The Choice of a Mate Chapter II . 3

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Chapter III
The Female Leg and the Influence of Dress on Morphology and Temperaments

In his essay on beauty and eugenics, Knight Dunlap says: "The most important element in the beauty of any individual is the evidence of her (or his) fitness for the function of procreating healthy children of the highest type of efficiency, according to the standards of the race." ¹
        This statement is unassailable, and thus we should look forward to the time when the valuation of a man or woman will be more biological than it is to-day, and when the judgment "normal", or "sound", or even "reputable" and "respectable" will be passed only on those people who bear on their person the visible characteristics of procreators of desirable offspring. And, since there is no possible separation between the invisible and the visible, between the so-called "mental" and the so-called "physical" attributes of a creature, this desirability of offspring must imply psychological as well as physiological superiority.
        Knight Dunlap says further: "Our standards of bodily development are still, in the main Greek." ²
        This, too, is doubtless correct. In fact, it would be correct to say also that our standards of beauty are Greek.
        We in north-western Europe derive from a mixture of stocks, which, even if it is not the same as that of the ancient Greeks, contains many of the same ingredients, though probably in different proportions. There is much mystery regarding the ethnic origins of the ancient Hellenes. But there appears to be general agreement concerning the strong Mediterranean (Pelasgian or Iberian) ³ and the Nordic, or Teutonic elements, in their blood. Ripley, who tells us that the admiration felt by the ancient Greeks "for blondness in heroes and deities is well known", ⁴ definitely associates blondness with the Teutonic

        1 P.B.R.P., p. 40.
        2 Ibid., p. 28. For the extension of this race to the Iberian Peninsula, western Fiance, and the British Isles, see A.E., p. 66.
        4 R.E., p. 407.

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(Germanic, Nordic) race. ¹ Dr. Beddoe speaks of the ancient Greeks as "largely blond" ² and Dr. F. Hertz declares "that among the several races from the fusion of which the ancient Hellenes proceeded there was also a Nordic clement is, for more than one reason, highly probable." ³ A curious passage in Aristotle's PHYSIOGNOMY, in which he speaks of hazel and not black eyes as being a sign of courage, ⁴ seems to point (a) to the fact that: a northern Teutonic conqueror type probably constituted a prominent element in the old Hellenic make-up, and (b) that the characteristics of this conqueror type helped to mould the beauty ideal of the Greeks. Dr. Ridgeway's arguments also seem to point in this direction, ⁵ while Dr. Beddoe, remarking on the blond complexion and its share in the ideal of beauty, says: "This has throughout all historical time, and in most parts of Europe, been the one most admired, while the red, the brown, and the black, though they have all had their local reasons of favour or fashion, have, on the whole, been the less thought of and less spoken of, especially by the poets, from Homer downwards." ⁶
        We also know that Apollo, Dionysus, Rhadamanthus, Pallas Athene and Alexander had flaxen hair, while Finck declares: "I have been assured that, in the Greece of to-day, light hair is still held as indicating the purest Hellenic blood." ⁷
        There is probably overstatement here, because we know that Pelasgian or Mediterranean blood was strongly represented among the Greeks, particularly of Athens. Nevertheless, this admiration for blondness among them, together with other considerations, seems to point to the conclusion that a northern or Teutonic element existed also, and justifies us in assuming that, in so far as this was the case, there would be an ethnic affinity between them and old and modern western European stocks, which would make the admiration of a similar type of beauty not unlikely.
        Now the English, French, Germans, Belgians and Italians do not differ from each other so much in regard to the variety of

        1 Ibid., p. 121.
        2 A.H.E., p. 51.
        3 RACE AND CIVILIZATION (London, 1928, p. 106). Dr. Hertz, however, disbelieves that the Greeks were largely blond. For strong support of the belief that they were largely of Nordic or Teutonic blood, see F., pp. 168–172.
        4 PHYSIOGNOMY (trans. as before, Chap. VI). He says definitely that black eyes mean cowardice. He could hardly have said this had the Greeks been chiefly of Mediterranean stock.
        5 THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE. I.
        6 A.H.E., p. 177.
        7 R.L.P.B., II, p. 375.

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stocks originally composing them, as in regard to the proportions of each parent stock in each nation. And, as we have seen, the principal difference between them consists in this, that whereas Teutonic and Mediterranean blood, in varying degrees is common to them all, there is an absence of Alpine blood in Britain and a prevalence of it in France, Belgium, Germany, and Italy. ¹
        This confirms the standpoint and is, in any case, enough for our purpose, seeing that the interest: here is not so much a matter of the races of Europe, with which we are only indirectly concerned, but the existence of a possible ethnic affinity between ourselves and the Greeks, which would make a similar ideal of beauty probable on a priori grounds alone.
        The ancient Romans certainly agreed with the Greeks in the matter of admiring blondes, and their dark women used not only to dye their hair a blond shade, but also imported blond locks of hair from Germany, or else cut them from the heads of their German captives. ² This inclines one to the view that a general admiration for blondness prevailed in classical Europe, possibly because this type of complexion and hair was associated with a superior or conquering race, or with the masterful elements in the population. ³
        Now, it is unlikely that the complexion and hair would have been admired alone. The probability is that with them went the regular-featured orthognous face associated with the present ideal European type, which we find in the heads of Greek gods and athletes. And the spontaneity with which the beauty of the latter is admired, and has been admired, by western Europeans, seems to point to a fundamentally ethnic affinity.
        It is no reply to this, or refutation of the argument, to say that the Greeks greatly idealized their types, because in their sculptures they represented their deities. For, in the first place, idealization does not entirely transform, it merely emphasizes an admired character, clears an accepted type of blemishes, or perfects the type. It never produces a totally different type out

        1 R.E., p. 305.
        2 Ovid: ARTIS AMATORIÆ, III, 163–164. AMORES, I, i, 31–50. Martial: VIII, 33, 20, and XIV, 26. In the former Martial recommends a Batavian pommade for lightening the hair-colour, in the latter he says, "The spuma of the Chatti turns to flame Teutonic locks; you can be smarter with the hair of a captive slave."
        3 R.E., p. 469: "The trait [blondness] has for some reason become so distinctive of a dominant race all over Europe that it has been rendered susceptible to the influence of artificial selection. . . . Were there space we might adduce abundant evidence to prove that the upper classes in France, Germany, Austria and the British Isles are distinctly lighter in hair and eyes than the peasantry."

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of a standard or common level of features among & population. Secondly, we know that the statues which first established the familiar Hellenic type were those of men and not of divinities. ¹
        So that the point I wish to make, which, after all, is not so very controversial, is that in the spontaneous and enduring admiration of ancient Greek types in Europe, we are probably concerned primarily with an ethnic affinity. And this accounts tor the fact that when we see in our theatres, streets or homes to-day a girl who looks like the Demeter of Cnidus, the Clyte of the British Museum, the De Laborde Head of Paris, or Demophon's Artemis of Athens; or when we see a young man who looks like a typical Hermes or Apollo of the best Greek period, we do not hesitate to regard such a young girl or man, whether dark or fair, as among the highest examples of our own blood. And this applies just as much to the bodily development as to the features.
        This spontaneous admiration, which I suggest may be due to some extent to ethnic affinity, cannot be a recent development in Europe, as is shown not merely by the European vogue for Greek sculpture in antiquity, but also by such an apparently insignificant incident as Gregory's enthusiasm over some captive slaves from England in the sixth century. ²
        This constitutes my first reason for agreeing with Knight Dunlap regarding our standards being in the main Greek.
        There is, however, a less obvious and much less innocent, cause of our standards being in the main Greek. I refer to the precept and example constantly inculcated upon all Europeans, particularly us of western Europe, by our study and admiration of Greek antiquity.
        This influence, while it has confirmed the spontaneous reactions due to our ethnic affinity, has at the same time modified

        1 Grote: HISTORY OF GREECE (London, 1872, III, p. 321). "It was in statues of men, especially in those of the victors at Olympia and other sacred games, that genuine ideas of beauty were first arrived at and in part attained, from whence they passed afterwards to the statues of the gods." The gross liberties taken with the female form by Greek sculptors and draughtsmen was not, strictly speaking, idealization, but monstrification, or transformation to meet male homosexual taste.
        2 See READINGS IN SOCIAL HISTORY (Cambridge, 1921, I, pp. 15, 16). Some English youths carried to Rome for sale in A.D. 575, excited the attention of the city by the beauty and elegance of their features. Gregory, the Archdeacon of the Apostolic See, was so struck with "such an assemblage of grace in mortals" that when he had heard they were pagans from Deira (a province of Northumbria), he said, "These Angles, Angel-like, should be delivered from (de) ira, and taught to sing Allelulia."

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these reactions to the same extent as that to which ancient Greek culture differed from ours.
        In other words, the Greeks produced a culture which, in some of its leading features, was unique. This culture influenced their notions of beauty, and to the extent to which it did this, and produced an ideal suitable only to their peculiar form of culture, we, who belong to a different culture, are led sadly astray by adopting that ideal.
        As I have already shown, there is so much in the decadent period of Hellenic life, which has become an inextricable part of our Christian civilization, that the study and admiration of ancient Greece tends to be carried to lengths injurious to our best interests. But in this study and admiration of decadent Greek life, the Christian is in a somewhat serious dilemma.
        He is bound to Socrates as the "pre-Christian Christian", and yet very rightly loathes much of what to Socrates and his associates was a commonplace. He would like to concentrate on the intellectual achievements of Socrates and Plato and believe that they belonged to the zenith of Hellenic culture, and yet he is forced by history to regard precisely the period in which they appeared as one of decadence, ¹ and to reject much in the culture that preceded, and was also contemporary with, these two figures.
        I am not concerned with a general estimate of Greek culture. As will be seen from what I have already said about the Socratic school of philosophy in other chapters, I am, in this book, interested only in those aspects of Hellenism which directly or indirectly affect the mating of modern people. And in this sense alone do I now propose to point to certain peculiarities of Greek culture, the influence of which, through our study and admiration of antiquity, and not so much through racial affinity, affects modern mating values.
        Now the first fact to be grasped about the ancient Greeks, of the whole period from the end of the heroic to the dawn of the Hellenistic Age, is that they were a people of pronounced sensual tastes, who frankly and innocently indulged these tastes no matter whither they led, without any of the modern feeling of guilt that follows even a slight trip over the traces. I am not suggesting that this was either good or bad; I merely state it as a fact.

        1 THE CHIEF PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY (London, 1886, p. 21), where Edward Freeman says that the greatest Age in Greek history (fifth century B.C.) was in reality an Age of decline. In saying this he confirmed Finlay.

