Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume I Part 4

In the same way the social fear of arousing disgust combines easily and perfectly with any new development in the invention of ornament or clothing as s.e.xual lures. Even among the most civilized races it has often been noted that the fas.h.i.+on of feminine garments (as also sometimes the use of scents) has the double object of concealing and attracting. It is so with the little ap.r.o.n of the young savage belle. The heightening of the attraction is, indeed, a logical outcome of the fear of evoking disgust.

It is possible, as some ethnographists have observed,[48] that intercrural cords and other primitive garments have a physical ground, inasmuch as they protect the most sensitive and unprotected part of the body, especially in women. We may note in this connection the significant remarks of K. von den Steinen, who argues that among Brazilian tribes the object of the uluri, etc., is to obtain a maximum of protection for the mucous membrane with a minimum of concealment. Among the Eskimo, as Nansen noted, the corresponding intercrural cord is so thin as to be often practically invisible; this may be noted, I may add, in the excellent photographs of Eskimo women given by Holm.

But it is evident that, in the beginning, protection is to little or no extent the motive for attaching foreign substances to the body. Thus the tribes of Central Australia wear no clothes, although they often suffer from the cold. But, in addition to armlets, neck-bands and head-bands, they have string or hair girdles, with, for the women, a very small ap.r.o.n and, for the men, a pubic ta.s.sel. The latter does not conceal the organs, being no larger than a coin, and often brilliantly coated with white pipeclay, especially during the progress of corrobborees, when a large number of men and women meet together; it serves the purpose of drawing attention to the organs.[49] When Forster visited the unspoilt islanders of the Pacific early in the eighteenth century, he tells us that, though they wore no clothes, they found it necessary to cover themselves with various ornaments, especially on, the s.e.xual parts. "But though their males," he remarks, "were to all appearances equally anxious in this respect with their females, this part of their dress served only to make that more conspicuous which it intended to hide."[50] He adds the significant remark that "these ideas of decency and modesty are only observed at the age of s.e.xual maturity," just as in Central Australia women may only wear ap.r.o.ns after the initiation of p.u.b.erty.

"There are certain things," said Montaigne, "which are hidden in order to be shown;" and there can be no doubt that the contention of Westermarck and others, that ornament and clothing were, in the first place, intended, not to conceal or even to protect the body, but, in large part, to render it s.e.xually attractive, is fully proved.[51] We cannot, in the light of all that has gone before, regard ornaments and clothing as the sole cause of modesty, but the feelings that are thus gathered around the garment const.i.tute a highly important factor of modesty.

Among some Australian tribes it is said that the s.e.xual organs are only covered during their erotic dances; and it is further said that in some parts of the world only prost.i.tutes are clothed. "The scanty covering," as Westermarck observes, "was found to act as the most powerful obtainable s.e.xual stimulus." It is undoubtedly true that this statement may be made not merely of the savage, but of the most civilized world. All observers agree that the complete nudity of savages, unlike the civilized decollete or detrousse, has no suggestion of s.e.xual allurement. (Westermarck quotes numerous testimonies on this point, op. cit., pp. 192 et seq.) Dr. R. W. Felkin remarks concerning Central Africa, that he has never met more indecency than in Uganda, where the penalty of death is inflicted on an adult found naked in the street. (Edinburgh Medical Journal, April, 1884.) A study of pictures or statuary will alone serve to demonstrate that nakedness is always chaster in its effects than partial clothing. As a well-known artist, Du Maurier, has remarked (in Trilby), it is "a fact well known to all painters and sculptors who have used the nude model (except a few shady pretenders, whose purity, not being of the right sort, has gone rank from too much watching) that nothing is so chaste as nudity. Venus herself, as she drops her garments and steps on to the model-throne, leaves behind her on the floor every weapon in her armory by which she can pierce to the grosser pa.s.sions of men." Burton, in the Anatomy of Melancholy (Part III, Sect. II, Subsect. 3), deals at length with the "Allurements of Love," and concludes that "the greatest provocations of l.u.s.t are from our apparel." The artist's model, as one informs me, is much less exposed to liberties from men when nude than when she is partially clothed, and it may be noted that in Paris studios the model who poses naked undresses behind a screen.

