the body to the absurd.

[57] Rufinus, _Commentarius in Symbolum Apostolorum_, cap. XII.

[58] Migne, _Patrologia Graeca_, vol. xxvi, pp. 1170 et seq.

[59] Even in physical conformation the human sexual organs, when compared
with those of the lower animals, show marked differences (see "The
Mechanism of Detumescence," in the fifth volume of these _Studies_).

[60] It may perhaps be as well to point out, with Forel (_Die Sexuelle
Frage_, p. 208), that the word "bestial" is generally used quite
incorrectly in this connection. Indeed, not only for the higher, but also
for the lower manifestation of the sexual impulse, it would usually be
more correct to use instead the qualification "human."

[61] _Loc. cit._, _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, Jan., 1907.

[62] It has, however, become colored and suspect from an early period in
the history of Christianity. St. Augustine (_De Civitate Dei_, lib. xiv,
cap. XV), while admitting that libido or lust is merely the generic name
for all desire, adds that, as specially applied to the sexual appetite, it
is justly and properly mixed up with ideas of shame.

[63] Hinton well illustrates this feeling. "We call by the name of lust,"
he declares in his MSS., "the most simple and natural desires. We might as
well term hunger and thirst 'lust' as so call sex-passion, when expressing
simply Nature's prompting. We miscall it 'lust,' cruelly libelling those
to whom we ascribe it, and introduce absolute disorder. For, by foolishly
confounding Nature's demands with lust, we insist upon restraint upon
her."

[64] Several centuries earlier another French writer, the distinguished
physician, A. Laurentius (Des Laurens) in his _Historia Anatomica Humani
Corporis_ (lib. viii, Quaestio vii) had likewise puzzled over "the
incredible desire of coitus," and asked how it was that "that divine
animal, full of reason and judgment, which we call Man, should be
attracted to those obscene parts of women, soiled with filth, which are
placed, like a sewer, in the lowest part of the body." It is noteworthy
that, from the first, and equally among men of religion, men of science,
and men of letters, the mystery of this problem has peculiarly appealed to
the French mind.

[65] Schopenhauer, _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, vol. ii, pp. 608
et seq.

[66] "Perhaps there is scarcely a man," wrote Malthus, a clergyman as well
as one of the profoundest thinkers of his day (_Essay on the Principle o