The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization / Translated from the Sixth German Edition

by Iwan Bloch

CHAPTER VII

The first step on the road to the individualization of love was effected at the very outset of the grey primeval age by the origination of the sexual sense of shame. Recent researches have for the first time established the fact that the sense of shame is not innate in man, but that it is a specific product of civilization—that is to say, a mental phenomenon arising in the course of progressive evolution, and as such is peculiar to man—present already, indeed, in the naked man, but, above all, characteristic of the clothed man. Clothing and the sense of shame have developed proportionally side by side, and in dependence each on the other; and originally both subserved the same purpose, to develop more strongly, and to bring to expression the individual, personal, peculiar nature of the individual man. They mirror the first individual activities in the amatory life of primitive man.

Georg Simmel has recognized very clearly this individualizing influence of the sense of shame by saying: “The entire sense of shame depends upon the self-uplifting of the individual.”[72]

By means of the recent critical investigations of leading anthropologists and ethnologists, we have obtained most important conclusions regarding the erotic sense of shame. Above all worthy of mention are the clear-sighted investigations of Havelock Ellis, and these have been supplemented by the researches of C. H. Stratz, Karl von den Steinen, etc.

Havelock Ellis distinguishes an animal and a social factor of shame. The former is specifically of a sexual nature, and is the simplest and most primitive element in the sense of shame. It is unquestionably more strongly developed in woman than in man; originally, indeed, it was peculiar to the female sex, and was the expression of the endeavour to protect the genital organs against the undesired approach of the male. In this form we may observe the sense of shame in other animals.

The sexual sense of shame of the female animal, declares Havelock Ellis, is rooted in the sexual periodicity of the female sex in general, and is an involuntary expression of the organic fact that the present time is not the time for love. Since this fact persists throughout the greater part of the life of the females of all animals kept under man’s control, the expression of this sense of warding off becomes so much a matter of custom that it manifests itself also at times when it has ceased to be appropriate. We see this, for example, in the bitch, which, when on heat, herself runs up to the dog, but then turns round again and tries to run away, and finally permits copulation only after the most delicate approaches on the part of the dog. In this manner the sense of shame becomes more and more a simple manifestation of the proximity of the male; it comes to be expected by the male, and takes its place among his ideas of what is sexually desirable in the female. Thus the sense of shame would appear to be also explicable as a psychical secondary sexual character. The sexual sense of shame of the female, continues Havelock Ellis, is, therefore, the unavoidable by-product of the naturally aggressive demeanour of the male being in sexual relations, and of the naturally repellent demeanour of the female; and this, again, is founded upon the fact that—in man and in nearly all the species allied to him—the sexual function of the female is periodic, and must always be treated with circumspection by the other sex; whereas in the male any care of this kind in regard to the exercise of his own sexual functions is seldom or never needed.

Groos very rightly points out that the great biological and psychological importance of coquetry is dependent upon this protective nature of the sense of shame, coquetry arising from the conflict between the sexual instinct and the innate sense of shame. It is to some extent the turning to account of the sense of shame for sensual purposes, a seldom failing speculation on the sexual impulse of the male, and in this sense it is the outcome of a genuine gynecocratic instinct, which we shall again encounter in our study of masochism.

Since, then, it is no longer possible to question the data of the most recent researches, by which we are assured of the existence of a primitively organic animal basis for the sexual feeling of shame, it is quite as little open to doubt that the true psychic individual importance of the feeling of shame arises out of a second fundamental element of that feeling, out of the social factor; and this factor also affords an explanation of the origin of the sense of shame in man. This phenomenal form of the sense of shame is, moreover, specifically human.

This second social fundamental element of the sense of shame is the fear of arousing disgust.

In this connexion we must refer to the interesting and thoroughly naturalistic theory of Lombroso regarding the origin of the sense of shame. Lombroso starts from the observation that in many prostitutes there exists a kind of remarkable equivalent of the sense of shame—namely, the dislike to permit of an inspection of their genital organs when they are menstruating, or when for any other reason the organs are not clean. Now, the Romance term for shame is derived from “putere,” which indicates the origin of the sense of shame from the repugnance to the smell of decomposing secretions. If we connect with this the fact that the kiss was originally a smell, Lombroso declares that this pseudo-shame of prostitutes represents the original, primitive sense of shame of primeval woman—that is, the fear of being disgusting to man.[73] Sergi also accepts this hypothesis of Lombroso’s.

According to Richet’s studies regarding the origin of disgust, the genito-anal region, with its secretions and excrements, is an object of disgust among most primitive races, for which reason they carefully conceal it even from their own sex, but more particularly from the other sex. Later, quite commonly the fear of arousing dislike or disgust plays a prominent part in the production of the sense of shame. This fear relates not only to the actual sexual organs, but also to the buttocks. Among many primitive races the latter alone are covered.

The idea also of ceremonial uncleanness, aroused especially by the process of menstruation, and associated with ritual practices, plays a part in the genesis of the sense of shame.

Incontestably, however, the sense of shame has most intimate relations with clothing; but clothing is in part only to be referred to the above-described primary factors of the sense of shame. In the later course of the development of civilization, however, clothing has come to play a peculiar independent rôle in the further development of a refined sexual sense of shame.

Karl von den Steinen is led, as the result of his own observations among the Bakäiri of Central Brazil, to the most remarkable conclusions.

“I find it,” he writes, “impossible to believe that the sense of shame, which is entirely wanting among these naked Indians, can in other men be a primary sense. I am compelled to believe that this sense first made its appearance after certain parts of the body had been covered by clothing, and that the nakedness of women was first concealed from the gaze of others when, perhaps, in very slightly complicated economic and social conditions, the value of marriageable girls had increased, in consequence of more active intercourse, as is now the case among the principal families in Schingu. I am also of opinion that we make the explanation more difficult than it really is when we theoretically believe ourselves to possess a greater sense of shame than we practically have.”[74]

Thus we find that among the Bakäiri, who go completely naked, our (sexual) sense of shame is almost completely undeveloped; more especially, a sense of shame due to disclosure of parts does not exist, whilst the purely animal, physiological sense of shame is clearly manifested by these people.[75]

Where nudity is customary, the erotic sense of shame is very slightly developed. Civilized man also accustoms himself with incredible quickness to nudity, as if it were an entirely natural condition.

“The feeling of being in the presence of nudity is no longer noticed after a quarter of an hour, and when those who witness it are intentionally reminded of it, and are asked whether naked men and women, fathers, mothers, and children, who are standing about or walking unconcernedly, should be condemned or regarded with compassion on account of their shamelessness, the observer only feels inclined to laugh, as at something quite absurd, or to protest at a preposterous suggestion.... With what rapidity in unfamiliar regions it is possible to become accustomed to a purely nude environment is most clearly shown by the fact that I myself, in the night from the 15th to the 16th September, and again on the following night, dreamed of my German home, and there in my dream I saw all my acquaintances as completely nude as the Bakäiri with whom I was sojourning. I myself felt astonished at this, but my neighbour at table at a dinner-party at which in my dream I was a guest, a lady of quality, at once bade me compose myself, and said, ‘Now we all go like this.’”[76]

The Bakäiri, who go completely naked, have no “private parts.” They jest about these parts verbally and pictorially with complete indifference. It would be ridiculous for this reason to regard them as “indecent.” The onset of puberty is celebrated in the case of both sexes by noisy popular festivals, in which the “private parts” receive a demonstrative and joyful attention. A man who wishes to inform a stranger that he is the father of one of those present, a woman who wishes to declare herself to be the mother of a child, grasps the genital organs with an earnest and unconcerned demeanour, intending by this gesture to indicate that they themselves are the procreators. The cloth covering the penis of the male, and the three cornered apron of the female, are not for purposes of concealment, but are simply intended to protect the mucous membranes—as a bandage or an apron in the women, and in the men as an apparatus for the mechanical treatment of phimosis.

It is only in jest that such things can be regarded as “articles of clothing,” the principal object of which is to subserve the sense of shame. Sexual excitement is not concealed by this simple covering. The red threads of the Trumai, the vari-coloured cloths of the Bororo, are adornments, by which attention is attracted to this region rather than repelled.[77] The completely naked Suyá women wash their genital organs in the river in the presence of Europeans.[78]

Thus among these Caribs of Central Brazil, who are still living in the stone age, we observe in all their simplicity the results of complete nudity, and we are able to determine that this nudity entirely prevents the origination of an erotic sense of shame in our meaning of the term. The physiological factors of the sense of shame are not, taken alone, sufficiently strong to lead to the appearance of this sense in its full strength as a special psychical phenomenon. It is first in association with clothing that these physiological factors have any great significance in the production of the sense of shame.

