Academic Leadership by Paul Elmer More

"To have made this vision of the higher imagination a true part of our self-knowledge, in such fashion that the soul is purged of envy for what is distinguished and we feel ourselves fellows with the preserving, rather than the destroying, forces of time, is to be raised into the nobility of the intellect. To hold this knowledge in a mind trained to fine efficiency and confirmed by faithful comradeship is to take one's place with the rightful governors of the people. Nor is there any narrow or invidious exclusiveness in such an aristocracy, which differs in this free hospitality from an oligarchy of artificial prescription. The more its membership is enlarged, the greater is its power and the more secure are the privileges of each individual. Yet, if not exclusive, an academic aristocracy must by its very nature be exceedingly jealous of any levelling process which would shape education to the needs of the intellectual proletariat and so diminish its own ranks. It cannot admit that, if education is once levelled downwards, the whole body of men will of themselves gradually raise the level to the higher range; for its creed declares that elevation must come from leadership rather than from self-motion of the mass. It will therefore be opposed to any scheme of studies which relaxes discipline or destroys intellectual solidarity. It will look with suspicion on any system which turns out half-educated men with the same diplomas as the fully educated, thinking that such methods of slurring differences are likely to do more harm by discouraging the ambition to attain what is distinguished than good by spreading wide a thin veneer of culture. In particular it will distrust the present huge overgrowth of courses in government and sociology, which send men into the world skilled in the machinery of statecraft and with minds sharpened to the immediate demands of special groups, but with no genuine training of the imagination and no understanding of the longer problems of humanity. It will think that the dominance of such studies is one of the causes that men leave our colleges with no hold on the past, with nothing, as Burke said, "amidst so vast a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concentrate their thoughts, to ballast their conduct, to preserve them from being blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine." It will set itself against any regular subjection of the "fierce spirit of liberty," which is the breath of distinction and the very charter of aristocracy, to the sullen spirit of equality, which proceeds from envy in the baser sort of democracy. It will regard the character of education and the disposition of the curriculum as a question of supreme importance; for its motto is always, abeunt studia in mores."

Academic Leadership

Any one who has traveled much about the country of recent years must have been impressed by the growing uneasiness of mind among thoughtful men. Whether in the smoking-car, or the hotel corridor, or the college hall, everywhere, if you meet them off their guard and stripped of the optimism which we wear as a public convention, you will hear them saying in a kind of amazement. "What is to be the end of it all?" They are alarmed at the unsettlement of property and the difficulties that harass the man of moderate means in making provision for the future; they are uneasy over the breaking up of the old laws of decorum, if not of decency, and over the unrestrained pursuit of excitement at any cost; they feel vaguely that in the decay of religion the bases of society have been somehow weakened. Now, much of this sort of talk is as old as history, and has no special significance. We are prone to forget that civilization has always been a tour de force, so to speak, a little hard-won area of order and self-subordination amidst a vast wilderness of anarchy and barbarism that are continually threatening to overrun their bounds. But that is equally no reason for over-confidence. Civilization is like a ship traversing an untamed sea. It is a more complex machine in our day, with command of greater forces, and might seem correspondingly safer than in the era of sails. But fresh catastrophes have shown that the ancient perils of navigation still confront the largest vessel, when the crew loses its discipline or the officers neglect their duty; and the analogy is not without its warning.

Only a year after the sinking of the Titanic I was crossing the ocean, and it befell by chance that on the anniversary of that disaster we passed not very far from the spot where the proud ship lay buried beneath the waves. The evening was calm, and on the lee deck a dance had been hastily organized to take advantage of the benign weather. Almost alone I stood for hours at the railing on the windward side, looking out over the rippling water where the moon had laid upon it a broad street of gold. Nothing could have been more peaceful; it was as if Nature were smiling upon earth in sympathy with the strains of music and the sound of laughter that reached me at intervals from the revelling on the other deck. Yet I could not put out of my heart an apprehension of some luring treachery in this scene of beauty--and certainly the world can offer nothing more wonderfully beautiful than the moon shining from the far East over a smooth expanse of water. Was it not in such a calm as this that the unsuspecting vessel, with its gay freight of human lives, had shuddered, and gone down, forever? I seemed to behold a symbol; and there came into my mind the words we used to repeat at school, but are, I do not know just why, a little ashamed of to-day:

Thou, too, sail on, 0 Ship of State!
Sail on, 0 Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all its hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate! . . .

Something like this, perhaps, is the feeling of many men--men by no means given to morbid gusts of panic--amid a society that laughs over much in its amusement and exults in the very lust of change. Nor is their anxiety quite the same as that which has always disturbed the reflecting spectator. At other times the apprehension has been lest the combined forces of order might not be strong enough to withstand the ever-threatening inroads of those who envy barbarously and desire recklessly; whereas to-day the doubt is whether the natural champions of order themselves shall be found loyal to their trust, for they seem no longer to remember clearly the word of command that should unite them in leadership. Until they can rediscover some common ground of strength and purpose in the first principles of education and law and property and religion, we are in danger of falling a prey to the disorganizing and vulgarizing domination of ambitions which should be the servants and not the masters of society.

Certainly, in the sphere of education there is a growing belief that some radical reform is needed; and this dissatisfaction is in itself wholesome. Boys come into college with no reading and with minds unused to the very practice of study; and they leave college, too often, in the same state of nature. There are even those, inside and outside of academic halls, who protest that our higher institutions of learning simply fail to educate at all. That is slander; but in sober earnest, you will find few experienced college professors, apart from those engaged in teaching purely utilitarian or practical subjects, who are not convinced that the general relaxation is greater now than it was twenty years ago. It is of considerable significance that the two student essays which took the prizes offered by the Harvard Advocate in 1913 were both on this theme. The first of them posed the question: "How can the leadership of the intellectual rather than the athletic student be fostered?" and was virtually a sermon on a text of President Lowell's: "No one in close touch with American education has failed to notice the lack among the mass of undergraduates of keen interest in their studies, and the small regard for scholarly attainment."

Now, the Advocate prizeman has his specific remedy, and President Lowell has his, and other men propose other systems and restrictions; but the evil is too deep-seated to be reached by any superficial scheme of honours or to be charmed away by insinuating appeals. The other day Mr. William F. McCombs, chairman of the National Committee which engineered a college president into the White House, gave this advice to our academic youth: "The college man must forget--or never let it creep into his head--that he's a highbrow. If it does creep in, he's out of politics." To which one might reply in Mr. McComb's own dialect, that unless a man can make himself a force in politics (or at least in the larger life of the State) precisely by virtue of being a "highbrow," he had better spend his four golden years other-where than in college. There it is: the destiny of education is intimately bound up with the question of social leadership, and unless the college, as it used to be in the days when the religious hierarchy it created was a real power, can be made once more a breeding place for a natural aristocracy, it will inevitably degenerate into a school for mechanical apprentices or into a pleasure resort for the jeunesse doree (sc. the "gold coasters"). We must get back to a common understanding of the office of education in the construction of society and must discriminate among the subjects that may enter into the curriculum by their relative value towards this end.

A manifest condition is that education should embrace the means of discipline, for without discipline the mind will remain inefficient just as surely as the muscles of the body, without exercise, will be left flaccid. That should seem to be a self-evident truth. Now it may be possible to derive a certain amount of discipline out of any study, but it is a fact, nevertheless, which cannot be gainsaid, that some studies lend themselves to this use more readily and effectively than others. You may, for instance, if by extraordinary luck you get the perfect teacher, make English literature disciplinary by the hard manipulation of ideas; but in practice it almost inevitably happens that a course in English literature either degenerates into the dull memorizing of dates and names or, rising into the O Altitudo, evaporates in romantic gush over beautiful passages. This does not mean, of course, that no benefit may be obtained from such a study, but it does preclude English literature generally from being made the backbone, so to speak, of a sound curriculum. The same may be said of French and German. The difficulties of these tongues in themselves and the effort required of us to enter into their spirit imply some degree of intellectual gymnastics, but scarcely enough for our purpose. Of the sciences it behooves one to speak circumspectly; undoubtedly mathematics and physics, at least, demand such close attention and such firm reasoning as to render them properly a part of any disciplinary education. But there are good grounds for being sceptical of the effect of the non-mathematical sciences on the immature mind. Any one who has spent a considerable portion of his undergraduate time in a chemical laboratory, for example, as the present writer has done, and has the means of comparing the results of such elementary and pottering experimentation with the mental grip required in the humanistic courses, must feel that the real training obtained therein was almost negligible. If I may draw further from my own observation I must say frankly that, after dealing for a number of years with manuscripts prepared for publication by college professors of the various faculties, I have been forced to the conclusion that science, in itself, is likely to leave the mind in a state of relative imbecility. It is not that the writing of men who got their early drill too exclusively, or even predominantly, in the sciences lacks the graces of rhetoric--that would be comparatively a small matter--but such men in the majority of cases, even when treating subjects within their own field, show a singular inability to think clearly and consecutively, so soon as they are freed from the restraint of merely describing the process of an experiment. On the contrary, the manuscript of a classical scholar, despite the present dry-rot of philology, almost invariably gives signs of a habit of orderly and well-governed cerebration.

Here, whatever else may be lacking, is discipline. The sheer difficulty of Latin and Greek, the highly organized structure of these languages, the need of scrupulous search to find the nearest equivalents for words that differ widely in their scope of meaning from their derivatives in any modern vocabulary, the effort of lifting one's self out of the familiar rut of ideas into so foreign a world, all these things act as a tonic exercise to the brain. And it is a demonstrable fact that students of the classics do actually surpass their unclassical rivals in any field where a fair test can be made. At Princeton, for instance, Professor West has shown this superiority by tables of achievements and grades, which he has published in the Educational Review for March, 1913; and a number of letters from various parts of the country, printed in the Nation, tell the same story in striking fashion. Thus, a letter from Wesleyan (September 7, 1911) gives statistics to prove that the classical students in that university outstrip the others in obtaining all sorts of honours, commonly even honours in the sciences. Another letter (May 8, 1913) shows that of the first semester in English at the University of Nebraska the percentage of delinquents among those who entered with four years of Latin was below 7; among those who had three years of Latin and one or two of a modern language the percentage rose to 15; two years of Latin and two years of a modern language, 30 per cent; one year or less of Latin and from two to four years of a modern language, 35 per cent. And in the Nation of April 23, 1914, Professor Arthur Gordon Webster, the eminent physicist of Clark University, after speaking of the late B. O. Peiree's early drill and life-long interest in Greek and Latin, adds these significant words: "Many of us still believe that such a training makes the best possible foundation for a scientist." There is reason to think that this opinion is daily gaining ground among those who are zealous that the prestige of science should be maintained by men of the best calibre.

