The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1895-11-24

man would not need to wear clothing as a
consolation. " OF course you do not
believe all this, but 1 do not write 1T only
for you and your children and your chill
dren's children. but above all for myself; OF
myself and for myself. When 1 say
TO you that hair is the natural clothing OF
man you smile. but there are many living
to-day who. where they are n~aked-where
one can see their bodies-are almost COM
pletely covered with hair, especially about
their faces; the hair Of the head. the eye
lashes, the eyebrows. the whiskers, the
beard, the mustaches. And is such a man
the object of your scorn? Aye; in France
we even find numberless women who wear
boards. Fer the rest it is woman who has
suffered most by degeneration. She is
a beard. = Moreover the desire for a
natural clothing Of hair is not yet entirely
extinct. For We rejoice still to see a head
covered with a luxurious growth of hair:
We rejoice to see a maiden whose golden
hair falls over her hips. and 1t distresses us
to lose our hair, for. otherwise. we should
not wear wigs"
Herr Scham is not averse to baths. IF
you will wash yourself in water, go TO the
mountains and lie down in a mountain
spring. That will wash the sediment from
your body" But. on the whole. he seems
to prefer sun baths. Sun yourself in the
sum- he advises. and so long as your
skin does not perspire you have not suffi-
GENTLY summed yourself" And after the
manner of certain old authors who deemed
1t necessary to find an authority among
Tic lCAcllC W GupDOlI Tic CNCtg oldbC-
ment, he adds: There was one man in
olden days who took sun baths-Diogenes.
stand out of the sun, Alexander And
further on he says: But / will tel you
of still better baths. You might call them
wind baths. There is a wind that comes
from the west. but this is not the west
wind of which / speak: the west wind from
the distant seas. When this one comes
then hang yourselves-without clothing
high in the air and remain hanging so long
as the wind blows. Poor wretches!
~ r.,~A- IL AZ live q fhnucnnd -
no not even a hundred. And If you go at
the present pace you will shortly not live
twenty-five years. But so it will not be.
Already you are growing wiser and take
air baths"
Heinrich Scham ranks exercise as next in
Importance 10 nakedness. Leap, my chill
dren po1 leap Rack leap IN. t SWIM %in mv s cbi'dr 9n.
swim till your fingers become webbed and
fins grow upon launches. My chill
dren, run. Run, children, run Run till
your lungs are washed out of your body;
run till your finger nails breathe; motion is
life
Herr Scham has some suspicion that the
world will regard him as a
and so he advances this argument in iusti-
~fcation of his views: IF the loss OF hair
were to continue and increase and all men
were by degrees TO become bald, then ell
men would look upon the badness of chill
dren's heads even as they now look upon
the badness Of embryos, and any one who
ventured TO write a pamphlet upon The
Hair of the Head as / have written Upon
Naked Men, would be regarded as a fool.
even as ] am now regarded"
He points out that the origin of our wear
ing clothes, and therefore of our degener-
acy, was the Tree OF knowledge, from
which our first parents plucked the apple.
The knowledge which they gained was the
knowledge of sex. and when they gained
this knowledge they made themselves
aprons of fig leaves.
I'VE have been driven" says Herr Scham.
from the land of innocence to the land
of knowledge, but at any moment We are
free to return to Paradise; we have only
to learn TO know one another regardless of
sex: in other words, without clothes"
Scham's fathers name was pudor. but he
cast il off. Since then he has been known
by the German equivalent.