C. H. Stratz, in a historical and anthropological study regarding women’s clothing (Stuttgart, 1900), has compared the data of the more recent ethnological investigations with the facts already known in the history of civilization and art, and has noticed a remarkable agreement between the two. According to him, “the first original purpose of clothing was, not the covering, but simply and solely the adornment of the naked body.”[79] The naked man feels little or no shame; the clothed man is the first to feel shame—he feels it when the customary ornament is lacking. This is true alike for primitive and for civilized man. For Stratz very rightly points out that any manifestation of nudity which is prescribed by fashion—that is to say, by the then dominant code of beautification—is never felt as nudity. On the contrary, a lady in a high-necked dress amongst the décolletée ladies of a ballroom, “would feel deeply ashamed because her breast was not bare.”

The history of clothing and of fashion, which is so closely associated therewith, affords us the most important elements for the understanding of the sense of shame of modern man, and for the judgment of its importance and of its natural limitations. Moreover, clothing has most intimate relations to love as a psychical phenomenon. “How great an influence,” says Emanuel Herrmann, “love exercises, in all its stages, upon clothing, and how clearly, on the other hand, love is expressed by clothing!”[80] Clothing more especially satisfies the general human need, proved by Hoche and myself to exist, for variety in sexual relationships, which continually demands new allurements and new stimuli.

The preliminary stage of clothing, a kind of symbolic clothing for primitive man, is the staining, painting, and tattooing, of the skin, regarding which recent ethnological researches, especially those of Westermarck,[81] Joest,[82] and Marquardt,[83] have afforded us noteworthy conclusions.

It is a fact of great interest that the tendency to painting and adorning the body existed already in prehistoric times, thus affording a notable illustration of the truth of Herbert Spencer’s opinion that the vanity of uncivilized man was much greater than that of civilized man. In palæolithic dwellings coloured earths have actually been discovered, and coloured pastes made by mixing iron rust with reindeer fat, which unquestionably were employed for the colouring of the human body. Moreover, as Ludwig Stein remarks, the history of cosmetics, which Lord Bacon, in his “Cosmetica,” dated from the days of Biblical antiquity, can be traced back with certainty to the man of the ice age, upon whose individual and moral qualities this fact throws a significant light. According to Klaatsch, palæolithic man was not contented simply with painting his skin; he also tattooed himself by means of fine flint knives.[84]

Painting and tattooing of the body must, then, be regarded as a primitive stage of clothing. Ploss-Bartels remarks: “I find it impossible to doubt that the original meaning of tattooing is to be found in the endeavour to cover nakedness”; and Joest, the most learned student of tattooing, is of the same opinion. He writes: “The less a man clothes himself, the more he tattoos his skin; and the more he clothes himself, the less he tattoos.”[85]

We must also regard the coloration of the skin produced by tattooing as a means of allurement; tattooing was, in fact, principally carried out for the purpose of sexual allurement and stimulation. The tattooed man is the more beautiful, the more worthy object of desire. Even in cases in which painting and tattooing were originally undertaken for other purposes—for instance, with some therapeutic aim, or perhaps to serve as means of social or political differentiation—still, these signs and visible changes in the skin of the body speedily exerted a powerful influence upon the other sex, and by sexual selection were converted into sexual lures.[86]

This sexual character of tattooing is indicated also by the fact that amongst numerous savage people of the South Seas, in the Caroline Islands, in New Guinea, and in the Pelew Islands, the girls, in order to attract the men, were accustomed to tattoo exclusively the genital region, and especially the mons Veneris; thus, by tattooing, they made this region markedly apparent. It is characteristic that Miklucho-Maclay at the first glance received the impression that the girl tattooed in this manner wore on the mons Veneris a three-cornered piece of blue cloth, so closely can tattooing simulate clothing.

The sexual nature of tattooing is also shown by its association with phallic festivals. In Tahiti there is a very characteristic legend regarding the sexual origin of tattooing.[87] Among many primitive peoples the first appearance of menstruation gives the signal for tattooing, and for priapistic festivals.

An important sexual relationship is also manifested by the colour element of tattooing. It appears that the sense of love in primitive man is closely connected with the sight of particular colours. According to Konrad Lange, the sensual voluptuous value of these colours obtained its peculiar character from the feeling of love associated with viewing them; and, speaking generally, we can prove the existence of a certain association between the love of colour and the sexual impulse. Lange records an experience of his own youth, that when, about fourteen years of age, he was glancing at a vari-coloured necktie he had feelings which were not very different in their nature from sexual desire. He rightly draws attention to the fact that in primitive man this association of ideas is especially vivid, for the reason that, as already stated, the painting of the body is usually first undertaken at the time of the commencement of puberty.[88]

It is a significant fact that among modern civilized peoples the practice of tattooing is generally confined to certain lower classes of the population, such as sailors, criminals, and prostitutes, among whom the primitive impulses remain active in a quite exceptional strength, as Lombroso has more especially shown in his “Palimsesti di Carcere,” and in his works on the criminal and the prostitute. Very frequently obscene tattooings were found in such persons.[89] Marro, Lacassagne, Batut, and Rudolf Bergh, have also studied the tattooings of prostitutes and criminals, and have observed the same objects and ornaments in both classes. Salillas in Spain, Drago in the Argentine, Ellis and Greaves in England, and Tronow in Russia, obtained similar results. In 12·5 per cent. of the inmates of reformatories in Brieg, Kurella found that the skin was tattooed. According to him, cynicism, revenge, cruelty, remorselessness, gloomy or indifferent fatalism, bestial lewdness, with a dominant tendency to unnatural vices of every kind, “constituted the principal psychical manifestations exhibited by these tattoo-pictures.”

“Pæderastic symbols among the men, and tribadistic among the female prostitutes, are of especially frequent occurrence, and among these we often find a mackerel sketched on the vulva, denoting the souteneur; still more perverse sexual representations even French authors such as Batut have not ventured to reproduce; we see things which would send the police des mœurs out of their minds. Already in quite young vagabonds, frequently sons of prostitutes, we see representations of this kind.”[90]

Not only, however, in criminals and prostitutes, but also in the non-criminal members of the lowest classes of the population, we often observe erotic tattooings of the most obscene character, which, without doubt, serve as sexual lures and stimuli. J. Robinsohn and Friedrich S. Krauss recently published an interesting account of these matters.[91]

Cases of Tattooing in Women of the Upper Classes.—It appears that the primitive tendency to tattooing as a sexual stimulus and means of allurement has recently revived in certain circles of the refined sensual world. René Schwaeblé, in his celebrated book based on his own observations and moral studies, and entitled, “Les Détraquées de Paris” (Paris, 1904), gives an account of the increasing diffusion of tattooing among both men and women of the upper classes of Parisian society, for which purpose a specialist has opened an atelier in the Rue Blanche, in Montmartre. Schwaeblé devotes a special chapter to the “tatouées” (pp. 47-57), and describes an assembly of some of these distinguished libertines in a house in the Rue de la Pompe in Passy. In one of these ladies, tattooing imitated in a most deceptive manner a pair of stockings, thus affording a characteristic instance of the above-mentioned association between tattooing and clothing. Another woman had inscriptions tattooed on the thighs and hips; in two the legs were adorned with garlands of vine-leaves, birds were billing on the abdomen, and on the back were depicted many coloured bouquets of flowers, with the inscription, “X. pinxit, after Watteau.” A marchioness had her family coat-of-arms depicted between the shoulder blades; another great lady had had tattooed on her body the maddest and most obscene drawings of a satanistic character! Two unmistakably homosexual women had a common tattooing—that is to say, one was complementary to the other; only when they were side by side had the picture a meaning. The most remarkable of all the tattooings, however, was that of the hostess. On her body was the picture of a complete hunt, the individual scenes of which wound round her body; it was in the most vivid colours; carriages, packs of hounds and hunters were all shown. The final goal of the hunt was a fox tattooed in the genital region.

