considered it an act of indecency for men and women to wash
together. He shrugged his shoulders as he answered: 'But these
Westerns have such prurient minds!'" (Mitford, _Tales of Old
Japan_, 1871.)

Dr. Carl Davidsohn, who remarks that he had ample opportunity of
noting the great beauty of the Japanese women in a national
dance, performed naked, points out that the Japanese have no
aesthetic sense for the nude. "This was shown at the Jubilee
Exposition at Kyoto. Here, among many rooms full of art objects,
one was devoted to oil pictures in the European manner. Among
these only one represented a nude figure, a Psyche, or Truth. It
was the first time such a picture had been seen. Men and women
crowded around it. After they had gazed at it for a time, most
began to giggle and laugh; some by their air and gestures clearly
showed their disgust; all found that it was not aesthetic to paint
a naked woman, though in Nature, nakedness was in no way
offensive to them. In the middle of the same city, at a fountain
reputed to possess special virtues, men and women will stand
together naked and let the water run over them." (Carl
Davidsohn, "Das Nackte bei den Japanern," _Globus_, 1896, No.
16.)

"It is very difficult to investigate the hairiness of Ainu
women," Baelz remarks, "for they possess a really incredible
degree of modesty. Even when in summer they bathe--which happens
but seldom--they keep their clothes on." He records that he was
once asked to examine a girl at the Mission School, in order to
advise as regards the treatment of a diseased spine; although she
had been at the school for seven years, she declared that "she
would rather die than show her back to a man, even though a
doctor." (Baelz, "Die Aino," _Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_, 1901,
Heft 2, p. 178.)

The Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans, appear to have been accustomed
to cover the foreskin with the _kynodesme_ (a band), or the
_fibula_ (a ring), for custom and modesty demanded that the glans
should be concealed. Such covering is represented in persons who
were compelled to be naked, and is referred to by Celsus as
"decori causa." (L. Stieda, "Anatomisch-archaeologische Studien,"
_Anatomische Hefte_, Bd. XIX, Heft 2, 1902.)

"Among the Lydians, and, indeed, among the barbarians generally,
it is considered a deep disgrace, even for a man, to be seen
naked." (Herodotus, Book I, Chapter X.)

"The simple dress which is now common was first worn in Sparta,
and there, more than anywhere else, the life of the rich was
assimilated to that of the people. The Lacedaemonians, too, were
the first who, in their athletic exercises, stripped naked and
rubbed themselves over with oil. This was not the ancient custom;
athletes formerly, even when they were contending at Olympia,
wore girdles about their loins [earlier still, the Mycenaeans had
always worn a loin-cloth], a practice which lasted until quite
lately, and still persists among barbarians, especially those of
Asia, where the combatants at boxing and wrestling matches wear
girdles." (Thucydides, _History_, Book I, Chapter VI.)

"The notion of the women exercising naked in the schools with the
men ... at the present day would appear truly ridiculous.... Not
long since it was thought discreditable and ridiculous among the
Greeks, as it is now among most barbarous nations, for men to be
seen naked. And when the Cretans first, and after them the
Lacedaemonians, began the practice of gymnastic exercises, the
wits of the time had it in their power to make sport of those
novelties.... As for the man who laughs at the idea of undressed
women going through gymnastic exercises, as a means of revealing
what is most perfect, his ridicule is but 'unripe fruit plucked
from the tree of wisdom.'" (Plato, _Republic_, Book V.)

According to Plutarch, however, among the Spartans, at all
events, nakedness in women was not ridiculous, since the
institutes of Lycurgus ordained that at solemn feasts and
sacrifices the young women should dance naked and sing, the young
men standing around in a circle to see and hear them. Aristotle
says that in his time Spartan girls only wore a very slight
garment. As described by Pausanias, and as shown by a statue in
the Vatican, the ordinary tunic, which was the sole garment worn
by women when running, left bare the right shoulder and breast,
and only reached to the upper third of the thighs. (M.M. Evans,
_Chapters on Greek Dress_, p. 34.)

Among the Greeks who were inclined to accept the doctrines of
Cynicism, it was held that, while shame is not unreasonable, what
is good may be done and discussed before all men. There are a
number of authorities who say that Crates and Hipparchia
consummated their marriage in the presence of many spectators.
Lactantius (_Inst._ iii, 15) says that the practice was common,
but this Zeller is inclined to doubt. (Zeller, _Socrates and the
Socratic Schools_, translated from the Third German Edition,
1897.)

