pose.
The erect attitude of man gives them here, indeed, an advantage possessed
by very few animals, among whom it happens with extreme rarity that the
primary sexual characters are rendered attractive to the eye of the
opposite sex, though they often are to the sense of smell. The sexual
regions constitute a peculiarly vulnerable spot, and remain so even in
man, and the need for their protection which thus exists conflicts with
the prominent display required for a sexual allurement. This end is far
more effectively attained, with greater advantage and less disadvantage,
by concentrating the chief ensigns of sexual attractiveness on the upper
and more conspicuous parts of the body. This method is well-nigh universal
among animals as well as in man.

There is another reason why the sexual organs should be discarded as
objects of sexual allurement, a reason which always proves finally
decisive as a people advances in culture. They are not aesthetically
beautiful. It is fundamentally necessary that the intromittent organ of
the male and the receptive canal of the female should retain their
primitive characteristics; they cannot, therefore, be greatly modified by
sexual or natural selection, and the exceedingly primitive character they
are thus compelled to retain, however sexually desirable and attractive
they may become to the opposite sex under the influence of emotion, can
rarely be regarded as beautiful from the point of view of aesthetic
contemplation. Under the influence of art there is a tendency for the
sexual organs to be diminished in size, and in no civilized country has
the artist ever chosen to give an erect organ to his representations of
ideal masculine beauty. It is mainly because the unaesthetic character of a
woman's sexual region is almost imperceptible in any ordinary and normal
position of the nude body that the feminine form is a more aesthetically
beautiful object of contemplation than the masculine. Apart from this
character we are probably bound, from a strictly aesthetic point of view,
to regard the male form as more aesthetically beautiful.[139] The female
form, moreover, usually overpasses very swiftly the period of the climax
of its beauty, often only retaining it during a few weeks.

The following communication from a correspondent well brings out
the divergences of feeling in this matter:

"You write that the sex organs, in an excited condition, cannot
be called aesthetic. B