Tattooing leads on to the consideration of many-coloured clothing, which is especially common in primitive conditions of mankind. Such clothing, in such conditions, serves chiefly to accentuate particular portions of the body, in order to stimulate the sexual appetite of members of the opposite sex. According to Moseley, the savage begins by painting and tattooing himself for the sake of adornment. Then he takes a movable appendage, which he throws round his body, and on which he places the ornamentation which he had previously marked on his skin in a more or less ineradicable manner. Now a greater variation is rendered possible than was the case with tattooing and painting. Thus, by means of vari-coloured and bright bands, fringes, girdles, and aprons, which for the most part are attached in the genital region, attention is drawn to this part—and here a contrast of colours is found extremely effective. The Indians of the Admiralty Islands have as their only article of clothing a brilliant white mussel-shell, which exhibits a striking contrast to the dark colour of their skin. The Areois of Tahiti, a class of privileged libertines and voluptuous individuals, manifested this character in public places by wearing a girdle made of “ti-leaves.”[92]

The first and most primitive form of clothing was this pubic ornament, the original purpose of which was adornment, not concealment. The latter significance it acquired only in proportion as the genital organs became the object of a superstitious feeling of fear and respect, and were regarded as the seat of a dangerous magic.[93] The above-mentioned connexion between sexuality and magic here made itself apparent. It was necessary that this wonderful, daimonic region should be concealed, in order to protect an onlooker from its evil and influence, or, contrariwise, to protect the genital region from the evil glance of the observer. Both ideas are ethnologically demonstrable. According to Dürkheim, the genital organs, and especially those of women, were covered in primitive times, in order to prevent the perception of any disagreeable emanations from these regions. Finally, Waitz, Schurz, and Letourneau propounded the theory that the jealousy of primitive man was the primary ground of clothing, and was indirectly also the cause of the sense of shame. This view is supported by the interesting ethnological fact that in many races only the married women are clothed, whilst the fully-grown unmarried girls go completely naked. The married woman is part of the property of the husband; to the latter, clothing appears to be a protection against glances at his property—to unclothe the wife is a dishonour and a shame. When the idea of possession was extended to the relationship between the father and his unmarried daughters, these latter also were clothed; thus the idea of chastity and the feeling of shame were developed.[94]

We can, however, adduce numerous considerations in support of the view that the first covering of the genital organs, in association with the pubic ornament, did not arise out of the feeling of shame, but, on the contrary, that it served as a means of sexual allurement. By all kinds of striking ornaments, such as cat’s tails, mussel-shells, or strips of hide, fastened either in front or behind, every possible attention was attracted to the genital region or the buttocks.[95] Concealment made itself felt as a more powerful sensual stimulus than nudity. This is an old anthropological experience which still possesses great significance in our modern civilized life.

Virey believed that human beings had more intense and manifold sexual enjoyments than the lower animals, because these latter see their wives at all times without any kind of adornment, whereas the half-opened veil with which the human female conceals or partially discloses her charms increases a hundredfold the already boundless lust of mankind. “The less one sees, the more does imagination picture.”[96] That which causes a refined and sensual stimulus is not the entirely naked, but the half-naked or partial nudity. Westermarck remarks:

“We have numerous examples of races who generally go about completely naked, but sometimes employ a covering. In such cases they always wear the latter in circumstances which make it perfectly clear that the covering is used simply as a means of allurement. Thus, Lohmann relates that among the Saliras only prostitutes wear clothing, and they do this in order to stimulate by means of the unknown. Barth informs us that among many heathen races in Central Africa, the married women go entirely naked, whilst the girls ripe for marriage clothe themselves (in order that they may appear worthy of desire). The married women of Tipperah wear no more than a short apron, while the unmarried girls cover the breasts with vari-coloured cloths with fringed edges. Among the Toungta, the breasts of the women remain uncovered after the birth of the first child, but the unmarried women wear a narrow breast-cloth.”[97]

The significance of clothing and partial clothing as a sexual stimulus, proved by K. von den Steinen and Stratz to exist among primitive peoples, can be shown to form an element in the “fashion” of civilized races, which provides the imagination with entirely new sexual stimuli, by means of the two fundamental elements of the accentuation and disclosure of certain parts, and speaks to man of “hidden joys.” Moses made use of this psychical sexual influence of clothing. He wished to increase the numbers of his small people, and therefore he ordered the concealment of the feminine charms, “in order to stimulate the senses of the male members of his community, and thus increase the fertility of his people.”[98] Nudity, rejected by him as unsuitable, came in the Christian teaching to be regarded as “immoral”; for such a change in the point of view, we can find numerous examples in the public life of the present day.

The greatest sensual stimulus is exerted by the half-clothing or partial disclosure of the body, the so-called retroussé—that is, the art of bringing about a refined mutual influence between the charms of clothing and the charms of the body.[99] This plays a very important part in the origination of the so-called “clothes fetichism,” which we shall describe at greater length when we come to the consideration of these sexual anomalies.

There are two fundamental forms of clothing, the tropical (coat and sash) and the arctic (doublet and hose), and these, in addition to their simple function of protecting in the tropics from the powerful rays of the sun, and in the northern climates of protecting from cold, serve also in both sexes as a means of sexual allurement. The changeful phenomena and phases of “fashion in clothing” afford the most certain proofs of this fact; they may, in fact, be regarded as the most valuable sexual psychological documents of the successive epochs of civilization. The celebrated writer on æsthetics Friedrich Theodor Vischer has regarded them especially from this point of view in his original work, distinguished by its pithy style, “Fashion and Cynicism: Contributions to the Knowledge of the Forms of Civilization and of our Moral Ideas” (Stuttgart, 1888). He regards “the rage to excel in man-catching” as “the most powerful of impulses, capable of inflaming to fever-heat the madness of fashion, with its brainless changes, its furious inclinations, its raging distortions.” In a certain sense we may also speak of some of the fashions of men’s clothing as an art of “woman-catching.” Still, on the whole, this feature is much less manifest here than in relation to woman’s clothing.

Clothing has a sexually stimulating influence in a twofold manner: either certain parts are especially accentuated and enlarged by the shape or cut of the clothing and by peculiar kinds of ornamentation, or else particular portions of the body are directly denuded. Both of these have a sexual influence.

The accentuation and enlargement of certain parts of the body by means of clothing takes its origin in man’s belief that by this means he really produces certain enlargements of his personality, as though these portions of clothing were actually a part of himself. This remarkable theory of clothing, according to which the latter represents a strengthening of the body, a kind of outwardly projected emanation of the human personality, a direct continuation of the body, was first enunciated by the celebrated philosopher Hermann Lotze. He writes:

“Everywhere when we place a foreign body in connexion with the surface of our body (for not the hand alone develops this peculiarity), the consciousness of our personal identity is in a certain sense transmitted into the ends and outer surface of this foreign body, and there arise feelings, partly of an enlargement of our personal ego, partly of a change in form and in extent of movement, now become possible to us, but naturally foreign to our organs, and partly of an unaccustomed tension, firmness, or security of our carriage.”[100]

Naturally the reciprocal influence of one person upon another is not wanting, and the observer believes that in the clothing he actually finds the body. Parts that otherwise would not have attracted attention now appear as important objects. For example, the tall hat, as a prolongation of the head, seems to give the latter a certain height and worth. Gustave Flaubert, in “Madame Bovary,” very beautifully describes this remarkable transition, this identification of clothing with the body:

“Beneath her hair, which was drawn upwards towards the top of the head, the skin of the nape of her neck appeared to have a brownish tint, which gradually became paler, and lost itself in the shadows of her clothing. Her dress spread out on either side over the chair on which she was sitting; it fell in many folds, and spread out on the floor. When he chanced to touch it with his foot, he immediately drew the foot back again, as if he had trodden on something living.”

The same association of ideas has led to the idea that clothing “is, as it were, a complete skin to man,” as if it must represent a kind of “ideal nudity.”[101] Clothing represents the person, shelters the nature, the soul. It can, therefore, become the means of expression of human peculiarities, of individual traits of character. There exists a “physiognomy” of clothing; it is a mirror of the physical and spiritual being.[102] Very rightly is it asserted, in a pseudonymous essay on the “Erotics of Clothing,” that clothing, in the course of the many thousand years of the development of civilization, has taken up into itself so much of the spirit of mankind that we should find a solution for all the problems of human civilization if we were able completely and immediately to understand the spirit of clothing. The form of clothing is at the same time also the most subtle and accurate measuring apparatus for the peculiar and personal in a man—for the individual in him.[103]

If the accentuation of certain parts is the first sexual stimulus of clothing the denuding of certain parts is the second. When once the custom of concealing the body has been introduced, the denuding of portions of the body has acquired a sexually stimulating effect which it did not previously possess, and which it does not now possess among primitive communities. In the saying of a thoughtful writer, that there is a great difference from an erotic point of view between a glance at the naked leg of a sturdy peasant girl and a glance at the naked leg of a fashionable young lady, this different conception of nudity finds very clear expression. There is, in fact, a natural, sexually indifferent nudity, and an artificial, erotically stimulating nudity. It is the latter only which plays a part in the history of clothing and of fashion; and it is this, in association with the erotic accentuation of certain portions of the body, which has from early times been cultivated for the allurement of men, and above all by the world of prostitution and by the half-world.

