The Intermediate Sex

W. Pater’s “Renaissance,” pp. 8-16.

21

Among prose writers of this period, Montaigne, whose treatment of the subject is enthusiastic and unequivocal, should not be overlooked. See Hazlitt’s “Montaigne,” ch. xxvii.

22

I may be excused for quoting here the sonnet No. 54, from J. A. Symonds’ translation of the sonnets of Michel Angelo:—

“From thy fair face I learn, O my loved lord,
That which no mortal tongue can rightly say:
The soul, imprisoned in her house of clay,
Holpen by thee to God hath often soared:
And though the vulgar, vain, malignant horde
Attribute what their grosser wills obey,
Yet shall this fervent homage that I pay,
This love, this faith, pure joys for us afford,
Lo, all the lovely things we find on earth,
Resemble for the soul that rightly sees,
That source of bliss divine which gave us birth:
Nor have we first-fruits or remembrances
Of heaven elsewhere. Thus, loving loyally,
I rise to God, and make death sweet by thee.”

The labours of von Scheffler, followed by J. A. Symonds, have now pretty conclusively established the pious frauds of the nephew, and the fact that the love-poems of the elder Michel Angelo were, for the most part, written to male friends.

23

See an interesting paper in W. Pater’s “Renaissance.”

24

For a fuller collection of instances of this Friendship-love in the history of the world, see “Ioläus: an Anthology,” by E. Carpenter (George Allen, London. 3/– net). Also “Liebling-minne und Freundesliebe in der Welt-literatur,” von Elisar von Kupffer (Adolf Brand, Berlin, 1900).

25

As in the case, for instance, of Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” for which the poet was soundly rated by the Times at the time of its publication.

26

Jowett’s “Plato,” 2nd ed., vol. ii., p. 30.

27

Jowett, vol. ii., p. 130.

28

One ought also to mention some later writers, like Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and Dr. von Römer, whose work though avowedly favourable to the Urning-movement, is in a high degree scientific and reliable in character.

29

From Uranos—see, for derivation, p. 20 (#x2_x_2_i58), supra—also Plato’s “Symposium,” speech of Pausanias.

30

See, for estimates, Appendix, pp. 134-136 (#x5_x_5_i1).

31

Though there is no doubt a general tendency towards femininity of type in the male Urning, and towards masculinity in the female.

32

“Gli amori degli uomini.”

33

“Psychopathia Sexualis,” 7th ed., p. 227.

34

Ibid, pp. 229 and 258. See Appendix, p. 160 (#x5_x_5_i70).

35

“How deep congenital sex-inversion roots may be gathered from the fact that the pleasure-dream of the male Urning has to do with male persons, and of the female with females.”—Krafft-Ebing, “P.S.,” 7th ed., p. 228.

36

“Conträre Sexualempfindung,” 2nd ed., p. 269.

37

See “Love’s Coming-of-Age,” p. 22.

38

Pub.: F. A. Davis, Philadelphia, 1901.

39

Otto Weininger even goes further, and regards the temperament as a natural intermediate form (“Sex and Character,” ch. iv.) See also Appendix, infra, p. 169 (#x5_x_5_i91).

40

“Though then before my own conscience I cannot reproach myself, and though I must certainly reject the judgment of the world about us, yet I suffer greatly. In very truth I have injured no one, and I hold my love in its nobler activity for just as holy as that of normally disposed men, but under the unhappy fate that allows us neither sufferance nor recognition I suffer often more than my life can bear.”—Extract from a letter given by Krafft-Ebing.

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