something
evil; it had to be subdued and hidden at all cost. The result of
this vicious attitude is only now beginning to be recognized by
modern thinkers and educators. They realize that "nakedness has 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."[1] But the spirit of purism has so perverted
the human mind that it has lost the power to appreciate the beauty of
nudity, forcing us to hide the natural form under the plea of
chastity. Yet chastity itself is but an artificial imposition upon
nature, expressive of a false shame of the human form. The modern
idea of chastity, especially in reference to woman, its greatest
victim, is but the sensuous exaggeration of our natural impulses.
"Chastity varies with the amount of clothing," and hence Christians
and purists forever hasten to cover the "heathen" with tatters, and
thus convert him to goodness and chastity.

Puritanism, with its perversion of the significance and functions of
the human body, especially in regard to woman, has condemned her to
celibacy, or to the indiscriminate breeding of a diseased race, or to
prostitution. The enormity of this crime against humanity is
apparent when we consider the results. Absolute sexual continence is
imposed upon the unmarried woman, under pain of being considered
immoral or fallen, with the result of producing neurasthenia,
impotence, depression, and a great variety of nervous complaints
involving diminished power of work, limited enjoyment of life,
sleeplessness, and preoccupation with sexual desires and imaginings.
The arbitrary and pernicious dictum of total continence probably also
explains the mental inequality of the sexes. Thus Freud believes
that the intellectual inferiority of so many women is due to the
inhibition of thought imposed upon them for the purpose of sexual
repression. Having thus suppressed the natural sex desires of the
unmarried woman, Puritanism, on the other hand, blesses her married
sister for incontinent fruitfulness in wedlock. Indeed, not merely
blesses her, but forces the woman, oversexed by previous repres