This first occurred in classical antiquity, to which, however, true “fashion” was unknown, because clothing was not then, as it is in modern times, fused with the body, and therefore did not appear to be a continuation and representation of the bodily personality. In general, the refined quality of the modern “mode” was lacking, in regard to the accentuation of particular parts of the body by means of clothing. Very aptly has Schopenhauer, in the second volume of his “Parerga and Paralipomena,” pointed out the thorough-going difference between antique and modern clothing in this relationship. In the days of antiquity clothing was still a whole, which remained distinct from the body, and which allowed the human form to be recognized as distinctly as possible in all its parts. Sexual stimulation could be effected only by the employment of diaphanous fabrics, which were preferred in the circles of the half-world and by effeminate men. Varro, Juvenal, and Seneca chastise with biting words this immorality of “coacæ vestes,” and of the network clothing imported from Egypt. Then there appeared for the first time as a peculiar type the woman in man’s clothing, a proof of the wide diffusion of the love of boys, on which those prostitutes who went about clothed as men must have speculated when they assumed this dress.

The analysis of clothing into upper-clothing and under-clothing signifies a differentiation of clothing very effective as regards erotic influence. For the first time could the individual portions of the body appear in definite significance in relation to the body as a whole. And the indication of the waist became characteristic of fashion in clothing.[104]

The analysis of clothing was carried a stage further in the separation of clothing, properly speaking, from that which lies beneath it, the more intimate covering of the body, the washable underclothing—shirt, chemise, petticoat, etc. More especially had this differentiation a great erotic significance. It was the increase in the number of individual articles of clothing which first gave rise to the erotically tinged idea of the gradual “dressing” and “undressing,” to the idea of the intimate “toilet.” The possibilities of disclosure, half concealment, and semi-nudity were notably increased, and a much larger playground was opened to the erotic imagination.

In association with this, the waist, especially in the case of woman, indicated a separation of the bodily spheres into an upper sphere, associated chiefly with the intellectual, and a lower sphere, belonging rather to the purely sexual.

“The waist, which is already, roughly speaking, indicated by the sash or girdle, but which, in consequence of the progressive differentiation of feminine clothing, comes to play a principal part in women’s dress, divides the woman’s body into thorax and abdomen. The fully clothed woman becomes an insect, a wasp, with two sharply defined emotional and sexual spheres, with a heavenly and an earthly division.”[105]

With this classification and differentiation of clothing there now developed a fertile field for the activity of “fashion,” which therefore, as such, first really takes its rise in the middle ages. According to Sombart,[106] it was in the Italian States of the fifteenth century that it first became a living reality. Fashion is a product of the Christian middle ages; the specific element that this period introduced into feminine clothing—the corset—is a witness to Christian doctrine.

Stratz remarks on this subject:

“Strange as it may seem, it is very remarkably true that the corset derives its origin from the Christian worship of God. Owing to the strict ecclesiastical control in the middle ages—strict, at least, as regards public life—the dominant ascetic point of view demanded the fullest possible covering of the feminine body, and the mortification of the flesh; it insisted, at any rate, that those portions of the body should be withdrawn from the view of sinful man which are regarded as especially characteristic of the female sex. Through woman sin had entered the world, and therefore woman must, above all, take care to conceal as much as possible the sinful characteristics of her baser sex. Whilst man, by the greatest possible increase in breadth of shoulders and chest, endeavoured to suggest a more powerful and warlike aspect, we find that among women from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, the endeavour was dominant to make the breasts as flat and childlike and as narrow as possible, and for this purpose, for the compression and obliteration of the breasts, an early form of the corset was employed.”[107]

It is characteristic that fashion later employed the corset in precisely the opposite sense—namely, in order to make the breasts “stand out more prominently above the upper margin of the corset, which continually became shorter.” Thus there arose a conflict between medieval fashion and the ascetic tendencies of the times. Fashion was victorious along the whole line, as we can learn in detail in Ritter’s interesting essay regarding the nudities of the middle ages.[108]

Since the middle ages, two portions of the body have in the female sex been especially accentuated by clothing—the breasts, and the region of the hips and the buttocks.

As we have already pointed out, the corset was especially employed to accentuate the breasts, the corset having already produced the stimulating contrast between the prominence of the breast and the slenderness of the waist, increased by lacing. At the same time, at an early date the denuding of the upper part of the breasts was associated with this accentuation, the top of the dress being cut away in front à la grand’ gorge, whilst the corset, strengthened by rods of whalebone or steel, produced a bonne conché. This accentuation of the breasts dominated feminine fashion down to the present day. Besides the use of the corset in this matter, the region of the breasts was also rendered more prominent by the use of artificial breasts made of wax, by ornaments in the form of breast-rings, etc.

The partial denuding of the breasts represents the true décolleté of our balls and parties, a custom which a man so tolerant in other respects as H. Bahr condemns on æsthetic grounds.[109]

“The art of undressing and enjoying in imagination beautiful girls and women,” says Georg Hirth, “is learnt chiefly at Court and other balls, at which the feminine guests are compelled by fashion to bare the upper part of the body. It is astonishing how quickly, how invariably, the girls of the upper classes accustom themselves to this exhibition, which exercises so stimulating an effect upon us of the opposite sex. And yet they would turn up their noses if, at the parties of non-commissioned officers and servants, the women allowed such extensive glimpses of their charms. I once heard a girl three years of age express a naive surprise when she saw the décolletage of her mother, who was about to go to a ball. What a scolding would the poor servant-girl get if she were to exhibit her nudity to the children in such a manner!”[110]

Fr. Th. Vischer also severely criticizes this exposure of feminine nudities coram publico. Moreover, the free enjoyment of alcohol customary among men at these evening entertainments is likely to induce a frame of mind in which the charms thus freely displayed before their eyes will receive an attention not purely æsthetic.

As regards the corset more particularly, it is not only unæsthetic, but also unhygienic.

The corset draws in the beautiful outline of the feminine body in the most disagreeable manner; the wasp waist which it produces is an ugly exaggeration of the natural condition. The lady editor of the Documents of Women instituted an inquiry amongst a number of artists in regard to the corset. One of these, the architect Leopold Bauer, replied as follows:

“Nature has endowed the feminine body with a most beautiful outline. It is almost incomprehensible that the ideal of beauty should during so lengthy a period aim at the destruction of this wonderful and unique perfection. The corset makes an ugly bend in the vertebral column, it makes the hip shapeless, it suggests an unnatural and even repulsive development of the breasts, which transforms our sentiment of the sacred beauty of the human body into the lowest sexual and perverse impulses. That the corset does not really make the body appear slender is no longer open to doubt. All the suggested advantages of the corset are prejudices.... It is only when women’s dress is freed from the tyranny of this detestable corset that it will be able to develop in a free and artistic manner.”[111]

Physicians are unanimous regarding the unhygienic nature of the corset. The deleterious influence of tight-lacing upon the form and the activity of the thoracic and abdominal organs has been thoroughly elucidated by many authors. I need refer only, among many, to the writings of Hugo Klein,[112] Menge,[113] and O. Rosenbach,[114] regarding the dangers of the corset. The corset hinders the sufficient inspiration, which is so necessary for the adequate activity of the respiratory and circulatory organs, and herein we find a principal cause of anæmia (O. Rosenbach); it exercises the most harmful pressure on the abdominal organs, especially on the stomach and the liver, and presses them out of their natural situation, so that it gives rise to a descent of the kidneys, the liver, and the genital organs. The extremely ugly “pendulous belly” is also dependent on the influence of the corset. The pressure of the corset also often gives rise to an atrophy of the mammary glands, and to abnormal changes in the nipples. Thence ensues, further, a serious hindrance to the function of lactation, which may indeed be rendered completely impossible. For this reason, Georg Hirth, in his admirable essay upon the indispensable character of the maternal breast, exclaims: “Away with the corset!”[115]

The dorsal and abdominal muscles also undergo partial atrophy in consequence of the habitual wearing of the corset, because this garment to some extent relieves these muscles of their natural function. Anæmia, gastric and hepatic disorders, and intercostal neuralgia are also dependent upon this “most disastrous error of woman’s dress,” as von Krafft-Ebing calls the corset. Menge has very thoroughly studied the hurtful influence of the corset on the feminine reproductive organs. He enumerates, as a result of wearing it, among many evil results, inflammatory states and enlargement of the ovaries, relaxation of the uterine muscles, atrophy and excessive proliferation of the uterine mucous membrane, the onset of the extremely disagreeable fluor albus, premature termination of pregnancy, displacements of the uterus (retroflexion, anteversion, prolapse), abnormal stretching of the entire pelvic floor, retention of urine, constipation, and nervous troubles of the most varied character. Very often, also, sterility in woman is causally dependent upon the constriction and pressure exercised by the corset.

