an amulet and was worn
by all children. The figure, therefore, cannot have been an obscene one.
In the Roman gardens also were ithyphallic figures which appear to bear
witness to a survival of the growth-demon idea, or to usages which
originated in the growth-demon idea, and were perpetuated traditionally
without knowledge of the original meaning. On mediaeval churches figures
were often carved, as an expression of naive ideas and faiths, and in
pure realism, which were frankly obscene. Paintings and stained glass
often represented similar objects. In the second half of the sixteenth
century such objects were removed, or covered, or modified. It may be
that the notion of obscenity developed sooner in respect to literature
than in respect to art. Susemihl[1552] suggests that the lost tales of
Miletus may have been obscene, and also the tales of Paxamos, and that
their disappearance may be due to a war on them on this account.
Literature would furnish food to the mind. It would not deal with fact.
The popular judgment seems long to have refused to admit that facts of
structure and function which were universally human could be put under a
taboo and made improper to be known and seen. What is familiar tends to
remain in our overconsciousness only. The same is true of what offends
one's taste and from which one averts attention, although it cannot be
caused to cease, like profane language. The cases of toleration of what
would now be considered obscene are to be explained in this way.

+477. Symbols in Asia.+ "In ancient times obscene symbols were used
without offense to denote sex."[1553] Such symbols were very common in
western Asia. They are very common now in India. A Chinese woman's foot,
an Arab woman's face, a Tuareg man's mouth, is obscene to persons
educated in any one of those taboos, because it always is, and ought to
be, concealed. It is not obscene to us. On the other hand, the lingam in
India is obscene to us, but not to Hindoos who have never learned any
taboo in regard to it. An egg or a seed might have been made obscene in
some group on account of its connection with reproduction, if that
connection had been developed in dogma and usage. An Englishman would
never think of the garter as unseemly, but non-English men and women
have thought it such. The crucifix shows us how conventionalization and
familiarization set aside all the suggestion which an artifact really
carries. The figure of a naked man dying in