ity of the thought is
visibly identical.... Suppose, because they are delicious to eat,
pineapples were forbidden to be seen, except in pictures, and
about that there was something dubious. Suppose no one might have
sight of a pineapple unless he were rich enough to purchase one
for his particular eating, the sight and the eating being so
indissolubly joined. What lustfulness would surround them, what
constant pruriency, what stealing!... Miss ---- told us of her
Syrian adventures, and how she went into a wood-carver's shop and
he would not look at her; and how she took up a tool and worked,
till at last he looked, and they both burst out laughing. Will it
not be even so with our looking at women altogether? There will
come a _work_--and at last we shall look up and both burst out
laughing.... When men see truly what is amiss, and act with
reason and forethought in respect to the sexual relations, will
they not insist on the enjoyment of women's beauty by youths, and
from the earliest age, that the first feeling may be of beauty?
Will they not say, 'We must not allow the false purity, we must
have the true.' The false has been tried, and it is not good
enough; the power purely to enjoy beauty must be gained;
attempting to do with less is fatal. Every instructor of youth
shall say: 'This beauty of woman, God's chief work of beauty, it
is good you see it; it is a pleasure that serves good; all beauty
serves it, and above all this, for its office is to make you
pure. Come to it as you come to daily bread, or pure air, or the
cleansing bath: this is pure to you if you be pure, it will aid
you in your effort to be so. But if any of you are impure, and
make of it the feeder of impurity, then you should be ashamed and
pray; it is not for you our life can be ordered; it is for men
and not for beasts.' This must come when men open their eyes, and
act coolly and with reason and forethought, and not in mere panic
in respect to the sexual passion in its moral relations."

FOOTNOTES:

[40] Thus Athenaeus (Bk. xiii, Ch. XX) says: "In the Island of Chios it is
a beautiful sight to go to the gymnasia and the race-courses, and to see
the young men wrestling naked with the maidens who are also naked."

[41] Augustine (_De civitate Dei_, lib. ii, cap. XIII) refers to the same
point, contrasting the Romans with t