while their subjects crowded the
palace courtyard, descended the marble steps to the bath in complete
nakedness. When we make our conventions of clothing rigid we at once
spread a feast for lust and deny ourselves one of the prime tonics of
life.

"I was feeling in despair and walking despondently along a
Melbourne street," writes the Australian author of a yet
unpublished autobiography, "when three children came running out
of a lane and crossed the road in full daylight. The beauty and
texture of their legs in the open air filled me with joy, so that
I forgot all my troubles whilst looking at them. It was a bright
revelation, an unexpected glimpse of Paradise, and I have never
ceased to thank the happy combination of shape, pure blood, and
fine skin of these poverty-stricken children, for the wind seemed
to quicken their golden beauty, and I retained the rosy vision of
their natural young limbs, so much more divine than those always
under cover. Another occasion when naked young limbs made me
forget all my gloom and despondency was on my first visit to
Adelaide. I came on a naked boy leaning on the railing near the
Baths, and the beauty of his face, torso, fair young limbs and
exquisite feet filled me with joy and renewed hope. The tears
came to my eyes, and I said to myself, 'While there is beauty in
the world I will continue to struggle,'"

We must, as Boelsche declares (loc. cit.), accustom ourselves to
gaze on the naked human body exactly as we gaze at a beautiful
flower, not merely with the pity with which the doctor looks at
the body, but with joy in its strength and health and beauty. For
a flower, as Boelsche truly adds, is not merely "naked body," it
is the most sacred region of the body, the sexual organs of the
plant.

"For girls to dance naked," said Hinton, "is the only truly pure
form of dancing, and in due time it must therefore come about.
This is certain: girls will dance naked and men will be pure
enough to gaze on them." It has already been so in Greece, he
elsewhere remarks, as it is to-day in Japan (as more recently
described by Stratz). It is nearly forty years since these
prophetic words were written, but Hinton himself would probably
have been surprised at the progress which has already been made
slowly (for all true progress must be slow) towards this goal