Rightly, therefore, the abandonment of the corset plays a principal part in the “reformed dress” of woman—a subject to which we shall later return.

In addition to the accentuation of the breast by the corset and by other apparatus,[116] another aim of feminine fashion has been most persistent in very various forms, namely, the exaggeration of the hips, or the buttocks, or both—in fact, of all the visible parts of the clothed body which are directly related to the sexual functions of woman; that is to say, there has been a persistent endeavour to indicate in the most prominent manner, in a way to stimulate the male, the secondary sexual characters of the female in this region of the body.

“The thoroughly modern women,” says Heinrich Pudor, “coquet at the present day less with their breasts than with their hind-quarters—for this reason, because for the most part they have a masculine type (?). It began with the cul de Paris. Nowadays, clothes are cut in such a way that in the view from the back the gluteal region is especially prominent. This is how the fashionable wife of a German officer strikes us at present.

“‘Tailor-made’ is the phrase that has for some time been in use in England. The tailor has made it—not the milliner. No, the tailor, who perhaps is at the same time bath-master and masseur.... Certain species of baboons are distinguished by their brightly coloured and prominent hind-quarters—there seems to be no doubt that our modern ladies in high life have taken these for their example. Or can it be that they wish to avail themselves of the homosexual inclinations of their male acquaintances? Beyond question this is so. Here we find the fundamental ground of the type of clothing of our own day by which so much attention is drawn to the region of the buttocks. What is repulsive here is not the homosexuality, but the misuse that is made of clothing. In fact, that which is most repulsive to a refined sentiment is this—that women have their clothes cut as tightly as possible round the hips, in order that the broad pelvis, which is especially characteristic of women as a sexual being, shall be as far as possible visibly isolated.”[117]

Similarly Fr. Th. Vischer has castigated the immorality of the gross accentuation of kallipygian charms,[118] which in the eighteenth century was inaugurated by the invention of the so-called tournure (cul de Paris), against which Mary Wollstonecraft inveighed so severely. By the tension of the clothing, not only the buttocks, but also the hips and the thighs, were rendered grossly apparent. In certain epochs, also, the feminine abdomen was very markedly indicated by the mode of dress; for instance, in the middle ages, down to the sixteenth century, fashion provided women and girls with the insignia of pregnancy, as is apparent in the pictures of Jan van Eyck (“The Lamb,” “Eva”), Hans Memling (“Eva”), and Titian (“The Beauty of Urbino”). The fashion of the “thick abdomen” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was only another variation of the same theme.

In close relation to the variations of fashion we have just described is the farthingale (montgolfière) or crinoline. It was first adopted in the sixteenth century by courtesans and prostitutes, who thus exhibited rounded and provocative forms, wishing to allure men by these vertugales, which, according to the bon mot of a Franciscan, expelled vertu, leaving behind only the gale (syphilis). The aptest remarks regarding the repulsive and dirty fashion of the crinoline were made by Schopenhauer.[119] It seems as if the crinoline, which is well known to have celebrated its greatest triumph during the period of the Second Empire in France—who is not familiar with the characteristic daguerrotypes of that period?—has recently endeavoured to come to life once more, for it appears that attempts have actually been made towards the rehabilitation of this monstrosity of clothing.

The physical difference between man and woman is also beyond question the principal cause of the difference between masculine and feminine clothing. According to Waldeyer (Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Congress of Anthropologists at Kassel, 1895, published in the Journal of the German Society of Anthropologists, No. 9, p. 76), it is especially the difference in the length and position of the thigh-bones that is responsible for the differentiation between masculine and feminine clothing. In woman, the upper ends of the femora are, in consequence of the greater width of the pelvis, more widely separated than in the male; and since in both sexes these bones are closely approximated at the knees, in women their position appears more oblique. This, in combination with the comparative shortness of women’s thighs, has a manifest influence upon the gait, especially in running, in which man distinctly excels woman. In this purely anatomical difference is to be found the reason why the masculine mode of dress, which makes the lower extremities very manifest, is not adapted for woman, especially when in the upright posture. This is an important cause for the differentiation between masculine and feminine clothing.

A further fundamental difference between the clothing of man and that of woman is the much greater simplicity and monotony, on the whole, of masculine clothing. This has, with good reason, been associated with the greater intellectual differentiation of man, who, therefore, stands less in need of any peculiar accentuation of the individual personality by means of clothing. Woman, who earlier was only a sexual being, utilized clothing in manifold ways as a means of sexual allurement, as the chief means of compensation for the life of activity denied her by Nature and custom, whereas to man, on the whole, the employment of sexual stimulation by means of clothing was superfluous.

Georg Simmel writes from another point of view. He is of opinion that woman, in comparison with man, is, on the whole, the more constant being, but that precisely this constancy, which expresses the equability and unity of her nature on the emotional side, demands, on the principle of compensation of vital tendencies, a more active variability in other less central provinces; whereas, on the contrary, man, in his very nature less constant, who is not accustomed to cleave with the same unconditional concentration of all vital interests to any once experienced emotional relationship, precisely in consequence of this, stands less in need of such external variability. Man, as regards objective phenomena, is, on the whole, more indifferent than woman, because fundamentally he is the more variable being, and therefore can more easily dispense with such objective variability.[120]

Notwithstanding this, down to the beginning of the nineteenth century there were not wanting, in the fashion of men’s clothing, attempts to employ certain parts of dress for the purpose of sexual stimulation. I refer in this connexion to my earlier contributions.[121] Here I shall allude only in passing to the peculiar and characteristic variations of men’s clothing in the form of marked attention drawn to the male genitals by the breeches-flap (braguettes); to the shoe, à la poulaine, which imitated the form of a male penis; to certain effeminate tendencies in the dress of man which have recurred very often since the days of the Roman Empire,[122] which are connected with the wide diffusion of homosexual tendencies, and which sometimes have given men’s dress so variegated a character, have involved such frequent changes and such occasional nudities, that at these times it could enter into competition with women’s clothing. In this respect, clothing enables us to draw conclusions not merely regarding the nature of the men who wore it, but also regarding the character of the time. There exists also the modern dandyhood, which recalls many peculiarities of earlier times; but, on the whole, fashion in men’s clothing tends to simplicity and sexual indifference. This movement originated in England, and the English fashion in men’s clothing has become dominant throughout the whole world, whereas women’s clothing now, as formerly, receives its fashionable stimulus from Paris.

