to regard the sexual act as in itself disgusting; more especially in view of the fact that such an idea conflicts with the lofty ethical significance of the act to which we all owe our existence. What has been said about nakedness, has bearings also upon the relationships of the education of children to the matter of the nude in art. No intelligent person will deny the importance to art of the representation of the nude. A clothed Venus is a thing with which the connoisseur would prefer to dispense. Although I am not myself an enthusiastic adherent of the movement started a few years back with a great flourish of trumpets for the introduction of art into the education of children--a movement which has already perceptibly slackened--I do not wish to deny the important bearings of art upon the education of the child. Children who are still comparatively young, have not as a rule much understanding of art. None the less, we must not withhold from the child possibilities of appreciating the beauties of the nude. Apart from this purely educational aim, we have to remember that it is impossible to preserve children completely from the sight of the nude in art. We might, of course, exclude them from our museums; but our own houses also often contain nude statuary, and books with illustrations of the nude figure; and nude statues are to be 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