They are not aesthetically
beautiful. It is fundamentally necessary that the intromittent organ of
the male and the receptive canal of the female should retain their
primitive characteristics; they cannot, therefore, be greatly modified by
sexual or natural selection, and the exceedingly primitive character they
are thus compelled to retain, however sexually desirable and attractive
they may become to the opposite sex under the influence of emotion, can
rarely be regarded as beautiful from the point of view of aesthetic
contemplation. Under the influence of art there is a tendency for the
sexual organs to be diminished in size, and in no civilized country has
the artist ever chosen to give an erect organ to his representations of
ideal masculine beauty. It is mainly because the unaesthetic character of a
woman's sexual region is almost imperceptible in any ordinary and normal
position of the nude body that the feminine form is a more aesthetically
beautiful object of contemplation than the masculine. Apart from this
character we are probably bound, from a strictly aesthetic point of view,
to regard the male form as more aesthetically beautiful.[139] The female
form, moreover, usually overpasses very swiftly the period of the climax
of its beauty, often only retaining it during a few weeks.
Pages:
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327