An admirable poetic rendering of this element in the philosophy of clothing has been given by Herrick, that master of erotic psychology, in "A Lily in Crystal," where he argues that a lily in crystal, and amber in a stream, and strawberries in cream, gain an added delight from semi-concealment; and so, he concludes, we obtain

"A rule, how far, to teach, Your nakedness must reach."

In this connection, also, it is worth noting that Stanley Hall, in a report based on returns from nearly a thousand persons, mostly teachers, ("The Early Sense of Self," American Journal of Psychology, 1898, p. 366), finds that of the three functions of clothes-protection, ornament, and Lotzean "self-feeling"-the second is by far the most conspicuous in childhood. The att.i.tude of children is testimony to the primitive att.i.tude toward clothing.

It cannot, however, be said that the use of clothing for the sake of showing the natural forms of the body has everywhere been developed. In j.a.pan, where nakedness is accepted without shame, clothes are worn to cover and conceal, and not to reveal, the body. It is so, also, in China. A distinguished Chinese gentleman, who had long resided in Europe, once told Baelz that he had gradually learnt to grasp the European point of view, but that it would be impossible to persuade his fellow-countrymen that a woman who used her clothes to show off her figure could possibly possess the least trace of modesty. (Baelz, Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1901, Heft 2, p. 179.)

The great artistic elaboration often displayed by articles of ornament or clothing, even when very small, and the fact-as shown by Karl von den Steinen regarding the Brazilian uluri-that they may serve as common motives in general decoration, sufficiently prove that such objects attract rather than avoid attention. And while there is an invincible repugnance among some peoples to remove these articles, such repugnance being often strongest when the adornment is most minute, others have no such repugnance or are quite indifferent whether or not their ap.r.o.ns are accurately adjusted. The mere presence or possession of the article gives the required sense of self-respect, of human dignity, of s.e.xual desirability. Thus it is that to unclothe a person, is to humiliate him; this was so even in Homeric times, for we may recall the threat of Ulysses to strip Thyestes.[52]

When clothing is once established, another element, this time a social-economic element, often comes in to emphasize its importance and increase the anatomical modesty of women. I mean the growth of the conception of women as property. Waitz, followed by Schurtz and Letourneau, has insisted that the jealousy of husbands is the primary origin of clothing, and, indirectly, of modesty. Diderot in the eighteenth century had already given clear expression to the same view. It is undoubtedly true that only married women are among some peoples clothed, the unmarried women, though full grown, remaining naked. In many parts of the world, also, as Mantegazza and others have shown, where the men are naked and the women covered, clothing is regarded as a sort of disgrace, and men can only with difficulty be persuaded to adopt it. Before marriage a woman was often free, and not bound to chast.i.ty, and at the same time was often naked; after marriage she was clothed, and no longer free. To the husband's mind, the garment appears-illogically, though naturally-a moral and physical protection against any attack on his property.[53] Thus a new motive was furnished, this time somewhat artificially, for making nakedness, in women at all events, disgraceful. As the conception of property also extended to the father's right over his daughters, and the appreciation of female chast.i.ty developed, this motive spread to unmarried as well as married women. A woman on the west coast of Africa must always be chaste because she is first the property of her parents and afterwards of her husband,[54] and even in the seventeenth century of Christendom so able a thinker as Bishop Burnet furnished precisely the same reason for feminine chast.i.ty.[55] This conception probably const.i.tuted the chief and most persistent element furnished to the complex emotion of modesty by the barbarous stages of human civilization.

This economic factor necessarily involved the introduction of a new moral element into modesty. If a woman's chast.i.ty is the property of another person, it is essential that she shall be modest in order that men may not be tempted to incur the penalties involved by the infringement of property rights. Thus modesty is strictly inculcated on women in order that men may be safeguarded from temptation. The fact was overlooked that modesty is itself a temptation. Immodesty being, on this ground, disapproved by men, a new motive for modesty is furnished to women. In the book which the Knight of the Tower, Landry, wrote in the fourteenth century, for the instruction of his daughters, this factor of modesty is navely revealed. He tells his daughters of the trouble that David got into through the thoughtlessness of Bathsheba, and warns them that "every woman ought religiously to conceal herself when dressing and was.h.i.+ng, and neither out of vanity nor yet to attract attention show either her hair, or her neck, or her breast, or any part which ought to be covered." Hinton went so far as to regard what he termed "body modesty," as entirely a custom imposed upon women by men with the object of preserving their own virtue. While this motive is far from being the sole source of modesty, it must certainly be borne in mind as an inevitable outcome of the economic factor of modesty.