The disagreement in this matter would no doubt be less, were it not for an ambiguity in the meaning of the word "efficient" itself. There is a kind of efficiency in managing men, and there also is an intellectual efficiency, properly speaking, which is quite a different faculty. The former is more likely to be found in the successful engineer or business man than in the scholar of secluded habits, and because often such men of affairs received no discipline at college in the classics the argument runs that utilitarian studies are as disciplinary as the humanistic. But efficiency of this kind is not an academic product at all, and is commonly developed, and should be developed, in the school of the world. It comes from dealing with men in matters of large physical moment, and may exist with a mind utterly undisciplined in the stricter sense of the word. We have had more than one illustrious example in recent years of men capable of dominating their fellows, let us say in financial transactions, who yet, in the grasp of first principles and in the analysis of consequences, have shown themselves to be as inefficient as children.

Probably, however, few men who have had experience in education will deny the value of discipline to the classics, even though they hold that other studies, less costly from the utilitarian point of view, are equally educative in this respect. But it is further of prime importance, even if such an equality, or approach to equality, were granted, that we should select one group of studies and unite in making it the core of the curriculum for the great mass of undergraduates. It is true in education as in other matters that strength comes from union and weakness from division, and if educated men are to work together for a common end they must have a common range of ideas, with a certain solidarity in their way of looking at things. As matters actually are, the educated man feels terribly his isolation under the scattering of intellectual pursuits, yet too often lacks the courage to deny the strange popular fallacy that there is virtue in sheer variety and that somehow well-being is to be struck out from the dashing of miscellaneous interests rather than from concentration. In one of his annual reports some years ago President Eliot, of Harvard, observed from the figures of registration that the majority of students still at that time believed the best form of education for them was in the old humanistic courses, and therefore, he argued, the other courses should be fostered. There was never perhaps a more extraordinary syllogism since the argal of Shakespeare's grave-digger. I quote from memory, and may slightly misrepresent the actual statement of the influential "educationalist," but the spirit of his words, as indeed of his practice, is surely as I give it. And the working of this spirit is one of the main causes of the curious fact that scarcely any other class of men in social intercourse feel themselves, in their deeper concerns, more severed one from another than those very college professors who ought to be united in the battle for educational leadership. This estrangement is sometimes carried to an extreme almost ludicrous. I remember once in a small but advanced college the consternation that was awakened when an instructor in philosophy went to a colleague--both of them now associates in a large university--for information in a question of biology. "What business has he with such matters," said the irate biologist: "let him stick to his last, and teach philosophy--if he can!" That was a polite jest, you will say. Perhaps; but not entirely. Philosophy is indeed taught in one lecture hall, and biology in another, but of conscious effort to make of education an harmonious driving force there is next to nothing. And as the teachers, so are the taught.

Such criticism does not imply that advanced work in any of the branches of human knowledge should be curtailed; but it does demand that, as a background to the professional pursuits, there should be a common intellectual training through which all students should pass, acquiring thus a single body of ideas and images in which they could always meet as brother initiates.

We shall, then, make a long step forward when we determine that in the college, as distinguished from the university, it is better to have the great mass of men, whatever may be the waste in a few unmalleable minds, go through the discipline of a single group of studies--with, of course, a considerable freedom of choice in the outlying field. And it will probably appear in experience that the only practicable group to select is the classics, with the accompaniment of philosophy and the mathematical sciences. Latin and Greek are, at least, as disciplinary as any other subjects; and if it can be further shown that they possess a specific power of correction for the more disintegrating tendencies of the age, it ought to be clear that their value as instruments of education outweighs the service of certain other studies which may seem to be more immediately serviceable.

For it will be pretty generally agreed that efficiency of the individual scholar and unity of the scholarly class are, properly, only the means to obtain the real end of education, which is social efficiency. The only way, in fact, to make the discipline demanded by a severe curriculum and the sacrifice of particu- lar tastes required for unity seem worth the cost, is to persuade men that the resulting form of education both meets a present and serious need of society and promises to serve those in- dividuals who desire to obtain society's fairer honours. Mr. McCombs, speaking for the "practical" man, declares that there is no place in politics for the intellectual aristocrat. A good many of us believe that unless the very reverse of this is true, unless the educated man can somehow, by virtue of his education, make of himself a governor of the people in the larger sense, and even to some extent in the narrow political sense, unless the college can produce a hierarchy of character and intelligence which shall in due measure perform the off[ice of the discredited oligarchy of birth, we had better make haste to divert our enormous collegiate endowments into more use- ful channels. And here I am glad to find confirmation of my belief in the stalwart old Boke Named the Governour, published by Sir Thomas Elyot in 1531, the first treatise on education in the English tongue and still, after all these years, one of the wisest. It is no waste of time to take account of the theory held by the humanists when study at Oxford and Cambridge was shaping itself for its long service in giving to the oligarchic government of Great Britain whatever elements it possessed of true aristocracy. Elyot's book is equally a treatise on the education of a gentleman and on the ordinance of government, for, as he says elsewhere, he wrote "to instruct men in such virtues as shall be expedient for them which shall have authority in a weal public.'' I quote from various parts of his work with some abridgment, retaining the quaint spelling of the original, and I beg the reader not to skip, however long the citation may appear:

Beholde also the ordre that god hath put generally in al his creatures, begynning at the moste inferiour or base, and assendynge upwarde; so that in euery thyng is ordre, and without ordre may be nothing stable or permanent; and it may nat be called ordre, excepte it do contayne in it degrees, high and base, accordynge to the merite or estimation of the thyng that is ordred. And therfore hit appereth that god gyueth nat to euery man like gyftes of grace, or of nature, but to some more, some lesse, as it liketh his diuine maiestie. For as moche as under-standying is the most excellent gyfte that man can receiue in his creation, it is therfore congruent, and accordynge that as one excelleth an other in that influence, as therby beinge next to the similitude of his maker, so shulde the astate of his persone be auanced in degree or place where understandynge may profite. Suche oughte to be set in a more highe place than the residue where they may se and also be sene; that by the beames of theyr excellent witte, shewed throughe the glasse of auctorite, other of inferiour understandynge may be directed to the way of vertue and commodious liuynge ....

Thus I conclude that nobilitie is nat after the vulgare opinion of men, but is only the prayse and surname of vertue; whiche the lenger it continueth in a name or lignage, the more is nobilitie extolled and meruailed at ....

If thou be a gouernour, or haste ouer other soueraygntie, knowe thy selfe. Knowe that the name of a soueraigne or ruler without actuall gouernaunce is but a shadowe, that gouernaunce standeth nat by wordes onely, but principally by acte and example; that by example of gouernours men do rise or falle in vertue or vice. Ye shall knowe all way your selfe, if for affection or motion ye do speke or do nothing unworthy the immortalitie and moste precious nature of your soule ....

In semblable maner the inferior persone or subiecte aught to consider, that all be it he in the substaunce of soule and body be equall with his superior, yet for als moche as the powars and qualities of the soule and body, with the disposition of reason, be nat in euery man equall, therfore god ordayned a diuersitie or preeminence in degrees to be amonge men for the necessary derection and preseruation of them in conformitie of lyuinge ....

Where all thynge is commune, there lacketh ordre; and where ordre lacketh, there all thynge is odiouse and uncomly.

Such is the goal which the grave Sir Thomas pointed out to the noble youth of his land at the beginning of England's greatness, and such, within the bounds of human frailty, has been the ideal even until now which the two universities have held before them. Naturally the method of training prescribed in the sixteenth century for the attainment of this goal is antiquated in some of its details, but it is no exaggeration, nevertheless, to speak of the Boke Named the Governour as the very Magna Charta of our education. The scheme of the humanist might be described in a word as a disciplining of the higher faculty of the imagination to the end that the student may behold, as it were in one sublime vision, the whole scale of being in its range from the lowest to the highest under the divine decree of order and subordination, without losing sight of the immutable veracity at the heart of all development, which "is only the praise and surname of virtue." This was no new vision, nor has it ever been quite forgotten. It was the whole meaning of religion to Hooker, from whom it passed into all that is best and least ephemeral in the Anglican Church. It was the basis, more modestly expressed, of Blackstone's conception of the British Constitution and of liberty under law. It was the kernel of Burke's theory of statecraft. It is the inspiration of the sublimer science, which accepts the hypothesis of evolution as taught by Darwin and Spencer, yet bows in reverence before the unnamed and incommensurable force lodged as a mystical purpose within the unfolding universe. It was the wisdom of that child of Statford who, building better than he knew, gave to our literature its deepest and most persistent note. If anywhere Shakespeare seems to speak from his heart and to utter his own philosophy, it is in the person of Ulysses in that strange satire of life as "still wars and lechery" which forms the theme of Troilus and Cressida. Twice in the course of the play Ulysses moralizes on the cause of human evil. Once it is in an outburst against the devastations of disorder:

Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,
Between whose endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite.

And, in the same spirit, the second tirade of Ulysses is charged with mockery at the vanity of the present and at man's usurpation of time as the destroyer instead of the preserver of continuity:

For time is like a fashionable host
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
Grasps in the eomer: welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.

To have made this vision of the higher imagination a true part of our self-knowledge, in such fashion that the soul is purged of envy for what is distinguished and we feel ourselves fellows with the preserving, rather than the destroying, forces of time, is to be raised into the nobility of the intellect. To hold this knowledge in a mind trained to fine efficiency and confirmed by faithful comradeship is to take one's place with the rightful governors of the people. Nor is there any narrow or invidious exclusiveness in such an aristocracy, which differs in this free hospitality from an oligarchy of artificial prescription. The more its membership is enlarged, the greater is its power and the more secure are the privileges of each individual. Yet, if not exclusive, an academic aristocracy must by its very nature be exceedingly jealous of any levelling process which would shape education to the needs of the intellectual proletariat and so diminish its own ranks. It cannot admit that, if education is once levelled downwards, the whole body of men will of themselves gradually raise the level to the higher range; for its creed declares that elevation must come from leadership rather than from self-motion of the mass. It will therefore be opposed to any scheme of studies which relaxes discipline or destroys intellectual solidarity. It will look with suspicion on any system which turns out half-educated men with the same diplomas as the fully educated, thinking that such methods of slurring differences are likely to do more harm by discouraging the ambition to attain what is distinguished than good by spreading wide a thin veneer of culture. In particular it will distrust the present huge overgrowth of courses in government and sociology, which send men into the world skilled in the machinery of statecraft and with minds sharpened to the immediate demands of special groups, but with no genuine training of the imagination and no understanding of the longer problems of humanity. It will think that the dominance of such studies is one of the causes that men leave our colleges with no hold on the past, with nothing, as Burke said, "amidst so vast a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concentrate their thoughts, to ballast their conduct, to preserve them from being blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine." It will set itself against any regular subjection of the "fierce spirit of liberty," which is the breath of distinction and the very charter of aristocracy, to the sullen spirit of equality, which proceeds from envy in the baser sort of democracy. It will regard the character of education and the disposition of the curriculum as a question of supreme importance; for its motto is always, abeunt studia in mores.

