raising objections to marriage
for money, to the tyranny and formality of marriage, to prostitution,
etc.; and they should attempt to put in force a healthy selection and a
rational education such as we have indicated above.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Vide.--Ernest Contou: _Ecoles nouvelles et Landerziehungsheime_,
Paris, 1905; Wilhelm Frey: _Landerziehungsheime_, Leipzig, 1902;
Forel: _Hygiene des nerfs et de l'esprit_, Stuttgart, 1905.

[14] "Das Recht des Kindes: Vorschlaege fuer eine gesetzliche Regelung."
_Allgemeine oesterreichische Gerichtszeitung_, 1904.

CHAPTER XVIII

SEXUAL LIFE IN ART

=The Genesis of Art.=--Art represents in a harmonious form the
movements of our sentimental life. The phylogeny of art is still very
obscure; Darwin attributes it to sexual attraction, through the
efforts made by one sex to attract the other; but his arguments have
never convinced me.[15]

Aristotle recognized in art the principles of representation of the
beautiful and of imitation. Karl Groos, of Giessen, refutes Darwin's
hypothesis, and upholds the principle of the representation of self by
sensations which relate to the subject, thus giving a tangible object
to corresponding internal emotions (among animals, for example, the
pleasure of hearing their own voice).[16]

The motor instinct and the movements executed in play seem to be among
the most primitive autonomous creators of art. Similar play is
observed in ants. In man, Groos attributes a considerable role to
religious ecstasy and ecstasy in general, in the genesis of art.
"Since its object is to excite the sentiments, it is obvious that art
utilizes from the first the domain which is richest in emotional
sensations, that is the sexual domain." He shows at the same time that
erotic subjects have a much more general and definite importance in
highly developed art than in what we know of primitive art.

Groos is certainly right, for primitive eroticism was too coarse and
sensual, too exclusively tactile to affect the mind as deeply and with
such gradations of symphony as is the case with civilized man. This
reason alone seems to me sufficient to support Groos' view, which is
also confirmed by the fact that primitive works of art contain very
few erotic subjects.

The more delicate art becomes the better it acts. The intensity of its
action depends, however, more especially on the power with which it
moves our feelings. Art requires discord, not only in music