In Europe it seems probable that the generally accepted conceptions of mediaeval chivalry were not without influence in const.i.tuting the forms in which modesty shows itself among us. In the early middle ages there seems to have been a much greater degree of physical familiarity between the s.e.xes than is commonly found among barbarians elsewhere. There was certainly considerable promiscuity in bathing and indifference to nakedness. It seems probable, as Durkheim points out,[56] that this state of things was modified in part by the growing force of the dictates of Christian morality, which regarded all intimate approaches between the s.e.xes as sinful, and in part by the influence of chivalry with its aesthetic and moral ideals of women, as the representative of all the delicacies and elegancies of civilization. This ideal was regarded as incompatible with the familiarities of the existing social relations.h.i.+ps between the s.e.xes, and thus a separation, which at first existed only in art and literature, began by a curious reaction to exert an influence on real life.

The chief new feature-it is scarcely a new element-added to modesty when an advanced civilization slowly emerges from barbarism is the elaboration of its social ritual.[57] Civilization expands the range of modesty, and renders it, at the same time, more changeable. The French seventeenth century, and the English eighteenth, represent early stages of modern European civilization, and they both devoted special attention to the elaboration of the minute details of modesty. The frequenters of the Hotel Rambouillet, the precieuses satirized by Moliere, were not only engaged in refining the language; they were refining feelings and ideas and enlarging the boundaries of modesty.[58] In England such famous and popular authors as Swift and Sterne bear witness to a new ardor of modesty in the sudden reticences, the dashes, and the asterisks, which are found throughout their works. The altogether new quality of literary prurience, of which Sterne is still the cla.s.sical example, could only have arisen on the basis of the new modesty which was then overspreading society and literature. Idle people, mostly, no doubt, the women in salons and drawing-rooms, people more familiar with books than with the realities of life, now laid down the rules of modesty, and were ever enlarging it, ever inventing new subtleties of gesture and speech, which it would be immodest to neglect, and which are ever being rendered vulgar by use and ever changing.

It was at this time, probably, that the custom of inventing an arbitrary private vocabulary of words and phrases for the purpose of disguising references to functions and parts of the body regarded as immodest and indecent, first began to become common. Such private slang, growing up independently in families, and especially among women, as well as between lovers, is now almost universal. It is not confined to any European country, and has been studied in Italy by Niceforo (Il Gergo, 1897, cap. 1 and 2), who regards it as a weapon of social defence against an inquisitive or hostile environment, since it enables things to be said with a meaning which is unintelligible to all but the initiated person. While it is quite true that the custom is supported by the consciousness of its practical advantages, it has another source in a desire to avoid what is felt to be the vulgar immodesty of direct speech. This is sufficiently shown by the fact that such slang is mostly concerned with the sacro-pubic sphere. It is one of the chief contributions to the phenomena of modesty furnished by civilization. The claims of modesty having effected the clothing of the body, the impulse of modesty finds a further sphere of activity-half-playful, yet wholly imperative-in the clothing of language.

