Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6: Sex in Relation to SocietyEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6: Sex in Relation to Society
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
The movement of revolt against nakedness never became completely
victorious until the nineteenth century. That century represented the
triumph of all the forces that banned public nakedness everywhere and
altogether. If, as Pudor insists, nakedness is aristocratic and the
slavery of clothes a plebeian characteristic imposed on the lower classes
by an upper class who reserved to themselves the privilege of physical
culture, we may perhaps connect this with the outburst of democratic
plebeianism which, as Nietzsche pointed out, reached its climax in the
nineteenth century. It is in any case certainly interesting to observe
that by this time the movement had entirely changed its character. It had
become general, but at the same time its foundation had been undermined.
It had largely lost its religious and moral character, and instead was
regarded as a matter of convention. The nineteenth century man who
encountered the spectacle of white limbs flashing in the sunlight no
longer felt like the mediæval ascetic that he was risking the salvation of
his immortal soul or even courting the depravation of his morals; he
merely felt that it was "indecent" or, in extreme cases, "disgusting."
That is to say he regarded the matter as simply a question of conventional
etiquette, at the worst, of taste, of æsthetics. In thus bringing down his
repugnance to nakedness to so low a plane he had indeed rendered it
generally acceptable, but at the same time he had deprived it of high
sanction. His profound horror of nakedness was out of relation to the
frivolous grounds on which he based it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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