eeling. The normal man can feel that his instinct is no
shame when the spirit is in control. I know that to the
consciousness of others my instinct itself would be a shame and a
baseness, and I have no tendency to construct a moral system for
myself. I have, to be sure, moments when I declare to myself that
I will have my sensuous gratification as well as other men, but,
the moment I think of the wickedness of it, the rebellion is soon
over. The disesteem of self, the sense of taint, the necessity of
withdrawing from happiness lest I communicate my taint, that is a
spiritual malady which makes the ground-tone of my existence one
of pain and melancholy. Should you have only some moral
consolation without the promise of medical assistance I should
feel grateful."

In such a case as this, one can do little more than advise the
sufferer that, however painful his lot may be, it is not without
its consolations, and that he would be best advised to pursue, as
cheerfully as may be, the path that he has already long since
marked out for himself. The invert sometimes fails to realize
that for no man with high moral ideals, however normal he may be,
is the conduct of life easy, and that if the invert has to be
satisfied with affection without passion, and to live a life of
chastity, he is doing no more than thousands of normal men have
done, voluntarily and contentedly. As to hypnotism in such a case
as this, it is altogether unreasonable to expect that suggestion
will supplant the deeply rooted organic impulses that have grown
up during a lifetime.

We may thus conclude that in the treatment of inversion the most
satisfactory result is usually obtained when it is possible by direct and
indirect methods to reduce the sexual hyperesthesia which frequently
exists, and by psychic methods to refine and spiritualize the inverted
impulse, so that the invert's natural perversion may not become a cause of
acquired perversity in others. The invert is not only the victim of his
own abnormal obsession, he is the victim of social hostility. We must seek
to distinguish the part in his sufferings due to these two causes. When I
review the cases I have brought forward and the mental history of inverts
I have known, I am inclined to say that if we can enable an invert to be
healthy, selfrestrained and selfrespecting, we have often done better than