with the naked body.  Thus Eulenburg and Julian Marcuse (Sexualpaedagogik, p. 264) emphasize the importance of air-baths, not only for the sake of the physical health of the young, but in the interests of rational sexual training.  Hoeller, a teacher, speaking at the same congress (op. cit., p. 85), after insisting on familiarity with the nude in art and literature, and protesting against the bowdlerising of poems for the young, continues:  “By bathing-drawers ordinances no soul was ever yet saved from moral ruin.  One who has learnt to enjoy peacefully the naked in art is only stirred by the naked in nature as by a work of art.”  Enderlin, another teacher, speaking in the same sense (p. 58), points out that nakedness cannot act sexually or immorally on the child, since the sexual impulse has not yet become pronounced, and the earlier he is introduced to the naked in nature and in art, as a matter of course, the less likely are the sexual feelings to be developed precociously.  The child thus, indeed, becomes immune to impure influences, so that later, when representations of the nude are brought before him for the object of provoking his wantonness, they are powerless to injure him.  It is important, Enderlin adds, for familiarity with the nude in art to be learnt at school, for most of us, as Siebert remarks, have to learn purity through art.

Nakedness in bathing, remarks Boelsche in his Liebesleben in der Natur (vol. iii, pp. 139 et seq.), we already in some measure possess; we need it in physical exercises, at first for the sexes separately; then, when we have grown accustomed to the idea, occasionally for both sexes together.  We need to acquire the capacity to see the bodies of individuals of the other sex with such self-control and such natural instinct that they become non-erotic to us and can be gazed at without erotic feeling.  Art, he says, shows that this is possible in civilization.  Science, he adds, comes to the aid of the same view.

Ungewitter (Die Nacktheit, p. 57) also advocates boys and girls engaging in play and gymnastics together, entirely naked in air-baths.  “In this way,” he believes, “the gymnasium would become a school of morality, in which young growing things would be able to retain their purity as long as possible through becoming naturally accustomed to each other.  At the same time their bodies would be hardened and developed, and the perception of beautiful and natural forms awakened.”  To those who have any “moral” doubts on the matter, he mentions the custom in remote country districts of boys and girls bathing together quite naked and without any sexual consciousness.  Rudolf Sommer, similarly, in an excellent article entitled “Maedchenerziehung oder Menschenbildung?” (Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Bd. i, Heft 3) advises that children should be made accustomed to each other’s nakedness from an early age in the family life of the house or the garden,