Traces of homosexual practices, sometimes on a large scale, have been found among all the great divisions of the human race.  It would be possible to collect a considerable body of evidence under this head.[14] Unfortunately, however, the travellers and others on whose records we are dependent have been so shy of touching these subjects, and so ignorant of the main points for investigation, that it is very difficult to discover sexual inversion in the proper sense in any lower race.  Travellers have spoken vaguely of crimes against nature without defining the precise relationship involved nor inquiring how far any congenital impulse could be distinguished.

Looking at the phenomena generally, so far as they have been recorded among various lower races, we seem bound to recognize that there is a widespread natural instinct impelling men toward homosexual relationships, and that this has been sometimes, though very exceptionally, seized upon and developed for advantageous social purposes.  On the whole, however, unnatural intercourse (sodomy) has been regarded as an antisocial offense, and punishable sometimes by the most serious penalties that could be invented.  This was, for instance, the case in ancient Mexico, in Peru, among the Persians, in China, and among the Hebrews and Mohammedans.

Even in very early history it is possible to find traces of homosexuality, with or without an implied disapproval.  Its existence in Assyria and Babylonia is indicated by the Codex Hamurabi and by inscriptions which do not on the whole refer to it favorably.[15] As regards Egypt we learn from a Fayum papyrus, found by Flinders Petrie, translated by Griffiths, and discussed by Oefele,[16] that more than four thousand years ago homosexual practices were so ancient that they were attributed to the gods Horus and Set.  The Egyptians showed great admiration of masculine beauty, and it would seem that they never regarded homosexuality as punishable or even reprehensible.  It is notable, also, that Egyptian women were sometimes of very virile type, and Hirschfeld considers that intermediate sexual types were specially widespread among the Egyptians.[17]

One might be tempted to expect that homosexual practices would be encouraged whenever it was necessary to keep down the population.  Aristotle says that it was allowed by law in Crete for this end.  And Professor Haddon tells me that at Torres Straits a native advocated sodomy on this ground.[18] There seems, however, on the whole, to be little evidence pointing to this utilization of the practice.  The homosexual tendency appears to have flourished chiefly among warriors and warlike peoples.  During war and the separation from women that war involves, the homosexual instinct tends to develop; it flourished, for instance, among the Carthaginians and among the Normans, as well as among the warlike Dorians, Scythians, Tartars, and Celts,[19] and, when there has been an absence of any strong moral feeling against it, the instinct has