al ruin or disgrace. Who will be
astonished if the nerves of an individual in this position are not equal
to the horrid strain?

"In some cases the nerves give way altogether: mental alienation sets
in; at last the wretch finds in a madhouse that repose which life would
not afford him. Others terminate their unendurable situation by the
desperate act of suicide. How many unexplained cases of suicide in young
men ought to be ascribed to this cause!

"I do not think I am far wrong when I maintain that at least half of the
suicides of young men are due to this one circumstance. Even in cases
where no merciless blackmailer persecutes the Urning, but a connection
has existed which lasted satisfactorily on both sides, still in these
cases even discovery, or the dread of discovery, leads only too often to
suicide. How many officers, who have had connection with their
subordinates, how many soldiers, who have lived in such relation with a
comrade, when they thought they were about to be discovered, have put a
bullet through their brains to avoid the coming disgrace! And the same
thing might be said about all the other callings in life.

"In consequence of all this, it seems clear that if, as a matter of
fact, mental abnormalities and real disturbances of the intellect are
commoner with Urnings than in the case of other men, this does not
establish an inevitable connection between the mental eccentricity and
the Urning's specific temperament, or prove that the latter causes the
former. According to my firm conviction, mental disturbances and morbid
symptoms which may be observed in Urnings ought in the large majority of
instances not to be referred to their sexual anomaly; the real fact is
that they are educed in them by the prevalent false theory of sexual
inversion, together with the legislation in force against Urnings and
the reigning tone of public opinion. It is only one who has some
approximate notion of the mental and moral sufferings, of the anxieties
and perturbations, to which an Urning is exposed, who knows the
never-ending hypocrisies and concealments he must practise in order to
cloak his indwelling inclination, who comprehends the infinite
difficulties which oppose the natural satisfaction of his sexual
desire--it is only such a one, I say, who is able properly to wonder at
the comparative rarity of mental aberrations and nervous ailments in the
class of Urnings. The larger proportion of these morbid circumstanc