to unite with in the perpetuation of the race....  That which inclines to love seems beautiful; that which seems beautiful inclines to love.  This intimate union of art and of love is, indeed, the only explanation of art.  Without this genital echo art would never have been born and never have been perpetuated.  There is nothing useless in these deep human depths; everything which has endured is necessary.  Art is the accomplice of love.  When love is taken away there is no art; when art is taken away love is nothing but a physiological need.” (Remy de Gourmont, Culture des Idees, 1900, p. 103, and Mercure de France, August, 1901, pp. 298 et seq.)

Beauty as incarnated in the feminine body has to some extent become the symbol of love even for women.  Colin Scott finds that it is common among women who are not inverted for female beauty whether on the stage or in art to arouse sexual emotion to a greater extent than male beauty, and this is confirmed by some of the histories I have recorded in the Appendix to the third volume of these Studies.  Scott considers that female beauty has come to be regarded as typical of ideal beauty, and thus tends to produce an emotional effect on both sexes alike.  It is certainly rare to find any aesthetic admiration of men among women, except in the case of women who have had some training in art.  In this matter it would seem that woman passively accepts the ideals of man.  “Objects which excite a man’s desire,” Colin Scott remarks, “are often, if not generally, the same as those affecting woman.  The female body has a sexually stimulating effect upon both sexes.  Statues of female forms are more liable than those of male form to have a stimulating effect upon women as well as men.  The evidence of numerous literary expressions seems to show that under the influence of sexual excitement a woman regards her body as made for man’s gratification, and that it is this complex emotion which forms the initial stage, at least, of her own pleasure.  Her body is the symbol for her partner, and indirectly for her, through his admiration of it, of their mutual joy and satisfaction.” (Colin Scott, “Sex and Art,” American Journal of Psychology, vol. vii, No. 2, p. 206; also private letter.)

At the same time it must be remembered that beauty and the conception of beauty have developed on a wider basis than that of the sexual impulse only, and also that our conceptions of the beautiful, even as concerns the human form, are to some extent objective, and may thus be in part reduced to law.  Stratz, in his books on feminine beauty, and notably in Die Schoenheit des Weiblichen Koerpers, insists on the objective element in beauty.  Papillault, again, when discussing the laws of growth and the beauty of the face, argues that beauty of line in the face is objective, and not a creation of fancy, since it is associated with the highest human functions, moral and social.