Note 227 — Chapter VI · —THE THEORY OF SEXUAL INVERSION.

The love of relations may be tinctured by all degrees of sexual love, some of which are so faint and vague that they cannot be considered unnatural or abnormal; it is misleading to term them incestuous. The Russian novelist, Artzibascheff, in his Sanine described a brother's affection for his sister as thus touched with a perception of her sexual charm (I refer to the French translation), and the book has consequently been much abused as "incestuous," though the attitude described is very pale and conventional compared to the romantic passion sung in Shelley's Laon and Cythna, or the tragic exaltation of the same passion in Ford's great play, "'Tis Pity She's a Whore."