baser instincts. Early familiarity with nudity in art is at the same time
an aid to the attainment of a proper attitude towards purity in nature.
"He who has once learnt," as Hoeller remarks, "to enjoy peacefully
nakedness in art, will be able to look on nakedness in nature as on a work
of art."

Casts of classic nude statues and reproductions of the pictures
of the old Venetian and other Italian masters may fittingly be
used to adorn schoolrooms, not so much as objects of instruction
as things of beauty with which the child cannot too early become
familiarized. In Italy it is said to be usual for school classes
to be taken by their teachers to the art museums with good
results; such visits form part of the official scheme of
education.

There can be no doubt that such early familiarity with the beauty
of nudity in classic art is widely needed among all social
classes and in many countries. It is to this defect of our
education that we must attribute the occasional, and indeed in
America and England frequent, occurrence of such incidents as
petitions and protests against the exhibition of nude statuary in
art museums, the display of pictures so inoffensive as Leighton's
"Bath of Psyche" in shop windows, and the demand for the draping
of the naked personifications of abstract virtues in
architectural street decoration. So imperfect is still the
education of the multitude that in these matters the ill-bred
fanatic of pruriency usually gains his will. Such a state of
things cannot but have an unwholesome reaction on the moral
atmosphere of the community in which it is possible. Even from
the religious point of view, prurient prudery is not justifiable.
Northcote has very temperately and sensibly discussed the
question of the nude in art from the standpoint of Christian
morality. He points out that not only is the nude in art not to
be condemned without qualification, and that the nude is by no
means necessarily the erotic, but he also adds that even erotic
art, in its best and purest manifestations, only arouses emotions
that are the legitimate object of man's aspirations. It would be
impossible even to represent Biblical stories adequately on
canvas or in marble if erotic art were to be tabooed (Rev. H.
Northcote, _Christianity and Sex Problems_, Ch. XIV).

Early familiarity with th