Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

THE BIOLOGY OF SEXattractions he has experienced. It isunnecessary to emphasizethe existence of this factor, which has always to betaken into account in every consideration of sexual selectionin civilized man. But its variations are numerous, andin impassioned lovers it may even lead to the idealizationof features which are in reality the reverse of beautiful.We here approach the field of morbid sexual deviations.It is thus that we have to recognize another factor inthe constitution of the ideal of beauty, one perhaps exclu*sively found under civilized conditions: the love of theunusual, the remote, the exotic. It iscommonly statedthat rarity is admired in beauty. This isnot strictly true,except as regards combinations and characters which varyonly in a slight degree from the generally admired type."Jucundum nihil estquod non reficit variatas" accordingto an ancient saying. The greater nervous restlessness andsensitivity of civilization heightens this tendency, which isnot infrequently found also among men of artistic genius.In every great center of civilization the national idealof beauty tends to be somewhat modified in exotic directions,and foreign ideals, as well as foreign fashions, becomepreferred to those that are native.Beauty, if thus the chief, is not the sole, element in thesexual appeal of vision. In all parts of the world this hasbeen well understood, and in courtship, in the effort toarouse tumescence, the appeals to vision have been multipliedand at the same time aided by other secondaryappeals.Thus we have scoptophilia (mixoscopia) or the sexualexcitement aroused by the sight of sexual scenes, or evensimply of the sexual organs of the opposite sex. To someextent this is entirely normal, its shamefaced manifestationsbeing simply due to the rigid conventional secrecyin which the naked body is held. Many estimable men[73]