d
scattered through all communities, but are nowhere recognised except by
the penal code and the medical profession. In the fifth category we are
brought face to face with the problem offered by ancient Hellas, by
Persia, by Afghan, by the peoples of what Burton calls the Sotadic Zone.
However we may account for the origin of sexual inversion, the instinct
has through usage, tradition, and social toleration passed here into the
nature of the race; so that the four previous categories are confounded,
or, if distinguished, are only separable in the same way as the vicious
and morbid affections of the ordinary sexual appetite may be
differentiated from its healthier manifestations.

Returning to the first four categories, which alone have any importance
for a modern European, we perceive that only one of them, the third, is
positively morbid, and only one, the second, is _ipso facto_ vicious.
The first is immoral in the same sense as all incontinence, including
self-abuse, fornication, and so forth, practised _faute de mieux_, is
immoral; but it cannot be called either morbid or positively vicious,
because the habit in question springs up under extra-social
circumstances. The members of the fourth category are abnormal through
their constitution. Whether we refer that abnormality to atavism, or to
some hitherto unapprehended deviation from the rule in their sexual
conformation, there is no proof that they are the subjects of disease.
At the same time it is certain that they are not deliberately vicious.

The treatment of sexual inversion by society and legislation follows the
view taken of its origin and nature. Ever since the age of Justinian, it
has been regarded as an unqualified crime against God, the order of the
world, and the State. This opinion, which has been incorporated in the
codes of all the Occidental races, sprang originally from the conviction
that sterile passions are injurious to the tribe by checking
propagation. Religion adopted this view, and, through the legend of
Sodom and Gomorrah, taught that God was ready to punish whole nations
with violent destruction if they practised the "unmentionable vice."
Advancing civilisation, at the same time, sought in every way to limit
and regulate the sexual appetite; and while doing so, it naturally
excluded those forms which were not agreeable to the majority, which
possessed no obvious utility, and which _prima facie_ seemed to violate
the cardinal laws of human