the other hand, he was moved by the desire to let his work speak for itself, by his declared determination to leave everything open, and possibly by a more or less conscious sympathy with the inferences presented to him.  It was not until the last years of his life, when his sexual life belonged to the past, when weakness was gaining on him, when he wished to put aside every drain on his energies, that—­being constitutionally incapable of a balanced scientific statement—­he chose the simplest and easiest solution of the difficulty.[99]

Concerning another great modern writer—­Paul Verlaine, the first of modern French poets—­it seems possible to speak with less hesitation.  A man who possessed in fullest measure the irresponsible impressionability of genius, Verlaine—­as his work shows and as he himself admitted—­all his life oscillated between normal and homosexual love, at one period attracted to women, at another to men.  He was without doubt, it seems to me, bisexual.  An early connection with another young poet, Arthur Rimbaud, terminated in a violent quarrel with his friend, and led to Verlaine’s imprisonment at Mons. In after-years he gave expression to the exalted passion of this relationship—­mon grand peche radieux—­in Laeti et Errabundi, published in the volume entitled Parallelement; and in later poems he has told of less passionate and less sensual relationships which yet were more than friendship, for instance, in the poem, “Mon ami, ma plus belle amitie, ma Meilleure” in Bonheur.[100]

In this brief glance at some of the ethnographical, historical, religious, and literary aspects of homosexual passion there is one other phenomenon which may be mentioned.  This is the alleged fact that, while the phenomena exist to some extent everywhere, we seem to find a special proclivity to homosexuality (whether or not involving a greater frequency of congenital inversion is not usually clear) among certain races and in certain regions.[101] In Europe this would be best illustrated by the case of southern Italy, which in this respect is held to be distinct from northern Italy, although Italians generally are franker than men of northern race in admitting their sexual practices.[102] How far the supposed greater homosexuality of southern Italy may be due to Greek influence and Greek blood it is not very easy to say.

It must be remembered that, in dealing with a northern country like England, homosexual phenomena do not present themselves in the same way as they do in southern Italy today, or in ancient Greece.  In Greece the homosexual impulse was recognized and idealized; a man could be an open homosexual lover, and yet, like Epaminondas, be a great and honored citizen of his country.  There was no reason whatever why a man, who in mental and physical constitution was perfectly normal, should not adopt a custom that was regarded as respectable, and sometimes as even specially honorable.