n the absence or perversion of sexual
feelings. Brought up to prudery, sometimes to an absurd extent as in
England, these women lose their natural feeling and often suffer from
the excitation, indignation, and perpetual fright, which result from
it. The exaggerations of prudery, moreover, easily lead to opposite
excesses, or else degenerate into hypocrisy. The prude is ashamed of
the most natural things, and undergoes continual torment.

Prudery can be created or cured by education in childhood. It may be
created by isolation, by covering all parts of the body, and
especially by making children regard nudity as shameful. On the other
hand, it may be cured by mixed bathing, by accustoming the child to
consider the human body, in all its parts and functions, as something
natural of which one need not be ashamed, lastly by giving instruction
on the relations of the sexes, in due time and in a serious manner,
instead of replying to ingenuous questions by pious falsehoods, by
equivocation, or by an air of mystery.

The chapter on love is infinite, and its relations to the sexual
appetite make it still more complex. We shall confine ourselves to
indicating two more of its irradiations, peculiar to each sex, but
having for each a physionomy corresponding to its own mentality.

FETICHISM AND ANTI-FETICHISM

"We understand by fetiches, objects, portions of objects, or even
simply the qualities of objects which, from their association with a
certain person or with the idea of this person, produce a kind of
charm or at least a profound impression, which in no way corresponds
to the nature of the object itself."--(Krafft-Ebing.) The fetich thus
symbolizes a person in whom we have such a profound interest that
everything connected with her disturbs our feelings. It is we
ourselves who place in the fetich the charm arising from the person
whom it symbolizes for us.

In many religions fetichism plays an important part, so much so that
fetiches such as amulets or relics produce ecstasy in the faithful.

Binet, Krafft-Ebing and others give the name _erotic fetichism_ to the
charm which certain objects or certain parts of the body exercise in a
similar way on the sexual desires or even on love, in the sense that
their simple representation is powerfully associated with the erotic
image of a person of the other sex, or with a particular variety of
sexual excitation. In both man and woman certain portions of the
clothes or the bod