Now this aristocratic principle has, so to speak, its everlasting embodiment in Greek literature, from whence it was taken over into Latin and transmitted, with much mingling of foreign and even contradictory ideas, to the modern world. From Homer to the last runnings of the Hellenic spirit you will find it taught by every kind of precept and enforced by every kind of example; nor was Shakespeare writing at hazard, but under the instinctive guidance of genius, when he put his aristocratic creed into the mouth of the hero who to the end remained for the Greeks the personification of their peculiar wisdom. In no other poetry of the world is the law of distinction, as springing from a man's perception of his place in the great hierarchy of privilege and obligation from the lowest human being up to the Olympian gods, so copiously and magnificently set forth as in Pindar's Odes of Victory. And Aeschylus was the first dramatist to see with clear vision the primacy of the intellect in the law of orderly development, seemingly at variance with the divine immutable will of Fate, yet finally in mysterious accord with it. When the philosophers of the later period came to the creation of systematic ethics they had only the task of formulating what was already latent in the poets and historians of their land; and it was the recollection of the fulness of such instruction in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Platonic Dialogues, with their echo in the Officia of Cicero, as if in them were stored up all the treasures of antiquity, that raised our Sir Thomas into wondering admiration:

Lorde god, what incomparable swetnesse of wordes and mater shall he finde in the saide warkes of Plato and Cicero; wherin is ioyned grauitie with dilectation, excellent wysedome with diuine eloquence, absolute vertue with pleasure incredible, and euery place is so farced [crowded] with profitable counsaile, ioyned with honestie, that those thre bokes be almoste sufficient to make a perfecte and excellent gouernour.

There is no need to dwell on this aspect of the classics. He who cares to follow their full working in this direction, as did our English humanist, may find it exhibited in Plato's political and ethical scheme of self-development, or in Aristotle's ideal of the Golden Mean which combines magnanimity with moderation, and elevation with self-knowledge. If a single word were used to describe the character and state of life upheld by Plato and Aristotle, as spokesmen of their people, it would be eleutheria, liberty: the freedom to cultivate the higher part of a man's nature--his intellectual prerogative, his desire of truth, his refinements of taste--and to hold the baser part of himself in subjection; the freedom also, for its own perfection, and indeed for its very existence, to impose an outer conformity to, or at least respect for, the laws of this inner government on others who are themselves ungoverned. Such liberty is the ground of true distinction; it implies the opposite of an equalitarianism which reserves its honours and rewards for those who attain a bastard kind of distinction by the cunning of leadership without departing from common standards, for the demagogues, that is, who rise by flattery. But this liberty is by no means dependent on the artificial distinctions of privilege; on the contrary, it is peculiarly adapted to an age whose appointed task must be to create a natural aristocracy as a via media between an equalitarian democracy and a prescriptive oligarchy or a plutocracy. The fact is notable that, as the real hostility to the classics in the present day arises from an instinctive suspicion of them as standing in the way of a downward-levelling mediocrity, so, at other times, they have fallen under displeasure for their veto on a contrary excess. Thus, in his savage attack on the Commonwealth, to which he gave the significant title Behemoth, Hobbes lists the reading of classical history among the chief causes of the rebellion. "There were," he says, "an exceeding great number of men of the better sort, that had been so educated as that in their youth, having read the books written by famous men of the ancient Grecian and Roman commonwealths concerning their polity and great actions, in which books the popular government was extolled by that glorious name of liberty, and monarchy disgraced by the name of tyranny, they became thereby in love with their forms of government; and out of these men were chosen the greatest part of the House of Commons; or if they were not the greatest part, yet by advantage of their eloquence were always able to sway the rest." To this charge Hobbes returns again and again, even declaring that "the universities have been to this nation as the Wooden Horse was to the Trojans." And the uncompromising monarchist of the Leviathan, himself a classicist of no mean attainments, as may be known by his translation of Thucydides, was not deceived in his accusation. The tyrannicides of Athens and Rome, the Aristogeitons and Brutuses and others, were the heroes by whose example the leaders of the French Revolution were continually justifying their acts.

There Brutus starts and stares by midnight taper.
Who all the day enaets--a woollen-draper.

And again, in the years of the Risorgimento, more than one of the champions of Italian liberty went to death with those great names on their lips.

So runs the law of order and right subordination� But if the classics offer the best service to education by inculcating an aristocracy of intellectual distinction, they are equally effective in enforcing the similar lesson of time. It is a true saying of our ancient humanist that "the longer it continueth in a name or lineage, the more is nobility extolled and marvelled at." It is true because in this way our imagination is working with the great conservative law of growth. Whatever may be in theory our democratic distaste for the insignia of birth, we cannot get away from the fact that there is a certain honour of inheritance and that we instinctively pay homage to one who represents a noble name. There is nothing really illogical in this, for, as an English statesman has put it, "the past is one of the elements of our power." He is the wise democrat who, with no opposition to such a decree of Nature, endeavours to control its operation by expecting noble service where the memory of nobility abides. When, recently, Oxford bestowed its highest honour on an American, distinguished not only for his own public acts but for the great tradition embodied in his name, the Orator of the University did not omit this legitimate appeal to the imagination, singularly appropriate in its academic Latin:

... Statim succurrit animo antiqua ilia Romae condicio, cum non tam propter singulos cives quam propter singulas gentes nomen Romanum floreret. Cum enim civis alicujus et avum et proavum principes civitatis esse creatos, cum patrem legationis munus apud aulam Britannicam summa cum laude esse exsecutum cognovimus; cum denique ipsum per totum bellum stipendia equo meritum, summa pericula "Pulcra pro Liberrate" ausum .... Romanae alicujus gentis--Brutorum vel Deciorum--annales evolvere videmur, qui testimonium adhibent "fortes creari fortibus," et majorum exemplis et imaginibus nepotes ad virtutern accendi.*

Is there any man so dull of soul as not to be stirred by that enumeration of civic services zealously inherited; or is there any one so envious of the past as not to believe that such memories should be honoured in the present as an incentive to noble emulation?

Well, we cannot all of us count Presidents and Ambassadors among our ancestors, but we can, if we will, in the genealogy of the inner life enroll ourselves among the adopted sons of a family in comparison with which the Bruti and Decii of old and the Adamses of to-day are veritable new men. We can see what defence against the meaner depredations of the world may be drawn from the pride of birth, when, as it sometimes happens, the obligation of a great past is kept as a contract with the present; shall we forget to measure the enlargement and elevation of mind which ought to come to a man who has made himself the heir of the ancient Lords of Wisdom? "To one small people," as Sir Henry Maine has said, in words often quoted, "it was given to ereate the principle of Progress. That people was the Greek. Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin." That is a hard saying, but scarcely exaggerated. Examine the records of our art and our science, our philosophy and the enduring element of our faith, our statecraft and our notion of liberty, and you will find that they all go back for their inspiration to that one small people, and strike their roots into the soil of Greece. What we have added, it is well to know; but he is the aristocrat of the mind who can display a diploma from the schools of the Academy and Lyceum and from the Theatre of Dionysus. What tradition of ancestral achievement in the Senate or on the field of battle shall broaden a man's outlook and elevate his will equally with the consciousness that his way of thinking and feeling has come down to him by so long and honourable a descent, or shall so confirm him in his better judgment against the ephemeral and vulgarizing solicitations of the hour? Other men are creatures of the visible moment; he is a citizen of the past and of the future. And such a charter of citizenship it is the first duty of the college to provide.

I have limited myself in these pages to a discussion of what may be called the public side of education, considering the classics in their power to mould character and to foster sound leadership in a society much given to drifting. Of the inexhaustible joy and consolation they afford to the individual, only he can have full knowledge who has made the writers of Greece and Rome his friends and counsellors through many vicissitudes of life. It is related of Sainte-Beuve, who, according to Renan, read everything and remembered everything, that one could observe a peculiar serenity on his face whenever he came down from his study after reading a book of Homer. The cost of learning the language of Homer is not small; but so are all fair things difficult, as the Greek proverb runs, and the reward in the case is precious beyond estimation.

---

*The honour was bestowed on the late Charles Francis Adams.

---

Read "Aristocracy"

Paul Elmer More (1864-1937), with Irving Babbitt a proponent of the New Humanism, was an outstanding American critic and scholar. His writings display erudition, good sense, forceful argument and far-reaching concerns. None are now in print. For an account of his long-continued failure to attract a following, see Byron C. Lambert's "The Regrettable Silence of Paul Elmer More" in the Winter 1999 Modern Age.

More was educated at Washington University in St. Louis and Harvard. After a short spell teaching Sanskrit and classics at Harvard and Bryn Mawr he become a literary journalist, serving as literary editor of The Independent (1901-03) and the New York Evening Post (1903-09) and as editor of The Nation (1909-14). His views, like those of many others at the time, started with the experience of the living; they ended however in classical restraint, traditional standards, and a somewhat idiosyncratic Anglo-catholicism. In an era of naturalism and socialism he therefore drew considerable critical fire, notably from H.L. Mencken, who nonetheless considered him the "nearest approach to a genuine scholar" America had.

His best known work is his Shelburne Essays, 11 vol. (1904-21), a collection of articles and reviews. Also notable are the books he wrote afer his retirement from journalism: Platonism (1917); The Religion of Plato (1921); Hellenistic Philosophies (1923); New Shelburne Essays (1928-36); and his biography and last published work, Pages from an Oxford Diary (1937). His Greek Tradition, 5 vol. (1924-31), is generally thought to be his finest work.

Also see the Wikipedia article on More, and "Paul Elmer More: America's Reactionary" (Modern Age, Fall, 2003) by Brian Domitrovic.

The following are selections from More's writings:

Writings

Some of the following are taken from Professor Lambert's anthology, The Essential Paul Elmer More (New Rochelle, 1972), some from Daniel Aaron's anthology Paul Elmer More's Shelburne Essays on American Literature (New York, 1963), others directly from the Shelburne Essays and other sources.

