burden and always a flaw; it exists for the race and not for the
individual. In the human male, and precisely because of his erect
attitude, sex is the predominantly striking and visible fact, the
point of attack in a struggle at close quarters, the point aimed
at from a distance, an obstacle for the eye, whether regarded as
a rugosity on the surface or as breaking the middle of a line.
The harmony of the feminine body is thus geometrically much more
perfect, especially when we consider the male and the female at
the moment of desire when they present the most intense and
natural expression of life. Then the woman, whose movements are
all interior, or only visible by the undulation of her curves,
preserves her full aesthetic value, while the man, as it were, all
at once receding toward the primitive state of animality, seems
to throw off all beauty and become reduced to the simple and
naked condition of a genital organism." (Remy de Gourmont,
_Physique de l'Amour_, p. 69.) Remy de Gourmont proceeds,
however, to point out that man has his revenge after a woman has
become pregnant, and that, moreover, the proportions of the
masculine body are more beautiful than those of the feminine
body.

The primary sexual characters of man and woman have thus never at any time
played a very large part in sexual allurement. With the growth of culture,
indeed, the very methods which had been adopted to call attention to the
sexual organs were by a further development retained for the purpose of
concealing them. From the first the secondary sexual characters have been
a far more widespread method of sexual allurement than the primary sexual
characters, and in the most civilized countries to-day they still
constitute the most attractive of such methods to the majority of the
population.

The main secondary sexual characters in woman and the type which
they present in beautiful and well-developed persons are
summarized as follows by Stratz, who in his book on the beauty of
the body in woman sets forth the reasons for the characteristics
here given:--

Delicate bony structure.
Rounded forms and breasts.
Broad pelvis.
Long and abundant hair.
Low and narrow boundary of pubic hair.
Sparse hair in armpit.
No hair on body.
Delicate skin.
Rounded skull.
Small fac