In addition to the indirect relations of clothing with the vita sexualis, which we have already described, there is a direct relationship, and this is the effect of certain fabrics upon the skin, from which certain associations of ideas and certain abnormal tendencies may arise. Thus, for example, the contact of woollen stuffs and of furs has a sexually stimulating influence. Ryan compared their influence with that of flagellation.[123] In this sense, also, furs and the whip go together—these two symbols of “masochism”; velvet has a similar effect. The celebrated author of “Venus im Pelz,” Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, in his well-known romance bearing this name, deals fully with the sexual significance of furs. According to him, they exert a peculiar, prickling, physical stimulus, perhaps dependent upon their being charged with electricity, and upon the warmth of their atmosphere. A woman in a fur coat is like a “great cat,[124] a powerful electric battery.” Influences of smell also appear to be associated herewith. For, in a letter to his wife, Sacher-Masoch once wrote to tell her what voluptuous pleasure it would give to him to bathe his face in the warm odour of her furs.[125] With the description of the stimulating effect of fur dependent upon sensations of contact and smell, he associated also the fact that fur gave woman a dominant, masterful, magical influence. His “Venus im Pelz” is also to him “one who commands.” Titian found for the rosy beauty of his beloved one no more costly frame than dark fur. It is doubtless the strong contrast-effect between the delicate charm and the shaggy surroundings that evokes that remarkable symbolical relationship to longings for power and cruel despotism. In a thoughtful essay, “Venus im Pelz” (Berliner Tageblatt, No. 487, September 25, 1903), the idea is developed and explained, that the love of woman for furs results from her inward nature. It is the secret longing for an increase of her power and influence by means of contrast.[126]

Men’s and women’s clothing comprises the covering of the entire body with the exception of the face—the idea does not, as a rule, include the head-covering and the way the hair is dressed. In a recent work, H. Pudor brings the face into a peculiar sexual relationship with the clothing. His remarks on this subject, which contain many valuable observations, notwithstanding the fact that much of what he says is overdrawn, run as follows:

“There is no doubt that the face is a bearer of the sexual sense in the second and third degree. Not only the mouth or the larynx. The nose, especially in virtue of the mucous membranes by which odours are perceived. The eye, in virtue of the magnetic currents, the perception of light, and the chemical activity of the retina. But even the cheeks and the ears. Let some one you are fond of whisper something into your ear—notice the emotional wave you will feel, and observe how from the ear there are paths of conduction to the sexual cells [!]. Above all, however, naturally the mouth. We speak of the labia of the female genital organs, and therewith already we indicate the relationship to the lips of the mouth. We can, in fact, prove the existence, not only of a parallelism in the structure of the mouth and that of the sexual organs, in man just as in woman. We can go even further: we can regard the sacral region as the forehead, the anal region as the nose, the pudendal region as the mouth, and the gluteal region as the cheeks [!].

“If we regard the sexual differentiation of the features of the face as established, from this standpoint we gain an interesting light upon the deeper lying causes of the wearing of clothes. Civilized mankind conceals the sexual organs of the first degree; the sexual organs of the third degree—that is, the features of the face—are left naked; in fact, on account of the thorough way in which the parts of the body adjacent to the face are covered, stress is actually laid upon the nakedness of the face as bearing sexual organs of the third degree—now we recognize the rôle played by the hat—and by means of that which we call coquetry, we see mirrored in the features the proper sexual organs, or we have our attention drawn to the sexual organs by means of the features, and by the latter we are made aware of certain peculiarities of the former. In this connexion, let us remember certain facial adornments which serve to limit still more the naked area of the face, and to clothe a larger portion of that region, such as the locks of hair covering the ears which the dancer Cléo de Mérode introduced, ringlets such as were worn in youth by our grandmothers, or the chin-band drawn across the middle of the chin. Perhaps even other ornaments of the face (neck-band, ear-rings, and even eyeglasses and lorgnette [!]) also play a certain part in this connexion. Think, above all, of the stand-up collar and all other varieties of high collar by which the clothing is carried up as high as the chin. But those parts of the face which remain naked must now be as naked as possible; for this reason hairs, unless they belong to the beard as sexual organs of the second degree, must be removed, and society determinedly insists that faces shall be clean-shaven.”[127]

The relation of the face to the clothing already makes clear to us the idea of “costume” as an extension of clothing beyond the mere covering of the body. All which surrounds man, which has a relation to his appearance, is costume in the widest sense of the word; thus, sitting-room, workshop, study, dressing-room, park, library, etc.

“We take pains regarding all that we have nearest to us and round about us, our toilet, because therein we are at home, therein we suffer and we rejoice. Where we feel ourselves at home, we shall endeavour so to arrange matters that everything is comfortable to us, down to the furthest manifestations of our existence, so that our sitting-room, our bedroom, our house and our garden, constitute a prolongation, an extension of our clothing” (A. von Eye).[128]

Thus it happens that fashion is concerned, not merely with clothing, but also with an abundance of customary details of environment. The arrangement and furnishing of rooms, artistic objects, bodily exercises, social intercourse, sports, etc., are subject to the caprices of fashion. On this extended idea of fashion is based Fr. Th. Vischer’s definition: “Fashion is a general term to denote a complex of temporary current forms of civilization.”

The theory of fashion has been elaborated especially by Sombart[129] and Simmel.[130] In the work of W. Fred,[131] also, we find some thoughtful observations.

According to Simmel, fashion fulfils a double task. On the one hand, it is the imitation of a given example, and thus satisfies the need for social dependence; it leads the individual along the path on which all are going. But, on the other hand, it satisfies also the need for difference, the tendency to differentiation, to variation, to self-assertion. This fashion effects by means of frequent changes, and by the fact that first of all it is always a class fashion. The fashions of the upper classes are distinguished from those of the lower classes, and are instantly abandoned when the lower classes adopt them. Thus, according to Simmel’s definition, fashion is nothing else than a peculiar form among many forms of life, by means of which the tendency towards social equalization is connected with the tendency towards individual differentiation and variation to constitute a unitary activity.

In Paris, the centre of fashion, the associated work of these two tendencies may be studied most accurately and purely. We can there observe how at first always a portion only of society adopts the fashion, whilst the commonalty are still only on the way towards its adoption. If the fashion has become entirely general, if it is followed without exception, it is already over, it is no longer “fashionable,” because this class difference has ceased to exist.

“By means of this interplay—between its tendency to general diffusion on the one hand, and, on the other, the annihilation of its significance which this very diffusion brings about—fashion exercises the peculiar charm of the border-line, the charm of simultaneous beginning and ending, the charm of that which is at the same time new and obsolete” (Simmel).

In connexion with this fact we find that from the earliest times the “demi-monde” has always given the impulse to new fashions. Owing to the peculiarly uncertain position occupied by this class, everything conventional, everything long in use, is detested by its members; only newness and change are agreeable.

“In the continuous endeavour to find new, hitherto unheard-of fashions, in the heedlessness with which precisely that which is opposed to what has gone before is passionately grasped, there lies an æsthetic form of the destructive impulse, which all pariah existences appear to possess, so long, at any rate, as they are not completely enslaved” (Simmel).

On the other hand, the equalizing tendency of fashion serves delicate, sensitive natures as a kind of protection of their personality, as Simmel has shown in a masterly manner. To such persons fashion plays the part, as it were, of a mask.

“Thus it is a delicate shame and shyness, lest by a peculiarity in outward aspect, some peculiarity of the subjective character might perhaps be betrayed, that leads many natures to seek with eagerness the concealing equalization of fashion.... It gives a veil and a protection to all that lies within, and that thereby becomes more perfectly free.”

That modern fashion is, for the most part, a child of the nineteenth century, and is most intimately dependent upon the nature of capitalism, has been directly proved by W. Sombart. He indicates as a decisive fact in the process of the formation of fashion the perception that the participation of the consumer is thereby reduced to a minimum, that, on the contrary, the driving force in the creation of modern fashion is the capitalistic entrepreneur. If, for example, a Parisian cocotte discovers a new style of dress, or if, as the newspapers recently reported, the King of England introduces the fashion of a white hat or white shoes for men, these actions have, according to Sombart, the character only of intermediate assistance. The true driving agent for the rapid general diffusion of fashion, and for the frequent changes of fashion, remains the capitalistic entrepreneur, the producer, or merchant. Sombart proves this convincingly by striking examples. This economic aspect of fashion must receive no less consideration than the psychological.

If men’s clothing, as we have already said, is, in the gross, far less subject to the dominion of fashion than women’s clothing, still recently efforts have been apparent to simplify women’s clothing also, to make it independent of the caprices of fashion, and, above all, to subordinate it to hygienic principles. It is noteworthy that these efforts proceed more particularly from the leaders of the modern woman’s movement, an interesting proof of the connexion already alluded to between personality and clothing. The more differentiated and the more inwardly rich the personality, the simpler and more monotonous is the clothing. To this extent, therefore, the desire for simplification of feminine clothing is an entirely logical postulate of the emancipation of women. But this demand finds a justification also from the point of view of hygiene. This fact has been discussed especially by Paul Schultze-Naumburg in his book on “The Culture of the Feminine Body as the Basis of Women’s Clothing” (Leipzig, 1901). He insists above all on the complete abandonment of the corset, and of the “small waist,” and on a return of women’s clothing to the free, simple outlines of the antique. He makes, also, very noteworthy observations on the unhygienic footgear of both sexes.

