Offenses and the Existing Law. This was indeed a service to all those who are interested in the problems of homosexuality and its relation to the Christian Religion.

Mr. W. Dorr Legg, director of ONE Institute, which publishes the magazine, has devoted three pages to "Some Problems of Method for Homophile Studies." I expected much from this statement of methodology -all the more since, as the readers of "Arcadie" may suspect, I have some ideas of my own on this matter. I was, frankly, disappointed. Certainly a definition of the word "homophile" was imperative and we must deplore the fact that the one which was given was scarcely adequate. The author delimits the field of homophilic research by relating it to the various human sciences of medicine, biology, anthropology, sociology, history of religions, history of law and psychology. While we must be grateful to the author for this enumeration we must recognize that it scarcely goes beyond the level of any good dictionary.

It appears to me that it would be much more helpful to have stressed the difficulty in homophile studies of an historical nature owing to the lack of good editions and adequate translations of ancient and of exotic texts; indeed if one does not know these difficulties one risks (like many contemporary and earlier sexologists) ending up with nothing more than dangerous generalizations, with “a priori" and "almost" conclusions which are the very negation of any and all scientific investigation.

But I am wholly in accord with Mr. Dorr Legg when he observes that the lack of interest which until fairly recently, most scholars have exhibited in homophile studies is the direct result of an easy acceptance of the Christian condemnation, and again when he criticizes this neglectful attitude.

one

The aim of ONE Institute is vast: nothing less, really, than that of becoming a kind of university institute. with teams of researchers, courses open to the public, and the successful undertaking of investigations. I salute with real admiration the valor of such a program; if it can be realized in America it will mean that the intellectual maturity of the United States is strangely more advanced than that of our country. And may I be permitted to add that I will be very much surprised if that is so? But certainly we should not criticize an undertaking merely because it is bold for the more ambitious it is the more it deserves respect and success. If the directors of ONE Institute succeed in keeping their creation alive. its methods will of themselves improve and become more precise, and the results will automatically group themselves into a doctrine which it would be stupid to insist upon at the

outset.

I wish then, the very best of luck to our American friends of ONE Institute. If so far as I at least am concerned, the first issue of their Homophile Studies has not been overwhelmingly convincing it is perhaps because I am too exclusively familiar with the methods of historical research and which is not, as I recognize, the only approach to homophile studies. But one very apparent danger threatens our Los Angeles colleagues; the Anglo-Saxon world, important as it may be, is not the entire universe; homophile literature is not limited to Byron and Walt Whitman, nor historical science to the works of English and American historians. If ONE Institute intends to study the field of homosexuality in general it must widen its field of vision not only in time but in space! We will follow their progress with interest and, who knows, with a little will, perhaps, one day . .

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