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        Thus Dr. Hans Licht, one of the most scholarly authorities on the erotic life of Greece, writes: "The inmost nature of the Greeks is naked sensuality. . . . The whole life of the Greeks (not only their private life) represents solely an exultant creed of sensuality." ¹
        The second and more important fact to be grasped about the ancient Greeks is that they were a nation of homosexuals. It may be a regrettable, unfortunate and unpleasant tact that the people to whom we chiefly owe our religious philosophy should have been consistent and unblushing homosexuals, but it is only too plain.
        Naturally, in view of the profound indebtedness of Christian thought to later Greek thought, and also of the unpleasantness of the whole subject, no stone has been left unturned to hush up this side of Greek life in the modern world. But this determined suppression cannot alter the fact that homosexuality was fundamental in Hellenic life, and was, moreover, of very great antiquity. Plato speaks of it as a custom that prevailed before the time of Laius, the father of Œdipus, ² others ascribe it to Orpheus. Some maintain that it reached Greece through the Dorians, who were nomadic marauders, constantly separated for long periods from their women; others suggest that it came from the East.
        Nor was it a practice that was confined to debauchees and "degenerates"; for, as Licht says: "It was just the most important and influential supporters of Greek culture who held the most decidedly homosexual opinions." ³
        Epaminondas, "the greatest and purest of all the Greeks in history", was known to have been attached homosexually to the boy Asopichus "without fear and without reproach". ⁴ Æschylus, Sophocles, Socrates and Plato were all pederasts, ⁵ while "Parmenides, whose life, like that of Pythagoras, was accounted peculiarly holy, loved his pupil Zeno. ⁶ Theognis loved Kurnus, Pisistratus loved Charon, Pheidias loved Pantarkes, Pindar loved Theoxenos, Euripides loved Agathon, and Lysias, Demosthenes and Æschines did not scruple to avow their homosexual love. As J. A. Symonds (who does his utmost to defend

        1 S.L.A.G. (Introduction). See also D.P., pp. 229–230.
        2 LAWS, VIII, 836.
        3 S.L.A.G., p. 434.
        4 Mahaffy: SOCIAL LIFE IN GREECE FROM HOMER TO MENANDER (London, 1874, p. 307).
        5 D.P., p. 233.
        6 Symonds (S.P.S., I, Appendix A, p. 200).

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the Greeks) declares: "This list might be indefinitely lengthened." ¹
        Phædo, whose name supplies the title of Plato's dialogue on immortality, had his freedom purchased for him, through the instrumentality of Socrates, when the boy was an inmate of a male brothel. And the fact that these male prostitutes were tolerated and acknowledged is shown by the tax which the State used regularly to levy from them. ² Nor was the freer and more respectable form of homosexuality — practised by men with youths who gave themselves freely out of love — any less legal; for Solon, who besides being a legislator was also both a homosexual and a poet, passed laws which, by limiting this form of sexuality, implicitly legalised it. For instance, he forbade not merely the use of scent to slaves, but also pederasty, and, as Plutarch says, "he thus placed this practice among things decent, and praiseworthy, befitting, as it were, people whose rank made them worthy of it, and not befitting others." ³ Æschines refers to the whole of this legislation in his speech against Timarchus, and makes the same points as Plutarch, but more forcibly. ⁴
        When, now, we bear in mind that the practice was very much older than the time of Solon, that it received religious sanction at an early period, that the passion played an important part in B Greek history, that the literature of Greece is full of unashamed allusions to it and of rhapsodical eulogies both of the practice and of the youths whom poets, scholars and statesmen loved; ⁵

        1 Ibid.
        2 Æschines (CONTRE TIMARQUE, 119–120. French trans. by Victor Martin and Guy de Budé, Paris, 1927).
        3 See PLUTARQUE (trans. by Jacques Amyot, Paris. Ed. Lutetia. Solon., II). "Car que Solon n'ait pas esté trop ferme pour résister à la beauté, ny assez vaillant champion pour combattre l'amour, on le peut évidemment cognoistre, tant par autres escripts poëtiques qu'il a faits, que par un sien statut, auquel il défend que le serf ne se perfume ny ne soit amoureux des enfans, comme mettant cela au rang des choses honestes et louables exercises et conviant, par manière de dire, les personnes dignes à ce, dont il forclost les indignes." See, on this point, Wilamowitz-Moellendorf (STATT UND GESELLSHAFT DER GRIECHEN UND RÖMER, Berlin, 1910, p. 91).
        4 Trans. as before, because no modern English translation gives the bald facts; pp. 138, 139, where it is perfectly plain that the law recognized the right to homosexuality among free citizens, i.e. the peculiar homosexuality of the Greeks, which consisted of grown males consorting with boys, educating them and using them as women.
        5 For convincing evidence of this, see S.L.A.G., Chap. V, and D.P., pp. 230–236 and 387–427. As I was compelled to discuss paiderastia in order to make a point which will be seen in a moment, and not in order either to make a charge against the Greeks, or to defend them in regard to if, I could not burden the chapter with more evidence. The reader who still doubts the importance and prevalence of the custom in the culture is, therefore, referred to the original literature itself, and to the accounts of the custom given by Licht and Bloch.

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when we read Plato's SYMPOSIUM, with its exaltation of precisely this kind of love, and are forced to the conclusion that it constituted the only kind of individual love that existed in the culture, (until, comparatively later, the hetairæ began to assume equal importance in this respect), it is impossible to deny the fundamental position it held in Hellenic civlization.
        And yet no effort has been spared by the orthodox modern literature on ancient Greece, and by Hellenic scholars generally, to suppress the whole of this side of Greek culture, or else to make it appear quite secondary — so much so, indeed, that to anyone who does not take special pains, it is impossible, even if he has had an ordinary classical education, to become aware of the facts.
        As Licht points our, in five major German works on the classical age in Greece, there is either no mention of it, or else it is referred to so cursorily that the impression given is that the practice was insignificant. ¹ And the same applies to our own English authorities on Greek culture and our leading works of reference on the subject.
        "The result of this treatment," says Licht, "which is to be found throughout present-day literature, is to give to the reader, who is himself unable to consult the authorities, the idea that in the case of Greek homosexuality it was merely a subsidiary phenomenon, something which happened in isolated instances, rarely and only here and there." ²
        Attempts have, of course, been made, notably by Mahaffy and J. A. Symonds, to apologize for this clement in Greek culture. But, as we shall see, these very attempts at apology merely accentuate and confirm what I have said above.
        Throughout the few pages that Mahaffy devotes to the question (in the first edition of his work; for he cannot prevail upon himself to repeat the passages in the second edition), one can feel his trembling hatred of the whole of what he calls "this painful subject".
        He does not make it clear that the principal difference between that love of boys which prevailed throughout the best period of ancient Greece, and had its nobler educative aspects, and that later love of boys which, side by side with the other, degenerated into mere male prostitution, was this, that while the former (characterized by a free and willing surrender of his person by a boy to a single senior) served a cultural purpose both in war

        1 S.L.A.G., pp. 411–412.
        2 Ibid., p. 412.

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and education, the latter (which influenced Rome) was purely lustful mate prostitution, and possessed no educational or any other value whatsoever.
        By not making this clear he is able to refer to many a condemnation by Greeks, of the latter development as if it referred to the whole custom of homosexuality. Again, although male homosexuality was fundamental in the Greek state, nowhere did the customs or the laws allow any man to take a youth by force and against his will. Indeed, this crime was severely punished, just as rape of the female is in our culture. To allow this would have been to violate the sacred condition which was that, among free-born men the youth was joined only by voluntary attachment to his lover — a relationship essential to the educational aspect of the practice so important to Greek ideas. He might make a contract, and often did so, which involved the receipt of money. But the affair had to be free and voluntary. And yet, despite this well-known condition of the best form of Hellenic homosexuality, Mahaffy does not scruple, by a clever innuendo, to give the uninformed reader the impression that, in the case of Lysias, for instance, or the case for which Lysias composed the plaintiff's speech, the plaintiff is ashamed and confesses that such things ought not to be. By not telling the whole story, Mahaffy thus gives it a completely false complexion. The facts are that one, Simon, had signed an agreement with a boy, Theodotus, to consort with him, for which he had paid 300 drachmæ. Now the plaintiff, Lysias, or the man for whom Lysias composed his speech, had taken Theodotus by force, because he too loved him. This had led to blows between Simon and the plaintiff, and it was this which formed the grounds for the action.
        There is no shame expressed by either side for their relation to Theodotus. If shame is expressed, it is for the procedure which constituted the rape and which followed it. In fact, Mahaffy concludes his misleading account of the case by saying that "a modern reader is struck by the fact that he [Lysias] is not at all ashamed of his own relation towards Theodotus." ¹
        In spite of his laborious attempt at vindicating the Greeks, however, Mahaffy is forced, in face of the overwhelming mass of evidence, to admit that, "To us these things are so repugnant and disgusting that all mention of them is usually omitted when treating of Creek culture. But this is to ignore a leading feature, and the principal blot, in this civilization, as compared with ours

        1 Op. cit., p. 217.

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— one, too, which affected society deeply and constantly, so that without estimating it, our judgment of the Greeks must be imperfect and even false." ¹
        This does not alter the fact that he does try to slur it over, and does omit all but a reference to it in the second edition of his book.
        J. A. Symonds takes a different line. By him, too, the subject is represented as distasteful, but he tries to apologize for the Greeks by two lines of argument. In the first he tries to prove that Greek homosexuality had a noble spiritual side, and in the second that it was only in the period of decadence that it became carnal. He begins by denying that in the heroic age there was any trace of homosexuality, ² and declares that Homer knew nothing of it. Here Licht joins violent issue with him. ³ But I cannot enter into the details of the controversy, except to point out that Æschines, speaking in the year 345 B.C., definitely says of the love of Achilles and Patroclus, which figures so prominently in Homer: "Homer is silent about the nature of the love that unites them, and does not designate their comradeship by its proper name, feeling sure that their extraordinary attachment would be self-evident to any cultivated audience." ⁴
        Symonds certainly makes it plain that pederasty in Athens "was closely associated with liberty, manly sports, severe studies, enthusiasm, self-sacrifice, self-control, and deeds of daring." ⁵ He also clearly proves, as Licht and Bloch and the general literature of Greece show, that it was not "thought disreputable for men to engage in these liaisons", and that "disgrace only attached to the youth who gained a living by prostitution." ⁶ He, moreover, shows that "circumstances rendered it impossible for them [women] to excite romantic and enthusiastic passion", and that "the exaltation of the emotions was reserved for the male sex." ⁷
        But what he fails to do is to convince us that a people and a civilization, in which homosexuality of such a passionate and habitual kind can take this central position, could be anything but suspect in the psycho-physical sense, i.e. morbid and therefore unsound. And when an examination of their statuary actually reveals certain definitely morbid elements, ⁸ and we also

        1 Ibid., p. 311. The italics are.mine. A.M.L.
        2 Op. cit., pp. 166 and 169. See, however, pp. 183 and 188.
        3 S.L.A.G., pp. 449–452.
        4 Op. cit. (trans. as before), p. 142.
        5 Op. cit., p. 217.
        6 Ibid., p. 216.
        7 Ibid., p. 226 and 239.
        8 See my HEALTH AND EDUCATION THROUGH SELF-MASTERY, p. 20.

