Note BC — Chapter XVIII · PARAESTHESIA

This Platonic explanation of homosexuality, attributing the anomaly to the influence of a deity, is not quite modern, but it served its purpose at that time. All the modern theories do not do any more. For instance, the theory that men afflicted with an inverted sexual instinct have a female brain and male sexual glands, “anima muliebris in corpore virili inclusa,” is, as far as a theory goes, a good enough working theory, but as far as a real explanation of the causes of the homosexual anomaly is concerned, it does not contribute one iota (nor does any other theory the author is acquainted with) to the etiology of the abnormal emotion.

The reason is plain. We can never hope to find the cause of the abnormal emotion before we have first gained absolute knowledge of the nature of normal sex-attraction. Why does the Chilodon need conjugation at definite periods? Why does it not go on dividing and multiplying indefinitely without conjugation? The answer “protoplasmatic” hunger or “erotic chemotropismus” (erotic chemotropismus is not always the cause of sex-attraction; this clearly shows the infatuation, sometimes met with, of a normal woman with a girl masquerading as a boy, where no spermatozoa enter into the play; on the other hand, normally no chemotropismus seems to exist between the ova and spermatozoa of sister and brother who have been brought up together, while brother and sister do sometimes fall in love with each other if they are ignorant of their relationship) only begs the question. Whence comes this protoplasmatic hunger, whence this erotic chemotropismus? Do these beautiful high-sounding phrases say more than, e. g., a physician’s diagnosis “colonic stasis,” when the patient complains of constipation. Telling a homosexual man that he has a female brain is telling him what he already knows.

The real etiology of homosexuality must remain unknown, until we know the etiology of sex-attraction, and the knowledge of the “whence” and “why” of sex-attraction is homoiousious, not to say homoousious with the knowledge of the Supreme Cause. Sex-attraction or love is an energizing power, akin to the other great forces of nature or destiny, working to develop the soul of man, and it is futile to pick out one attribute of the divine creative power and speculate over it without the knowledge of the nature of the divinity itself. It is the same mistake Job of old has made.

In this oldest Hebrew drama, the spectators or audience, at the two scenes in Heaven, know that all the calamities, miseries and sufferings of Job were inflicted upon the great sufferer, who represents mankind, to try the constancy of his piety. According to human justice Job is innocent. This is Job’s claim. His friends try to convince him that he is not innocent, that even by the principles of human justice his sufferings are not unmerited. But they are silenced by Job’s arguments. Even the youthful Busite (Cap. xxxii.), emphasizing God’s greatness, who must have discovered some hidden sin in Job, although he is not answered by the latter, fails to convince us, for we know about the stipulations between Jehova and Satan.

Then Jehova himself answers from the whirlwind. He does not really answer, he rather asks some pertinent questions. “Have you been present when the foundations of the Earth were laid, when the Stars were born?” If not, how can he, the insignificant pigmy, dare question divine justice. Since you, Job, have no idea of the nature of the divinity (or God, the author fears to mention the word God lest he may offend the delicate susceptibilities of his atheistic friends who fly into a rage when seeing this word as a bull when seeing a red cloth), how can you know the causes or reasons for his attributes? Divine justice is an attribute of the divinity, and if the nature of the divinity is veiled in mystery, divine justice must of necessity remain unknown to mortal creatures, just as human justice is beyond the conception of the amoeba or of the lion. Divine justice can not be compared at all with human justice, just as the sense of justice of the amoeba or of the lion differs from that of man.

Now, the same questions may still be asked to-day. We must still recognize the incapacity of the human intellect to penetrate the divine plan of the universe. With all our scientific attainments we still are in ignorance about the sources of light. The length of its waves, its celerity is known to science, but where does the Sun come from? When was he born? Who gave birth to him? Science has traced the synthetic nature of the plant, the analytic nature of the animal, but tell us, Job, whence gets the seed the faculty to begin its synthetic work as soon as it is placed in favorable soil?

Here we are silenced like Job of yore and refuse to answer. And we are right. The “whence” and the “why” of things do not lie in the realm of science. Science investigates the “how” and leaves the investigation of the “whence” and the “why” to metaphysics or rather to religion. Even the latter has not yet succeeded to give humanity the irrefutable answer. From the Hindu trinity of Brahm’s Trimurti to the Hebrew unity of Jehovah back to the Christian Logos of John, they all tried to answer the question of the “whence” of things, and they must have failed. Otherwise humanity of all climes and of all ages would have had only one religion instead of being divided into innumerable creeds.

As far as the “how” is concerned, such an explanation as “anima muliebris in corpore virili inclusa” is quite a good enough working theory. Inversion would thus be a degenerative phenomenon, the invert representing the sport or the variation.