The significance of clothing and partial clothing as a sexual stimulus, proved by K. von den Steinen and Stratz to exist among primitive peoples, can be shown to form an element in the “fashion” of civilized races, which provides the imagination with entirely new sexual stimuli, by means of the two fundamental elements of the =accentuation= and =disclosure= of certain parts, and speaks to man of “hidden joys.” Moses made use of this psychical sexual influence of clothing. He wished to increase the numbers of his small people, and therefore he ordered the =concealment= of the feminine charms, “=in order to stimulate the senses of the male members of his community=, and thus increase the fertility of his people.”[98] Nudity, rejected by him as =unsuitable=, came in the Christian teaching to be regarded as “=immoral=”; for such a change in the point of view, we can find numerous examples in the public life of the present day. The greatest sensual stimulus is exerted by the =half-clothing= or =partial disclosure= of the body, the so-called _retroussé_--that is, the art of bringing about a refined mutual influence between the charms of clothing and the charms of the body.[99] This plays a very important part in the origination of the so-called “clothes fetichism,” which we shall describe at greater length when we come to the consideration of these sexual anomalies. There are two fundamental forms of clothing, the =tropical= (coat and sash) and the =arctic= (doublet and hose), and these, in addition to their simple function of protecting in the tropics from the powerful rays of the sun, and in the northern climates of protecting from cold, serve also in both sexes as a means of sexual allurement. The changeful phenomena and phases of “fashion in clothing” afford the most certain proofs of this fact; they may, in fact, be regarded as the most valuable sexual psychological documents of the successive epochs of civilization. The celebrated writer on æsthetics Friedrich Theodor Vischer has regarded them especially from this point of view in his original work, distinguished by its pithy style, “Fashion and Cynicism: Contributions to the Knowledge of the Forms of Civilization and of our Moral Ideas” (Stuttgart, 1888). He regards “the rage to excel in man-catching” as “the most powerful of impulses, capable of inflaming to fever-heat the madness of fashion, with its brainless changes, its furious inclinations, its raging distortions.” In a certain sense we may also speak of some of the fashions of men’s clothing as an art of “woman-catching.” Still, on the whole, this feature is much less manifest here than in relation to woman’s clothing. Clothing has a sexually stimulating influence in a twofold manner: either certain parts are especially =accentuated= and =enlarged= by the shape or cut of the clothing and by peculiar kinds of ornamentation, or else particular portions of the body are directly =denuded=. Both of these have a sexual influence.