The clear conception of what may be called the spiritual value of nakedness--by no means from More's point of view, but as a part of natural hygiene in the widest sense, and as a high and special aspect of the purifying and ennobling function of beauty--is of much later date. It is not clearly expressed until the time of the Romantic movement at the beginning of the nineteenth century. We have it admirably set forth in Sénancour's _De l'Amour_ (first edition, 1806; fourth and enlarged edition, 1834), which still remains one of the best books on the morality of love. After remarking that nakedness by no means abolishes modesty, he proceeds to advocate occasional partial or complete nudity. "Let us suppose," he remarks, somewhat in the spirit of Plato, "a country in which at certain general festivals the women should be absolutely free to be nearly or even quite naked. Swimming, waltzing, walking, those who thought good to do so might remain unclothed in the presence of men. No doubt the illusions of love would be little known, and passion would see a diminution of its transports. But is it passion that in general ennobles human affairs? We need honest attachments and delicate delights, and all these we may obtain while still preserving our common-sense.... Such nakedness would demand corresponding institutions, strong and simple, and a great respect for those conventions which belong to all times" (Sénancour, _De l'Amour_, vol. i, p. 314). From that time onwards references to the value and desirability of nakedness become more and more frequent in all civilized countries, sometimes mingled with sarcastic allusions to the false conventions we have inherited in this matter. Thus Thoreau writes in his journal on June 12, 1852, as he looks at boys bathing in the river: "The color of their bodies in the sun at a distance is pleasing. I hear the sound of their sport borne over the water. As yet we have not man in Nature. What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties." Iwan Bloch, in Chapter VII of his _Sexual Life of Our Time_, discusses this question of nakedness from the modern point of view, and concludes: "A natural conception of nakedness: that is the watchword of the future. All the hygienic, æsthetic, and moral efforts of our time are pointing in that direction."