• An extract from his Marginalia (1936).
• The Sceptical Approach to Religion (1934).
• Selections from "The Demon of the Absolute" (1928).
• And some from his Christ the Word (1927).
• "Progress" (1921).
• "Jonathan Edwards" (Shelburne Essays, Eleventh Series (1921)).
• "Emerson" (Shelburne Essays, Eleventh Series (1921)).
• "Henry Adams" (Shelburne Essays, Eleventh Series (1921)).
• "The Spirit and Poetry of Early New England" (Shelburne Essays, Eleventh Series (1921)).
• "Justice" (1915).
• "Natural Aristocracy" (1915).
• "Property and Law" (1915).
• "Disraeli and Conservatism" (Shelburne Essays, Ninth Series (1915)).
• "The Paradox of Oxford" (Shelburne Essays, Ninth Series (1915)).
• "Philosophy of the War" (Shelburne Essays, Ninth Series (1915), originally published November, 1914).
• "Academic Leadership" (1914).
• "The New Morality" (1914).
• "Definitions of Dualism" (Shelburne Essays, Eighth Series (1913)). A statement of his own philosophy.
• "Huxley" (Shelburne Essays, Eighth Series (1913)).
• "Cardinal Newman" (Shelburne Essays, Eighth Series (1913)).
• "Nietzsche" (Shelburne Essays, Eighth Series (1913)).
• "Walter Pater" (Shelburne Essays, Eighth Series (1913)).
• "Scholarship of Ideas" (1911).
• "The Pragmatism of William James" (Shelburne Essays, Seventh Series (1910)).
• "Criticism" (1910).
• "Victorian Literature" (1910).
• "Pope" (1910).
• "Rousseau" (1908).
• "The Teaching of the Classics" (1908).
• "The Historic Sense" (1907).
• "Benjamin Franklin" (Shelburne Essays, Fourth Series (1906)).
• "Walt Whitman" (Shelburne Essays, Fourth Series (1906)).
• "Dickens" (1906).
• "Keats" (1905).
• "Hawthorne: Looking Before and After" (Shelburne Essays, Second Series (1905).
• "The Influence of Emerson" (Shelburne Essays, First Series (1904).
• "The Solitude of Nathaniel Hawthorne" (Shelburne Essays, First Series (1904).
• "A New Intrusion of Pedantry" (1903).
• "Wealth and Culture" (1902).
• "Arthur Symons: the Two Illusions" (1902).

Interesting Facts

-----------------------------------------------------
THINGS FEW PEOPLE KNOW.
-----------------------------------------------------
In the 1400's a law was set forth in England that a
man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick no
thicker than his thumb. Hence we have "the rule of
thumb."
-----------------------------------------------------
Many years ago in Scotland , a new game was invented.
It was ruled "Gentlemen Only...Ladies Forbidden"...and
thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.
-----------------------------------------------------
The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime
time TV were Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
-----------------------------------------------------
Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the
U.S. Treasury.
-----------------------------------------------------
Men can read smaller print than women can; women can
hear better.
-----------------------------------------------------
Coca-Cola was originally green.
-----------------------------------------------------
It is impossible to lick your elbow.
-----------------------------------------------------
The State with the highest percentage of people who
walk to work: Alaska.
-----------------------------------------------------
The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28%. (Now
get this... )

The percentage of North America that is wilderness:
38%.
-----------------------------------------------------
The cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of
eleven: $6,400.
-----------------------------------------------------
The average number of people airborne over the U.S. in
any given hour: 61,000.
-----------------------------------------------------
Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their
hair.
-----------------------------------------------------
The first novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom
Sawyer.
-----------------------------------------------------
The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile
National Monuments.
-----------------------------------------------------
Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a
great king from history:

  Spades - King David

  Hearts - Charlemagne

  Clubs  - Alexander, the Great

  Diamonds - Julius Caesar

-----------------------------------------------------
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
-----------------------------------------------------
If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has
both front legs in the air, the person died in battle.

If the horse has one front leg in the air the person
died as a result of wounds received in battle.

If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the
person died
of natural causes.
-----------------------------------------------------
Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence
on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of
the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature
wasn't added until 5 years later.
-----------------------------------------------------
Q. Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of what?
A. Their birthplace.
-----------------------------------------------------
Q. Most boat owners name their boats. What is the most
 popular boat name requested?
A. Obsession.
-----------------------------------------------------
Q. If you were to spell out numbers, how far would you
have to go until you would find the letter "A"?
A. One thousand.
-----------------------------------------------------
Q. What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield
wipers, and laser printers all have in common?
A. All were invented by women.
-----------------------------------------------------
Q. What is the only food that doesn't spoil?
A. Honey.
-----------------------------------------------------
Q. Which day are there more collect calls than any
other day of the year?
A. Father's Day.
-----------------------------------------------------
In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on the
bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the
mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on.
Hence the phrase... "Goodnight, sleep tight."
-----------------------------------------------------
It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years
ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's
father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead
he could drink.  Mead is a honey beer and because
their calendar was lunar based, this period was called
the honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon.
-----------------------------------------------------
In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts.
So in old England , when customers got unruly, the
bartender would yell at them "Mind your pints and
quarts, and settle down."

It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's."
-----------------------------------------------------
Many years ago in England , pub frequenters had a
whistle baked into the rim, or handle, of their
ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the
whistle to get some service. "Wet your whistle" is the
phrase inspired by this practice.
-----------------------------------------------------
       ~~~~~~~~~~~AND FINALLY~~~~~~~~~~~~
-----------------------------------------------------
At least 75% of people who read this will try to lick
their elbow!
-----------------------------------------------------
Don't delete this just because it looks weird. Believe
it or not, you can read it.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd
waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan
mnid! Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,
it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod
are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and
lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.

The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it
wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos
not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a
wlohe.

Amzanig, huh?
-----------------------------------------------------
  YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2006 when...

  1. You accidentally enter your PIN on the
microwave.

  2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in
years.

  3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach
your family of three.

  4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk
next to you.

  5. Your reason for not staying in touch with
friends and family is that they don't have e-mail
addresses.

  6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your
cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry
in the groceries.

  7. Every commercial on television has a web site
at the bottom of the screen.

  8. Leaving the house without your cell phone,
which you didn't even have the first 20 or 30 (or 60)
years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you
turn around to go and get it.

  10. You get up in the morning and go on-line
before getting your coffee.

  11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile.
: )

  12. You're reading this and nodding and laughing.

  13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are
going to forward this message.

  14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on
this list.

  15. You actually scrolled back up to check that
there wasn't a #9 on this list.

Nudity in Ancient to Modern Cultures by Aileen Goodson

[Painting: "The_Pipelighter" by Jean-Leon Jerome added by site owner.]

(This chapter excerpt is from Aileen Goodson's Therapy, Nudity & Joy)

"If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred"

-Wait Whitman I Sing the Body Electric

Primitive Nude Living

Many of us may be unaware that nudity is a normal condition that has prevailed throughout most of mankind's existence. Anything from complete nakedness to casual body covering was a lifestyle component from prehistoric times through the Greco-Roman civilizations and into part of the Middle Ages.

Even today, in various remote areas of the warmer climes, naked societies persist as primitive tribes whose members do not wear clothes. These societies point up, among other things, how drastically our attitudes toward nudity and social organization have changed throughout human history. Unfortunately, modern civilization's puritanical laws of decency have labeled unclothed tropical-zone cultures as offensive and inferior. Missionaries, settlers, and tradespeople have effectively forced compliance with western dress codes wherever primitive cultures are found. Due to such diligence, we are now able to travel worldwide to exotic islands, join African safaris, and explore South American jungles without having to confront the "embarrassment" of viewing tribal nakedness.

Inexcusably, as civilization encroaches upon many of these out-of-the-way places, the aboriginal cultures are often severely damaged or destroyed by the invading virus of a technologically superior society. Enticed by trinkets and modern conveniences, the native populations almost invariably succumb to the customs, clothing, diseases, and problems of our intrusive culture.

In 1988, the January 3rd issue of The Los Angeles Times reported that the Yanomamis of the remote northern Brazilian territory of Roraima, a primitive and naked tribe, are in danger of extinction because the government has discovered gold and diamonds on their land. The Yanomamis are the largest known tribe still isolated from the outside world: "Yanomamis hunt with poisoned arrows, and many use primitive tools. They shun clothes, decorate their bodies with fruit dye and flowers, and live under huge palm huts in communities of 50 people. The population of Roraima is about 100,000. Anthropologists, the Roman Catholic Church, and Indian-rights groups fear that forced acculturation by an onslaught of whites will further reduce the Yanomami population, largely through disease. Because of their isolation, the Indians have no immunity against common viruses and can easily die from flu or a cold."

The Tupari tribe of the Rio Branco, in the Amazon jungles of Brazil, furnish another example of nude living among aborigines. Tibor Sekelj, who lived with the Tupari for four months, wrote: "It is no wonder that the Tupari never created any kind of clothing, for the weather is always warm. Their natural nudity fits perfectly into the framework of their surroundings and, except for ceremony or decoration, they never think of covering themselves."

Men of the Tupari set off before sunup to hunt. Those men and boys remaining in the village work at preparing the ground for planting or collect firewood and building materials. Meanwhile, the women attend to the children, collect fruit, spin cotton, and weave hammocks. By three o'clock in the afternoon, their day's work over, men and women gather together, drink fermented chica, make bows, arrows, necklaces, and headdresses, and decorate their bodies. It is a life of unhurried simplicity.2

How remarkable it is that such idyllic scenes of ancient and perhaps prehistoric times still co-exist with our modernized, stress-filled lifestyles and complex governmental structures.

Nudity in Early Egypt

A fascinating tale of early sun worship and nudity was unearthed in 1887 at Tell-el-Amarna, a small Egyptian village on the banks of the Nile some 200 miles south of Cairo. There, an Arab woman accidentally stumbled upon the baked-clay tablet archives of Pharaoh Akhen-Aton (1385-1353 B.C.). It was learned through the subsequent translation of these tablets that the brilliant young pharaoh and his exquisitely beautiful queen, Nefertiti, considered the sun, Aton, to be the true wellspring of life and thus justified the practice of nudism for spiritual and physical advancement.3

Because of the discovery of these tablets and other artifacts at Tell-el Amarna, the seat of Pharaoh Akhen-Aton's government, it is now well known that he was not only a great religious reformer and mystic, who disputed the pantheism of the traditional priesthood, but also a poet of great sensitivity. On the scattered stones that had formed the original wall of Aton's Temple, archaeologists have found and deciphered the pharaoh's famous "Hymn to Aton, the Sun God," a portion of which appears in the Hebrew scriptures as Psalm 104 of the Old Testament. "Through this poem," writes J. Herman in King& Queen of the Sun, "the pharaoh reveals himself to be a lover of beauty in nature, in art, and in man."4

However, some of the archaeologists who unraveled the story of the Sun Pharaoh had difficulty accepting what they found and became highly critical of Akhen-Aton and Nefertiti. "Brought up in an environment of Victorian and puritanical notions, they condemned these entrancing figures of Egyptian history because they discovered that not only the Pharaoh and his wife but also their children and officials went around with too few clothes (transparent at that!) or no clothes at all, that they practiced nudity in the royal palace, in the royal gardens and swimming pool, that they loved physical beauty, valued good food and wine, and led a frankly joyful existence."5

The spontaneity, freedom, and humanistic values espoused in the lifestyle of this remarkable couple brought scathing criticism and retaliation from the conservative priests of the "old religion." Upon his death, Akhen-Aton was succeeded by son-in-law Tutankh-Aton ("King Tut," famous for the fabulous gold and jewels found in his tomb in the twentieth century), who was coerced by the priests into eradicating Akhen-Aton's reforms.

