Christianity, which found so many of Plato’s opinions congenial, would have nothing to do with his view of nakedness and failed to recognize its psychological correctness.  The reason was simple, and indeed simple-minded.  The Church was passionately eager to fight against what it called “the flesh,” and thus fell into the error of confusing the subjective question of sexual desire with the objective spectacle of the naked form.  “The flesh” is evil; therefore, “the flesh” must be hidden.  And they hid it, without understanding that in so doing they had not suppressed the craving for the human form, but, on the contrary, had heightened it by imparting to it the additional fascination of a forbidden mystery.

Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy (Part III, Sect II, Mem.  II, Subs.  IV), referring to the recommendations of Plato, adds:  “But Eusebius and Theodoret worthily lash him for it; and well they might:  for as one saith, the very sight of naked parts, causeth enormous, exceeding concupiscences, and stirs up both men and women to burning lust.”  Yet, as Burton himself adds further on in the same section of his work (Mem.  V, Subs.  III), without protest, “some are of opinion, that to see a woman naked, is able of itself to alter his affection; and it is worthy of consideration, saith Montaigne, the Frenchman, in his Essays, that the skilfullest masters of amorous dalliance appoint for a remedy of venereous passions, a full survey of the body.”

There ought to be no question regarding the fact that it is the adorned, the partially concealed body, and not the absolutely naked body, which acts as a sexual excitant.  I have brought together some evidence on this point in the study of “The Evolution of Modesty.”  “In Madagascar, West Africa, and the Cape,” says G.F.  Scott Elliot (A Naturalist in Mid-Africa, p. 36), “I have always found the same rule.  Chastity varies inversely as the amount of clothing.”  It is now indeed generally held that one of the chief primary objects of ornament and clothing was the stimulation of sexual desire, and artists’ models are well aware that when they are completely unclothed, they are most safe from undesired masculine advances.  “A favorite model of mine told me,” remarks Dr. Shufeldt (Medical Brief, Oct., 1904), the distinguished author of Studies of the Human Form, “that it was her practice to disrobe as soon after entering the artist’s studio as possible, for, as men are not always responsible for their emotions, she felt that she was far less likely to arouse or excite them when entirely nude than when only semi-draped.”  This fact is, indeed, quite familiar to artists’ models.  If the conquest of sexual desire were the first and last consideration of life it would be more reasonable to prohibit clothing than to prohibit nakedness.

When Christianity absorbed the whole of the European world this strict avoidance of even the sight of “the flesh,” although nominally accepted by all as the desirable ideal, could only be carried out, thoroughly and completely, in the cloister.  In the practice of the world outside, although the original Christian ideals remained influential, various pagan and primitive traditions in favor of nakedness still persisted, and were, to some extent, allowed to manifest themselves, alike in ordinary custom and on special occasions.