[44] I have not considered it in place here to emphasize the aesthetic influence of familiarity with nakedness.  The most aesthetic nations (notably the Greeks and the Japanese) have been those that preserved a certain degree of familiarity with the naked body.  “In all arts,” Maeterlinck remarks, “civilized peoples have approached or departed from pure beauty according as they approached or departed from the habit of nakedness.”  Ungewitter insists on the advantage to the artist of being able to study the naked body in movement, and it may be worth mentioning that Fidus (Hugo Hoeppener), the German artist of to-day who has exerted great influence by his fresh, powerful and yet reverent delineation of the naked human form in all its varying aspects, attributes his inspiration and vision to the fact that, as a pupil of Diefenbach, he was accustomed with his companions to work naked in the solitudes outside Munich which they frequented (F.  Enzensberger, “Fidus,” Deutsche Kultur, Aug., 1906).

CHAPTER IV.

THE VALUATION OF SEXUAL LOVE.

The Conception of Sexual Love—­The Attitude of Mediaeval Asceticism—­St. Bernard and St. Odo of Cluny—­The Ascetic Insistence on the Proximity of the Sexual and Excretory Centres—­Love as a Sacrament of Nature—­The Idea of the Impurity of Sex in Primitive Religions Generally—­Theories of the Origin of This Idea—­The Anti-Ascetic Element in the Bible and Early Christianity—­Clement of Alexandria—­St. Augustine’s Attitude—­The Recognition of the Sacredness of the Body by Tertullian, Rufinus and Athanasius—­The Reformation—­The Sexual Instinct regarded as Beastly—­The Human Sexual Instinct Not Animal-like—­Lust and Love—­The Definition of Love—­Love and Names for Love Unknown in Some Parts of the World—­Romantic Love of Late Development in the White Race—­The Mystery of Sexual Desire—­Whether Love is a Delusion—­The Spiritual as Well as the Physical Structure of the World in Part Built up on Sexual Love—­The Testimony of Men of Intellect to the Supremacy of Love.

It will be seen that the preceding discussion of nakedness has a significance beyond what it appeared to possess at the outset.  The hygienic value, physically and mentally, of familiarity with nakedness during the early years of life, however considerable it may be, is not the only value which such familiarity possesses.  Beyond its aesthetic value, also, there lies in it a moral value, a source of dynamic energy.  And now, taking a still further step, we may say that it has a spiritual value in relation to our whole conception of the sexual impulse.  Our attitude towards the naked human body is the test of our attitude towards the instinct of sex.  If our own and our fellows’ bodies seem to us intrinsically shameful or disgusting, nothing will ever really ennoble or purify our conceptions of sexual love.  Love craves the flesh, and if the flesh is shameful the lover