"Among the Tyrrhenians, who carry their luxury to an
extraordinary pitch, Timaeus, in his first book, relates that the
female servants wait on the men in a state of nudity. And
Theopompus, in the forty-third book of his _History_, states that
it is a law among the Tyrrhenians that all their women should be
in common; and that the women pay the greatest attention to their
persons, and often practice gymnastic exercises, naked, among the
men, and sometimes with one another; for that it is not accounted
shameful for them to be seen naked.... Nor is it reckoned among
the Tyrrhenians at all disgraceful either to do or suffer
anything in the open air, or to be seen while it is going on; for
it is quite the custom of their country, and they are so far from
thinking it disgraceful that they even say, when the master of
the house is indulging his appetite, and anyone asks for him,
that he is doing so and so, using the coarsest possible words....
And they are very beautiful, as is natural for people to be who
live delicately, and who take care of their persons." (Athenaeus,
_Deipnosophists_, Yonge's translation, vol. iii, p. 829.)

Dennis throws doubt on the foregoing statement of Athenaeus
regarding the Tyrrhenians or Etruscans, and points out that the
representations of women in Etruscan tombs shows them as clothed,
even the breast being rarely uncovered. Nudity, he remarks, was a
Greek, not an Etruscan, characteristic. "To the nudity of the
Spartan women I need but refer; the Thessalian women are
described by Persaeus dancing at banquets naked, or with a very
scanty covering (_apud_ Athenaeus, xiii, c. 86). The maidens of
Chios wrestled naked with the youths in the gymnasium, which
Athenaeus (xiii, 20) pronounces to be 'a beautiful sight.' And at
the marriage feast of Caranus, the Macedonian women tumblers
performed naked before the guests (Athenaeus, iv, 3)." (G. Dennis,
_Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_, 1883, vol. i, p. 321.)

In Rome, "when there was at first much less freedom in this
matter than in Greece, the bath became common to both sexes, and
though each had its basin and hot room apart, they could see each
other, meet, speak, form intrigues, arrange meetings, and
multiply adulteries. At first, the baths were so dark that men
and women could wash side by side, without recognizing each other
except by the voice; but soon the light of day was allowed to
enter from every side. 'In the bath of Scipio,' said Seneca,
'there were narrow ventholes, rather than windows, hardly
admitting enough light to outrage modesty; but nowadays, baths
are called caves if they do not receive the sun's rays through
large windows.' ... Hadrian severely prohibited this mingling of
men and women, and ordained separate lavaera for the sexes.
Marcus Aurelius and Alexander Severus renewed this edict, but in
the interval, Heliogabalus had authorized the sexes to meet in
the baths." (Dufour, _Histoire de la Prostitution_, vol. ii, Ch.
XVIII; cf. Smith's _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities_,
Art. Balneae.)

In Rome, according to ancient custom, actors were compelled to
wear drawers (_subligaculum_) on the stage, in order to safeguard
the modesty of Roman matrons. Respectable women, it seems, also
always wore some sort of _subligaculum_, even sometimes when
bathing. The name was also applied to a leathern girdle laced
behind, which they were occasionally made to wear as a girdle of
chastity. (Dufour, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 150.) Greek women also
wore a cloth round the loins when taking the bath, as did the men
who bathed there; and a woman is represented bathing and wearing
a sort of thin combinations reaching to the middle of the thigh.
(Smith's _Dictionary_, loc. cit.) At a later period, St.
Augustine refers to the _compestria_, the drawers or apron worn
by young men who stripped for exercise in the _campus_. (_De
Civitate Dei_, Bk. XIV, Ch. XVII.)

Lecky (_History of Morals_, vol. ii, p. 318), brings together
instances of women, in both Pagan and early Christian times, who
showed their modesty by drawing their garments around them, even
at the moment that they were being brutally killed. Plutarch, in
his essay on the "Virtues of Women,"--moralizing on the
well-known story of the young women of Milesia, among whom an
epidemic of suicide was only brought to an end by the decree that
in future women who hanged themselves should be carried naked
through the market-places,--observes: "They, who had no dread of
the most terrible things in the world, death and pain, could not
abide the imagination of dishonor, and exposure to shame, even
after death."

In the second century the physician Aretaeus, writing at Rome,
remarks: "In many cases, owing to involuntary restraint from
modesty at assemblies, and at banquets, the bladder becomes
distended, and from the consequent loss of its contractile power,
it no longer evacuates the urine." (_On the Causes and Symptoms
of Acute Diseases_, Book II, Chapter X.)

