensively of the general phenomena of sexual attraction between persons of the same sex, even if only of a slight and temporary character.  It may be admitted that there is no precise warrant for any distinction of this kind between the two terms.  The distinction in the phenomena is, however, still generally recognized; thus Iwan Bloch applies the term “homosexuality” to the congenital form, and “pseudo-homosexuality” to its spurious or simulated forms.  Those persons who are attracted to both sexes are now usually termed “bisexual,” a more convenient term than “psycho-sexual hermaphrodite,” which was formerly used.  There remains the normal person, who is “heterosexual.”

Before approaching the study of sexual inversion in cases which we may investigate with some degree of scientific accuracy, there is interest in glancing briefly at the phenomena as they appear before us, as yet scarcely or at all differentiated, among animals, among various human races, and at various periods.