problem quite differently, thanks to the existence of numerous peaceful professions where the weak, the tender, and the contemplative may find employment.) This article is an excellent contribution to the future synthesis of the data of ethnology having to do with homosexuality.

LITERARY HISTORY

1. Noel I. Garde, "The Mysterious Father of American Homophile Literature" (Edward Prime-Stevenson, 1868-1942) (Fall, 1958). An interesting biographical and bibliographical ccount of this writer, almost unknown today, who wrote under a pseudonym (Xavier Mayne) several works on sexology, of which one (The Intersexes, 1908) is curious as evidence of that pseudo-scientific tendency toward apology for homosexuality, rather general at the beginning of the XXth century (for example with Symonds, Carpenter, etc.).

2. A. E. Smith, "The Curious Controversy Over Whitman's Sexuality" (Winter, 1959). Was Walt Whitman heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual? If one admits that he was homosexual, was it a matter of overt action or of spirit only? These delicate questions have been discussed for the past seventy years, drawing at times from the poems of Whitman, sometimes from his letters, from statements of his friends, sometimes on the reexamination of dates and facts. Mr. Smith here gives an exciting resumé of this erudite controversy, one worthy of all praise. He has rearranged old displays of learned jargon, of aggressiveness of tone; the different opinions of the many writers who have occupied themselves with the problem are classified into categories, and there are derived some very intriguing conclusions from these juxtapositions! I have not in a long time read an article of literary history which has interested me so much.

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BIOLOGY, MEDICINE, AND

PSYCHOLOGY

1. D. B. Vest,* "The Isophyl as a Biological Variant: An Enquiry into Racial and Civilic Value of the Human Intergrade" (Summer, 1958). In this incredible text, pedantry and pseudo-scientific obscurity attain unparalleled heights: it is, to quote a reader of Homophile Studies, "the most fantastic display of language I have ever had to wade through." Thus "homosexual" too simple a word is replaced by "isophyl," and "homosexuality" by "intergrade." The definition (adjusted to the grasp of the average reader) of "intergrade": being "the sex variant who comprises in his psycho-physique the elements divergently and polarly developed by Female and Male." Is this quite clear? In short, Mr. Vest sets out to demonstrate that the homosexual (pardon: the isophyl) constitutes a distinct biological type, with qualities which are distinctly his own (for (for example "panaestheticism"). Nothing in this verbal delirium even resembles remotely scientific reasoning.

2. J. Kepner, Jr., "An Introduction to Homosexuality and the Biological Evidence" (Fall, 1958). This article is an excellent presentation, clear and concise, of scientific data. The position taken is at times rather far-fetched (thus, when the author proposes to reserve procreation to certain men with the purpose of letting others remain free to make love according to their taste: a procedure that would lead one close to the racial theories of the late Adolph Hitler!); but, on the whole it is an interesting contribution to the future Encyclopedia of ONE Institute.

3. Dr. Harry H. Benjamin, "Transvestism and Transsexualism" (Fall, 1958). This article is a correct re-

*Nom de plume for a British scientific philosopher whose score or more books have had great influence among intellectuals.