Apuleius, writing in the second century, says: "Most women, in
order to exhibit their native gracefulness and allurements,
divest themselves of all their garments, and long to show their
naked beauty, being conscious that they shall please more by the
rosy redness of their skin than by the golden splendor of their
robes." (Thomas Taylor's translation of _Metamorphosis_, p. 28.)

Christianity seems to have profoundly affected habits of thought
and feeling by uniting together the merely natural emotion of
sexual reserve with, on the one hand, the masculine virtue of
modesty--_modestia_--and, on the other, the prescription of
sexual abstinence. Tertullian admirably illustrates this
confusion, and his treatises _De Pudicitia_ and _De Cultu
Feminarum_ are instructive from the present point of view. In the
latter he remarks (Book II, Chapter I): "Salvation--and not of
women only, but likewise of men--consists in the exhibition,
principally, of modesty. Since we are all the temple of God,
modesty is the sacristan and priestess of that temple, who is to
suffer nothing unclean or profane to enter it, for fear that the
God who inhabits it should be offended.... Most women, either
from simple ignorance or from dissimulation, have the hardihood
so to walk as if modesty consisted only in the integrity of the
flesh, and in turning away from fornication, and there were no
need for anything else,--in dress and ornament, the studied
graces of form,--wearing in their gait the self-same appearance
as the women of the nations from whom the sense of _true_ modesty
is absent."

The earliest Christian ideal of modesty, not long maintained, is
well shown in an epistle which, there is some reason to suppose,
was written by Clement of Rome. "And if we see it to be requisite
to stand and pray for the sake of the woman, and to speak words
of exhortation and edification, we call the brethren and all the
holy sisters and maidens, likewise all the other women who are
there, with all modesty and becoming behavior, to come and feast
on the truth. And those among us who are skilled in speaking,
speak to them, and exhort them in those words which God has given
us. And then we pray, and salute one another, the men the men.
But the women and the maidens will wrap their hands in their
garments; we also, with circumspection and with all purity, our
eyes looking upward, shall wrap our right hand in our garments;
and then they will come and give us the salutation on our right
hand, wrapped in our garments. Then we go where God permits us."
(_Two Epistles Concerning Virginity_; Second Epistle, Chapter
III, vol. xiv. Ante-Nicene Christian Library, p. 384.)

"Women will scarce strip naked before their own husbands,
affecting a plausible pretense of modesty," writes Clement of
Alexandria, about the end of the second century, "but any others
who wish may see them at home, shut up in their own baths, for
they are not ashamed to strip before spectators, as if exposing
their persons for sale. The baths are opened promiscuously to men
and women; and there they strip for licentious indulgence (for,
from looking, men get to loving), as if their modesty had been
washed away in the bath. Those who have not become utterly
destitute of modesty shut out strangers, but bathe with their own
servants, and strip naked before their slaves, and are rubbed by
them, giving to the crouching menial liberty to lust, by
permitting fearless handling, for those who are introduced before
their naked mistresses while in the bath, study to strip
themselves in order to show audacity in lust, casting off fear in
consequence of the wicked custom. The ancient athletes, ashamed
to exhibit a man naked, preserved their modesty by going through
the contest in drawers; but these women, divesting themselves of
their modesty along with their chemise, wish to appear beautiful,
but, contrary to their wish, are simply proved to be wicked."
(Clement of Alexandria, _Paedagogus_, Book III, Chapter V. For
elucidations of this passage, see Migne's _Patrologiae Cursus
Completus_, vol. vii.) Promiscuous bathing was forbidden by the
early Apostolical Constitutions, but Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage,
found it necessary, in the third century, to upbraid even virgins
vowed to chastity for continuing the custom. "What of those," he
asks, "who frequent baths, who prostitute to eyes that are
curious to lust, bodies that are dedicated to chastity and
modesty? They who disgracefully behold naked men, and are seen
naked by men? Do they not themselves afford enticement to vice?
Do they not solicit and invite the desires of those present to
their own corruption and wrong? 'Let every one,' say you, 'look
to the disposition with which he comes thither: my care is only
that of refreshing and washing my poor body.' That kind of
defence does not clear you, nor does it excuse the crime of
lasciviousness and wantonness. Such a washing defiles; it does
not purify nor cleanse the limbs, but stains them. You behold no
one immodestly, but you, yourself, are gazed upon immodestly; you
do not pollute your eyes with disgraceful delight, but in
delighting others you yourself are polluted; you make a show of
the bathing-place; the places where you assemble are fouler than
a theatre. There all modesty is put off; together with the
clothing of garments, the honor and modesty of the body is laid
aside, virginity is exposed, to be pointed at and to be
handled.... Let your baths be performed with women, whose
behavior is modest towards you." (Cyprian, _De Habitu Virginum_,
cap. 19, 21.) The Church carried the same spirit among the
barbarians of northern Europe, and several centuries later the
promiscuous bathing of men and women was prohibited in some of
the Penitentials. (The custom was, however, preserved here and
there in Northern Europe, even to the end of the eighteenth
century, or later. In Rudeck's _Geschichte der oeffentlichen
Sittlichkeit in Deutschland_, an interesting chapter, with
contemporary illustrations, is devoted to this custom; also, Max
Bauer, _Das Geschlechtsleben in der Deutschen Vergangenheit_, pp.
216-265.)

