of his own studies of the naked human form during many years.  It is necessary to correct the impressions received from classic sources by good photographic illustrations on account of the false conventions prevailing in classic works, though those conventions were not necessarily false for the artists who originated them.  The omission of the pudendal hair, in representations of the nude was, for instance, quite natural for the people of countries still under Oriental influence are accustomed to remove the hair from the body.  If, however, under quite different conditions, we perpetuate that artistic convention to-day, we put ourselves into a perverse relation to nature.  There is ample evidence of this.  “There is one convention so ancient, so necessary, so universal,” writes Mr. Frederic Harrison (Nineteenth Century and After, Aug., 1907), “that its deliberate defiance to-day may arouse the bile of the least squeamish of men and should make women withdraw at once.”  If boys and girls were brought up at their mother’s knees in familiarity with pictures of beautiful and natural nakedness, it would be impossible for anyone to write such silly and shameful words as these.

There can be no doubt that among ourselves the simple and direct attitude of the child towards nakedness is so early crushed out of him that intelligent education is necessary in order that he may be enabled to discern what is and what is not obscene.  To the plough-boy and the country servant-girl all nakedness, including that of Greek statuary, is alike shameful or lustful.  “I have a picture of women like that,” said a countryman with a grin, as he pointed to a photograph of one of Tintoret’s most beautiful groups, “smoking cigarettes.”  And the mass of people in most northern countries have still passed little beyond this stage of discernment; in ability to distinguish between the beautiful and the obscene they are still on the level of the plough-boy and the servant-girl.

FOOTNOTES: 

[18] These manifestations have been dealt with in the study of Autoerotism in vol. i of the present Studies.  It may be added that the sexual life of the child has been exhaustively investigated by Moll, Das Sexualleben des Kindes, 1909.

[19] This genital efflorescence in the sexual glands and breasts at birth or in early infancy has been discussed in a Paris thesis, by Camille Renouf (La Crise Genital et les Manifestations Connexes chez le Foetus et le Nouveau-ne, 1905); he is unable to offer a satisfactory explanation of these phenomena.

[20] Amelineau, La Morale des Egyptiens, p. 64.

[21] “The Social Evil in Philadelphia,” Arena, March, 1896.

[22] Moll, Kontraere Sexualempfindung, third edition, p. 592.

[23] This powerlessness of the law and the police is well recognized by lawyers familiar with the matter.  Thus F. Werthauer (Sittlichkeitsdelikte der Grosstadt, 1907) insists throughout on the importance of parents and teachers imparting to children from their early years a progressively increasing knowledge of sexual matters.