This text is part of:
View text chunked by:
- bekker page : bekker line
- book : chapter : section
like the creature in woman's form1
that is said to rip up pregnant females and devour their offspring, or certain savage
tribes on the coasts of the Black Sea, who are alleged to delight in raw meat or in human
flesh, and others among whom each in turn provides a child for the common banquet2; or the reported depravity of Phalaris.3
[3]
These are instances of Bestiality. Other unnatural
propensities are due to disease, and sometimes to insanity, as in the case of the madman
that offered up his mother to the gods and partook of the sacrifice, or the one that ate
his fellow slave's liver. Other morbid propensities are acquired by habit, for instance,
plucking out the hair, biting the nails, eating cinders and earth, and also sexual
perversion. These practices result in some cases from natural disposition, and in others
from habit, as with those who have been abused from childhood.
[4]
When nature is responsible, no one would describe such persons as
showing Unrestraint, any more than one would apply that term to women because they are
passive and not active in sexual intercourse; nor should we class as Unrestraint a morbid
state brought about by habitual indulgence.
[5]
Now these various morbid dispositions in themselves