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“Unto the pure all things are pure” is quoted from Titus and may well serve as the slogan for this entertaining and serious study of why
human beings thought it desirable to wear clothes, or not to wear, so many, at certain times and in divers places, the pun being apologized for.
After having been an active, very active worker in social uplift movements, mostly sound and advisable, the author here comes out for the nudist movement. In order to do so, the whole problem, more philosophically clothed by Carlyle in the Victorian Era, must needs be explored. This work does just this, beginning with Religious Customs and Myths, as among the Israelites and Canaanites, The Myth of Sex and Sin goes on and our author traces its history among the early Christians, interspersed with modern fanaticisms, very diffuse and rambling. The Modesty Concept is then discussed in a similar manner. He would show it is not innate, else certain tribes would not ramble about naked, at times and in certain places.
Dr. Warren and the modern psychology studies come in for a review in Chapter V, Modern Witchcraft Persecutions in Chapter VII, etc., etc., with the legal parasites fattening on the trial of Mrs. Dennett's The Sex Side of Life. Truly a lesson in class parasitism rendered possible by the law-making groups. This in a later chapter with its pro's and con's and the opinions of certain judges and lawyers more honest and socially illumined than the prosecutor persecutors! Then of course, ‘Anthony Comstock', Congress and the Post Office. What can be done about it? This is the final chapter.
A turgid, fervent, and somewhat diffuse and very unorganized mass of material. All on the manifest content level with little valuable insight into the latent content of the whole situation.