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contemplate the fact that their civilization lasted for what is comparatively an exceedingly brief period, we cannot help concluding that all was not well with them. It is unfortunate that the enormous debt which Christianity owes to Socrates should have made it necessary to apologize for them at all, and I strongly suspect that, were it not for the fact that Socratic dualism and the unhealthy elevation by Socrates of the soul above the body, supplies the philosophic basis to Christianity, we should hear nothing but rabid condemnation of the Greeks and their whole culture.
        It is most regrettable, from the standpoint of the believer, that the fundamental tenets of Christianity and "the Christian before Christ" should have hailed not only from a nation of male homosexuals, but also from that nation in its decadence, and we non-Christians may well shudder to think what would have been said of our creed by Christians if it had sprung from similar origins. Nevertheless, without taking all the advantage of this damaging fact against our enemies, which they would have taken of it against us, may we not reasonably regard it as a confirmation of our repeated charge that Christianity is a morbid, unhealthy and dysgenic religion? May we not regard it as a tribute to our instincts, that this religion, which we have always stigmatized as insanitary, should have been built upon the tenets of a man who was condemned to death for corrupting the youth of his city, and who, in addition, belonged to a nation of homosexuals?
        This, however, is not the point at which I wished to arrive. If I found myself bound to make this unpleasant digression on Greek homosexuality, it was because I wished to show that, unless we grasp the central position it held in Hellenic culture, it is impossible to understand either the latter, or the influence it has had upon us, or the effect of this influence on our taste in mating. How has all this happened?
        I suggest that male homosexuality could not possibly have taken the central position it did in Hellenic culture, without having influenced the taste of the Greeks in human morphology.
        This Symonds denies. Referring to Greek taste in human form as expressed in art, he says: "There is no partiality for the beauty of the male." ¹
        We shall now try to determine the precise value of this statement. Long before I was aware of the dominant role played by male homosexuality in Hellenic culture, my eye as a draughtsman had

        1 Op. cit., p. 242.

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discerned something odd in the female figure as presented in Greek sculpture. I had seen that what Schopenhauer foolishly described as the "unæsthetic character of the female form" — its "narrow shoulders, broad hips, low stature and diminutive legs" — had been decidedly modified or wholly eliminated by Greek art; in fact, that the Greeks had misrepresented those characteristic proportions of legs to trunk, ² and shoulders to hips, which differentiate the normal female from the male.
        If, however, male beauty was the leading æsthetic note in their culture, may we not suspect that, in this matter the Greeks would have sympathized with Schopenhauer, and that, in fact, Schopenhauer unconsciously revealed the potent influence of Greek culture in making his famous remarks about the female figure?
        Unless we presuppose a deliberate choice of the perverse Greek standard by Schopenhauer, it is, in any event, a senseless point of view. For, unless, as should be the case, we observe one code of æsthetic values for the appreciation of the female form, and another for that of the male, we are bound to judge one sex according to criteria that do not apply to it. To say, therefore, that, from the standpoint of the male form that of the female is ugly, is as sensible as to say that, from the standpoint of the female form, that of the male is ugly.
        Why should not the female leg-trunk ratio, for instance, be as beautiful in its way as the male? Æsthetic taste is purely arbitrary. There are no inexorable laws about it. Therefore, to declare, as Schopenhauer, Goethe, and a host of others have done, that the male form is more beautiful, betrays a bias unconsciously acquired from homosexual Greece, or else a puerile confusion of standards of which such men as Schopenhauer and Goethe can hardly be suspected.
        Goethe declares that "according to pure æsthetic standards, ³ man is, after all, very much more beautiful, more excellent and more perfect than woman", and Cennini and Rémy de Gourmont agree with him. Then he goes on to explain that, given this fact, it would easily lead to an animal and coarse materialistic expression; and thus the love of boys would be a natural propensity, although at the same time contrary to nature. ⁴

        1 P.P., I, p. 654.
        2 Throughout this and the ensuing chapters, the word "trunk", in such phrases as trunk-leg ratio, stands for head and trunk.
        3 The italics are mine. A.M.L.
        4 UNTERHALTUNGEN MIT DEM KANZLER FRIEDRICH VON MÜLLER. (Stuttgart, l898, p. 231.) See also Cennino Cennini; LE LIVRE DE L'ART (trans. by Victor

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        But, for once, Goethe is talking nonsense. There are no such "pure æsthetic standards". In fact, in this case, as we have seen, they were most impure. Taste may be healthy or unhealthy, non-morbid or morbid, according to whether it tends to an ascent or a descent in the line of life. But when it discriminates between forms which diner, although equally healthy and sound, and each of which is in a class of its own, there is, apart from any psycho-physical abnormality, no "pure æsthetic standard" which places the one above the other. There is only bias.
        The best proof of this is that, before the Greeks, and long before Cennini, Goethe and Schopenhauer, other great peoples had depicted women in art, not merely with the normal female trunk-leg ratio, but also with an exaggeration of it, evidently conceiving it, as in itself beautiful. Let anyone who doubts this look at the wonderful figures of women carved in ivory by the artists of the Cro-Magnon period, ¹ or at the exquisitely beautiful women depicted in Indian art, ² or at many of the female figures represented in Egyptian sculpture and drawings, ³ or even at some of the Greek work itself, produced more especially before the time of the Parthenon, but also even as late as the Parthenon pediments, ⁴ when presumably the Greek male-homosexual bias had not exerted its fullest influence. Even if the reader will look

Mottez, Paris, 1911, p. 42). Referring to the bodily proportions of man and woman, Cennini says: "Celles de la femme je n'en parlerai pas, elle n'a aucune mesure parfaite." Cennini was writing in 1437, at the height of the Renaissance, when Greek values were enjoying their second vogue in Italy. See also P.L., p. 70, where Rémy de Gourmont says of the trunk-leg ratio: " Il suffit de comparer une série de photographies d'après l'art avec une série d'après le nu, pour se convaincre que la beauté du corps humain est une création idéologique. Il faut dire aussi que le corps humain a de graves défauts de proportion et qu'ils sont plus accentués chez la femelle que chez le mâle." Innumerable examples of this kind of nonsense could be quoted, revealing either an unconscious Greek male-homosexual bias, or an unconscious native homosexual bias, in the author.
        1 L'ART PENDANT L'AGE DU RENNE (Paris, 1907). Plates LXXI, LXXIII and XXVII.
        2 T. A. Gopinatha Rao: DOCUMENTS OF HINDU ICONOGRAPHY (Madras, 1914, I, Part II), particularly Plates XXII, XC, XCIX, CXI, CIII, CVI, and CV1II.
        3 See, for instance, EBONY NEGRESS of the XVIII Dynasty (Petrie Collection), the Statuette of a Princess (described by Chassinat), also of the XVIII Dynasty; the picture of two YOUNG MUSICIAN PRINCESSES of the XVIII Dynasty (at El-Amara), and many other examples, all to be found in G. Maspero's ART IN EGYPT (London, 1912). The absurd elongation of the female lower limbs sometimes found in Egyptian work, is usually a conventional modification to suit the exigencies of a pattern or of a handle, instrument, or what not. But, as we shall see, the Egyptians were not consistent, and changed their canon with time.
        4 ANATOMIE DER AUSSEREN FORMEN, by Dr. Carl Langer (Vienna, 1884, p. 60), where, according to measurements of antique statues in Vienna, the author is able to say: "The figures in the pediments of the Parthenon are in keeping with the proportions of the natural medium-sized human being."

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at certain masters of the French School of the last half of the nineteenth century, such as Renoir and Degas, he will see that moderns too have appreciated and known how to admire the normal leg-trunk ratio in the female, and even an exaggeration of it. ¹
        To suppose that the Indian artist, who modelled the Annapurnadevi, ² was not conscious of the peculiar beauty of the proper female proportions, and could not appreciate it as belonging to an order all its own, would be a fantastic misconception.
        What then becomes of Goethe's alleged "pure æsthetic standards"?
        The fact is that Goethe, Schopenhauer and millions of other Europeans are unconsciously labouring under the ancient Greek male-homosexual bias in favour of the male form, and its influence upon their own ideal of female beauty.
        Symonds, as I have already observed, denies this influence on Greek art. But hear what he says: "The Greeks admitted, as true artists are obliged to do, that the male body displays harmonies of proportion and melodies of outline, more comprehensive, more indicative of strength expressed in terms of grace, than that of women." ³
        How can a man write such nonsense? Except for a male homosexual bias, conscious or unconscious, native or borrowed, which, at all events, is out of place in judging woman, why is a man more of a "true" artist who admires the male form than he who admires the female?
        It is not easy to be patient with this unconscious emulation of a nation of male homosexuals; for if we compare the work above mentioned of the Cro-Magnons, of India, of Egypt, and of such moderns as Renoir and Degas, with certainly the bulk of Greek work, we cannot help being struck with the difference of proportions in the female figures shown in the Greek work, and wondering how to account for it. Nor should we forget that, as E. A. Gardner points out, although "male draped figures are not unknown in the early period" of Greek art, they "are comparatively rare"; while nude male figures in art were actually

        1 See particularly Renoir's LE JUGEMENT DE PARIS, and the innumerable studies of ballet girls by Degas. They shock the over-Hellenized taste of modern England; but evidently Renoir and Degas thought them beautiful.
        2 Plate CVIII in Rao's Collection.
        3 Op. cit., p. 245. Does he not here inadvertently admit what he elsewhere denies, that Greek male homosexuality did actually influence Hellenic taste in regard to human form?

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an invention of the Greeks, and prevailed throughout the various periods of sculpture. On the other hand, while a few nude statuettes of women occur in the early period, the nude female figure in sculpture was "an extremely rare occurrence in Greece until the fourth century". ¹
        This is very significant. But it is particularly to the proportions of the Greek female statue that I wish to refer.
        Licht flatly contradicts Symonds, and declares that Greek male homosexuality did actually affect the Hellenic ideal of beauty. He says, in speaking of this: "The most fundamental difference between ancient and modern culture is that the ancient is throughout male", and, "To how great an extent the boyish ideal appeared to the Greeks the embodiment of all earthly beauty may be further appreciated from the fact that in plastic art specifically female beauty is represented as approximating to the type of the boy or youth". He adds: "And the truth of this assertion can be found by rapidly turning over the pages of any illustrated history of Greek art." ²
        To anyone with the slightest knowledge of the male and female figure, this influence of boy-love and of male homosexuality on the Greek sculptures of females is obvious; and when Grote says: "It was the masculine beauty of youth that fired the Hellenic imagination with glowing and impassioned sentiment", ³ he is not exaggerating.
        Now Dr. Karl Gustave Carus, who was an artist as well as a man of science, shows that the principal differences between the bodily proportions of the sexes "are almost confined to the size of the femur, the hand and the foot"; and he adds: "The most important feature in the female is the shortened structure of the femur, which is chiefly responsible for her smaller stature as a whole." ⁴
        As a consequence, we find the middle point of the body in the normal female a little higher than in the normal male. Thus

        1 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK CULTURE (London, 1897, pp. 92–95).
        2 S.L.A.G., pp. 418 and 427. Also Bloch (D.P., p. 232), who adduces as proof of the higher place held by the form of the boy and of man in Greek æsthetic values, the "love-token vases" bearing inscriptions expressing homage to beauty. According to Wilhelm Klein, "the small number of vases bearing female names is so striking — thirty in all compared with 528 bearing male names — that we may ignore them with impunity."
        2 PLATO (2nd Ed., 1867, II, p. 207). In a previous passage Grote writes: "The beauty of woman yielded satisfaction to the senses, but little beyond." See also p. 209.
        3 DIE PROPORTIONSLEHRE DER MENSCHLICHEN GESTALT. (Leipzig, 1854, p. 14).