The idea that woman’s clothing should unconstrainedly represent the form of her body has been admirably realized in the different varieties of the so-called “reformed dress.” Not without influence on these deserving attempts has been the recognition of the distinguished simplicity and hygienic purposefulness of the Japanese women’s clothing.

For the present, however, fashion, as of old, remains dominant, and celebrates annually its triumph in respect of new discoveries and refinements of the dress of women of the world, employing for this purpose the familiar means of accentuation and disclosure, and of coloured and ornamental stimuli. The “woman’s movement” has as yet had little ostensible and practical influence in liberating women’s dress from the all-powerful control of fashion.

Now that we have considered clothing and fashion in their relations to the sexual life, and have learned to understand how they combine in action as means of sexual stimulation of a peculiar nature, we are in a position to grasp the relations between the sense of shame and nudity, as it presents itself to us as a problem of modern civilization.

While, as Simmel also maintains, and as we have thoroughly explained above, clothing, through the intermediation of fashion, gives rise to shamelessness as a group manifestation, or, as we are accustomed to say at the present day, seriously impairs the sense of shame in such a manner as would be repelled with disgust if it were adopted by the personal choice of an isolated individual,[132] clothing has, on the other hand, led astray the natural biological sense of shame, since it is the sole cause of the “exaggerated sense of shame” known as prudery. Prudery recognizes the existence of clothed human beings only; it will not recognize the existence of naked man; it refuses to admit the purely moral-æsthetic influence of natural nudity—to prudery this is something immoral and repulsive.

To prudery alone we must ascribe the fact that we modern civilized human beings have completely lost the taste for natural nudity, and also for the natural sense of shame, and thus we show little understanding of the ennobling, civilizing influence of both.

Natural nudity, the state in which every human being is born into this world, not artificial nudity, with its lascivious influence dependent upon clothing, posture, and gesture, is purely an object of simple contemplation for the human being of normal perceptions, who sees in the unclothed human body precisely the same individual natural object as he sees in the bodies of other living beings. People, in other respects extremely prudish, admit this when they have the opportunity—at the present day certainly very rare—of seeing completely naked human beings in natural surroundings, as, for instance, when bathing.

It is only when we introduce intentionally a sensual or, speaking generally, an artificial influence, that nudity has an effect of lascivious stimulation. Prudery is, however, nothing more than such a way of looking at nudity, with concealed lustful feelings. The talented Schleiermacher already recognized this fact. He unmasked prudery as a lack of the sense of shame, and very clearly pointed out the sexual and lascivious element which it conceals. In his “Vertrauten Briefen über die Lucinde” (edition of K. Gutzkow, Hamburg, 1835, pp. 63-65) we find the following beautiful passage:

“What, then, shall we think of those who pretend to be in a condition of quiet thought and activity, and yet are so intolerably sensitive that as a result of the most trivial and most remote impulse, passion arises in them, and who believe themselves to be the more fully equipped with the sense of shame the more readily they find in everything something worthy of suspicion? They do not really find what they pretend to find in every occurrence; it is their own crude lust which lies always on the watch, and springs forward as soon as anything shows itself in the distance akin to themselves, and which therefore they find it possible to condemn; and they will quickly seize an opportunity for blaming anything of which the motives were absolutely blameless. Ordinarily, indeed, blamelessness appears to them a pretence. Youths and maidens are represented as knowing nothing as yet of love, but none the less as full of yearnings which every moment threaten to break out, and which clutch the slightest opportunity in order to grasp the forbidden fruit. But this is absurd. True youths and maidens are, indeed, the ideals of this kind of modesty, but in them it takes another form. Only that which has no other purpose than to arouse desire and passion can do them any harm; but why should they not be allowed to learn love and to understand Nature, both of which they see everywhere round them? Why should they not, without restraint, understand and enjoy what is thought and said about these matters, since in this way so much the less would passion be aroused in them? Such anxious and limited modesty as is at the present day characteristic of society is based only upon the consciousness of a great and widespread perversity, and upon a deep corruption. What will be the end of all this? If matters were left to themselves, they would become worse and worse; when we so persistently hunt out that which in reality is not shameful, we shall at last succeed in finding something immodest in every circle of ideas; and finally all conversation and all society must come to an end; we must separate the sexes so that they may not look at one another; we must introduce monasticism, or even something more severe. But this is not to be borne, and it will happen to our society as it happened to our wives when morality confined them ever more and more strictly, until at last it became improper for them to show the tips of their fingers—and then in despair they suddenly turned round, and they exposed their necks, their shoulders, and their breasts to the rude winds and to lascivious eyes; or, like the caterpillars, they cast off their old skin by a predetermined movement. Thus will it be; when corruption has reached its climax, and the crude impulses become so dominant that it is no longer possible to keep them within bounds, all these false appearances will break down of themselves, and behind them we shall see youthful shamelessness which has long intimately entwined itself round the body of society, so that this has become the true skin in which society naturally and easily moves. Complete corruption and completed culture, by way of which we return to blamelessness—both of these make an end of prudery.”

Fine words from a theologian! This thoroughly just description of the nature of prudery and of its dangers should be laid seriously to heart by our modern theological bigots and moral fanatics. How truly Schleiermacher has depicted the nature of prudery is shown by the observations of the alienist J. L. A. Koch, that it is precisely the women who were formerly prudish and “moral” when they become insane—for example, in mania—who are much more shameless than women who in everyday life had taken a more natural view of sexual relationships.

The eternal concealment of the most natural things is what first makes them appear unnatural, first awakens desire, where otherwise they would have been passed by quietly and harmlessly without attention. At the present day the natural justifiable sense of shame has been intensified to an unnatural degree, and has been falsified to such an extent that this exaggeration of the sense of shame, this unceasing objective suppression of natural harmless activities and feelings, has really increased the hidden desires to an immeasurable degree; it is this, in fact, which heaps fuel on the fire of fleshly lust.[133]

The genuine, natural, biological sense of shame sets bounds to lust. To this shame we owe the ennobling and spiritualizing of the crude sexual impulse; it is the preliminary stage to the individualization of that impulse. It is intimately related to that voluntary, temporary, and relative continence which has so great an importance for the individual life. The sense of shame has civilized the sexual impulse without denying its essential basis.

Complete culture returns to complete innocence. It knows no fig-leaves; it does not go about, as did recently in the Dresden Museum a clergyman affected with the psychosis of hyper-prudery, knocking off the genital organs from naked statues; nor does it castrate the human spirit, as we find most biographers do even now in the case of the great men whose lives they describe. It recognizes the sexual as something noble and natural.

The sense of shame is an inalienable acquirement of civilization; it is self-respect. But, as Havelock Ellis rightly remarks, in completely developed human beings self-respect keeps a tight rein on any excess of the sense of shame. Knowledge and culture give the death-blow to all false prudery. The cultured man looks the natural in the face; he recognizes its value and its necessity. To him the sexual is the indispensable preliminary of life; hence in its essential nature it is something harmless, wholly comprehensible; something that must not be underrated, but above all must not be overrated, as our virtuous hypocrites and fanatics of prudery invariably overrate it.

The true league against immorality is the league against prudery. The apostles of the nude do more service to true morality than the men of the “Lex-Heinze,” than those who hold conferences on morality, than the German Christian League of Virtue. A natural conception of the nude—that is the watchword of the future. This is shown by all the hygienic, æsthetic, and ethical endeavours of our time.

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[72] G. Simmel, “Philosophy of Fashion” (Berlin, 1906, p. 27).

[73] Cf. C. Lombroso and G. Ferrero, “Woman as Criminal and Prostitute.”

[74] Karl von den Steinen, “Experiences among the Savage Races of Central Brazil” (Berlin, 1894, p. 199).

[75] Op. cit., p. 66.

[76] Op. cit., p. 64.

[77] A discussion of the early manifestations of the sexual sense of shame as exhibited by savages and by primitive man would hardly be complete without an allusion to the theory mentioned by Robert Browning (“Bishop Blougram’s Apology,” Collected Works, 1889, vol. iv., p. 271):

“Suppose a pricking to incontinence—
Philosophers deduce you chastity
Or shame, from just the fact that at the first
Whoso embraced a woman in the field,
Threw club down and forewent his brains beside,
So stood a ready victim in the reach
Of any brother savage, club in hand;
Hence saw the use of going out of sight
In wood or cave to prosecute his loves:
I read this in a French book t’other day.”

