, and by R. Ungewitter in _Die Nacktheit_ (first
published in 1905), a book which has had a very large circulation
in many editions. These writers enthusiastically advocate
nakedness, not only on hygienic, but on moral and artistic
grounds. Pudor insists more especially that "nakedness, both in
gymnastics and in sport, is a method of cure and a method of
regeneration;" he advocates co-education in this culture of
nakedness. Although he makes large claims for
nakedness--believing that all the nations which have disregarded
these claims have rapidly become decadent--Pudor is less hopeful
than Ungewitter of any speedy victory over the prejudices opposed
to the culture of nakedness. He considers that the immediate task
is education, and that a practical commencement may best be made
with the foot which is specially in need of hygiene and exercise;
a large part of the first volume of his book is devoted to the
foot.

As the matter is to-day viewed by those educationalists who are equally
alive to sanitary and sexual considerations, the claims of nakedness, so
far as concerns the young, are regarded as part alike of physical and
moral hygiene. The free contact of the naked body with air and water and
light makes for the health of the body; familiarity with the sight of the
body abolishes petty pruriencies, trains the sense of beauty, and makes
for the health of the soul. This double aspect of the matter has
undoubtedly weighed greatly with those teachers who now approve of customs
which, a few years ago, would have been hastily dismissed as "indecent."
There is still a wide difference of opinion as to the limits to which the
practice of nakedness may be carried, and also as to the age when it
should begin to be restricted. The fact that the adult generation of
to-day grew up under the influence of the old horror of nakedness is an
inevitable check on any revolutionary changes in these matters.

Maria Lischnewska, one of the ablest advocates of the methodical
enlightenment of children in matters of sex (op. cit.), clearly
realizes that a sane attitude towards the body lies at the root
of a sound education for life. She finds that the chief objection
encountered in such education, as applied in the higher classes
of schools, is "the horror of the civilized man at his own body."
She shows that there can be no doubt that those who are engaged