(3) The custom of nakedness, in its inception at all events, has a dynamic psychological influence also on morals, an influence exerted in the substitution of a strenuous and positive morality for the merely negative and timid morality which has ruled in this sphere.
Perhaps there are not many adults who realize the intense and secret absorption of thought in the minds of many boys and some girls concerning the problem of the physical conformation of the other sex, and the time, patience, and intellectual energy which they are willing to expend on the solution of this problem.

This is mostly effected in secret, but not seldom the secret impulse manifests itself with a sudden violence which in the blind eyes of the law is reckoned as crime.

A German lawyer, Dr.
Werthauer, has lately stated that if there were a due degree of familiarity with the natural organs and functions of the opposite sex ninety per cent.

of the indecent acts of youths with girl children would disappear, for in most cases these are not assaults but merely the innocent, though uncontrollable, outcome of a repressed natural curiosity.
It is quite true that not a few children boldly enlist each others' cooeperation in the settlement of the question and resolve it to their mutual satisfaction.

But even this is not altogether satisfactory, for the end is not attained openly and wholesomely, with a due subordination of the specifically sexual, but with a consciousness of wrong-doing and an exclusive attentiveness to the merely physical fact which tend directly to develop sexual excitement.