they are thus compelled to retain, however sexually desirable and attractive they may become to the opposite sex under the influence of emotion, can rarely be regarded as beautiful from the point of view of aesthetic contemplation.  Under the influence of art there is a tendency for the sexual organs to be diminished in size, and in no civilized country has the artist ever chosen to give an erect organ to his representations of ideal masculine beauty.  It is mainly because the unaesthetic character of a woman’s sexual region is almost imperceptible in any ordinary and normal position of the nude body that the feminine form is a more aesthetically beautiful object of contemplation than the masculine.  Apart from this character we are probably bound, from a strictly aesthetic point of view, to regard the male form as more aesthetically beautiful.[139] The female form, moreover, usually overpasses very swiftly the period of the climax of its beauty, often only retaining it during a few weeks.

    The following communication from a correspondent well brings out
    the divergences of feeling in this matter: 

“You write that the sex organs, in an excited condition, cannot be called aesthetic.  But I believe that they are a source, not only of curiosity and wonder to many persons, but also objects of admiration.  I happen to know of one man, extremely intellectual and refined, who delights in lying between his mistress’s thighs and gazing long at the dilated vagina.  Also another man, married, and not intellectual, who always tenderly gazes at his wife’s organs, in a strong light, before intercourse, and kisses her there and upon the abdomen.  The wife, though amative, confessed to another woman that she could not understand the attraction.  On the other hand, two married men have told me that the sight of their wives’ genital parts would disgust them, and that they have never seen them.

“If the sexual parts cannot be called aesthetic, they have still a strong charm for many passionate lovers, of both sexes, though not often, I believe, among the unimaginative and the uneducated, who are apt to ridicule the organs or to be repelled by them.  Many women confess that they are revolted by the sight of even a husband’s complete nudity, though they have no indifference for sexual embraces.  I think that the stupid bungle of Nature in making the generative organs serve as means of relieving the bladder has much to do with this revulsion.  But some women of erotic temperament find pleasure in looking at the penis of a husband or lover, in handling it, and kissing it.  Prostitutes do this in the way of business; some chaste, passionate wives act thus voluntarily.  This is scarcely morbid, as the mammalia of most species smell and lick each others’ genitals.  Probably primitive man did the same.”

Brantome (Vie des Dames Galantes, Discours II) has some remarks to much the same