"They practiced a religion and nudist way of life that was far ahead of their time," writes Dr. deHoratev of the Sun King and his queen. "They came to an age that understood them not." He adds, rather dejectedly, that although future generafions may be more understanding of their message, "...our own day gives them a miserly recognition."6

While it is known that Akhen-Aton and Nefertiti were not the first Egyptians to luxuriate nude in the sun's rays (a fourteenth century, B.C. carving of a nude Sumerian priest is preserved in the British Museum, and a fifteenth century, B.C. painting of a nude Egyptian girl lutist is found on the wall of a Thebes tomb), he and his alluring consort did have their "day in the sun," breathing life into a freshly idealistic concept of community.

Nudity In Ancient Greece

Centuries later, Pharaoh Akhen-Aton's passion for holistic living was enthusiastically practiced by the early Greeks. While many cultures have recognized the contributions of ancient Greece to law, politics, literature, art, and philosophy, not much has been recorded about early Greek advocacy of freedom from clothing when practical and appropriate. The dress of both the upper and lower classes within Greek society was in accordance with the simplicity and forthrightness characteristic of Greek philosophy--that a draped garment that could be taken off in a second. Even the fancier gowns designed for both sexes, with jeweled or metal shoulder clips, were made from one piece of beautifully draped material.

"When a Greek wished to dance or work, he simply slipped out of his clothing and proceeded. It was the natural thing to do, and no one was dismayed by...seeing a nude person dancing or working. Archaeologists have found many vases depicting completely naked performers at festivals and laborers in the fields," writes Anthony J. Papalas in his article "Greek Attitudes Toward Nudity."7

Historians acknowledge this ancient Greek body-attitude mainly when they write about the athletic training that took place in the Greek gymnasium. The very word gymnasium is based on the root word gymnos (meaning "naked"), the gymnasium being defined, thereby, as a place where one stripped naked to exercise.

While nudity was so common in early Greek athletics and sculpture that historically it cannot be overlooked, historians tend to downplay or ignore the religious and philosophic foundations for nudism in Greek life. For example, the Greek gymnasium is rarely presented as a place for general education which, in fact, it was. Paul LeValley, in an article appearing in the naturist magazine Clothed with the Sun offers a more accurate picture.

"The Greeks could think of no higher tribute to their gods than to imitate them--to become as godlike as possible, both mentally and physically. It was the whole person that mattered: the well-developed mind in the well-developed body. Apollo, the god of athletics, was also the god of music. In fact, the athletes trained to music. The gymnasiums were where philosophers like Socrates hung about. Almost every major school of Greek philosophy was headquartered in a gymnasium.... As Greek religion declined and was replaced by philosophy, Socrates often advocated nudity as a form of honesty."8 It is clear from this that the ancient Greeks sought balance--their goal of The Golden Mean in individual accomplishments as well as in matters of state.

Beginning with exercises in the nude, a typical day for the Greek student is described by Papalas in the article cited above: "After several hours of activity and instruction about the body, he bathed and went to his classroom--most often in the nude, for the mild climate of Greece did not require clothing except for some unusually cold days in winter.... Teachers and scholars attempted to establish an equilibrium between mind and body. The student, therefore, was required to devote the same amount of effort to physical progress as to mental."9

Pericles, the famous Greek statesman, general, and athlete, said that men should harmoniously work for "the perfect beauty of our bodies and the manly virtues of our soul.... We are lovers of beauty without having lost the taste for simplicity, and lovers of wisdom without loss of manly vigor."10

Darius, the Persian king, relying on the report of a spy sent to observe Greeks training for battle, mistakenly concluded from their attitude toward nudity and democracy that Greeks were weaklings.

The army infiltrator returned to Darius with an account of how the Greeks spent their time prancing around in the nude "or sitting, partially clothed, listening to idiots propound ridiculous ideas about freedom and equality for the individual citizen."11 Based on this information, Darius expected the Greeks would be an easy target, but his laughter turned to fear and grief when the Persian army was driven out to sea at the Battie of Marathon by well-trained opponents.

Though men of ancient Greece were offered an exceptional training as citizens (with the obvious exception of male slaves), Greek women were denied the high-level education of the gymnasium. This inequality was speciously justified by reasoning that women had less need for education because they were not permitted to participate in civic affairs along with the men. Such discrimination, however, diminished with the appearance of a women's rights movement.

Among the gains won by the women of this group was the establishment of female athletic competitions. During these games, women performed comfortably in the nude, as was the practice for men. "The Greek admiration for the human body and the willingness to display it were closely bound up with Greek honesty and intelligence. No one thought it wrong that young Spartan girls should go naked in public dances and processions. The young men who gathered to look upon the events displayed no lust or wantonness. Plutarch (the Greek biographer and historian) wrote that the appearance of these maidens was received with admiration, respect, and shamelessness."12

Eventually, nudity also became part of the tradition of the Olympic Games. Ancient historians suggest that the Olympic Games originated as far back as 1100 B.C. as peace treaty contests authorized by kings of the cities of Pisa, Elis, and Sparta. The games derived their name from the Valley of Olympia, where they were held. The first Olympic Festival for which there are records was held in 776 B.C. At least from that time forward, the Olympic Games were specifically dedicated to the Greek gods.

Athletes from Sparta are given historical credit for being the first to discard clothing while in training for competition. It's possible this occurred as early as the seventh century B.C. Since these pioneering athletes won an abnormally high proportion of the prizes because their bodies were not restricted by clothing, other Greek athletes began to emulate the nudity of the Spartans. Thereafter, nudity was an integral part of the Olympic tradition until 393 A.D., when Roman Emperor Theodosium, Christian ruler of Greece, banned the Olympic Games because he considered them to be pagan ceremonies. The gymnasia and all it stood for was then treated with contempt. It wasn't until 1896, some 1500 years later, that the Olympics were revived--but without nudity!

"Beauty to the Greeks was the very essence of virility. The perfect balance of mind and body followed the ancient Greek belief in 'meden agan,' which means 'nothing in excess.' And 'Kalos k'agathos'--the 'beautiful and good'--was the touchstone and secret of the preeminence of ancient Greece for more than five hundred years."13

Nudity in Ancient India

It is now known that social nudity in ancient Greece was encouraged by the existence of nudity among the holy men of India. For example, when Alexander the Great heard reports of nude ascetics in India, he sent Onesicritus, a Greek philosopher, to investigate the gymnosophists (a name given by the Greeks to these naked philosophers). The findings of Onesicritus must have impressed and intrigued Alexander, for he then traveled to India (in 326 B.C.) to meet with a gymnosophist group, and this meeting then led to other exchanges between the two countries.14

Pyrrho of Elis, founder of the philosophy of skepticism, studied with the gymnosophists and, upon returning to Elis, practiced their teachings, including nudism. 15 Further, when the Greek army was in India, the soldiers participated in numerous religious observances that were accompanied by nude sports activities. For several centuries thereafter, Greek athletes competing in India were occasionally reported as being both nude and in loin cloth.

In Alexander's time (356-323 B.C.) there were a number of ascetic sects in India whose members walked about naked as part of their spiritual discipline. The largest, Ajivikas, demanded complete nudity of its disciples. This group lasted about two thousand years before completely disappearing. Buddha was a naked ascetic before founding his own religion, and it has been suggested that Buddha had his followers wear robes mainly to distinguish them from the other sects.16

Today, most of the naked holy men of India are associated with the Jains, members of a major Indian religion founded about 500 B.C. Mahavira, founder of the Jains, insisted on complete nudity for the monks as part of their vow to give up all worldly goods. In time there was a split in this group, nakedness being too much of a hardship for Jains in the colder northern parts of India. These northerners donned robes and became known as Suetambaras, or '4white clad," while the southerners were thereafter referred to as Digambaras, or "clothed with the sky." The Jains have many followers in India today.17

Paul LeValley, in his article "Ancient India," compares the Greeks with the gymnosophists: "The reasons each gave for their naked asceticism or their naked athletes were strikingly similar.... [They spoke] of efficiency.... Every known group of naked Indian ascetics praised the values of the simple life which nudity encouraged. ,the lawgiver of Sparta, advocated nudity among his citizens for the same reason... [plus] reasons of health.... The gymnosophists praised nudity as a method of building endurance, as did the Greeks." Another reason given for nudity was that it promoted "independent thought and self-assurance...."

LeValley further states that "Mahavira scolded the Greeks, who mostly confined their nudity to the gymnasium, for being less assured than Indian ascetics. Mahavira often mentioned nudity as a method of becoming free from bonds...contentment with no clothes...."18 Indians and Greeks both agreed that nakedness represented a state of purity and honesty.

LeValley also points out areas of difference between the two cultures, such as the Greek emphasis on the beauty of the human body, an issue of considerably less importance within the religious philosophy of India. Whereas the gymnosophists of India referred to their nudity as a "step toward attaining oneness with the whole universe, or moksha ('the bliss of enlightenment')," the Greeks considered nudity as a basis for and expression of the wholeness of the individual and society. The Greeks thus placed more emphasis on fun, music, dance, and physical pleasure.

"Perhaps the greatest value both groups held in common, Levalley continues, "...was the association of Indian asceticism and Greek athletes with the idea of peace."19 The basis for the Olympiads, for example, was to bring together dissident Greek city-states for peaceful competition and friendship, while the Jains, on their part, practiced nonviolence (ah imsa) and vegetarianism. To this day, some Jains carry these principles to an extreme, always wearing nose and mouth masks so that insects are protected from accidental entrapment. Ghandi based his modem political and social reform movement on this Jain practice of ahimsa.

During British control of India, the gymnosophist practice of nudism was greatly curtailed. However, now that there is an independent Republic of India, the jains are again unhampered in their religious practice of nudity. In India today, some women have also joined the ranks of the naked Jain ascetics.

