The moment personality is
acknowledged as the only decisive factor in erotic life, chaotic
impersonal sensuality stands condemned. The obscene is the darker aspect
of modern love, and without modern love it could not exist. Its essence
is negative, is the tendency to caricature and mock the highest form of
love. The photograph of a nude woman is not obscene; but if the face is
hidden, and thus the personal moment intentionally eliminated in favour
of the generic element, it approaches the obscene. This accounts for the
widely felt pleasure in obscene pictures; the beholder is not personally
engaged, he can enjoy these pictures without taking upon his shoulders
any kind of responsibility. Even that minimum of respect which the very
dregs of humanity may claim is not required of him. The picture is
capable of affording pleasure without claiming a grain of human
kindness. Thus it would seem that sensual pleasure is possible without
any sacrifice of the inwardly professed higher eroticism, a sacrifice
which might be a bar to a primitive relationship with a woman of flesh
and blood.
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