Having regard then to the direction in which science has been steadily moving in this matter, it is not difficult to see that the epithet “morbid” will probably before long be abandoned as descriptive of the homogenic bias--that is, of the general sentiment of love towards a person of the same sex. That there are excesses of the passion--cases, as in ordinary sex-love, where mere physical desire becomes a mania--we may freely admit; but as it would be unfair to judge of the purity of marriage by the evidence of the Divorce courts, so it would be monstrous to measure the truth and beauty of the attachment in question by those instances which stand most prominently perhaps in the eye of the modern public; and after all deductions there remains, we contend, the vast body of cases in which the manifestation of the instinct has on the whole the character of normality and healthfulness--sufficiently so in fact to constitute this _a distinct variety of the sexual passion_. The question, of course, not being whether the instinct is _capable_ of morbid and extravagant manifestation--for that can easily be proved of any instinct--but whether it is capable of a healthy and sane expression. And this, we think, it has abundantly shown itself to be.
Anyhow the work that Science has practically done has been to destroy the dogmatic attitude of the former current opinion from which itself started, and to leave the whole subject freed from a great deal of misunderstanding, and much more open than before. If on the one hand its results have been chiefly of a negative character, and it admits that it does not understand the exact place and foundation of this attachment; on the other hand since it recognises the deeply beneficial influences of an intimate love-relation of the usual kind on those concerned, it also allows that there are some persons for whom these necessary reactions can only come from one of the same sex as themselves.
“Successful love,” says Moll (p. 125) “exercises a helpful influence on the Urning. His mental and bodily condition improves, and capacity of work increases--just as it happens in the case of a normal youth with _his_ love.” And further on (p. 173) in a letter from a man of this kind occur these words:--“The passion is I suppose so powerful, just because one looks for everything in the loved man--Love, Friendship, Ideal, and Sense-satisfaction.… As it is at present I suffer the agonies of a deep unresponded passion, which wake me like a nightmare from sleep. And I am conscious of physical pain in the region of the heart.” In such cases the love, in some degree physically expressed, of another person of the same sex, is allowed to be as much a necessity and a condition of healthy life and activity, as in more ordinary cases is the love of a person of the opposite sex.