ks in no way
encourage immorality; on the contrary, they inspire disgust and a
healthy and holy terror at the perversity of our sexual customs. No
doubt such works may have an erotic action on ignorant and low-minded
persons. The Tyrolean peasants, in their moral indignation, have been
known to destroy the marble statues of women erected in public places.
Such acts serve no purpose, for prudery will never rid the world of
eroticism; it will only increase it by leading to hypocrisy. We have
something better to do than persecute and insult true art and men of
talent or genius who expose our social perversions.

Pornography is quite another thing. It is not contented with
representing the aesthetic, licit, and normal side of natural
eroticism. It does not depict sexual vice so as to emphasize its
ugliness and its tragic consequences, but to glorify it. Whether it is
represented as brazen nudity unadorned, or enveloped in a transparent
veil which reveals everything it pretends to hide; whether it reels in
bacchanalian orgies; whether it appears in brilliant fancy dress
illuminated by electric lights, or in the discreet light of a
fashionable boudoir; whether it is clearly revealed or equivocal,
perverted in one way or depraved in another; in all its forms its aim
is to tickle, to excite, to seduce, to allure, by arousing lewdness
and inflaming its lowest passions.

The pornographic dishes are often served up with a sentimental and
moral sauce which naturally does not tend to hide the flavor of the
meat--for then all its charm would be gone--on the contrary it
increases its spicy quality by means of contrast, at the same time
making the product more marketable; this hypocritical disguise giving
it a certain varnish of propriety. The trick of clothing pornographic
articles with the mantle of virtue may deceive the artless, and give
the less artless excuse for buying them without putting themselves to
any inconvenience. In such cases it is extremely difficult to act
without injustice and without doing injury to art and science by
vexatious measures. This requires much tact and rare perspicacity.

=Other Sexual Misdemeanors.=--Many sexual assaults are committed on
the insane and feeble-minded, in the hope that they will not defend
themselves and denounce the criminal. We have mentioned the case of
inverts who become attendants in lunatic asylums in order to satisfy
their appetites. Such crimes should be classed with those co