It is to Hirschfeld that we owe the chief attempt to gain some notion of the percentage of homosexual persons among the general population.[104] It may be said to vary in different regions and more especially in different occupations, from 1 to 10 per cent.

But the average when the individuals belonging to a large number of groups are combined is generally found to be rather over 2 per cent.

So that there are about a million and a half inverted persons in Germany.[105] This would be a minimum which can scarcely fail to be below the actual proportion, as no one can be certain that he is acquainted with the real proclivities of all the persons comprising a larger group of acquaintances.[106] It is not found in the estimates which have reached Hirschfeld that the French groups show a smaller proportion of homosexual persons than the German groups, and a Japanese group comes out near to the general average for the whole.

Various authorities, especially Germans, believe that homosexuality is just as common in France as in Germany.[107] Saint-Paul ("Dr.Laupts"), on the other hand, is unable to accept this view.

As an army surgeon who has long served in Africa he can (as also Rebierre in his _Joyeux et demifous_) bear witness to the frequency of homosexuality among the African battalions of the French army, especially in the cavalry, less so in the infantry; in the French army generally he finds it rare, as also in the general population.[108] Naecke is also inclined to believe that homosexuality is rarer in Celtic lands, and in the Latin countries generally, than in Teutonic and Slavonic lands, and believes that it may be a question of race.[109] The question is still undecided.