uninteresting to him.  Enough was said, however, to enable me to realize that he held the current ideas on the subject; and I would not for worlds have allowed him, to guess that I myself came under the despised and tainted category.

“I have seldom heard sexual inversion discussed among my professional friends.  They speak of it with disgust or amusement.  I have never met a professional man who would consider it dispassionately and scientifically.  For them it was a subject entirely belonging to psychological medicine.

“I have had no admitted case of it among my patients; but I have often instinctively felt that some who consulted me about other matters would have taken me into their confidence about that, but for their fear of being cruelly misunderstood.

“As to my moral attitude I fear to speak.  Grossness disgusts me; but I am not sure that I should be able to resist temptation placed in my way.  But I am absolutely sure that I should never, under any circumstances, tempt others to any disgraceful act.  If I ever committed any sexual act with one of my own sex whom I loved, I could not look at it or approach it in any other than a sacramental way.  This sounds blasphemous and shocking, but I cannot otherwise express my meaning.

“As regards the marriage of inverts, my own feeling is that for a congenital invert—­no matter how fully the situation be explained beforehand—­it is a step fraught with too great possibilities of tragedy and of the deepest unhappiness, to be advised at all.  My view is that for the invert, far more than for the ordinary person, there is no escape from the supreme necessity of self-control in any relationship he may form.  If that be attained then the ideal is a relationship with another man of similar temperament—­not a platonic one, necessarily—­by means of which the highest happiness of both may be reached.  But this can occur very seldom.

“To poetry and the fine arts I am very susceptible, and I have given a great deal of time to this study.  I am devoted heart and soul to music, which is more and more to me every year I live.  Trivial or light music I cannot endure, but of Beethoven, Bach, Haendel, Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Tschaikowsky, and Wagner I should never hear enough.  Here, too, my sympathies, are very catholic, and I delight in McDowell, Debussy, Richard Strauss, and Hugo Wolf.”

HISTORY VII.—­“My parentage is very sound and healthy.  Both my parents (who belong to the professional middle class) have good general health; nor can I trace any marked abnormal or diseased tendency, of mind or body, in any records of the family.

“Though of a strongly nervous temperament myself, and sensitive, my health is good.  I am not aware of any tendency to physical disease.  In early manhood, however, owing, I believe, to the great emotional tension under