C. H. Stratz, Die Körperformen in Kunst und Leben der Japaner, Second edition, Ch. III; id., Frauenkleidung, Third edition, pp. 22, 30.
I have not considered it in place here to emphasize the æsthetic influence of familiarity with nakedness. The most æsthetic 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 Höppener), 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 Mediæval 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.