"Women," says Clement again, "should not seek to be graceful by
avoiding broad drinking vessels that oblige them to stretch their
mouths, in order to drink from narrow alabastra that cause them
indecently to throw back the head, revealing to men their necks
and breasts. The mere thought of what she is ought to inspire a
woman with modesty.... On no account must a woman be permitted to
show to a man any portion of her body naked, for fear lest both
fall: the one by gazing eagerly, the other by delighting to
attract those eager glances." (_Paedagogus_, Book II, Chapter V.)

James, Bishop of Nisibis, in the fourth century, was a man of
great holiness. We are told by Thedoret that once, when James had
newly come into Persia, it was vouchsafed to him to perform a
miracle under the following circumstances: He chanced to pass by
a fountain where young women were washing their linen, and, his
modesty being profoundly shocked by the exposure involved in this
occupation, he cursed the fountain, which instantly dried up, and
he changed the hair of the girls from black to a sandy color.
(Jortin, _Remarks on Ecclesiastical History_, vol. iii, p. 4.)

Procopius, writing in the sixth century after Christ, and
narrating how the Empress Theodora, in early life, would often
appear almost naked before the public in the theatre, adds that
she would willingly have appeared altogether nude, but that "no
woman is allowed to expose herself altogether, unless she wears
at least short drawers over the lower part of the abdomen."
Chrysostom mentions, at the end of the fourth century, that
Arcadius attempted to put down the August festival (Majuma),
during which women appeared naked in the theatres, or swimming in
large baths.

In mediaeval days, "ladies, at all events, as represented by the
poets, were not, on the whole, very prudish. Meleranz surprised a
lady who was taking a bath under a lime tree; the bath was
covered with samite, and by it was a magnificent ivory bed,
surrounded by tapestries representing the history of Paris and
Helen, the destruction of Troy, the adventures of AEneas, etc. As
Meleranz rides by, the lady's waiting-maids run away; she
herself, however, with quick decision, raises the samite which
covers the tub, and orders him to wait on her in place of the
maids. He brings her shift and mantle, and shoes, and then stands
aside till she is dressed; when she has placed herself on the
bed, she calls him back and commands him to drive away the flies
while she sleeps. Strange to say, the men are represented as more
modest than the women. When two maidens prepared a bath for
Parzival, and proposed to bathe him, according to custom, the
inexperienced young knight was shy, and would not enter the bath
until they had gone; on another occasion, he jumped quickly into
bed when the maidens entered the room. When Wolfdieterich was
about to undress, he had to ask the ladies who pressed around him
to leave him alone for a short time, as he was ashamed they
should see him naked. When Amphons of Spain, bewitched by his
step-mother into a were-wolf, was at last restored, and stood
suddenly naked before her, he was greatly ashamed. The maiden who
healed Iwein was tender of his modesty. In his love-madness, the
hero wanders for a time naked through the wood; three women find
him asleep, and send a waiting-maid to annoint him with salve;
when he came to himself, the maiden hid herself. On the whole,
however, the ladies were not so delicate; they had no hesitation
in bathing with gentlemen, and on these occasions would put their
finest ornaments on their heads. I know no pictures of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries representing such a scene, but
such baths in common are clearly represented in miniatures of the
fifteenth century." (A. Schultz, _Das Hoefische Leben zur Zeit der
Minnesaenger_, vol. i, p. 225.)

"In the years 1450-70, the use of the cod-piece was introduced,
whereby the attributes of manhood were accentuated in the most
shameless manner. It was, in fact, the avowed aim at that period
to attract attention to these parts. The cod-piece was sometimes
colored differently from the rest of the garments, often stuffed
out to enlarge it artificially, and decorated with ribbons."
(Rudeck, _Geschichte der oeffentlichen Sittlichkeit in
Deutschland_, pp. 45-48; Dufour, _Histoire de la Prostitution_,
vol. vi, pp. 21-23. Groos refers to the significance of this
fashion, _Spiele der Menschen_, p. 337.)

