ly attained to the third stage
of love, feels even the purely spiritual love as odious in its
incompleteness. It strikes him as unnatural and forced, a feeling which
must, however, not be confused with the ordinary contempt of spiritual
love.

Primitively constituted man knows only undifferentiated sexuality. He
enjoys the nude, and sees no difference between a Venus by Titian and an
ordinary photograph of a nude figure; the aesthete, and more especially
the artist, can never understand that a work of art may be sensually
stimulating. That it may be so will always be bluntly denied by an
individual capable of enjoying a beautiful form, but to the uncultivated
mind the picture of the female body will only evoke memories of
pleasure. This feeling, however, is quite distinct from the obscene; it
is neither hostile to the higher spiritual life, nor is it criminal; it
is natural and harmonious. But the same feeling may become obscene if a
man, aware of higher aesthetic values, ignores art and enjoys the
picture merely as a representation of a nude figure. Here, too, the
seduction lies in a demoniacal element, namely in the destruction of the
aesthetic value. The destructive characteristic of the obscene wars
against all higher conceptions; it is the revenge of chaotic sex
deposed by a higher principle, and has the special charm of secret
wrong-doing.

I might go even further, and maintain that because modern love does not
admit pleasure as its foundation and content, and because the craving
for pleasure is deeply rooted in human nature, love favours to a high
degree the desire to reserve a sphere for pleasure distinct from
personal love. This region is the obscene, and one might prophesy that
it will grow in proportion as the principle of personal love acquires
dominion; for pleasure will always need an undisturbed retreat
untroubled by higher demands. This can only be found in the sphere of
the obscene in which the element of personality is entirely eliminated.

Modern man is beset by another peculiar temptation. The beauty of woman,
which in the days of the past was regarded as sacred, can be made a
means of pleasure, and thus drawn from the realm of values into the
realm of sensuality. This is a breach with the principle of personal
love, for to the latter the beauty of a woman is so much part and parcel
of the whole personality that it cannot be enjoyed separately, that
indeed it can hardly be noticed as a distinct el