The Sakas, a Hindu sect of India, have transmitted their traditions of nudity to modem India through the thousands of explicit sculptures that remain on the walls of the city of Khajurako. Built about 1000 A.D., this temple at Khajurako communicates its values to the modem visitor with a directness that leaves nothing to the imagination. "Tens of thousands of human and animal figures dance happily over and around the facade of these buildings.... Kings and commoners are depicted in joyous sexual union, completely naked except for beads, bangles, and decoration.... The beauty of the body was exalted, paraded even. And, since sexual function is part of the body, that too was exalted."20

The Khajurako temple is not an isolated example of a great tolerance for nudity in ancient India. Other Indian temples, such as the revered shrines at Konarak and Ellora, also display highly realistic erotic sculptures. These representations were obviously not regarded as obscene by the people who lived at the time they were created. Their directness of statement and their placement at central public locations shows that they were an essential part of the living experience of the community, part of the fabric of their social, educational, and religious life.

Art historian Mulk Raj Anand discusses these openly erotic sculptures in his book Kama Kala, using them to explain the differences between eastern and western attitudes regarding the human body and sexuality. Speaking of these celebrations of life, he says, "There is a mutual enjoyment which excites not laughter but reverence.... Worship of the sun [was] demonstrated in the energy which brings the human couples together.... The male and female forms thus become the manifestation of duality desired by the Supreme God, the earthly symbols of manliness and procreation. And just as our human love is seen as a symbol of the great love of the Supreme God, so the Joy of physical union reflects the limitless Joy of the Deity in creation."21

Mulk Raj Anand notes that sex has been driven into "furtive corners" in the west. He believes that modern attitudes of prudery originating from western religious teachings are an unfortunate part of western culture in general and do not adequately permit enjoyment or open discussion of the tenderness of coital practice.

While modern Indian tour guides cannot avoid showing these explicit nude sculptures of Khajurako, Konarak, and Ellora to tourists from other lands, it is reported by many observers that they are not comfortable in doing so. It is evident that the body freedom depicted in the public art of ancient temples is not incorporated into the westernized lifestyle of contemporary India.

Nudity in the Orient

Until the twentieth century, the Japanese sense of modesty strongly differed from that of Europe or America. Nude communal bathing, for example, was a basic fact of daily life until fairly recently and still exists in rural areas that are distant from Japan's westernized major cities. Nevertheless, Bernard Rudofsky in his book Are Clothes Modern? observes that nudity was not an acceptable subject for traditional Japanese artists. "Even lovers bedded down on acres of quilts--a favorite subject in [Japanese] art--are always fully clothed, not because the artists were prudes but because the Japanese seem to like making love entangled in each other's garments.... [This non-Christian culture] not only skipped Original Sin but never felt a need for adopting it. "22

However, the Japanese were far from being prudes! Their attitude that everything natural is moral is revealed in the "bridal books" published for hundreds of years in Japan as a means of practical sex education for young women. Through explicit text and pictures, this type of book prepared the unmarried Japanese woman for the sexual conduct that would, or should, take place after her wedding. Experienced couples were also provided with "pillow books," meant to be kept near the bed. These contained erotically stimulating illustrations to enhance marital enjoyment.

Members of the Chinese upper class were much more inhibited and even considered their unclothed peasantry to be subhuman. Nudity, even in art, was seen as immoral. In his essay The Future of Nakedness, John Langdon-Davies tells a story about the Jesuit priests who were horrified to learn that the Chinese regarded the Christian books containing beautifully colored religious pictures of male and female saints in classical drapery as pomographic.23

In ancient China, strict custom even prevented a woman of high rank from being unclothed in the presence of her doctor. The only way she could communicate with her doctor regarding her physical problems was to point to the corresponding place on a miniature ivory or alabaster nude sculpture. These little statues, items of considerable importance for every respectable Chinese household in more ancient times, can still be purchased by tourists in Chinese sections of modem cities throughout the world.24

By examining the bathing habits of a culture, it's possible to determine body-image attitudes with some precision. The Japanese, Turkish, and Scandinavian peoples in recent times, for example, have traditionally enjoyed communal nude bathing, as did their earlier cultures. In the Greco-Roman empire, until its decadent and declining years, the two sexes usually commingled during communal nude bathing because the emphasis of the culture was on cleanliness, health, and socializing, not on physical sexual differences. During the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church suppressed such bathing practices.25 However, communal nude bathing where the sexes were usually segregated survived in parts of central and northern Europe until, finally, the modern nudist movement initiated the currently relaxed European attitudes toward mixed-sex nudity in spas and on beaches.

The western world, from the Middle Ages through the nineteenth century, was not known for body cleanliness. Since the unclothed body was thought of as sinful, the sensual practices of languishing in a nurturing bath or soaking in a communal bathhouse (such as the luxurious, body-pampering baths of the Orient) were not only unavailable for the vast majority of people but were unthinkable and unacceptable. Sponge or "splash" baths were the custom, and the use of perfume was more of a cover-up for infrequent bathing than a means for sexual allurement.

Turkish baths utilizing thermal hot springs were constructed wherever the Ottoman Empire ruled, introducing to many parts of Europe the pleasurable and health-promoting cycle of nude swimming, sweating, and massage regeneration. Both men and women of the Ottoman Empire used the baths as a social center, but always with the sexes segregated.

However, in Japan, a country blessed with natural volcanic hot springs, nude family and mixed-sex communal bathing were approved by the prevailing religions for over two thousand years. Some of the public bath houses in Japan today have private rooms of various sizes where families or social groups can experience the steaming pools in privacy. Most common, however, is the large community pool.

Originally a Shinto purification rite, the practice of social bathing in the nude spread throughout Japan and became as much a part of Japanese daily life as the rising of the sun. Shintoism, prior to 1945 the state religion of Japan, emphasizes personal cleanliness, both spiritually and physically. However, even the Buddhist monks built bath houses within their temple compounds. At the beginning of each day, these monks would gather branches of pine, holly, or boxwood trees in preparation for heating the thick-walled red clay "firebox" which was set on a floor of stones. The doors were opened to the public once the steam was up. Some bath houses offered tea ceremonies, while others provided fruit and other food. There were sansulces (bath boys) and bath maidens who offered their service of back scrubbing.

Therefore, most Japanese men and women have grown up accustomed to being viewed in the nude and to seeing the nudity of others at all ages. Yet, with the faster pace of life typical of the larger cities in Japan and with the westernization of home architecture, the neighborhood bath house is losing its previous prominence. The communal, nude thermal springs, however, remain prized vacation spots. In many areas of Japan, the winters are bitterly cold, and the natural hot springs traditionally have been a pleasurable and healthful refuge--steaming oases nestled in craggy mountains and lush forests. Some of these pools have now become the sites of modern resort hotels.

The presently popular use of hot-tub spas in the United States obviously originated from these ancient and traditional customs of communal bathing so prominent in Japan, Scandinavia, and Turkey.

Witchcraft and Satanism

To many people, the word witchcraft conjures up visions of evil Hailoween hags on broomsticks or strange and perhaps depraved rituals of nudity and sex. However, some historians believe that witchcraft is the oldest religion in the world and, therefore, quite respectable despite the prevalent prejudices of Judaism and Christianity. These historians of religion say that witchcraft's fertility rites are only a worship and awe of nature, and that the monthly new-moon "esbats" and seasonal "sabbats" are only ceremonial rituals in an appeal to the gods for fecundity of the earth and fertility of its inhabitants. The word witchcraft, for example, actually means "craft of the wise," since Wicca," its root, means "wise one." As civilization developed, this old religion became a blend of fertility cults, Egyptian occultism, and ancient kabbalistic studies.26

This attitude was carried to such extremes that huge numbers of innocent people were murdered. It is now known that the great majority of those unfortunate victims had no connection with wrong-doing other than being identified as immoral and evil by their fearful neighbors and enemies. Of course, it is conceivable that there were a few witches at the time who used their potions and pills for personal profit and revenge, as their accusers claimed, just as some witches must have "cursed" their persecutors with great forcefulness. But the Wicca tradition as a whole was a religion celebrating joy, health, and fruitful harvests.

This old religion is having a renaissance today as part of the "New Age" interest in metaphysics and psychic phenomena. Meditation and hypnosis, traditional tools of witchcraft, are now popular methods of "raising consciousness" toward accomplishing personal and global changes. Flowers, herbs, and crystals, the natural sacraments of the old religion, are also widely used by New Agers in their healing rituals.

Much of the evil that has been attributed to witchcraft is actually part of the quite different traditions of Satanism and/or Devil Worship. Cults of this type were based on atheistic hedonism rather than on nature worship. Like witches, the members also practiced ritualistic nudity, but their emphasis was on orgiastic sexuality. Their "black mass" was centered around a nude woman as the altar, and their rites included liberal usage of drugs and hallucinogenic potions.

Their theology was and still is different. Anton Lavey, whose Church of Satan was founded in San Francisco in 1966, believes that even if there is a God, He is unable to intervene in human events. Since Satan, according to LaVey's devotees, is the symbol of the material world and man's carnal nature, he becomes the worshiped idol. At one time, Satanism was acknowledged to be a functioning religion (or anti-religion) in Europe, but never on a large scale.

Through the ages, rituals of vengeance through animal and human sacrifice and weird stories of rituals with nude dead bodies have been associated with Satanism. While the possibility of the existence of secret devil-cult practices in modem times cannot be ignored, LaVey's Church of Satan seems to be a nonthreatening version of devil worship. But horror stories of killings and sexual abuse do surface on occasion and are often attributed to the rituals of "devil cults." For instance, on a recent television program (1989), Geraldo Rivera interviewed a law enforcement officer who stated that the infamous cult of mass murderer Charles Manson had been linked to the "Son of Sam " group, purported to be a satanic cult.

Early Christian Nudists

There are a number of ministers and priests in the contemporary nudist movement. In fact, the modem nudist movement was largely organized by ordained religious leaders, as discussed more fully in Chapter 8. These religious leaders used as their justification the many parts of the Judaic-Christian Bible which speak of accepting the human body without shame (such as references to those apostles who were fishermen, naked at their work). Religious nudists use these quotations as an answer to the fundamentalist preachers who sermonize about God's demand for clothing.

For example, the Rev. Martin Wadestone, author of "Nudism and Christianity," writes: "Actually, in the light of the Bible, there is no sin in nudity itself; but if a person uses the nudity for lustful or immoral purposes he has misused it, and this constitutes a sin. The Bible does not speak against nudity nor does it teach that the body is shameful. There is reference to shame in nudity, but this shame was produced in the mind of man, not by divine ordination."28

This was also the belief of at least five groups in the history of Christianity: the Carpocrations, Adamites, Adamianis, Encratites, and Marcosians. Most of the historical information we have concerning the beliefs and practices of these early Christians comes to us, in fact, through the recorded criticisms and diatribes of Roman Catholic Church authorities, since these authorities have largely destroyed the writings of those they considered heretical.

