Yet, regarded as a whole, and notwithstanding the frequency with which
they witness to congenital morbidity, the phenomena of erotic symbolism
can scarcely fail to be profoundly impressive to the patient and impartial
student of the human soul. They often seem absurd, sometimes disgusting,
occasionally criminal; they are always, when carried to an extreme degree,
abnormal. But of all the manifestations of sexual psychology, normal and
abnormal, they are the most specifically human. More than any others they
involve the potently plastic force of the imagination. They bring before
us the individual man, not only apart from his fellows, but in opposition,
himself creating his own paradise. They constitute the supreme triumph of
human idealism.
FOOTNOTES:
[64] Binet, _Etudes de Psychologie Experimentale_, esp., p. 84;
Krafft-Ebing, _Op. cit._, p. 18.
[65] G. Tarde, "L'Amour Morbide," _Archives de l'Anthropologie
Criminelle_, 1890, p. 585.
[66] Lucretius, Lib. IV, vv. 1150-1163.
[67] Burton, _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part III, Section II, Mem. III,
Subs. I.
[68] Judith Cladel, _Auguste Rodin Pris sur la Vie_, 1903, pp. 103-104.
Some slight modifications have been made in the translation of this
passage on account of the conversational form of the original.
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