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Dr. Alexander Walker says of the normal woman: "Owing to the smaller stature and to the greater size of the abdominal region, the middle point, which is the pubis in the male, is situated higher in the female." ¹
        Dr. Ernst Brücke notices the same sexual differentiation. He says: "As a rule women have shorter legs than men, and this is true also of their representation in art." ² Regarding the proportion of the upper to the lower part of the body. Dr. Carl Langer declares, "it is easily seen that in men the pubis seldom marks the centre of the body length; as a rule the central point is below the pubis. Consequently the lower extremities in men are somewhat longer than the upper part of the body. In women, on the contrary, the central point is usually in the region of the pubis, and the legs are therefore proportionately shorter." ³
        There is no need to labour this point. It is a commonplace of the studios, though as a difference it is surviving with less and less frequency, as I shall show.
        Now it is true to say that the proportions of the human body, regarded as normal and desirable, have, according to artistic canons, been steadily altering both for the male and the female.
        William W. Story points out, for instance, the increasing length of the lower limbs in proportion to the whole figure in five successive canons. ⁴ According to an old Sanscrit MS., the SILPA SASTRA, the upper body is reckoned at 258 parts and the lower at 222, which makes the legs very short. Then, after tracing the proportions through the ages, from a canon of the most ancient Pharaonic dynasty to a canon of the time of Amunophth III (1200 B.C.), the figure comes to be divided into 19 parts, 10 of which cover the length from pubis to sole, and 9 from pubis to top of skull. ⁶

        1 BEAUTY (London, 1863, p. 169).
        2 SCHÖNHEIT UND FEHLER DER MENSCHLICHEN GESTALT (Vienna, 1891, p. 145). See also A., p. 240. Taking man's height as 1.689 m. and woman's as 1.580, Quetelet says: "La jambe par exemple est relativement plus courte chez la femme que chez l'homme. A 25 ans la hauteur de la rotule au dessus du sol est de .475 m. chez l'homme, et seulement .442 m. chez la femme . . . la hauteur de la bifurcation au dessus du sol est .806 m. chez l'homme et .739 m. chez la femme." Quetelet also confirms Langer on the difference of the central point in males and females.
        3 Op. cit., p. 55.
        4 THE PROPORTIONS OF THE HUMAN FIGURE (London, 1864, p. 15).
        5 Regarding the SILPA SASTRA, Dr. Siegfried Schadow gives interesting particulars (POLYCLET, Berlin, 1882, p. 19). Story probably copied Schadow because (a) he repeats Schadow's mistake in the spelling of the code, (b) he gives fewer details about it than Schadow, and (c) Schadow's first edition appeared in 1834. Giving the ideal measurements of man and woman, Schadow says (pp. 6l–68): the length from sole to pubis in a man of 5 ft. 6 ins. (1.730 m.) should be 33 ins.,

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        The Greeks followed the same strange development. From a canon which was clearly under seven head-lengths for the total height, they rose fairly quickly to a canon of 7 head-lengths, 7.8 head-lengths and 8.5 head-lengths. If we glance at the early sixth-century metopes of the Temple of Silenus (Palermo), and the type of the Argive masters of the early fifth century B.C., we have no difficulty in recognizing that, in its beginnings, Greek art made the proportion of leg to total height comparatively low. Even in the sixth-century Apollo of Tenea, although the head is small, and the figure therefore tall, the leg to trunk ratio is low, and the central point in the figure is above the pubis. Polycleitus, in the Doryphorus, or Canon, gives us a figure of seven heads to total height, with central point at the pubis. ¹ But Lysippus increases the height to eight head-lengths and increases the length of the leg in proportion to the rest of the body. In his Apoxyomenus (fourth century B.C.) the leg-trunk ratio, instead of being 500 : 500 (Polycleitus), or 480 : 500, is actually 553.8 : 446.1, according to Langer's tables. ² This is even in excess of the Apollo Belvedere (probably third century B.C.), in which the leg-trunk ratio, according to the same authority, is 538.5 : 461.5. ³ Thus the central point of the Greek male figure descended steadily from a position well above the" pubis to a position well below it.
        It is as if there were, as Weidenreich declares, a tendency in urban life to produce an increasing height and slimness of body, or, to use his terms, which will be explained in due course, as if "leptosomes" were more frequent among urban than among rural populations. ⁴ That this increase of the "leptosome" occurred in Egypt is indicated by the canons I have referred to above. That it did so in the "polites" of Greece is shown by what I have said regarding the Greek canon. But there is curious independent evidence of this, apart from what the plastic arts

while in a woman of 5 ft. 5 ins. (1.660 m.) it should he 30 ins. (.785 m.). From pubis to vertex in same man, the measurement should be 33 ins., in same woman 33 1/2 ins. Thus in Schadow's normal female, the central point would be well above pubis. He says the distance between sole and pubis in woman should, as a rule, equal that between pubis and eyebrows (op. cit., p. 66).
        1 See also the Diadumenus after Polycleitus at the British Museum for similar proportions.
        2 Op. cit., p. 61.
        3 Even in Cleomenes' GERMANICUS of the Græco-Roman period, probably made to suit Roman tastes, the leg-trunk ratio is 520 : 480.1 — big enough indeed, but less than that of the canon of Lysippus.
        4 R.U.K, p. 154.

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supply, in a passage in Aristophanes, which I have never seen explained, which it is impossible to find in a modern English version of the classics, and which certainly confirms Weidenreich's claim. It is to the effect that the men of the good old times were square and solidly built, whereas the dramatist's contemporaries were meagre, mean and asthenic. ¹
        Unfortunately for Europe, the canon for women did not merely follow the same course, but, owing to the intense And one-sided admiration of the male figure in Greece, it was also made to approximate as nearly as possible to the latter. Dr. Carus definitely states that false proportions were deliberately adopted by the ancient Greeks in representing the female form, and in regard to the arbitrary lengthening of the femur in the female, he instances the truly monstrous VENUS OF ARLES. ²
        The Greeks started fairly healthily. If we examine the statues of draped women found buried between the Erechtheum and the northern wall of the Acropolis, which date from before the ruin of the Acropolis by Xerxes (480 B.C.) and must therefore belong to the sixth century B.C., we find that these women have very hort legs, i.e. that their leg-trunk ratio is small, or, according to Schadow and others, normal. In the metope of the Heraion of Selinus, which is early fif h century B.C., we still see Hera quite short in the leg, while Zeus too has sound, manly proportions. But from about the middle of the fifth century B.C. onwards, these normal proportions for women all vanish and Ernst Brücke acknowledges that women with male leg proportions appear in the antique. ³ In the Aphrodite of Cnidus by Praxiteles (fourth century B.C.) we already notice a considerable lengthening of the whole body, and particularly of the leg, in comparison with what Gardner calls the "broad and majestic femal figures of the Parthenon", the pubis is nearing the central point of the figure,

        1 CLOUDS (French trans. by Ch. Zévort, 996–1024). Just Cause is speaking: "Si tu t'appliques à suivre mes conseils, tu auras toujours la poitrine robuste, le leint clair, les épaules larges, la langue courte, les fesses grosses, le membre petit. Mais si tu te façonnes aux mœurs du jour, tu auras le teint jaune, les épaules étroites, la poitrine grêle, la langue longue, les fesses petites, le membre énorme, le parlage intarissable." It is odd that Weidenreich, Kretschmer and the other morphologists I have consulted, appear to have overlooked this passage, as also most of the evidence from ancient sculpture and æsthetic codes. In spite of what Pliny says of Lysippus (NAT. HIST., trans. by J. Bostock and H. T. Riley, London, 1857, Book 4, 65) that while "other artists made men as they actually were . . . he made them as they appeared [ought]o be," it is likely, therefore, that art did to some extent follow nature, at least in the male. The word "appeared" in Pliny's sentence is obviously wrong, and following O. Müller, I have suggested "ought" as the proper word.
        2 Op. cit., p. 19.
        3 Op. cit., p. 145.

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and the lower extremities are much longer in proportion than those of the Indian canon's ideal male, and longer even than those of the early Greek male. In the Amazon from the pediment at Epidaurus (Athens Museum, fourth century B.C.) the legs are quite male, as they are also in the Artemis of Versailles (early third century B.C.), and in the goddess Victory from Samothrace (306 B.C.). In the Venus dei Medici, which probably belongs to the late third century B.C., the leg-trunk ratio is actually 529.8 : 470.4, i.e. much greater than that of the Germanicus, a male figure, and much greater than that of Schadow's normal man, or even of the Greek male of the time of Polycleitus! ¹
        I am not suggesting that this fantastic female leg-trunk ratio was even approximately approached by the women of the period. What I do maintain, however, is that in these statues, and m the progressive assimilation of the female to the male type, we have definite evidence of the monosexual ideal of beauty in ancient Greece, i.e. proof positive of Licht's and Bloch's claim that the æsthetic ideal was male, and that it influenced the æsthetic conception of desirability in the female form more .and more. In a word, what I think this evidence demonstrates is that the prevailing male homosexuality in ancient Greece did in the end produce an ideal female form which is a monstrosity. It now remains for me to discuss how this ideal, by having been acquired and followed by Europe, certainly since the Renaissance, has affected our choice in mating, and has to some extent influenced the morphology of our women.
        There can be no doubt that the late Greek conception of beauty in the female form has been prominently before the general public ever since the Renaissance. Nor can there be any doubt that, particularly latterly — i.e. since the influence of men like Winckelmann and his associates — it has been widely popularized, and, throughout the nineteenth century, regarded more or less as the canon of desirability.
        Nor can it be maintained that, at least in Protestant countries, with their return to the more ascetic and primitive forms of Christianity, there was any influence, sociological or moral, to resist this cult. On the contrary! From two totally different starting-points, the late Greek, wholly male-homosexual ideal of female form, and the early Christian ascetic ideal of human form

        1 Nor was it the leg-trunk ratio alone that was masculinized in Greek female sculpture, the pelvis followed suit. See on this point M.W., pp. 61–62, and T.O.S., p. 45.

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in general, converged on the same point to produce the same results. ¹ And thus it happened that, certainly in Puritanical England, there was a twofold influence operating in the direction of a monstrous female form. Burne-Jones symbolizes as it were the highest crest of this curious confluence of ideals in the nineteenth century.
        Now, apart from æsthetic canons and ideals, what does a male or long leg in the female mean?
        I have already quoted authorities for the contention that the female should be relatively shorter in the leg than the male. ²
        Why should this be a female characteristic?
        Chiefly because the female matures sooner than the male ³ and, as we have already seen, there appears to be some antagonism between the operation of the growth-promoting, and the sexual, glands. The development of the latter (the gonads) seems to close the epiphyses of the long bones, and thus to stop their growth. And as these long bones, particularly the femur, are the principal determiners of height, any difference between the sexes in regard to the time at which their growth is arrested must make appreciable differences in the height of the skeleton.
        This accounts for the commonly observed unusual length of the leg in eunuchs and eunuchoid men and women. ⁴ It also

        1 The conflict between soul and body, and the desire to produce a type as soulful and as "asthenic" as possible, soon led the Christians, from quite other motives, to depict a tenuous, bodiless creature which outshone in height and slenderness the "leptosome" of Lysippus and his followers. These emaciated figures, narrow and fragile, are a characteristic of the Gothic, whether in MSS. or in the statues of the saints; and the fact that the 8.4 heads to the body of the Apoxyomenos was surpassed by a Byzantine canon of the eleventh century measuring nine heads is proof enough of the curious coincidence of ideals. The work of Segna, Duccio and even Botticelli provides good examples of the type; while as late as the sixteenth century, Agnola Firenzuola (1493–1546) postulated that a man should measure nine heads. The two tendencies, Greek and Christian, combine in the work of men like Tintoretto, Corregio (see his ST. GEORGE MADONNA at Parma). Giorgione (VENUS at Dresden) and even Titian (VENUS OF URBINO, Uffizi). Another sixteenth century example is Gerard David's BAPTISM OF CHRIST in the Bruges Museum, in which Christ is represented as quite asthenic. See also, for a very leptosome Christ, the picture by Meister von Wittingen in the Church of St. Magdalen, Wittingau (fourteenth century); also Martin Schongauer's engraving, THE CRUCIFIXION (fifteenth century).
        2 See, in addition, M.W., p. 49.
        3 This is a well-established fact. See, for instance, F. H. A. Marshall: THE PHYSIOLOGY OF REPRODUCTION, p. 713; Schültze: DAS WEIB IN ANTHROPOLOGISCHER UND SOZIALER BEZIEHUNG, p. 22; M.W., p. 39; and Franz Daffner: DAS WACHSTUM DES MENSCHEN, p. 89.
        4 Thus Drs. Tandler and Gross (op. cit., p. 62) describe eunuchoidism as "increased growth of the extremities, with correspondingly long legs and arms; while the skeleton maintains its epiphyses open, which is the sign of immaturity, long after the period when normally they have undergone synostosis".