Platonic philosopher Carpocrates, born in Alexandria, Egypt in the second century A.D., believed in one God as creator of the world and all things in it. He combined the Christian ideal of the brotherhood of man with portions of Plato's Republic, advocating that the glories of God should not be hidden. He urged Christians, both male and female, to look upon the natural body with gratitude for the creative force of God-love. His disciples suffered ridicule and sometimes severe persecution but continued their practices into the fourth century A.D. Records indicate that nude statues and a museum were created to honor this sect. It was the Carpocrations who first portrayed Christ's body in the exposed form commonly seen to this day.

The Adamianis existed in the second and third centuries A.D. They were a group that hoped to regain the innocence mankind lost in the Garden of Eden and, consequently, worshiped in a state of nakedness and lived as a nudist community. It's believed that groups of Adamianis used deserted pagan temples for their own rituals.

Some generations later, Encratites and Marcosians, who developed out of the Adamiani tradition, appeared on the scene. The Encratites were vegetarians and many, if not all, practiced nudism. In ancient Gaul (France), a Gnostic teacher named Marcus and his followers became known as Marcosians and were well established in the Rhone Valley by the third century. Irenaeus, a conservative Christian writer of the day, criticized their nudity and religious beliefs, remarking: "Marcus is regarded by these senseless and brain cracked as working miracles."29

The Adamites (no connection with the Adamianis) were an active sect in Bohemia during the fifteenth century A.D. They were part of the Hussite Reformation. This group set up numerous religious nude communities.

Natural-living Christians were referred to by traditionalists as "Gnostic heretics," because their Christian doctrines were influenced by esoteric teachings and Eastern mystical thought. Henry de Horatev has written that, while in one sense they could be considered Gnostics, "they were not Gnostics but just plain radical Christians."30

These "in-the-buff" religious groups were not exhibitionists, preferring to live in isolated and inaccessible seclusion, protected by the forests in Gaul, the deserts in Egypt, and the islands of Greece.

They built sturdy stone walls for privacy and protection from the hostile communities surrounding them. DeHoratev reflects, "How much it is to be regretted that the only records we have of the early Christian nudists come to us from hostile censorious quarters! Let us hope that someday, in some European or African monastery or tomb, there will be discovered a cache of lost Gnostic books which will shed new light on the persecuted groups of the nudists of antiquity, just as the Dead Sea Scrolls have brought new understanding to the old Hebrew literature."3

Nudity as Protest

Nakedness has been used throughout history as a form of protest as well as an expression of positive human values. If one's aim is to get noticed, in a clothed society stripping is certainly an effective method of gaining attention. This was a tactic used by some hippies in the 1960s and also by a number of religious protesters throughout history. For example, regarding the famous St. Francis of Assisi: "0n being rebuked by his bishop, he snatched off his clothes and walked naked through the streets."32

While it is possible, of course, to interpret this as an act of religious humility rather than protest, there is no doubt about the Doukhobors of Canada, who left Russia in 1898 and still exist in small colonies to the north of the United States. An extremist and individualistic sect of anarchists who separated from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1785, the Doukhobors numbered some 15,000 persons when they first came to Canada. Calling themselves "Sons of Freedom," they were constantly in trouble with the law because of their refusal to conform with Canadian laws governing educational, civic, and cultural standards. The Doukhobors often protested en masse in the nude. Their first nude parade was in 1903, and though the demonstrators were prosecuted and jailed, they continued this unique manner of making a statement for several decades.

Body Freedom Related to Status of Women

Even after European religious practices placed tight restrictions on body freedom and sexual enjoyment, there were periods of relaxed attitudes, perhaps as a reaction to prolonged social and sexual repressions. Jorge Lewinski, author of The Naked and The Nude, notes that some historians connect such fluctuations with a changed status of women in these cultures. He points to the early Middle Ages as being strictly patriarchal, dominated by priests with repressive attitudes toward nakedness and sex. The later Middle Ages, however, are noted for chivalry, troubadours, admiration of women, and more relaxed attitudes. The Renaissance was an era of greater prestige for women, with its Greco-Roman dress and appreciation for nonreligious nude paintings. The increased body freedom appears to be related to the flourishing arts movement of the period.

Then came Calvin and Luther, who brought back patriarchal moral restraints during the Reformation movement. This was again followed by a relaxation of morals in the eighteenth century which, for a short time, restored women's social position. Next, there was a deep plunge into the restrictive, patriarchal Victorian period--from which the feminist-oriented twentieth century has not yet completely emerged.33

The Puritan Ethic, Victorianism, and Body Shame

The whole man from head to foot is thus, as it were, drenched in a flood of wickedness so that no part has remained without sin and so everything which springs from him is counted as sin.

John Calvin, 16th century Reformist

Our weakness lies not in our works but in our nature; our person, nature, and entire being are corrupted through Adam's fall

Martin Luther, 16th century Reformist

John Calvin, a Frenchman who was incensed by the wealth, flamboyance, and moral license of the ruling Catholic Church, became a leader of the Reform movement. Forced to flee his country, Calvin received recognition in Switzerland as the founder ofprotestant Presbyterianism. He also gained fame as a founder of the ''puritan ethic.''

Martin Luther, a German monk, was the "Father of the Reformation." In 1517 he broke with papal authority to form the Protestant Lutheran Church, rebelling against what he saw as the moral laxity and extravagances of the Catholic Church and its aristocracy. Luther brought fundamentalist, no-nonsense religion to a ready and willing middle class.

With the advent of Protestantism came biblical interpretations which stressed, as never before, the impurity and sin inherent in the human body. Also emphasized was devil-fear. While God was mind and spirit, the Devil represented evil and tantalizing body sensuality. Suspected witches were persecuted and put to death on the flimsiest of hearsay. A test for detecting a witch in England (abolished in 1219 but said to have been practiced until the 18th century) is described in Robert T. Smith's Cult and Occult. "First they stripped her. Then they tied the thumb of her right hand to the big toe of her left foot. Then the thumb of her left hand to the big toe of her right foot. Then they threw her into a river or pond. If she sank and drowned, she wasn't a witch. If she floated, she was helped by the Devil and they would pull her out and execute her. "34

The puritan ethic came to America with the Mayflower. Our first settlers were hard-working Protestant pilgrim pioneers who had neither the time nor the inclination for frivolity. Their body guilt and shame became the law of the land, and this law was even more extreme in the United States than overseas. In Europe, extreme prudery was largely confined to the middle class, since the aristocracy and lower classes were apt to take more liberties with the rules of religious moralists. However, in America, the moral prohibition against so-called "acts of the Devil" was stronger.

During the 1600s and 1700s, any deviation from the norm in behavior or lifestyle was suspect. Hysterical zealots carried out witch hunts that were even more senseless than those in Europe. And a law in effect while New Jersey was still a British colony allotted the same penalty given witches to women: "...whether virgins, maids, or widows who shall after this Act, impose upon, seduce, or betray into matrimony any of His Majesty's subjects by virtue of scents, cosmetics, washes, paints, artificial teeth, or highheeled shoes." 35

In Europe, the few years of physical and emotional body-freedom experienced during the Napoleonic period shifted to the version of puritanical repression known to history as Victorianism. A middle-class morality was developing that emphasized self-reliance, self-control, and love of work. This fit well with the views of religious moralists, whose beliefs were now supported by the ruling monarchy. In England, Queen Victoria (who reigned from 1837 to 1901) and Prince Albert set patterns of conduct that were accepted as the new morality of Europe and North America.

Shame regarding sexual desires and activities reached such extremes that a woman in the mid-1800s minimized and hid all body parts except her face. She wore layers of petticoats and was enveloped in clothing from high-collared blouse to floor-length bustled skirt, a bonnet completely covering her head and a shawl drawn around the body. "Even a lady's hands were hidden. An 1840 Victorian ladies' journal advised that "Gloves are always graceful for a lady in the house except at meals." And some women did not appear at the table "barehanded. They wore fingerless mittens."37 Men were also expected to be "proper' in both dress and manner.

However, obliterating the body was not sufficient for the morality of the Victorian period. Sexual words and references to body parts were removed from "proper" language to prevent the stimulation of sinful sexual desires. It was offensive to mention the human body in the mixed company of polite society. Legs became "limbs," a chicken leg became "dark meat," and a chicken breast "white meat." Some people took modesty to the extreme of covering such items as piano legs. Thomas Bowdler brought "respectability" to Shakespeare by publishing ten volumes of his works with all words alluding to sex or nudity removed.

The Victorian age lasted from mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Victorianism created a society of contradictions by placing body taboos on normal biological urges and needs. Medical textbooks of the time stated that any woman who had sexual pleasure was abnormal. Frigidity for women was considered desirable, and doctors prescribed sedatives for those who were not frigid. While it was acceptable for men to have sexual desires, the medical profession warned that male indulgences would lead to a permanent drain on their psychic and physical resources.

Nevertheless, the pride of the Victorian husband in having a "proper" wife was a facade that hid a dark side. There were more prostitutes per capita roaming the streets of London during this time than at any other period of that city's history. A flourishing trade in pornography and a profitable trade in virgins existed. Young girls were abducted: "The going rate on the clandestine market fluctuated between five and forty Pounds, according to their age and beauty."38 After having been disgraced, these girls often joined the ranks of prostitutes.

This was the heyday of surreptitious "French Postcards," printed photographs of nude females that by today's standards would be considered little more than coy or mildly suggestive. However, these postcards were undoubtedly "racy" to the deprived male who had no other opportunity to satisfy natural curiosity about the female body. Along these lines, it was reported that the famous poets who were symbols of nineteenth century romance, Elizabeth Barrett and her husband, Robert Browning, never saw each other's nude body.

There was censorship of books, art, theater, and dance. However, nudity was allowed in paintings of an allegorical or cherubic nature. It was also permissible to view the torture of nude or transparently draped saints, and pictures of the sensuous, suffering male Saviour were displayed in respectable homes. "In the penumbra of a chapel, Saint Sebastian triumphed on a canvas and in stone as a glorified pinup of the pious, while Adam and Eve, the perennial exhibitionists, could always be depended upon to rescue nakedness from oblivion. In plain daylight, however, the human body was carefully hidden from sight. Clothes were hermetic."39

However, reality in secular art provoked violent reactions during the Victorian period. Such familiar works as Gustave Courbet's Bathers and Manet's Luncheon on the Gross and Olympia were considered obscene. While French writer Emile Zola passionately defended Manet, the extensive collection of Greek and Roman statues displayed in the Vatican was "fig-leafed." Nude sculptures sent to museums by missionaries were mutilated or covered with loin cloths.

