Sex efficiency through exercises : special physical culture for women / by Th. H. van de Velde ; [photos, by E. Steinemann].

attribute, whereas many primitive peoples do not cover the genitalia and perineum. And there is yet another form of modesty, more rarefied and complicated than either organic or functional shame- facedness, which we might term erotic shyness. This applies to the emotions, and is often undiminished even when law, custom and religion approve, as in marriage. Such intense and intricate sensitiveness is associated with reverence and with the desire to keep the soul's inmost sanctuary from all unwelcome touch, word—or thought* Moreover, even to-day, many men believe that any mention or discussion of such matters degrades and stains the woman they love ; and this—in itself extremely complex—trend of thought and feeling contributes a further quota to the deliberate suppres- sion and dissimulation of all sexual activity within marriage. In my youth, I experienced a striking and memorable example of this inhibition in thought and speech, especially as concerns third parties, and even when the possibility of offspring was the chief subject to which allusion was made. I was present at a wedding breakfast; the host, a man respected by all, was the adoptive father of the bride, and in his speech of goodwill and congratulation to his foster- daughter and her bridegroom, he wished them the blessing of children in terms of touching emotion, for he had himself suffered deeply because this blessing had been denied to him. Among the younger guests, many of them medical men with their fiancees, there was general indignation and resentment at such freedom of speech ! Reference to the natural results of married union was considered indecent ! We may shake our heads in regretful disapproval of this and prefer the more direct and spontaneous speech of the common people ; for in spite of the freedom and modernism of certain sections of our young people to-day, the climate of thought is unchanged among the majority of the responsible highly educated, hard-working, professional classes who form so valuable— I would even say, indispensable—an element of the com- munity. * See the more detailed studies by Alfred Vierkandt Havelock Ellis s> and Adolf Gerson <4).