[52]
Karsch in his _Gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Naturvoelker_ (1911) has
brought out the high religious as well as social significance of castes of
cross-dressed and often homosexual persons among primitive peoples. At the
same time Edward Carpenter in his remarkable book, _Intermediate Types
among Primitive Folk_ (1914), has shown with much insight how it comes
about that there is an organic connection between the homosexual
temperament and unusual psychic or divinatory powers. Homosexual men were
non-warlike and homosexual women non-domestic, so that their energies
sought different outlets from those of ordinary men and women; they became
the initiators of new activities. Thus it is that from among them would in
some degree issue not only inventors and craftsmen and teachers, but
sorcerers and diviners, medicine-men and wizards, prophets and priests.
Such persons would be especially impelled to thought, because they would
realize that they were different from other people; treated with reverence
by some and with contempt by others, they would be compelled to face the
problems of their own nature and, indirectly, the problems of the world
generally.
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