are at fault in expecting postal employees to be either judges or literati. All of our original questions are now resolved into one: Should determinations of "obscenity" in literature and the arts be or remain in the domain of postal activities? To enlarge the question even further: Should any printed, pictorial, literary or artistic matter, transmittable through the mails, be subject, while in transit, to any inspection or censorship? Should the answers to either of these questions be a categorical NO, and implemented as such, then a number of sweeping changes in Postal statutes would result, and, as far as the mails are concerned it would be left for John Q. Public to determine the kind and level of his own tastes, the strength and direction of his own loyalties, and the calibre and quality of himself, as a citizen of this great republic. Perhaps this is where such responsibility actually belongs.

Obscenity in the Category of Morals

Although we are primarily interested in the specific question of the constitutionality of Postal Censorship over "obscenity" in literature and the arts, an article on the stated subject would hardly be complete without some treatment of the question of censorship generally, together with what it is that is being censored, and the reasons for such censorship. Postal regulations prohibit "obscene" matter in the mails only because "obscenity" is a term which has already had a long history of legal definitions in the criminal statutes of English and American law. Moreover, censorship in such matters is by no means a postal prerogative, being exercised in all our media of communications and expression (newspapers, the stage, radio, television), and on all levels of public authority, including the municiple. We all remember the tribula-

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tions of "Les Ballets Africains" in 1960, in which a woman doing a native dance with bare breasts was banned in New York City, and in Los Angeles, but was both permitted and acclaimed in (of all places) Boston.

There are many possible categories of judgment in which "obscenity" may be evaluated, but of all of them, the only two which seem to provide some basis for legal prohibitions and judgments, are those involving morality and esthetics. In the former category, "obscenity" is that which tends to “deprave or corrupt"; in the latter, it is that which tends to "shock, or disgust." These two kinds of judgment have been very carefully distinguished in the courts, and it is partly for this reason that they are mentioned here.

The moral evaluation of "obscenity" rests upon essentially simple grounds, since it is involved with just one question: To what extent are individual acts motivated by the portrayal of erotic material in literature and the arts? For example, a man contemplates at length some photographs of nudes, and then goes out to commit rape or some other act of sexual violence punishable by law. The question at once arises; Is there any necessary connection of cause and effect between the photographs and the act? It might be argued, in the particular instance, that the photographs were a contributing cause. But this does not preclude the possibility that the same man could commit similar acts without the aid of pictorial stimulants. Was he not already "depraved and corrupted" from other causes, before ever seeing the photographs in question? A converse question also arises: Does the contemplation of nudes always result in acts of sexual violence? The answer here is obviously negative, since it is well established that strong erotic interests are by no means always associated with tendencies toward violence. Such

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