Note 328 — Chapter VIII · MUSIC AND PLASTIC
Charles Francis Atkinson translation
In other countries, e.g., old Egypt and Japan (to anticipate a particularly foolish and shallow assertion), the sight of naked men was a far more ordinary and commonplace thing than it was in Athens, but the Japanese art-lover feels emphasized nudity as ridiculous and vulgar. The act is depicted (as for that matter it is in the “Adam and Eve” of Bamberg Cathedral), but merely as an object without any significance of potential whatsoever.