Modesty of speech has, however, a deep and primitive basis, although in modern Europe it only became conspicuous at the beginning of the eighteenth century. "All over the world," as Dufour put it, "to do is good, to say is bad." Reticences of speech are not adequately accounted for by the statement that modesty tends to irradiate from the action to the words describing the action, for there is a tendency for modesty to be more deeply rooted in the words than in the actions. "Modest women," as Kleinpaul truly remarks, "have a much greater horror of saying immodest things than of doing them; they believe that fig-leaves were especially made for the mouth." (Kleinpaul, Sprache ohne Worte, p. 309.) It is a tendency which is linked on to the religious and ritual feeling which we have already found to be a factor of modesty, and which, even when applied to language, appears to have an almost or quite instinctive basis, for it is found among the most primitive savages, who very frequently regard a name as too sacred or dangerous to utter. Among the tribes of Central Australia, in addition to his ordinary name, each individual has his sacred or secret name, only known to the older and fully initiated members of his own totemic group; among the Warramunga, it is not permitted to women to utter even a man's ordinary name, though she knows it. (Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 581.) In the mysterious region of s.e.x, this feeling easily takes root. In many parts of the world, men use among themselves, and women use among themselves, words and even languages which they may not use without impropriety in speaking to persons of the opposite s.e.x, and it has been shown that exogamy, or the fact that the wife belongs to a different tribe, will not always account for this phenomenon. (Crawley, The Mystic Rose, p. 46.) A special vocabulary for the generative organs and functions is very widespread. Thus, in northwest Central Queensland, there is both a decent and an indecent vocabulary for the s.e.xual parts; in Mitakoodi language, for instance, me-ne may be used for the v.u.l.v.a in the best aboriginal society, but koon-ja and pukkil, which are names for the same parts, are the most blackguardly words known to the natives. (W. Roth, Ethnological Studies Among the Queensland Aborigines, p. 184.) Among the Malays, puki is also a name for the v.u.l.v.a which it is very indecent to utter, and it is only used in public by people under the influence of an obsessive nervous disorder. (W. Gilman Ellis, "Latah," Journal of Mental Science, Jan., 1897.) The Swahili women of Africa have a private metaphorical language of their own, referring to s.e.xual matters (Zache, Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1899, Heft 2-3, pp. 70 et seq.), and in Samoa, again, young girls have a euphemistic name for the p.e.n.i.s, aualuma, which is not that in common use (Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1899, Heft 1, p. 31); exactly the same thing is found in Europe, to-day, and is sometimes more marked among young peasant women than among those of better social cla.s.s, who often avoid, under all circ.u.mstances, the necessity for using any definite name.

Singular as it may seem, the Romans, who in their literature impress us by their vigorous and naked grip of the most private facts of life, showed in familiar intercourse a dread of obscene language-a dread ultimately founded, it is evident, on religious grounds-far exceeding that which prevails among ourselves to-day in civilization. "It is remarkable," Dufour observes, "that the prost.i.tutes of ancient Rome would have blushed to say an indecent word in public. The little tender words used between lovers and their mistresses were not less correct and innocent when the mistress was a courtesan and the lover an erotic poet. He called her his rose, his queen, his G.o.ddess, his dove, his light, his star, and she replied by calling him her jewel, her honey, her bird, her ambrosia, the apple of her eye, and never with any licentious interjection, but only 'I will love!' (Amabo), a frequent exclamation, summing up a whole life and vocation. When intimate relations began, they treated each other as 'brother' and 'sister.' These appellations were common among the humblest and the proudest courtesans alike." (Dufour, Histoire de la Prost.i.tution, vol. ii, p. 78.) So excessive was the Roman horror of obscenity that even physicians were compelled to use a euphemism for urina, and though the urinal or vas urinarium was openly used at the dining-table (following a custom introduced by the Sybarites, according to Athenaeus, Book XII, cap. 17), the decorous guest could not ask for it by name, but only by a snap of the fingers (Dufour, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 174).

In modern Europe, as seems fairly evident from the early realistic dramatic literature of various countries, no special horror of speaking plainly regarding the sacro-pubic regions and their functions existed among the general population until the seventeenth century. There is, however, one marked exception. Such a feeling clearly existed as regards menstruation. It is not difficult to see why it should have begun at this function. We have here not only a function confined to one s.e.x and, therefore, easily lending itself to a vocabulary confined to one s.e.x; but, what is even of more importance, the belief which existed among the Romans, as elsewhere throughout the world, concerning the specially dangerous and mysterious properties of menstruation, survived throughout mediaeval times. (See e.g., Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, Bd. I, XIV; also Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth ed. Ch. XI.) The very name, menses ("monthlies"), is a euphemism, and most of the old scientific names for this function are similarly vague. As regards popular feminine terminology previous to the eighteenth century, Schurig gives us fairly ample information (Parthenologia, 1729, pp. 27 et seq.). He remarks that both in Latin and Germanic countries, menstruation was commonly designated by some term equivalent to "flowers," because, he says, it is a blossoming that indicates the possibility of fruit. German peasant women, he tells us, called it the rose-wreath (Rosenkrantz). Among the other current feminine names for menstruation which he gives, some are purely fanciful; thus, the Italian women dignified the function with the t.i.tle of "marchese magnifico;" German ladies, again, would use the locution, "I have had a letter," or would say that their cousin or aunt had arrived. These are closely similar to the euphemisms still used by women.