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accounts, as Drs. Tandler and Gross point out, for the difference in the size, not only between men and women, but also between southern and northern women, ¹ since the latter mature later than the former.
        Dr. Draper also points out that even an attack of mumps in a growing youth may occasion rapid and unusual growth of the extremities, owing to the check the disease may offer to the gonadal development and influence. ²
        When, therefore, from what cause soever, there is increased activity of the pituitary gland, which is largely concerned with growth, a corresponding gonadal inadequacy in early lire may often be inferred. ³ But the gonadal inadequacy need not manifest itself only in abnormal growth. It can, as Tandler and Gross point out, show itself through abnormal adiposity. ⁴ But I am not discussing gonadal inadequacy as such, I am only concerned with it to the extent to which it impinges on the facts of morphology in Greek and Christian art given above.
        When, therefore. Dr. Lipschütz, speaking of castrates, says that in them "the zone of proliferation of the epiphyses in the extremities remains longer than normally", and, in referring to eunuchoids, says, "all authorities agree that the state of 'eunuchoidism' is connected [in women] with ovarian deficiency," ⁵ we have a hint of what an artificial cultivation of the excessively long, or male, leg in females must mean.
        It most probably means the cultivation of an ideal of eunuchoidism, or in its sub-acute forms, at least, an ideal of low-sexed feminity.
        The fact that the male homosexual bias of the Greeks and the Christian pursuit of a soulful, disembodied spirit-type, should have coalesced in modern England with a strange recent taste (unconsciously homosexual among men?) for the boyish figure in girls, is a concatenation of such extraordinary fatality, that it is hardly credible. And yet it is undeniable, and may possibly account for Gini's claim regarding the increase of frigidity among Anglo-Saxon women, and also for the figures recently collected regarding the low-sexed type.
        It is certainly strange that Europe is 'he only continent in which, ever since the fourth century B.C. there has been a succession of so-called "Woman's Movements" — feminist agitations

        1 Op. cit., p. 71.
        2 D.M., p. 126.
        3 Ibid., p. 122.
        4 Op. cit., pp. 62–66.
        5 Op. cit., pp. 8 and 430.

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characterized by (a) a desire on the part of the agitating female minority to drop the essential callings of females, particularly motherhood, ¹ (b) a striving on the part of that same minority to adopt masculine callings and to persuade other women to do so, and (c) an actively militant attitude in that same minority, bearing marked signs of rivalry with and hostility towards males.
        Seeing that we can reckon five or six major movements of this kind — those of ancient Greece itself, ancient Rome, the Renaissance in Italy, seventeenth-century England and France, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in America, France, England, Germany and the Netherlands; and seeing, moreover, that nowhere else in the world (except where Greek-infected and Christianized Europeans reside) has anything similar been witnessed, it becomes difficult to account for the persistence of the affliction, except in some recurrent morphological anomaly, which is undoubtedly associated with it, and the origin of which is to be found in the very country where the first feminist movement started.
        It is not proved that the antagonism or correlation between the gonadal and pituitary secretions is alone responsible for differences in the growth and development of the body, and particularly of the long bones. ² As Tandler and Gross declare: "It must be admitted that we are still a long way off from certainty regarding the nature of this correlation." ³ But an assembly of facts, which all converge from different charters upon the same point, lead one to infer that the conscious or unconscious admiration and pursuit of the leptosomatic or even asthenic female — long or male-legged, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped and athletic — by most Europeans since the days of ancient male-homosexual Greece (with its marvellously persuasive plastic art) and the acceptance by Christian art of the leptosomatic ideal has probably done much to effect a change in female morphology,

        1 This claim is put very typically by Leonie Ungern-Sternberg in B.M., pp. 264–265. She says: "Humanly woman has now the possibility of a life of her own [sic!!]; she can now lead an independent manless existence without perceiving it to be devoid of meaning."
        2 Other glands may be involved, and the thyroid and principal glands certainly are.
        3 Op. cit., p. 129. Also Lipschütz (op. cit., p. 15): "There can he no doubt that the formation of the morphological, physiological, and psychical characters of man depends on the sexual glands. . . . There may be different opinions as to the extent of this dependence . . . but on the other hand we are absolutely certain that this dependence exists."

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and to produce (may be in periodical waves) a large percentage of masculoid, eunuchoid and, as Dr. Anton Schücker suggests, also infantile adult females in certain generations. ¹
        Let us now examine these converging lines of evidence.
        In the first place, there is the comparatively common occurrence of sexual frigidity in European and United States women. The fact that frigidity among these women is much more common than among their men seems to be generally admitted, though never satisfactorily accounted for. ² The fact, however, that there should be a marked difference is in itself a problem. Dr. Otto Adler claims with Guttzeit that 40 per cent of women suffer from frigidity, as compared with only 1 per cent of men, according to Dr. O. Effertz. The latter estimates that only 10 per cent of women suffer from frigidity. This is high enough when compared with its incidence among men; but Dr. Iwan Bloch, usually so careful and fair, considers Effertz's estimate too low and says that "the truth probably lies midway between the views of Effertz and those of Guttzeit." ³ This would mean that, in Europe and the United States to-day, 25 per cent of women are frigid and only 1 per cent of men.
        Why this great difference? Can we regard it as natural that precisely that one of the two sexes (both of which are equipped for the joys of reproduction) whose sexual functions are the more elaborate and extensive, should be indifferent or actually inaccessible to the extent of 25 per cent of its members to the lure and joys of sex? Even if we cut this down to half, as we may seem entitled to do according to the figures given by Dickinson and Bean, the difference is still very great. ⁴

        1 See Z.P.F., pp. 41–43. One might add "negroid" females; because, as the negress has she smallest pelvis of all three principal divisions of mankind (white, yellow, black) she can look masculoid without abnormality.
        2 The literature abounds with admissions of this fact. See Dr. Helene Deutsch: PSYCHOANALYSE DER WEIBLICHEN SEXUALFUNKTIONEN (Leipzig, 1925, pp. 60–65), who says: "It is a remarkable fact which still remains unexplained psychologically that female frigidity is considerably more frequent than the corresponding disability — psychical impotence — in the male." Nor, in my opinion, does Dr. Deutsch satisfactorily account for this difference. Dr. S. Herbert (op. cit., p. 117) also says: "Frigidity — i.e. a natural coldness towards sex-relationship — is a much more frequent occurrence among women than among men." Also Bloch, S.L.O.T., p. 433.
        3 S.L.O.T., pp. 432–437. Also S.P.S., III, pp. 203–227, for another discussion of same question, Havelock Ellis quotes Shufeldt as saying that 75 per cent of married women in New York are sexually frigid. Hegar gives 50 per cent, while Dr. Harry Campbell goes so far as to say that "the sexual instinct in the civilized woman is . . . tending to atrophy" (op. cit., p. 39).
        4 Statistics of female frigidity are not easily found, as definite evidence can be obtained only from the married. In T.M., p. 438, out of over 300 of a group of

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        Nowhere in my reading of anthropology and ethnology have I seen it stated that among savage women there is anything like this proportion of frigids. Something then seems to have affected European women, and their transatlantic cousins, to account for this peculiarly adverse differentiation from man.
        It is difficult to accept Bloch's suggestion that the effects of (a) masturbation, and (b) inadequate artistry in the male, ¹ suffice to explain the anomaly, because he gives us no convincing data about either (a) or (b), and masturbation, in adult life at least, is in itself rather the result of an anomaly (usually hetero-sexual abstinence) ² than of a congenital disposition. Nor is the lack of male artistry universal in Europe. Regarding masturbation and its alleged connexion with frigidity, Felix Bryk, for instance, tells us that among women of the Buganda tribe in equatorial Africa, masturbation is very common; but he does not say that any frigidity is induced by the practice. ³
        Dunlap suggests that the "age-long drafting into the ranks of harlots of the more ardent women should theoretically give a slight advantage in reproduction to the colder type." ⁴ But is it a tact that the more ardent women tend to gravitate to prostitution? ⁵ Does the variety of causes, economic, temperamental, vocational, accidental, etc., which lead prostitutes to their profession justify us in regarding this class of women as very different from their more "respectable" sisters? Dr. William J. Robinson, after a careful survey of the whole question, concludes that "morally, mentally and physically, she [the prostitute] differs very little from the average of the stratum from which she springs." ⁶ R. G. Randall certainly argues that "the appetite for

770 women, 227 were definitely negative to sexual relations. See also p. 440 ibid.: Of 375 wives on the negative side in marriage, 100 were diagnosed as frigid. This would be about 37 per cent of the 375, and 13 per cent of the whole group of 770. As, however, these figures relate to the married, who presumably would contain a lower percentage of frigids than of females as a whole (who would include numbers of spinsters who had remained so owing to frigidity) Bloch's 25 per cent is more probably right than the 13 per cent of the last computation.
        1 S.L.O.T., p. 433. See, however, p. 86.
        2 On this point, see Dr. B. A. Bauer's WOMAN AND LOVE (London, 1927, p. 244). See also W., p. 190, and S.P.W., p. 96, where Magian claims that "During the recent war, owing to the prolonged absence of men from home, a decided increase in the habit was generally noted in the towns and cities of all the countries involved."
        3 N.E., pp. 32 and 118. Dr. Hirschfeld also doubts whether masturbation can be a cause of female frigidity (G.K., II, p. 233).
        4 P.B.R.B., p. 63.
        5 Effertz says prostitutes are much more often frigid from the start than actually passionate" (G.K., II, p. 233).
        6 PROSTITUTION, THE OLDEST PROFESSION IN THE WORLD, Etc. (S.R.C., pp. 278–295).

