arck observes, "was
found to act as the most powerful obtainable sexual stimulus." It
is undoubtedly true that this statement may be made not merely of
the savage, but of the most civilized world. All observers agree
that the complete nudity of savages, unlike the civilized
_decollete_ or _detrousse_, has no suggestion of sexual
allurement. (Westermarck quotes numerous testimonies on this
point, op. cit., pp. 192 et seq.) Dr. R.W. Felkin remarks
concerning Central Africa, that he has never met more indecency
than in Uganda, where the penalty of death is inflicted on an
adult found naked in the street. (_Edinburgh Medical Journal_,
April, 1884.) A study of pictures or statuary will alone serve to
demonstrate that nakedness is always chaster in its effects than
partial clothing. As a well-known artist, Du Maurier, has
remarked (in _Trilby_), it is "a fact well known to all painters
and sculptors who have used the nude model (except a few shady
pretenders, whose purity, not being of the right sort, has gone
rank from too much watching) that nothing is so chaste as nudity.
Venus herself, as she drops her garments and steps on to the
model-throne, leaves behind her on the floor every weapon in her
armory by which she can pierce to the grosser passions of men."
Burton, in the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ (Part III, Sect. II,
Subsect. 3), deals at length with the "Allurements of Love," and
concludes that "the greatest provocations of lust are from our
apparel." The artist's model, as one informs me, is much less
exposed to liberties from men when nude than when she is
partially clothed, and it may be noted that in Paris studios the
model who poses naked undresses behind a screen.

An admirable poetic rendering of this element in the philosophy
of clothing has been given by Herrick, that master of erotic
psychology, in "A Lily in Crystal," where he argues that a lily
in crystal, and amber in a stream, and strawberries in cream,
gain an added delight from semi-concealment; and so, he
concludes, we obtain

"A rule, how far, to teach,
Your nakedness must reach."

In this connection, also, it is worth noting that Stanley Hall,
in a report based on returns from nearly a thousand persons,
mostly teachers, ("The Early Sense of Self," _American Journal of
Psychology_, 1898,