an aberration from the usual course of nature. But the clash of contending
elements which must often mark the history of such a deviation results now
and again--by no means infrequently--in nobler activities than those
yielded by the vast majority who are born to consume the fruits of the
earth. It bears, for the most part, its penalty in the structure of its
own organism. We are bound to protect the helpless members of society
against the invert. If we go farther, and seek to destroy the invert
himself before he has sinned against society, we exceed the warrant of
reason, and in so doing we may, perhaps, destroy also those children of
the spirit which possess sometimes a greater worth than the children of
the flesh.

Here we may leave this question of sexual inversion. In dealing with it I
have sought to avoid that attitude of moral superiority which is so common
in the literature of this subject, and have refrained from pointing out
how loathsome this phenomenon is, or how hideous that. Such an attitude is
as much out of place in scientific investigation as it is in judicial
investigation, and may well be left to the amateur. The physician who
feels nothing but disgust at the sight of disease is unlikely to bring
either succor to his patients or instruction to his pupils.

That the investigation we have here pursued is not only profitable to us
in succoring the social organism and its members, but also in bringing
light into the region of sexual psychology, is now, I hope, clear to every
reader who has followed me to this point. There are a multitude of social
questions which we cannot face squarely and honestly unless we possess
such precise knowledge as has been here brought together concerning the
part played by the homosexual tendency in human life. Moreover, the study
of this perverted tendency stretches beyond itself;

"O'er that art
Which you say adds to Nature, is an art
That Nature makes."

Pathology is but physiology working under new conditions. The stream of
nature still flows into the bent channel of sexual inversion, and still
runs according to law. We have not wasted our time in this toilsome
excursion. With the knowledge here gained we are the better equipped to
enter upon the study of the wider questions of sex.

FOOTNOTES:

[243] In this connection I may refer to Moll's _Sexual Life of the Child_,
to the writings of Dr. Clement Dukes, physician to Rugby Sch