from being the only androgyne who has gravitated toward the "supreme men" whose voluntary profession has as its aim the killing of their fellow man. Androgynism appears to go hand in hand with militarism rather than vice versa. Havelock Ellis says that homosexuality is particularly common among the Sikhs, the most military of the Hindustan races.
It is more likely that the emergence of androgynism is a sign of national health. The ultra-brilliant Age of Pericles surpassed all other periods in the recognition and influence of androgynism, which promotes art and general culture. The androgyne, being a combination of man and woman in a single individual, has a wider view of life than the full-fledged man or woman. He possesses, in a measure, the mental qualities peculiar to each sex. That is why the Shakespeare-Author knew both the masculine and the feminine mind better than any other writer. Such duality is the reason artistic genius crops out far more frequently among androgynes than among the sexually full-fledged. The amalgamated man-woman nature gets nearest to sentiment and emotion—to the soul of art.[1]
Why do cultured androgynes carefully conceal their quasi-feminine sexual predilections? Why did Angelo not publish any of his homosexual sonnets? Why did Raphael not proclaim on the housetops the happenings in his house at night? Androgynes hide their sexual predilections and practices, not because of consciousness of personal degeneracy, but because
- ↑ I wrote this paragraph, so much like that quoted (at close of preceding chapter) from Carpenter's Love's Coming of Age, before I had heard of the existence of the book named.