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sex in the prostitute seems to be so strong that it excludes the possibility of her considering her life seriously; but he does not make out a very convincing case, and seems to lay more stress on ignorance, and the accidents to which it leads, than upon ardent sensibilities. Moreover, his conclusion is much the same as Dr. Robinson's; for he says: "Neither prostitutes nor prostitute-users are so far removed from the rest of humanity in their make-up." ¹ Dr. Helene Deutsch ascribes the prostitute's choice of her profession to the Œdipus and Castration Complexes, and to disappointment at the failure of a relationship with the father. "As father will not have me, I shall throw myself at any and every man!" ² Secondly, she ascribes it to "wounded narcissism". In a careful discussion of the subject. Dr. Bernard A. Bauer feels inclined "to attribute prostitution exclusively to bad social conditions and harmful moral influences during early childhood". He then goes on to suggest that economic causes, laziness, coquetry, passion for adornment, defective education and bad example all play their part. ³ As for the prostitute herself, she is characterised, according to Dr. Bauer, by "vanity, passion for adornment and an overwhelming desire to please". ⁴ Of 5183 Parisian prostitutes, Duchâtelet found that nearly half had been deserted by lovers, and the other half had taken up the life on account of poverty, loss of parents, or general helplessness. ⁵
        To my mind, Bloch sums up the whole question very well when he says: "I consider the dispute regarding the causes of prostitution as superfluous; a number of causes are in operation, and in each individual case it is always an unfortunate concatenation of circumstances, of subjective and objective influences, which have driven the girl to prostitution . . . not one of them [the various theories] explains it wholly." ⁶
        We cannot, therefore, accept Dunlap's suggestion regarding prostitution, and the greater incidence of frigids among women remains unexplained. It seems the more impossible to accept Dunlap's explanation seeing that, now as ever, it is chiefly from

        1 THE INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF PROSTITUTION AMONG THE ENGLISH MIDDLE CLASSES (S.R.C. pp. 254–267). See also Rolf Ehrenfels: KANN PROSTITUTION BEKÄMPFT WERDEN? (S.R.C. pp. 296–299), who suggests various causes of prostitution, but does not claim that the prostitute is exceptionally ardent.
        2 Op. cit, p. 35.
        3 W., pp. 357–358.
        4 Ibid., p. 363.
        5 DE LA PROSTITUTION DANS LA VILLE DE PARIS (Paris, 1836, I, p. 100).
        6 S.L.O.T., p. 325. Also p. 335.

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the lower or servant class that prostitutes are recruited; whereas, for Dunlap to be correct, the absorption of the more ardent women by prostitution would effect women as a whole. ¹ According to Corrado Gini, moreover, frigidity appears to be more common in the "upper" classes than in the lower. ² So that again, if Dunlap were right, we should have to explain how the class from which prostitutes are chiefly recruited yet contains the greatest proportion of ardent women. Gini argues that the lower birth-rate of the upper classes "is not fundamentally due to Neo-Malthusian theories. It is rather the fact that the urge of genetic instincts has ceased, which allows their minds to receive the persuasive arguments of reason in favour of regulating the number of children, etc." ³
        He adduces some statistical evidence of this, based chiefly on the researches of Dr. G. V. Hamilton. Among other things he shows that out of 200 intellectual families of New York, 46 of the 100 women examined "were found inadequate to complete the sexual act". Out of 67 bridegrooms only 29, and out of 69 brides only 28 had sexual relations on the first night of marriage. ⁴
        It is now possible, however, to add to Gini's statistics pointing to the prevalence of frigidity, or a decline of the genetic instincts, in the middle classes. In Katherine B. Davis's investigation into the lives of 2200 middle-class American women, it was found that in the 1000 married women examined, the group which used contraceptive measures actually had a higher average of preg-

        1 W., p. 348. Bauer's whole essay will convince anyone that we cannot charge prostitution with having made even a feeble preferential selection of the more ardent women in the population. Regarding the large proportion of domestic servants and of women of the same class among prostitutes, see S.L.O.T., p. 33.
        2 P., p. 25. Also Dr. Harry Campbell (op. cit., p. 212): "It is even possible that an elimination of women having strong sexual instincts is taking place." But Dr. Campbell says it is not proved that the recruiting of prostitutes has this effect. His views on the causes of frigidity in women are on pp. 39 and 211 of his book. His principal point is that whereas in animals an instinctive predisposition to union with the male is necessary in the female, this is not imperative in human beings; hence numbers of women in each generation must marry who are not strongly sexual, and who thus transmit this subparity.
        3 The decline of the genetic instincts in Europeans probably began generations ago, for had he not observed it, Larochefoucauld would hardly have said: "Il y a des gens qui n'auraient jamais été amoureux s'ils n'avaient jamais entendu parler de l'amour" (MAXIMES, CXXXVI). Paul Bournet certainly observed it in France in 1890, for he wrote: "La femme à tempérament est beaucoup plus rare dans nos races fatiguées que notre fatuité masculine n'en veut convenir" (P.A.M., pp. 131–139).
        4 P., p. 42. See also J.A.M.A., 1.7.33, p. 64, where Dr. F. E. Kliman is reported to have said of conditions in Minnesota, "sterility is found in about 20 per cent of all married women."

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nancies and of children than the group which did not use them. The figures were as follows:—

Families of those who used contraceptives.

Aver. No. of pregnancies.		Aver. of children.		Aver. age.
2.30		1.84		35.97

Families of those who did not use contraceptives.

Aver. No. of pregnancies.		Aver. of children.		Aver. age.
1.67		1.37		41.59 ¹

        Surely these figures not only argue against Dunlap, but, seeing that the Federal Census for 1910 gives the average size of the family in the U.S.A. as 4.5, i.e. 2.5 children to a family, they also go very far towards supporting Gini's contention. We should also note that whereas 206 of the 1000 married women were childless, yet only four gave "no children" as a cause of unhappiness. ²
        In the investigation carried out by R. L. Dickinson and L. Bean, it was found that out of 1000 married women of the upper middle class, ³ one-third bore no living child. And as regards the pleasures of sexual intercourse, it was found that in every five women, two experienced orgasm, two did not, and one sometimes. ⁴
        Thus there is undoubtedly statistical evidence to show that Gini's contention is right; while, as to Dunlap, he is mistaken, not in recognising the frequency of frigidity among women, but in one of the chief causes to which he ascribes it. ⁵
        Havelock Ellis certainly points to many considerations which investigators in this department are too much inclined to overlook — the fact that women cannot always get the men they would like, or would have chosen; the fact that certain women may

        1 F.I.L.T., Table II, Chap. II and p. 16.: 15 of the 1000 did not answer the question, 255 said they never used contraceptives, and 730 said they did. Of this 730,520 were college graduates. These figures seem to imply that 25.5 per cent of the group (which does not include the sterile) were below genetic parity. See also B.M.J., 9.3.29, where Drs. C. Mazer and J. Hoffmann are reported to have said of 500 gynæcological cases, that they found "one out of every seven marriage unions in America remains barren".
        2 F.I.L.T., p. 437.
        3 T.M., p. 434. The authors say: "The social and economic milieu represented averages well above the middle-class line of humanity in large cities."
        4 T.M., pp. 437–438.
        5 For a not improbable cause of the preponderance of frigidity in the female sex, see Prof. R. Kossmann's chapter on Menstruation in M.D., p. 163. It may be that frigidity in some women is only an extra-menstrual phenomenon. I have already touched lightly on this point in my NIGHT HOERS (pp. 258–259).

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be negative to sex with one man and positive with another, and that with them sexual ardour may develop, if they are in the right hands, etc. And he says: "If one wish to be accurate, it is very doubtful whether we can assert that a woman is ever absolutely without the aptitude of sexual satisfaction." ¹ All this is reminiscent of La Bruyère, who says: "Une femme insensible est celle qui n'a pas encore vu celui qu'elle doit aimer." ² The fact that many have exaggerated the incidence of frigidity in women cannot, I think, be questioned, particularly in view of the undoubted truth of much that Havelock Ellis says. On the other hand, the fact that, in our own small circles we all constantly meet with women who, although mated and happy with men of their own deliberate choice, display a negative attitude to sex, makes us wonder whether the condition is not independent of the optimum external requirements for a more positive attitude, and whether, if Havelock Ellis had considered the morphology of the frigid woman, he would have been so ready to doubt the prevalence of her type.
        So much for one line of evidence.
        We come next to the correlation between the onset of the catamenia and the duration of the sexual life. It would seem reasonable to suppose that the duration of the sexual life would be some indication of the vigour of tine sexual equipment, and that the early onset of the catamenia, within normal limits would likewise indicate sexual vigour, including greater fertility, and be accompanied by a relatively smaller stature.
        Kisch actually found the first correlation, He says:—
        "Exceptions apart, and generally speaking, it may be said that the earlier a woman displays maturity by her first menstruation, the more inclined she will be to bear many children, and the later also may her menopause be expected; because all these features are connected with a vigorous reproductive equipment". ³ And he goes on to say: "The reason of this seems to be that certain women manifest in their very constitution a sexual vigour

        1 S.P.S., III, p. 206. The whole discussion (pp. 203–227) should be read. Bloch, despite the figures I have quoted from him, agrees with Havelock Ellis. He says (S.L.O.T., p. 86): "In the majority of cases the sexual frigidity of women is, in fact, apparent merely — either because behind the veil prescribed by conventional morality . . . there is concealed an ardent sexuality, or else because the particular man with whom she has had intercourse has not succeeded rightly in awakening her erotic sensibility." See also G.K., I, p. 261, and II, p. 233, where Hirschfeld agrees and confirms Bloch and Havelock Ellis.
        2 L.C. (chap. "Des Femmes").
        3 The italics are mine. A.M.L.

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whereby an earlier ripening of the ovaries, and an earlier appearance of the catamenia are produced." ¹
        In statistics and conclusions that; have recently appeared ² there is much that confirms Kisch. Among other statements, we find the following: "Childbearing, especially if it occurs frequently in the life of a woman, seems to be associated with the late onset of the menopause. . . . In most instances there is a definite association between the onset of puberty and the time of appearance of the menopause. In general it may be said that the earlier the menstrual function begins the longer it will continue." ³
        Dr. Magian upholds these findings more or less. He says: "Women who have married, lived normal sexual lives, and had several children whom they have suckled themselves, as a rule have a longer sexual life than those in whom these conditions have not prevailed." And again: "Sterile married women usually have an exceptionally early menopause." ⁴
        Thus there appears to be a correlation between sexual vigour and length of sexual life, and consequently a correlation between both and the normal early onset of the catamenia (not precocious puberty). Unfortunately I have been unable to find correlation tables of sexual vigour and height, or of sexual vigour and the female leptosomatic or asthenic figure. There are, however, one or two pregnant indications.
        The first is the obvious increase in stature in both sexes,

        1 K.A.F., p. 25. He proceeds to give statistics from various sources bearing out this conclusion.
        2 J.A.M.A., 8.10.32.
        3 Ibid. The italics are mine. A.M.L. Tables also follow, but there is no room to reproduce them.
        4 S.P.W., p. 1X7. On the other hand, see the report on AN INVESTIGATION OF THE MENOPAUSE IN ONE THOUSAND WOMEN (LANCET, 14.1.33, pp. 106–108), where it is definitely stated that "no relationship was exhibited in the date between the menstrual and menopausal ages of either married or single women". Yes, but there was evidence of a shorter sexual life in those that had first menstruated at a later age, because the report shows that, "where menstruation began at 13, the mean age of cessation was 47.3; when it began at 18, it was 47.5", and the mean age at menopause was found to decline for menstrual ages after 19. The report also states that "child, bearing exerted no influence whatever on the age at the menopause". There are, however, various features in this report -which are unconvincing — for instance, the tendency to plead "small numbers" as invalidating a conclusion adverse to spinsterhood, and the absence of such a plea in regard to a conclusion favourable to spinsterhood. Again, to say that "no relation was exhibited in the data between the menstrual and the menopausal ages of either married or single women", is distinctly misleading, when the Figures show that when the mean menstrual age is 15 the mean menopausal age is 47.3, and when the mean menstrual age is 13 the mean menopausal age is 47.5. Surely with five years difference it is fair to say that, relatively, the girls menstruating at 18 have an earlier menopause, or a shorter sexual life.