[78] Op. cit., pp. 190, 191, 195. Cf. also the interesting remarks regarding the nudity of the indigens of South America by Alex. von Humboldt, “Journey in the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent” (Stuttgart, vol. ii., pp. 15, 16).

[79] Somewhat diverging from these views, Karl von den Steinen (op. cit., pp. 174, 178, and 186) is of opinion that man learned first by their use for practical ends the employment of the articles later utilized for adornment. Above all, in this connexion, he alludes to tattooing, which originated, he believes, in the practice of smearing the body with various coloured earths and with different kinds of clay, these at the same time serving to promote coolness and to afford a protection against the bites of insects. Cf. also Yrjö Hirn, “The Origin of Art” (Leipzig, 1904, p. 222).

[80] E. Herrmann, “Natural History of Clothing” (Vienna, 1878, p. 239).

[81] Edward Westermarck, “History of Human Marriage.”

[82] Wilhelm Joest, “Tattooing, Scarifying, and Painting the Body” (Berlin, 1887).

[83] Carl Marquardt, “Tattooing of Both Sexes in Samoa” (Berlin. 1899).

[84] Ludwig Stein, “The Beginnings of Human Civilization” (Leipzig, 1906, pp. 74, 75); Edward Tylor, “Anthropology: an Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilization” (Macmillan, 1881, p. 237).

[85] According to Karl von den Steinen (op. cit., p. 186), the oil colours used in painting the body are “actually the clothing of the Indians, employed for this purpose as occasion demands.” Their oldest aim was protection against heat, cutaneous irritation, and external noxious influences.

[86] Cf. Y. Hirn, “The Origin of Art” (Leipzig, 1904, pp. 223, 224).

[87] Cf. my “Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,” vol. ii., p. 338.

[88] Cf. K. Lange, “The Nature of Art” (Berlin, 1901, vol. ii., pp. 185, 186).

[89] The significance of tattooing of this nature in the diagnosis of sexual perversities we shall later discuss at greater length.

[90] Cf. Kurella, “The Natural History of the Criminal” (Stuttgart, 1893, pp. 105-112).

[91] “Erotic Tattooing” in “Anthropophyteia, Annual for Folk-lore and for Researches regarding the History of the Evolution of Sexual Morals,” edited by Friedrich S. Krauss (Leipzig, 1904, vol. i., pp. 507-513). According to an account in the Temps, in a deserter from the French army the most remarkable tattooings were observed. On the breast there were two seductive women throwing kisses to a sturdy musketeer, in addition to portraits of music-hall singers, both male and female—for example, Yvette Guilbert. The entire back was covered with love sketches. Cf. B. Z. am Mittag, August 21, 1906.

[92] William Ellis, “Polynesian Researches” (London, 1859, vol. i., p. 235).

[93] Cf. Hirn, “The Origin of Art,” pp. 214, 215.

[94] Cf. Havelock Ellis, op. cit. pp. 56-62.

[95] It is well known that the buttocks formed an object of erotic allurement in many savage races, and especially so in certain African tribes.

[96] J. J. Virey, “Woman” (Leipzig, 1825, p. 300).

[97] Westermarck, “History of Human Marriage,” pp. 193, 197.

[98] C. H. Stratz, “Women’s Clothing” (Stuttgart, 1900, p. 42).

[99] In his “Confessions,” Rousseau writes regarding the collar of the beautiful courtesan Giulietta: “Her cuffs and collar had silken threads running through them, and were adorned with pictures of roses. These made a beautiful contrast with her fine skin.”

[100] H. Lotze, “Mikrokosmus: Ideas regarding the Natural History of Mankind” (third edition, Leipzig, 1878, vol. ii., p. 210).

[101] H. Bahr, “Clothing Reform,” in Dokumente der Frauen, 1902, vol. vi., No. 23, p. 665.

[102] Cf. the detailed account of this aspect of clothing in my “Contributions to the Etiology of the Psychopathia Sexualis,” vol. ii., pp. 334-336.

[103] Cf. Lucianus, “Erotics of Clothing,” published in Die Fackel, edited by Karl Kraus (Vienna, No. 198, March 12, 1906, pp. 12, 13).

[104] Cf., in this connexion, Ernest Kapp, “Fundamental Outlines of a Philosophy of Technique,” p. 267 (Brunswick, 1877).

[105] Lucianus, “Erotica of Clothing,” p. 16.

[106] W. Sombart, “Domestic Economy and Fashion” (Wiesbaden, 1902, p. 12).

[107] Stratz, “Woman’s Clothing,” pp. 123, 124.

[108] B. Ritter, “Nudities in the Middle Ages: Outlines of the History of Morals,” in the Annual of Science and Art, published by O. Wigand (Leipzig, 1855, vol. iii., p. 229).

[109] H. Bahr, “Clothing Reform,” op. cit., p. 666.

[110] G. Hirth, “Ways to Love,” p. 619.

[111] Leopold Bauer, in Documents of Women, March, 1902, pp. 675, 676.

[112] Op. cit., pp. 671, 672.

[113] Menge, “The Influence of Constricting Clothing upon the Abdominal Organs, and more Especially upon the Reproductive Organs of Woman” (Leipzig, 1904).

[114] O. Rosenbach, “The Corset and Anæmia” (Stuttgart, 1895).

[115] G. Hirth, “Ways to Love,” p. 49.

[116] The modern fancy for slender, ethereal, Pre-Raphaelite feminine figures is also to some extent allied with a negative accentuation of the breasts. Heinrich Pudor with good reason declares that at the present time perhaps the strongest sexual influence of woman is dependent upon the fact that “the existence of the breasts is concealed, and the appearance of the male sex is simulated.” Cf. his article, “Clothing and Sex,” in Die Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, August number, 1906, p. 22. Still, the sexual stimulating influence of this concealment of the breasts appears to be of a transient character, and confined to certain circles of the hyperæsthetic and the homosexual.

[117] Heinrich Pudor, “Nackt-Kultur,” vol. ii.; “Clothing and Sex; Limbs and Pelvis,” pp. 7, 8 (Berlin-Steglitz, 1906).

[118] Cf. the passages relating to this in my work, “Contributions,” etc., vol. i., pp. 152, 153.

[119] Schopenhauer, “Parerga and Paralipomena,” vol. v., p. 176.

[120] G. Simmel, “Philosophy of Fashion, p. 24” (Berlin, 1906).

[121] “Contributions to the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis,” vol. i., pp. 158-162.

[122] Ovid, in his “Ars Amandi,” long ago advised men who wished to please women to avoid feminine adornments, and to leave those to the homosexual.

[123] J. Ryan, “Prostitution in London,” p. 382 (London, 1839).

[124] In Alfred de Musset’s erotic story, “Gamiani,” he describes how a woman danced on a mat of catskin, which gave rise in her to very voluptuous sensations.

[125] “Confessions of My Life,” Memoirs of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch, p. 38 (Berlin and Leipzig, 1906).

[126] Here we may allude to a remark in the diary of the de Goncourts that there is nothing to compare to the delicate voluptuous charm of old cashmere as a dress-fabric for women (E. and J. de Goncourt, “Diary,” 1851-1895).

[127] H. Pudor, “Nackt-Kultur,” vol. ii., pp. 4-6.

[128] Ernst Kapp, “Elements of a Philosophy of Technique,” pp. 269, 270 (Brunswick, 1877).

[129] W. Sombart, “Domestic Economy and Fashion” (Wiesbaden, 1902).

[130] G. Simmel, “The Psychology of Fashion,” published in Die Zeit, October 12, 1895; “The Philosophy of Fashion” (Berlin, 1906).

[131] W. Fred, “The Psychology of Fashion” (Berlin, 1905).

[132] Simmel rightly points out that many women would feel very uncomfortable if they had to appear in their private sitting-room, or before a single strange man, in a dress so décolleté as that in which they readily appear, in society and following the fashion, before thirty or a hundred.

[133] What serious dangers to health prudery may entail has recently been shown by Karl Ries in a valuable essay, “Prudery as the Cause of Bodily Disorders” (published in the Reports of the German Society for the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, 1906, vol. iv., pp. 113-121).

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CHAPTER VIII
THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT IN LOVE—THE INDIVIDUALIZATION OF LOVE

“Above all, we must avoid the widely diffused error of regarding love as a simple and single feeling. The exact opposite is the truth—love consists of an entire group, and, indeed, of an extremely complex, incessantly varying, group of feelings.”—H. T. Finck.

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