e seen also
in places of public resort. A demand for the removal of such
nude figures is so stupid, that it hardly deserves serious
discussion--outside of the columns of the comic papers. A classical
education, too, gives so many opportunities for the sight or the mention
of the nude--for instance, delineations of the gods of the ancient
mythology that the demands of the "morality-fanatics" could be met only
by cutting off the child from the most beautiful sources of culture. But
now, let those who, in the lower classes of our schools, have seen in
the text-books of mythology pictures of unclad gods and goddesses,
seriously ask themselves whether in this connexion they ever experienced
even the faintest uncleanness of thought! If in one among thousands of
such children, the sight of such a picture is followed by an undesired
result, we have further to remember that this fact does not give us the
right to deprive thousands of other children of the spiritual
nourishment requisite for their emotional and aesthetic development, and
for their general culture. There is no need for any anxiety about this
question of the nude in art; and we must avoid suggesting to children
that there is anything peculiar about the nakedness of statuary. We are,
indeed, justified in asking whether the replacement or concealment of
the genital organs by a fig-leaf--a practice supposed to have been
initiated by the influence of the Jesuits about the middle of the
eighteenth century--is a sound one; or whether this is not the very way
to lead to objectionable conversations between children. The child
compares the work of art with its own body and with the bodies of others
which it has seen, notes the difference at once, and is thereby incited
to improper conversation.

Those who wish to prevent children seeing artistic representations of
the nude are influenced by two very different motives, although by the
morality-fanatics themselves these motives are not clearly
distinguished. Sometimes we are told that the sight of the nude in art
may awaken the child's sexual impulse, sometimes that morality forbids
such representations of the nude. These two reasons must not be
confused; for even if well-developed moral ideas may repress sexual
acts, it does not follow that everything which is immoral is also
sexually exciting. A great many pictures are immoral, and yet do not
tend in the very least to induce sexual excitement--it suffices to
mention illust