Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 - Sexual Selection In Man by Havelock Ellis
page 68 of 399 (17%)
page 68 of 399 (17%)
|
and there are sufficient grounds for such an association, it is important
to remember that it is not an inevitable and fatal association; a scrupulously clean person is by no means necessarily impelled to licentiousness; a physically unclean person is by no means necessarily morally pure. When we have eliminated certain forms of the bath which must be regarded as luxuries rather than hygienic necessities, though they occasionally possess therapeutic virtues, we have eliminated the most violent appeals of the bath to the sexual impulse. So imperative are the demands of physical purity now becoming, in general opinion, that such small risks to moral purity as may still remain are constantly and wisely disregarded, and the immoral traditions of the bath now, for the most part, belong to the past. SMELL. I. The Primitiveness of Smell--The Anatomical Seat of the Olfactory Centres--Predominance of Smell among the Lower Mammals--Its Diminished Importance in Man--The Attention Paid to Odors by Savages. The first more highly organized sense to arise on the diffused tactile sensitivity of the skin is, in most cases, without doubt that of smell. At first, indeed, olfactory sensibility is not clearly differentiated from general tactile sensibility; the pit of thickened and ciliated epithelium or the highly mobile antennæ which in many lower animals are sensitive to |
|