These prison relationships are not always of a brutal character, McMurtrie states, the attraction sometimes being more spiritual than physical.[47] Prison life develops and fosters the homosexual tendency of criminals; but there can be little doubt that that tendency, or else a tendency to sexual indifference or bisexuality, is a radical character of a very large number of criminals.

We may also find it to a considerable extent among tramps, an allied class of undoubted degenerates, who, save for brief seasons, are less familiar with prison life.

I am able to bring forward interesting evidence on this point by an acute observer who lived much among tramps in various countries, and largely devoted himself to the study of them.[48] The fact that homosexuality is especially common among men of exceptional intellect was long since noted by Dante:-- "In somma sappi, che tutti fur cherci E litterati grandi, et di gran fama D'un medismo peccato al mondo lerci."[49] It has often been noted since and remains a remarkable fact.
There cannot be the slightest doubt that intellectual and artistic abilities of the highest order have frequently been associated with a congenitally inverted sexual temperament.

There has been a tendency among inverts themselves to discover their own temperament in many distinguished persons on evidence of the most slender character.

But it remains a demonstrable fact that numerous highly distinguished persons, of the past and the present, in various countries, have been inverts.