s
investigators. Raffalovich, whose attitude is, on the whole, philosophical
rather than scientific, regards congenital inversion as a large and
inevitable factor in human life, but, taking the Catholic standpoint, he
condemns all sexuality, either heterosexual or homosexual, and urges the
invert to restrain the physical manifestations of his instinct and to aim
at an ideal of chastity. On the whole, it may be said that the book is the
work of a thinker who has reached his own results in his own way, and
those results bear an imprint of originality and freedom from tradition.

In recent years no one has so largely contributed to place our knowledge
of sexual inversion on a broad and accurate basis as Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld
of Berlin, who possesses an unequalled acquaintance with the phenomena of
homosexuality in all their aspects. He has studied the matter exhaustively
in Germany and to some extent in other countries also; he has received the
histories of a thousand inverts; he is said to have met over ten thousand
homosexual persons. As editor of the _Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle
Zwischenstufen_, which he established in 1899, and author of various
important monographs--more especially on transitional psychic and physical
stages between masculinity and femininity--Hirschfeld had already
contributed greatly to the progress of investigation in this field before
the appearance in 1914 of his great work, _Die Homosexualitaet des Mannes
und des Weibes_. This is not only the largest but the most precise,
detailed, and comprehensive--even the most condensed--work which has yet
appeared on the subject. It is, indeed, an encyclopedia of homosexuality.
For such a task Hirschfeld had been prepared by many years of strenuous
activity as a physician, an investigator, a medico-legal expert before the
courts, and his position as president of the _Wissenschaftlich-humanitaeren
Komitee_ which is concerned with the defense of the interests of the
homosexual in Germany. In Hirschfeld's book the pathological conception
of inversion has entirely disappeared; homosexuality is regarded as
primarily a biological phenomenon of universal extension, and secondarily
as a social phenomenon of serious importance. There is no attempt to
invent new theories; the main value of Hirschfeld's work lies, indeed, in
the constant endeavor to keep close to definite facts. It is this quality
which renders the book an indispensable source for all who seek
enlightened a