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noticed by anthropologists, and already referred to, ¹ which may have a purely biological significance, but which happens to have been contemporaneous with a widespread feminist movement throughout western and northern Europe, and which suggests a general disturbance of endocrine balance, probably associated with a belated assertion of the gonadal influence. There is, moreover, the specially noticed recent increase in stature in those women among whom the boyish-figure ideal has prevailed most intensely (Anglo-Saxons). This has been attested by two independent observers. Dr. Charles Read, Superintendent of the Elgin State Hospital, Illinois, and Dr. Harold Diehl, of Minnesota University, who ascribes the fact (superficially, I think) to dieting and exercise. ² The second is the general disparity in stature between French women and north European and Anglo-Saxon women, having regard to the fact that, as Weininger points out, "France . . . has never had a successful woman's movement", ³ although women of commanding intelligence abound there. In this connexion I would remind the reader of what I have already said above, that painters like Renoir and Degas — to mention only two — reveal by their work that the taste in France for women with a normal trunk-leg ratio is still prevalent; and that, as I point out in another work, Rodin, who was much influenced by the Greek, always endeavoured to obtain English female models for their masculoid trunk-leg ratio. ⁴ If it be contended that the difference between France and England in this respect is really a matter of race, I would reply that, although differences in stature may exist between races, this does not necessarily imply in peoples so closely allied as Europeans, ⁵ a great and constant difference in trunk-leg ratio, or in the proportions of shoulders to hips, etc. And it is precisely to these proportions that I am now referring. The literature of the day in England alone proves how prevalent the boy-type ideal is. See, for instance, pages 30–31 supra; see also how Alicia Ramsay describes the type she obviously admires: "A tall woman; straight as a young poplar, slim as a young birch . . . a woman whose hand should rule the destinies of men"; ⁶ or how Stella Mead describes a woman obviously held up to the admiration of the reader: "A . . .

        1 See p. 116 supra.
        2 Daily Press: 15.10.33 and 12.1.34.
        3 S.C., p. 74.
        4 See PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF AUGUSTE RODIN (London, 1926, p. 122).
        5 As between Europeans and Mongolians, or Negroes, the difference of race would imply marked differences in bodily proportions.
        6 THE THREE COCKTAILS (London, 1933, p. 15).

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lady . . . who walked serenely, with a movement of lovely grace, as a slender flower might sway forward on a lilting breeze." ¹ These are figures reminiscent: of the asthenic women of Cranach and the Dutch draughtsmen and painters of the sixteenth century, who aimed at portraying the attenuated ascetic Christian type, afterwards so faithfully depicted by the pre-Raphaelites. Indeed, one has only to glance at the fashion-plates of the day in modern England to convince oneself that the ideal is actually a hipless, broad-shouldered and long-legged woman, who seems to bend like a slender flower under the weight of her head. ²
        This ideal, as I shall try to show later, has not always prevailed in England. It is of post-Renaissance origin, at least in its present intensified form.
        Thirdly, there is, as we shall see, good ground for associating a schizothymic character with the constitutionally leptosomatic and asthenic, and Kretschmer definitely states that "the born bachelor and spinster . . . are specially frequent among the strongly schizoid." ³ We have also Dr. Anton Schücker's careful investigation into the somatic characters of those women who display frigidity, hostility to man and marriage, and a tendency to agitate for masculine callings for women, etc., and his conclusion that such women invariably belong to one of two types — either the athletic (or masculoid), or the infantile. ⁴ And, finally, we have Dr. Victor Cox Pederson, the distinguished New York specialist, offering us quite independently the following interesting confirmation of our claims: "Broadly speaking,

        1 GREEN CLOISTERS (London, 1933, p. 80).
        2 The pastimes of the English and American girl also probably help to accentuate her eunuchoid and frigid character. In Dr. Riddle's paper, already quoted, he asks: "Is the increased metabolism of the female professional athlete favourable to her sex development and reproductive functions?" And he points out that his investigations into the influence of metabolism on sex show, not only that the rate of metabolism in individuals is plastic and "markedly influenced by such things as activities, occupation, excitement, nutrition and habits", but also that the experimentalist should be warned that "when he places a male and female under a condition that modifies the metabolism, he is not necessarily affecting the two individuals to the same extent" (op. cit., p. 945). Thus in promoting even mild athleticism among our schoolgirls, we may be actually masculinizing them, or at least reducing their feminity. (See pp. 476–481 infra).
        3 B.M., p. 316. Also LANCET (21.1.33, p. 150), where Dr. A. J. Nissen is reported to have investigated the number of children born to 322 schizophrenes. The main findings were: "The comparative rarity of marriage in this class, the comparative sterility of these few marriages . . . only 166 children legitimate and illegitimate were born to these 322 patients. . . . While in the general population [in Norway] 9.43 per cent of the married women were childless, this was the case with 24.4 per cent of the 41 married schizophrenic women."
        4 Z.P.F., pp. 38–47.

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small and rather undersized women are more fruitful than large athletic women. The physiological reason for this circumstance is that ovarian processes in smaller women are more active (the chief reason for these women being smaller) and consequently are the grounds themselves of greater fertility." ¹
        Although the matter cannot, in the present state of our knowledge, be placed entirely beyond doubt, there seems, therefore, to be a very colourable warrant for my contention that Greek male homosexuality, with the bad taste it generated in regard to the female figure, has done much to influence our ideal of woman and our choice of women, and that it has consequently been responsible for an ever-increasing tendency in each generation to produce the virago, or athletic, asthenic, infantile and generally masculoid type of female. ² This theory offers a satisfactory explanation not only of the disparity in the incidence of frigidity between the sexes and of the frequency and increasing intensity of the various so-called "Feminist" movements in Europe, but also of the declining vigour of the genetic instincts observed by Gini and others, and of the increasing stature or modern women. When we remember that the male homosexual bias of the Greeks was ultimately confirmed by (a) the Christian ascetic ideal, with its elongated, tenuous and asthenic types, and finally, in our own day by (b) a frankly admitted preference for the "boyish" figure in women and the cultivation of sports and athleticism by girls, it seems to me that there can hardly be any doubt that the ideal of human female beauty to-day is largely Greek, or at least greatly influenced by male-homosexual Greece, and that if we are to get back to a healthier ideal, which will restore harmony between the sexes and the happiness of superior adaptation to the female, we must try to forget or destroy all we know about those ancient Greek ideals of female beauty and form, which belong to the whole of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., and root out from our life-habits those practices which, by assimilating the female to the male, destroy her femininity without achieving any corresponding gain.

        1 Op. cit., pp. 38–47.
        2 Weininger (S.C., pp. 64–65 and 73) seems to have approached the views expressed in this section, for he says: "A woman's demand for emancipation and her qualifications for it are in direct proportion to the amount of maleness in her." Also, on the periodicity of Feminist movements, he says: "If it occurs it may be associated with the 'secessional taste' which idealised tall, lanky women with flat chests and narrow hips. The enormous recent increase in a kind of dandified homosexuality may be due to the increasing effeminacy of the age, and the peculiarities of the pre-Raphaelite movement may have a similar explanation."

- p. 376 -
        This means establishing another ideal of womanhood, not based on Greek male homosexuality, and it is this ideal which I shall attempt to describe in the final chapter.

*        *        *        *        *        *        *

        In his discourse on clothes, Carlyle says: "Strange enough how creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to the plainest facts." ¹ But what is still more strange is the fact that, in a treatise on clothes, to write which he presumably sat down to dwell on all the aspects of his subject, Carlyle, who never tired of calling other people fools, should himself have overlooked the most important feature of clothes — their sexual differentiation and their effect on human morphology and temperament. But, long ago, I gave up looking for profundity in Carlyle. His popularity alone argues against it.
        Be this as it may, the people of what is known as Western Civilization will one day certainly discover that perhaps the worst mistake they ever made was to adopt different clothing for the sexes. The step, as far as I can make out, was taken gradually, without either plan or method, following chiefly the exigencies of calling and occupation. ² But, from the moment when each sex began to wear definitely unlike terms of apparel, the natural indolence of the human eye led to the uncritical habit of telling sex by garments or adornments alone rather than by bodily characteristics.
        In a sentence; dissimilar clothing for the sexes led to a sartorial rather than a morphological heterosexual stimulus.
        Stated thus, the idea may sound preposterous. Let the reader, however, imagine the conditions of a world in which both sexes dressed alike, and he will perceive that much of what to-day passes for discrimination would, in such an environment, be regarded as the most purblind obtuseness.
        The fact is that to-day, as far as the eye is concerned — and it is the first organ to record the presence of a member of the opposite sex — there is a tendency in all people, even the observant, to stop and remain content with a standardized sartorial message, rather than to seek out and challenge the genuineness of the morphological one. A man tends to be a creature who wears male, and a woman a creature who wears female, clothes.

        1 SARTOR RESARTUS.
        2 Even these exigencies, however, did not prevent the earliest Romans from retaining a uniform garb for both sexes; for the toga, which in the early days was worn by both men and women "was the male garb for peace and war" (P.L.R., p. 564).

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        In a world in which, except when engaged on special duties proper to each sex, ¹ both sexes wore the same clothes, however, a man would be a man only when, in spite of his integument, he looked a man, and a woman would be a woman only when, in spite of her epicene uniform, she looked a woman.
        This would mean that the amorphous member of either sex would pass unnoticed by the opposite sex, as belonging to the same sex as the latter. Normal young men would not stop to look at her, or be falsely stimulated by her, if she were a female, and normal girls would not turn round to look at him it he were a male.
        The normal heterosexual person of either sex would thus never be found pursuing a creature whose body did not conquer the epicene disguise, and much purely imaginary stimulation and attraction would instantly cease to be possible.
        Those who doubt this conclusion have recently had ample means of testing its accuracy, thanks to the new fashion among young women of wearing male attire at the seaside in the summer. Again and again I have observed that, if she is at all eunuchoid, or masculoid, or even asthenic, the eye simply does not notice a girl thus attired, whether in shorts and a blazer, or in grey flannel trousers and a blazer, but that it is instantly aware of one who, in the male garments selected, appears but a travesty of the male, and on whom no epicine integument could possibly act as a disguise.
        Imagine women confronted by men adopting similar methods. Imagine the large-hipped, narrow-shouldered, soft, effeminate male type dressed in garments that did not advertise him as a male, and how many young heterosexual women would look at him, or fail to know at a glance that he was a poor or bad specimen of his sex?
        The reader may retort that clean-shaving was surely a step in the direction of dress-assimilation between the sexes. True, it was. But it is neutralized by the absence of an epicene uniform.
        In the first place, it assimilates to the female a part of the body which, at least out of doors, is so plainly masculinised by the powerful sex-suggestion of the male hat above, and the male clothing immediately below it, that its importance is lost. This is particularly so in military men — hence the impression created by the late war that there were many more desirable-looking

