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.
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