ot assaults but merely the
innocent, though uncontrollable, outcome of a repressed natural curiosity.
It is quite true that not a few children boldly enlist each others'
cooeperation in the settlement of the question and resolve it to their
mutual satisfaction. But even this is not altogether satisfactory, for the
end is not attained openly and wholesomely, with a due subordination of
the specifically sexual, but with a consciousness of wrong-doing and an
exclusive attentiveness to the merely physical fact which tend directly to
develop sexual excitement. When familiarity with the naked body of the
other sex is gained openly and with no consciousness of indecorum, in the
course of work and of play, in exercise or gymnastics, in running or in
bathing, from a child's earliest years, no unwholesome results accompany
the knowledge of the essential facts of physical conformation thus
naturally acquired. The prurience and prudery which have poisoned sexual
life in the past are alike rendered impossible.

Nakedness has, however, a hygienic value, as well as a spiritual
significance, far beyond its influences in allaying the natural
inquisitiveness of the young or acting as a preventative of morbid
emotion. It is an inspiration to adults who have long outgrown any
youthful curiosities. The vision of the essential and eternal human form,
the nearest thing to us in all the world, with its vigor and its beauty
and its grace, is one of the prime tonics of life. "The power of a woman's
body," said James Hinton, "is no more bodily than the power of music is a
power of atmospheric vibrations." It is more than all the beautiful and
stimulating things of the world, than flowers or stars or the sea. History
and legend and myth reveal to us the sacred and awful influence of
nakedness, for, as Stanley Hall says, nakedness has always been "a
talisman of wondrous power with gods and men." How sorely men crave for
the spectacle of the human body--even to-day after generations have
inculcated the notion that it is an indecorous and even disgusting
spectacle--is witnessed by the eagerness with which they seek after the
spectacle of even its imperfect and meretricious forms, although these
certainly possess a heady and stimulating quality which can never be found
in the pathetic simplicity of naked beauty. It was another spectacle when
the queens of ancient Madagascar at the annual Fandroon, or feast of the
bath, laid aside their royal robes and