It should be added that euphemisms for menstruation are not confined to Europe, and are found among savages. According to Hill Tout (Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, 1904, p. 320; and 1905, p. 137), one of these euphemisms was "putting on the moccasin," and in another branch of the same people, "putting the knees together," "going outside" (in allusion to the customary seclusion at this period in a solitary hut), and so on.

It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that this process is an intensification of modesty. It is, on the contrary, an attenuation of it. The observances of modesty become merely a part of a vast body of rules of social etiquette, though a somewhat stringent part on account of the vague sense still persisting of a deep-lying natural basis. It is a significant coincidence that the eighteenth century, which was marked by this new extension of the social ritual of modesty, also saw the first appearance of a new philosophic impulse not merely to a.n.a.lyze, but to dissolve the conception of modesty. This took place more especially in France.

The swift rise to supremacy, during the seventeenth century, of logical and rational methods of thinking, in conjunction with the new development of geometrical and mathematical science, led in the eighteenth century to a widespread belief in France that human customs and human society ought to be founded on a strictly logical and rational basis. It was a belief which ignored those legitimate claims of the emotional nature which the nineteenth century afterwards investigated and developed, but it was of immense service to mankind in clearing away useless prejudices and superst.i.tions, and it culminated in the reforms of the great Revolution which most other nations have since been painfully struggling to attain. Modesty offered a tempting field for the eighteenth century philosophic spirit to explore.

The manner in which the most distinguished and adventurous minds of the century approached it, can scarcely be better ill.u.s.trated than by a conversation, reported by Madame d'Epinay, which took place in 1750 at the table of Mlle. Quinault, the eminent actress. "A fine virtue," Duclos remarked, "which one fastens on in the morning with pins." He proceeded to argue that "a moral law must hold good always and everywhere, which modesty does not." Saint-Lambert, the poet, observed that "it must be acknowledged that one can say nothing good about innocence without being a little corrupted," and Duclos added "or of modesty without being impudent." Saint-Lambert finally held forth with much poetic enthusiasm concerning the desirability of consummating marriages in public.[59] This view of modesty, combined with the introduction of Greek fas.h.i.+ons, gained ground to such an extent that towards the end of the century women, to the detriment of their health, were sometimes content to dress in transparent gauze, and even to walk abroad in the Champs Elysees without any clothing; that, however, was too much for the public.[60] The final outcome of the eighteenth century spirit in this direction was, as we know, by no means the dissolution of modesty. But it led to a clearer realization of what is permanent in its organic foundations and what is merely temporary in its s.h.i.+fting manifestations. That is a realization which is no mean task to achieve, and is difficult for many, even yet. So intelligent a traveler as Mrs. Bishop (Miss Bird), on her first visit to j.a.pan came to the conclusion that j.a.panese women had no modesty, because they had no objection to being seen naked when bathing. Twenty years later she admitted to Dr. Baelz that she had made a mistake, and that "a woman may be naked and yet behave like a lady."[61] In civilized countries the observances of modesty differ in different regions, and in different social cla.s.ses, but, however various the forms may be, the impulse itself remains persistent.[62]

Modesty has thus come to have the force of a tradition, a vague but ma.s.sive force, bearing with special power on those who cannot reason, and yet having its root in the instincts of all people of all cla.s.ses.[63] It has become mainly transformed into the allied emotion of decency, which has been described as "modesty fossilized into social customs." The emotion yields more readily than in its primitive state to any sufficiently-strong motive. Even fas.h.i.+on in the more civilized countries can easily inhibit anatomical modesty, and rapidly exhibit or accentuate, in turn, almost any part of the body, while the savage Indian woman of America, the barbarous woman of some Mohammedan countries, can scarcely sacrifice her modesty in the pangs of childbirth. Even when, among uncivilized races, the focus of modesty may be said to be eccentric and arbitrary, it still remains very rigid. In such savage and barbarous countries modesty possesses the strength of a genuine and irresistible instinct. In civilized countries, however, anyone who places considerations of modesty before the claims of some real human need excites ridicule and contempt.

