CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XXX
Distinction between pornography and eroticism — An old medical thesis concerning obscene books, dating from the year 1688 — Definition of obscenity in this thesis — Modern definition of an obscene book — Treatment of purely sexual relationships from the artistic and scientific standpoints respectively — Summary of the general tendency — Morality-fanaticism and medical authorship — The artistic treatment of sexual matters — Humorous mode of treatment — The erotic in caricature — The mystic-satanic conception of the sexual — The importance of the individuality and the age of the reader or onlooker — Danger of Bible-reading for children — A remark of John Milton upon this subject — Importance of the standard of the time, and of contemporary moral ideas, in our judgment of an erotic work — Example of the works of Nicolas Chorier and of the Marquis de Sade — Observation regarding the recent German translations of pornographic works — Comparison of obscene books with natural poisons — Recent obscene literature — Remarkable fondness of great artists and poets for the pornographic-erotic element — French celebrities as pornographists (Voltaire, Mirabeau, de Musset, Gautier, Droz, etc.) — Goethe and Schopenhauer as erotic writers — Schiller’s and Goethe’s fondness for French erotic writings — Occupation of women with pornographic literature — Obscene pictures by great painters, from Lucas Cranach to the present time — Pornographic garbage literature and garbage art — Origin of these — Dangers of hawkers’ literature — Futility of the efforts of Purity Societies — Historical examples of this — The true means to render pornography harmless.