Page:The art of kissing (IA artofkissing987wood).djvu/61

 bent being the chief ones: The mouth, containing the organs of taste and in part of breath, stands for the chief outer gate to the man's life and whatever of soul he has: if it kisses in humility its lord, or his hand, or his foot, there is utter symbolic subjection. Kisses of courtesy, as between men and men, grew out of formal expressions of medieval subjection.

The kiss, as a token of subjection, has declined among us. The reason is not too obscure: men and women today are increasingly growing to the point where they realize that they should not stand in subjection to any human lord or any fantasied deity, where they know that they can look the whole world in the face with level eyes. When, to the decline of servility, we add the ever-present fact of the danger of infection from promiscuous kissing of lips or hands or great toes, and when we see certain religious shrines taking no chances, but wiping the relic with some germicide between kisses, it is not hard to see why merely formal kissing is departing.

The kiss to express love is another thing. If we are to have physical love continued on the earth, this reaches its crest in a complete commingling and interweaving of the bodies of the loving ones, as well as a commingling and interweaving of their spirits. The final rapture lies elsewhere: but, after hand has touched hand, the next step is for lip to touch lip. This is the prelude to the fuller loving to follow later. When a man kisses a woman, it is an offer of his love, physically at least, in