        1 In which case the sexes would be segregated as long as the duties lasted, just as they are to-day.

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men about than in peace-time. Hence, too, the case with which many men in those days found admiring partners, although in peace time they would have been rejected with scorn. ¹ Indeed, one often sees a young Guards officer to-day who, were it not for his bearskin and his tunic, Raphael might easily have chosen for one of his Madonnas. So that clean-shaving is not really enough to make the superficial make-up perfectly epicene.
        The fact that, as Dr. Oscar F. Scheuer points out, clean-shaving eliminates a secondary characteristic which can and does reveal virility, is, of course, to be regretted. According to him and the authorities he quotes, from Ebles in 1831 to Rieger, Stieda, Gallavardin, Rebattu, Friedenthals, Stekel and Havelock Ellis in our own time, the quality and vigour of the beard is a definite indication of sexual potency. ²
        Whether this is so or not, however, it seems to me that clean-shaving, by contributing to an epicene uniform, is desirable because it leaves to the facial features and the body the task of conveying the impression of sex, and it is important, from the standpoint of sound (heterosexual) mating, that this impression should be made by the various and multiple morphological characters which belong peculiarly to the male.
        As things are to-day, however, with the principal accent of sex differentiation relegated to the wholly adventitious factor of purchased garments, the reaction in either sex tends to be to these garments (particularly in the young and unobservant), with the result that border-line cases, both of the effeminate-male and the masculoid-female type, often get selected even by heterosexual mates who otherwise would have passed them over.
        The influence of distinctive clothing for each sex has, therefore, been to remove one of the checks on unwise mating and to some extent to abet and promote the multiplication of —
        (a) Masculoid and eunuchoid females who, as we have seen, are already unsoundly selected as desirable owing to the male homosexual Greek, the Christian ascetic, and the more or less recent, ideals, and
        (b) The effeminate and eunuchoid males whom urban life and the callings created by commerce, industry, and the intellectual

        1 Marcel Proust, on women's love of soldiers and firemen, says: "L'uniforme les rend moins difficiles pour le visage: elles croient baiser sous la cuirasse un cœur différent, aventureux et doux; et un jeune souverain, un prince héritier, pour faire les plus flatteuses conquêtes, dans les pays étrangers qu'il visite, n'a pas besoin du profit régulier qui serait peut-être indispensable à un coulissier" (DU COTÉ DE CHEZ SWAN, I, ii).
        2 D.M., pp. 36–40.

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professions, have already tended preferentially to select in sufficient numbers.
        The more closely, in the near future, male and female clothes can be assimilated, therefore, the better will it be for the race. For only thus can proper standards of criticism be easily followed. and the human eye trained to discern critically the differentiated characters of the heterosexual male and female. That is why those who to-day are raising pious objections to the adoption of male attire by women, and to the bobbing or cropping of women's hair, are really impeding a movement which in itself is likely to bring about a welcome suppression of one of the conditions which probably contribute most to unhappy and ill-assorted mating.
        I do not deny that this movement, as it appears to-day, is probably chiefly supported by female transvestites. But it is obvious to every alert observer that many more girls are induced to adopt its innovations than those who are congenitally transvestites. It is, in fact, creating a fashion, and a fashion is followed apart from neurotic impulses, although it may appeal to many who have the latter.
        There is, however, quite a large body of evidence which shows that in very early times the custom of not sexually differentiating clothes was very widespread.
        In ancient Greece, for instance, the difference between the garments for both sexes was but trifling. The chiton was worn by both men and women, and was only a little shorter for the former, except in Sparta, where the women went about in a short chiton too. The himation was also the same for both sexes in classical times. ¹ But, on the other hand, adult males frequently wore beards, which, of course, defeated the uniformity of the garb. Clean-shaving was, however, practised too, particularly in later times.
        In early Rome the toga was worn by both men and women, ² and when, in historical times, women adopted the palla, its resemblance to the toga was such — as the monuments show — that, except for the long stola underneath, the dress could not be called conspicuously different. True, the men wore beards, but not consistently. They certainly did so in the earliest times, but between 300 B.C. and the time of Hadrian, clean-shaving was the rule, though chiefly among adults over forty. ³

        1 Carl Köhler: DIE TRACHTEN DER VÖLKER (Dresden, 1871, pp. 98–104).
        2 P.L.R., pp. 44, 564–574.
        3 Ibid., pp. 598 and 600.

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        In Japan "the costume for women", says Basil Hall Chamberlain, "is less different from that of the men than is the case with us." ¹ while Dr. Briffault adduces evidence which seems to show that in China, in the early days, there was no differentiation of clothing between the sexes. ² Felix Bryk, in his fresh and spirited account of various negro tribes in equatorial Africa, north of Lake Victoria Nyanza, speaks of the difficulty of distinguishing the sexes at a distance, owing to the similarity of their clothing, and adds that, at least among the Bantus, shaving among the men was general. He hints that before Mahommedan and European influence was felt, the apparel of the sexes was uniform, and also that occasionally, owing to this act, "a youth looks like a girl and a girl like a youth". ³ I would add: "Only to the European eye trained to recognize sex sartorially."
        Many other instances could be given, but these suffice to show tint an epicine uniform would be nothing new, and, in conjunction with clean-shaving by men, would lead to a re-education of the eye regarding desirable form in the other sex.
        The ideal would be for the male to abandon his present garb and gradually to adopt the essentials of the present female apparel — the skirt and the loose open upper garment. And it is greatly to be regretted, from the standpoint of the male, that the process of assimilation should have been begun by the other sex, who have voluntarily adopted male clothing and male pate-hair fashion.
        My reasons for saying this are not wholly relevant to the subject of this work. Seeing, however, that the change to an epicine dress ought to come and that the features of present-day male attire may bear some relation to the decline in the genetic instincts of Europeans and those people who are offshoots from them, perhaps the reader will forgive a partial irrelevancy in return for an explanation why a male sartorial assimilation to the female, and not a female assimiliation to the present male form of apparel is to be desired.
        It is a question of male potency and sexual vigour.
        The dress of the ancient world, as can be seen from monuments, vases and frescoes, and as we know from investigations, was of a kind which always left the male external genital organs free

        1 Op. cit., p 124. In this connexion an interesting remark was made to me by Dr. G. T. Wrench on his return from Japan before the Great War. He said that the sexes in Japan were most conspicuously differentiated morphologically.
        2 MO, I, p. 447.
        3 N.E., pp. 1, 5, 18, 49, 119.

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and accessible to the air. The Egyptian males, for instance, wore kilts. The Greeks and Scots wear kilts to this day, and it is the old male dress of the Irish. The Greeks and Romans, as we have seen, wore garments which were in the nature of flowing robes, leaving their external genital organs free and accessible to the air. And the same is true of almost every race and people on earth.
        By some extraordinarily adverse fate, however — so extraordinary, indeed, that it makes one almost wonder whether there was not from the very dawn of history a curse upon the sexual instincts of Europeans — the Arctic pattern of clothing for both sexes, the trouser, became the garment adopted by the men in all temperate climes populated by Europeans, while the women, who might well have adopted the Arctic pattern of clothing without injury to themselves, were somehow left with the tropical pattern, i.e. the skirt, kilt, long tunica, or stola. If differentiation was necessary at all. it seems strange that here, at these important sartorial cross-roads, the wrong; choice should have been made. At all events, it was made, and almost all European males and their cousins and kinsmen overseas have thus come to wear the worst garment that could possibly have been selected from the standpoint of hygiene, virility and, indirectly, female happiness. With the exception of the modern Greek peasant and the modern Scot, all European men do themselves injury every time they dress for the day's duties.
        In addition to being extremely ugly, the trouser is essentially a non-male garment, i.e. a garment unfit for men to wear and appropriate only for the female; and it is simply one more of the innumerable errors of taste which Europeans seem to have been doomed to commit ever since the grossly over-rated Greeks started them on the road to decline.
        It must be obvious to everyone why the trouser is an ugly garment — not so, however, why it is specially injurious to the man.
        The reason is one which will soon occur to anybody who chooses to observe the males of other mammals than man�
        He will find that, unlike the males of many other orders, the males of mammals all have external testicles, which have left the region of the abdomen, and become suspended in a receptacle outside it; and that this receptacle, the scrotum, is, compared with the rest of the animal, comparatively naked, often devoid of hair, and, in the case of horses and cattle, actually devoid of the thick leathery coat.

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        What a priori conclusion suggests itself from these observations?
        Clearly that the function of the testicle in mammals is best performed not only away from the normal heat of the abdomen, but also actually in a position and in a receptacle which allows of a lower temperature than is required by he rest of the body.
        How then does the trouser defeat Nature's arrangement?
        By restoring to the neighbourhood of the testicle, if not the constant temperature of the abdomen, at least a degree of heat closely approximate to it; for, by the time the region of the fork has warmed after the donning of trousers, which retain the heat radiated by both the abdomen and the thighs, a temperature is soon generated which is not far short of that in the abdomen.
        It has already been suggested by one or two investigators that the optimum temperatures for spermatogenesis is below that of the abdomen ¹ — hence the normal exposure of the testicles outside the region in the lower mammals — and experiments carried out by Dr. Fukin (not yet confirmed, it is true) seem to show that a comparatively slight increase in temperature applied to the scrota of both rats and rabbits has sufficed to produce regressive changes in the seminiferous tubules. ²
        Thus there would appear to be confirmation of the a priori conclusion that constantly over-heated scrota and sterility are related, and that, in sub-acute cases, constantly artificially warmed scrota may be suspected of causing varying degrees of decline in sexual vigour. If this is so, and there seems little doubt that it is, it is impossible to surmise how much damage has been done to each generation of males for centuries in temperate climes by the wearing of trousers and of the close and heavy leg-garments that preceded them. Combined with the factors causing frigidity and sexual sub-parity in the female, and the other factors enumerated which have exercised a preferential selection of males with sexual sub-parity, this grave sartorial mistake in males has probably done much towards bringing about the state which Gini has described as a decline in the genetic instincts.
        Nor should it be supposed that the earlier fashions for men,

        1 F. A. E. Crew is one of these. See his INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF SEX (London, 1932, pp. 117–118). Also Dr. G. L. Moench (LANCET, 22.3.30) and Dr Gregorio Maranon (THE EVOLUTION OF SEX, London, 1932, p. 134).
        2 B.M.J., 15.10.28, p. 654. Remarkable as it may seem, Hippocrates, who presumably did not know the .scientific reason why trousers are deleterious to male sexuality, ascribed the reputed impotence of the ancient Scythians partly to their habit of wearing trousers. (AIRS, WATERS AND PLACES. Trans. by W. H. S. Jones, London, 1923, XXII.)

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before trousers became universal among whites — such garments as the short breech, trunk-breeches and breeches — are any better; for although perhaps less offensive æsthetically, they were equally injurious, if not more so, from the standpoint of virility. ¹
        The ideal lower garment for men, therefore, there can be little doubt, would seem to be the kilt, or some other convenient modification of the flowing robe, open at the knees or calves, which the males of ancient civilizations were wise enough to wear. Since, however, in our neighbours and friends, the Scots, we have a people who have wisely adopted a sane lower garment for men, ² why on earth we should not be sensible enough to emulate them, it is difficult to see. Meanwhile, if it is necessary to have differentiated garments for the sexes and women choose to go into trousers, no one can reasonably wish to prevent them; for the garment, ugly though it is, is certainly much more theirs than ours; it cannot injure them, and it is admirably calculated not to dissimulate their pelvic development.

        1 At all events trousers must be a very ancient garment for men in Europe, for we are told that when Cæcina Alienus returned from the north of Europe (A.D. 69) he offended the Romans by addressing them in a plaid and drawers or trousers (braccæ), the latter being regarded by the Romans as characteristic of barbarians. (Tacitus, HISTORIES, II, 20. Oxford translation, London, 1854).
        2 The kilt was not retained by the Scots to preserve virility, but simply owing to the accidental circumstance that walking through wet or dew-laden heather is not practical in trousers.

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