VOL. LXXVI

T

O write of the nude in art is something like writing about the alphabet in literature. Historically, this is certainly true. The very first hunter of the stone age, who, with a bit of red clay pigment, drew upon the walls of that famous cave in Southern France, crude outlines of the forms of life with which he was familiar-bison, deer and human, started the fashion of treating as legitimate material for art, the undraped human figure.

All the early artists followed his lead. And it might almost be said the higher the value of the art of any early civilization, the more frequent the use by painter or sculptor of the absolute nude. Certainly such civilizations as those of Persia and Assyria, Egypt and Yucatan, where, according to our present valuations, art did not reach the degree of development reached in Greece, there was a tendency to depict costumed figures, conventualized after the national mode. But the Greeks, especially at their zenith of cultural glory, had always, even when they draped their figures, the feeling for the nude. The swift flowing garments of the Victory of Samothace might have been of the lightest chiffon-so do they reveal the beauty which they cover and enhance.

Aesthetically this is just as true. For an impersonal or "objective" attitude toward all life and phenomena, lies at the very beginning of art appreciation. The woman who can not view the Winged Mercury without a sneaking sense of shame, and the man who cannot gaze at the Venus de Medici without the subtlest tinge of lasciviousness coloring his thought, are both really incapable of ap

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preciating any form of art, for they could always read a personal, gross, literal, vulgar meaning into any representation -even of landscape.

Perhaps the real purpose of art is to give us a detached "outside" view of our Own emotions, sensations, passions. Herein doubtless rests the source of that cooling and soothing effect which galleries have upon those who love to haunt them.

A belief that there is anything wrong or shameful in the contemplation of the beauties of the human form betokens a vicious attitude of mind in the person or community holding it. It is always attended with other vices and evils, of which the greatest is provincial igno

rance.

Anatole France, in his allegorical and fantastic satire on human society, "Penguin Island" tells how the devil introduced lasciviousness into a primitive and uncorrupted society.

It will be remembered that the penguins are a comical sort of bird living near the South Pole, who are nearer akin to fishes and reptiles than any other bird not extinct. Those who saw the Peary South Pole Expedition movies will also remember that at a distance, with their erect attitude, characteristic movements and peculiar "coat and vest" markings, they somewhat resemble clothed diminutive human beings.

In France's book, a short-sighted medieval missionary, mistaking an assemblage of these birds for humans, preaches to them, becomes convinced by their movements that he has converted them, and straightway baptizes them for the remission of their sins.

He thereby caused the celestial authorities much embarrassment.

This embarrassment arose out of the theological problem of how it might be possible to remit the sins of a race which had never yet sinned-never, in fact, as yet been capable of sinning.

A sort of convention of the saints was called, and France's report of the alleged doings of that heavenly assemblage, with its bickerings, its suggestions, arguments and counter-arguments, is not altogether unlike an Examiner reporter's write-up of a stormy session of the Board of Supervisors, with Andy Gallagher and "Jemmet" in full swing.

The problem was finally solved by the suggestion of one of the saints-I forget which one that the penguins be turned into men and given a chance to accumulate a few sins (in order that said heavenly authorities might have a chance of fulfilling their contract to remit the penguins' iniquities).

This was accordingly done, and for once the Prince of Darkness fell in with heavenly designs by undertaking the promotion of sin among the penguins.

When the penguins were turned into men, they, of course, lost their feathers, and went about clad rather airily, considering the probable climate of their island, which France places near the pole.

Up to the time that Satan got busy, the female human penguin meant just as much to the male human penguin, as she had meant when they were both mere birds-just that much and no more.

Such a state of affairs did not suit Satanic purposes.

His very first activity on the island, according to France, was to catch a poor naked unsophisticated - and awkward female penguin and teach her the art of dress, that is to say, of covering her form in a manner to call attention to and enhance (or create) its charms.

The point of all which is that the origin and everlasting source of all unhealthy sex mysticism and over-emphasis is in clothes. That lasciviousness and overlust is based more upon a lack of knowledge and appreciation of the beauties of the human form than it is upon the pres

ence of that knowledge.

This observation is not original with the writer - nor did it originate with France. It is an ancient, although sometimes imperfectly recognized truth.

To tell the truth, sex and sex allure is the most over advertised commodity on earth.

Sex, love, marriage, et cetera, have been press-agented by every poet from Homer and Omar to Amy Lowell and Witter Bynner-that is, of course, if it is admitted that all four are poets - by every dramatist from Euripides and Shakespeare to George Cohan and David Belasco with the same provisionary condition, of course.

Sculptors, painters, novelists, musicians, newspaper reporters-in short, all the world's literature and all the world's art, good, bad and indifferent, have devoted their efforts to the creation of an illusion and emphasis which, to tell the truth, the subject doesn't merit.

Such people as Ellen Key and Havelock Ellis, who pretend to strip away the veil, don't do anything of the sort. They have merely found a new way of singing the song and telling the story. They draw the curtain well enough, but only to discover to us an artificial stage setting-perhaps new and original in design and plan, but unreality, nevertheless.

And of all the press-agents of sex, the priests and the purists, the preachers and moralists have been the most efficient.

If sin and sinful women, for instance, were only just one-half as alluring and charming in reality as the oldtime sunday school teacher used to make out, how much more joyful a place this old world would be! But the wild, wild women are so sadly tame after all!

One of the most baffling and confusing things in life is not only that love and marriage, but that sin, "sweet sin," itself, as experiences, never come up to anything like the reputation given them.

Not only is the bliss and joy that is claimed, missing from the actuality, but the very deep agony and torment of which the poets sing, exist mainly in their songs.

The queer thing is that although prac