[4]

Fliess (Die Beziehungen zwischen Nase und weiblichen Geschlechts-Organen, p. 194) remarks on the fact that, in the Bible narrative of Eden, shame and fear are represented as being brought into the world together: Adam feared G.o.d because he was naked. Melinaud ("Psychologie de la Pudeur," La Revue, Nov. 15, 1901) remarks that shame differs from modesty in being, not a fear, but a kind of grief; this position seems untenable.

[5]

Bashfulness in children has been dealt with by Professor Baldwin; see especially his Mental Development in the Child and the Race, Chapter VI, pp. 146 et seq., and Social Interpretations in Mental Development, Chapter VI.

[6]

Bell, "A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love Between the s.e.xes," American Journal Psychology, July, 1902.

[7]

Professor Starbuck (Psychology of Religion, Chapter x.x.x) refers to unpublished investigations showing that recognition of the rights of others also exhibits a sudden increment at the age of p.u.b.erty.

[8]

Perez, L'Enfant de Trois a Sept Ans, 1886, pp. 267-277.

[9]

It must be remembered that the Medicean Venus is merely a comparatively recent and familiar embodiment of a natural att.i.tude which is very ancient, and had impressed sculptors at a far earlier period. Reinach, indeed, believes ("La Sculpture en Europe," L'Anthropologie, No. 5, 1895) that the hand was first brought to the breast to press out the milk, and expresses the idea of exuberance, and that the att.i.tude of the Venus of Medici as a symbol of modesty came later; he remarks that, as regards both hands, this att.i.tude may be found in a figurine of Cyprus, 2,000 years before Christ. This is, no doubt, correct, and I may add that Babylonian figurines of Ishtar, the G.o.ddess of fertility, represent her as clasping her hands to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s or her womb.

[10]

When there is no s.e.xual fear the impulse of modesty may be entirely inhibited. French ladies under the old Regime (as A. Franklin points out in his Vie Privee d'Autrefois) sometimes showed no modesty towards their valets, not admitting the possibility of any s.e.xual advance, and a lady would, for example, stand up in her bath while a valet added hot water by pouring it between her separated feet.

[11]

I do not hereby mean to deny a certain degree of normal periodicity even to the human male; but such periodicity scarcely involves any element of s.e.xual fear or att.i.tude of s.e.xual defence, in man because it is too slight to involve complete latency of the s.e.xual functions, in other species because latency of s.e.xual function in the male is always accompanied by corresponding latency in the female.

[12]

H. Northcote, Christianity and the s.e.x Problem, p. 8. Crawley had previously argued (The Mystic Rose, pp. 134, 180) that this same necessity for solitude during the performance of nutritive, s.e.xual, and excretory functions, is a factor in investing such functions with a potential sacredness, so that the concealment of them became a religious duty.

[13]

Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1878, p. 26.

[14]

Essais, livre ii, Ch. XV.

[15]

Monsieur Nicolas, vol. i, p. 89.

[16]

Lane, Arabian Society, p. 228. The Arab insistence on the value of virginal modesty is well brought out in one of the most charming stories of the Arabian Nights, "The History of the Mirror of Virginity."

[17]

This has especially been emphasized by Crawley, The Mystic Rose, pp. 181, 324 et seq., 353.

[18]

Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Bd. II, Heft 8, p. 358.

[19]

This, however, is not always or altogether true of experienced women. Thus, the Russian correspondent already referred to, who as a youth was accustomed, partly out of shyness, to feign complete ignorance of s.e.xual matters, informs me that it repeatedly happened to him at this time that young married women took pleasure in imposing on themselves, not without shyness but with evident pleasure, the task of initiating him, though they always hastened to tell him that it was for his good, to preserve him from bad women and masturbation. Prost.i.tutes, also, often take pleasure in innocent men, and Hans Ostwald tells (s.e.xual-Probleme, June, 1908, p. 357) of a prost.i.tute who fell violently in love with a youth who had never known a woman before; she had never met an innocent man before, and it excited her greatly. And I have been told of an Italian prost.i.tute who spoke of the exciting pleasure which an unspoilt youth gave her by his freshness, tutta questa freschezza.

[20]

Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III, Sect. III. Mem. IV. Subs. I.

[21]

N. Venette, La Generation de l'Homme, Part II, Ch. X.