Note 45 — JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS (continued 2)

Burton's acquaintance with what he called "le Vice" was principally confined to Oriental nations. He started on his enquiries, imbued with vulgar errors; and he never weighed the psychical theories examined by me in the foregoing section of this Essay. Nevertheless, he was led to surmise a crasis of the two sexes in persons subject to sexual inversion. Thus he came to speak of "the third sex." During conversations I had with him less than three months before his death, he told me that he had begun a general history of "le Vice"; and at my suggestion he studied Ulrichs and Krafft-Ebing. It is to be lamented that life failed before he could apply his virile and candid criticism to those theories, and compare them with the facts and observations he had independently collected.