In the late 1940s, a team from Life Magazine was assigned to take the first direct-color photographs of the renowned Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. Church authorities were cooperative with one exception. All photographs of Michelangelo's famed ceiling had to be cropped before publication to remove the frontal nudity of the figures. However, there was no restriction on photographing the murals on the lower walls. It was learned that one of the previous popes had assigned an artist to take care of lower-level nudity by painting drapes over exposed midsections. Since the famous ceiling was so inaccessible, its figures had not been subjected to draping.

The United States had Anthony Comstock, notorious for his crusades against anything suggestive of sex or sensuality. A special agent for the US Post Office starting in 1868, he waged a relentless fight against "smut," resulting in the confiscation of the masterpieces of such famous painters and writers as George Bernard Shaw, Tolstoy, Zola, Balzac, Stendhal, and Flaubert. His censorship powers limited the body freedom, art, and reading material of the nation for four decades. And his repressive mandates remained part of the U.S. postal regulations for many years after his death. 40

The literati of the day were constantly at war with Comstock. Writers and critics complained that "...many of his cases concerned books and plays and pictures which were pornographic only by the wildest stretch of the imagination."41 Comstock's obsession with what he considered smut made him privy to many of today's masterpieces of erotica, such as the works of D. H. Lawrence and Henry Miller, the Kama Kala temple art of India, and many sculptural and pictorial works of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He also founded the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, was given police powers, and carried a gun while looking for lewdity. "On one occasion he entered a brothel and offered three women fourteen dollars to strip naked, then arrested them when they did." 42 The predecessor of Comstock was "hell and brimstone" Rev. John R. McDowell. This protector of the masses from the evils of licentiousness was secretly a collector of pornography.43

Perhaps the most cruel and destructive manifestation of Victorianism was the insensitive treatment of native cultures by religious missionaries and European colonists. With no regard for native pride and dignity, for their religious customs, nor for the practicality of their dress and lifestyle, arrogant victorianism demanded conformity with European customs. Forcing clothing on those peoples whose cultures had previously permitted them to experience body freedom was not only demean ing and humiliating but an effective and constant reminder of their "inferior" heritage and status. An 1894 report by a former governor of a Tonga village describes these conditions: "It was punishable by fine and imprisonment to wear native clothing; punishable by fine and imprisonment to wear long hair or a garland of flowers; punishable by fine and imprisonment to wrestle or to play ball; punishable not to wear shirt and trousers and, in certain localities, coat and shoes also...."41

The Christian missionaries created cover-up garments from whatever source was available. They often forced the natives to wear sacklike coverings, but odd assortments of discarded clothing from the Continent were also given to them. Richard Harrington tells of seeing "a strapping black stevedore in Leopoidville wear a child's pink bonnet, unaware he was ridiculous to the eyes of the white man. I have seen African women with castoff brassieres arranged above their breasts for use as pockets."45

"Since the natives had never learned to wash or mend clothes, it took them a long time to adapt to European garments, which were at first worn until they fell to pieces. There was a great decline in cleanliness with resulting skin diseases and other infections."46 The natives were subjected to the same kind of embarrassment in having to be seen in clothing as we, in a clothed society, would feel upon being forced to abandon ours. It is a wonder that more missionaries didn't end up in the cannibal's pot!

However, there were always voices of protest against the moralistic, antisexual, and body-shame edicts of the Victorian period, especially from the educated classes. In 1833, Thomas Carlyle wrote a much-discussed book, Sartor Resartus, in which he challenged the dogma of the indispensability of clothing. He discussed the moral, religious, and polifical influence of clothes, humorously observing that if there were nakedness in the House of Lords, their power would be diminished. Also, he philosophically considered the possibility of a nude world.47

Benjamin Franklin wrote of his daily ritual, a nude cold-air bath each morning while reading or writing. Franklin is reported to have been seen swimming the Thames in London without clothing. In Leysin, Switzerland, Dr. Charles Rollier was obtaining cures of tuberculosis and other diseases by prescribing sunbathing as an element of treatment. British writers and artists, such as George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and Aubrey Beardsley, ridiculed the mores of their society and demonstrated their beliefs by occasionally wearing extreme clothing or displaying unconventional behavior. In America, writer Henry David Thoreau and poet Walt Whitman expressed strong feelings about the need for back-to-nature innocence and body freedom.

Twentieth Century Modernism

At the turn of the century, famous American dancer Isadora Duncan started wearing loosely draped clothing in ordinary life and on the stage, saying, "I live in my body like a spirit in a cloud." She captivated audiences in America and Europe with the graceful new freedom and expressiveness of her performances in filmy, flowing Greek tunics. By her break with convention, Duncan not only started a new fashion in dance but opened the way to twentieth century modernism in clothing, making the corset obsolete.

The rebellion against Victorian clothing took another turn in Germany where, in 19O3, Richard Ungewitter wrote a book, Die Nacktheit, which advocated a return to ancient Greek attitudes toward nudity for hygienic and moralistic reasons. In 1905 Paul Zimmerman opened the first resort for social and family nudism, Freilichtpark (Free Light Park). At the same time another German, Dr. Heinrich Pudor, wrote a book titled Nacktcultur, which discussed the benefits of nudity in coeducation and advocated the enjoyment of sports free of cumbersome clothing. "Dr. Pudor called nudity aristocratic and slavery to clothes a plebeian characteristic, stating that all nations which completely disregard the rights of their people to nudity rapidly become decadent."48 The nudist movement (now international in scope) sprang from such simple beginnings, in bold defiance of what had become a century-long mentality of body denial.

The women's suffragette movement had begun to challenge the status quo prior to World War One, but it wasn't until after the war that the tight reign of repressive morality began to shake loose. When their men were sent off to war, women took charge of managing their families and worked at jobs never before available to them. By the 1920s women had emancipated themselves from restricting dresses and were showing off their bodies in abbreviated blouses and short skirts. Women even discarded the crown of femininity by "bobbing" their hair. Furtive curiosity about nakedness was replaced by the openness of nudity in entertainment. Burlesque striptease, Ziegfeld's Follies, Earl Carroll's Vanities, and George White's Scandals were spectacular and sensual displays of the joy and beauty of the female body. On the bolder Parisian stage, musical productions included full nudity.

However, the permissive glamour of the 1920s "flapper" era was tempered by the great depression that followed. By this time the body was liberated from cumbersome clothing, sexuality was publicly acknowledged, and it didn't seem possible to go back. Nevertheless, there were, and are, many indications that our culture as a whole has not broken completely from its heritage of guilt and shame rooted in the "original sin" written about in our biblical roots.

The naked body is still considered unnatural. Nudity on American televtsion is rare. During the daytime hours, when children are watching, nudity isn't permissible. Children are protected from the "damaging" effects of viewing a natural, normal, and harmless human body, but body violence is condoned as entertainment for our children and ourselves. Such confused value systems help fill the psychiatric couch!

1. Quoted from an anonymous article in The Los Angeles Times, January 3, 1988.

2. Tibor Sekelj, "Living in the Jungle,"Nude Living #39 (Los Angeles: Elysium, Inc., 1967).

3. Henry deHoratey, "The Nudist Pharoah," Nude Living#9 (Los Angeles: Elysium, Inc., 1962).

4. J. Herman, "King and Queen of the Sun," NudistAdventure #15 (Los Angeles: Elysium, Inc., 1968).

5. deHoratev, op. cit.

6. Ibid.

7. Anthony J. Papalas, "Greek Attitudes Toward Nudity," Nudist Adventure #13 (Los Angeles: Elysium, Inc., 1967).

8. Paul LeValley, "Ancient India," Clothed with the Sun, Vol.6.4 (Oshkosh, WI: The Naturists, Inc., Winter, 1986-87).

9. Papalas, op. cit.

10. Lynn Poole and Gray Poole, History of the Olympic Games (New York: Ivan Obolensky Publishers, 1963).

11. Ibid.

12. Papalas, op. cit.

13. Poole, op. ciL

14. LeValley, op. cit.

15. deHoratev, op. cit.

16. LeValley, op. cit.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Murray Wren, "A Nudist view of Social History,"

Nudist Adventure #9 (Los Angeles: Elysium, Inc., 1966).

21. Mulk Raj Anand, Kama Kala (Nagel Publishers, 1959) (from a book review in Evergreen Review cited in Nude Living#2) (Los Angeles: Elysium, Inc., 1961).

22. Bernard Rudofsky, Are Clothes Modern? (Chicago: Paul Theobald Publishers, 1947).

23. William Hartm an, Marilyn Fithian, and Donald Johnson, NudistSociety (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1970).

24. Marvin K. Opler, "TheAbsence of Clothes Doesn't Mean the Absence of Morality," Sexual BehaviorMagazine (January, 1973).

25. L. Clovis Hirning, "(Clothing and Nudism," Encyclopedia of Sexual Behavior, eds. Albert Ellis and Albert Abarbanee (New York: Hawthorn l~ooks, 1961).

26. Nathaniel Lande, Mindstyles, Lifestyles (Los Angeles: Price/Stern/Sloan, 1976).

27. Justine Glass, Witchcraft, the Sixth Sense (North Hollywood, CA: Wilshire Book Company, 1974).

28. Martin Wadestone, "Nudism and Christianity," Sundial #19 (Los Angeles: Elysium, Inc., 1964).

29. Henry deHoratev, "Early Christian Nudists," Nude Living #2 (Los Angeles: Elysium, Inc., 1961).

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid.

32. Bernard Rudofsky, The Unfashionable Human Body (Garden City, NY: l)oubleday& Company, 1971).

33. Jorge Lewinski, The Naked and The Nude (New York: Harmony Books, 1987).

34. Robert T. Smith, Cult and Occult (Minneapolis, MN: Winston Press, 1973).

35. Lawrence Langner, The Importance of Wearing Clothes (New York: Hastings Rouse Press, 1959).

36. Edmund Kieman, "The 19th Century and Nudity," Nude Living#1 (Los Angeles: Elysium Publishing, Inc., 1961).

37. Emily Coleman and Betty Edwards, Body Liberation (Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, Inc., 1977).

38. Lewinski, op. cit.

39. Rudofsky, The Unfashionable Human Body, op. cit.

40. Lewinski, op. cit.

41. Hartman et al, op. cit.

42. Dennis Craig Smith with Dr. William Sparks, Growing Up Without Shame (Los Angeles: Elysium Growth Press, 1986).

43. Lewinski, op. cit.

44. Rudofsky, The Unfashionable Human Body, op. cit.

45. Richard Harrington, "The Vanishing Nude," Nude Living #27 (Los Angeles: Elysium Publishing, Inc., 1965)

46. Hirning, op. cit.

47. Kiernan, op. cit.

48. Ibid.