"The first shirt began to be worn [in Germany] in the sixteenth
century. From this fact, as well as from the custom of public
bathing, we reach the remarkable result, that for the German
people, the sight of complete nakedness was the daily rule up to
the sixteenth century. Everyone undressed completely before going
to bed, and, in the vapor-baths, no covering was used. Again, the
dances, both of the peasants and the townspeople, were
characterized by very high leaps into the air. It was the chief
delight of the dancers for the male to raise his partner as high
as possible in the air, so that her dress flew up. That feminine
modesty was in this respect very indifferent, we know from
countless references made in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. It must not be forgotten that throughout the middle
ages women wore no underclothes, and even in the seventeenth
century, the wearing of drawers by Italian women was regarded as
singular. That with the disappearance of the baths, and the use
of body-linen, a powerful influence was exerted on the creation
of modesty, there can be little doubt." (Rudeck, op. cit., pp.
57, 399, etc.)

In 1461, when Louis XI entered Paris, three very beautiful
maidens, quite naked, represented the Syrens, and declaimed poems
before him; they were greatly admired by the public. In 1468,
when Charles the Bold entered Lille, he was specially pleased,
among the various festivities, with a representation of the
Judgment of Paris, in which the three goddesses were nude. When
Charles the Fifth entered Antwerp, the most beautiful maidens of
the city danced before him, in nothing but gauze, and were
closely contemplated by Duerer, as he told his friend, Melancthon.
(B. Ritter, "Nuditaeten im Mittelalter," _Jahrbuecher fuer
Wissenschaft und Kunst_, 1855, p. 227; this writer shows how
luxury, fashion, poverty, and certain festivals, all combined to
make nudity familiar; cf. Fahne, _Der Carneval_, p. 249. Dulaure
quotes many old writers concerning the important part played by
nude persons in ancient festivals, _Des Divinites Generatrices_,
Chapter XIV.)

Passek, a Polish officer who wrote an account of his campaigns,
admired the ladies of Denmark in 1658, but considered their
customs immodest. "Everyone sleeps naked as at birth, and none
consider it shameful to dress or undress before others. No
notice, even, is taken of the guest, and in the light one garment
is taken off after another, even the chemise is hung on the hook.
Then the door is bolted, the light blown out, and one goes to
bed. As we blamed their ways, saying that among us a woman would
not act so, even in the presence of her husband alone, they
replied that they knew nothing of such shame, and that there was
no need to be ashamed of limbs which God had created. Moreover,
to sleep without a shift was good, because, like the other
garments, it sufficiently served the body during the day. Also,
why take fleas and other insects to bed with one? Although our
men teased them in various ways, they would not change their
habits." (Passek, _Denkwuerdigkeiten_, German translation, p. 14.)

Until late in the seventeenth century, women in England, as well
as France, suffered much in childbirth from the ignorance and
superstition of incompetent midwives, owing to the prevailing
conceptions of modesty, which rendered it impossible (as it is
still, to some extent, in some semi-civilized lands) for male
physicians to attend them. Dr. Willoughby, of Derby, tells how,
in 1658, he had to creep into the chamber of a lying-in woman on
his hands and knees, in order to examine her unperceived. In
France, Clement was employed secretly to attend the mistresses of
Louis XIV in their confinements; to the first he was conducted
blindfold, while the King was concealed among the bed-curtains,
and the face of the lady was enveloped in a network of lace. (E.
Malins, "Midwifery and Midwives," _British Medical Journal_, June
22, 1901; Witkowski, _Histoire des Accouchements_, 1887, pp. 689
et seq.) Even until the Revolution, the examination of women in
France in cases of rape or attempted outrage was left to a jury
of matrons. In old English manuals of midwifery, even in the
early nineteenth century, we still find much insistence on the
demands of modesty. Thus, Dr. John Burns, of Glasgow, in his
_Principles of Midwifery_, states that "some women, from motives
of false delicacy, are averse from examination until the pains
become severe." He adds that "it is usual for the room to be
darkened, and the bed-curtains drawn close, during an
examination." Many old pictures show the accoucheur groping in
the dark, beneath the bed-clothes, to perform operations on women
in childbirth. (A. Kind, "Das Weib als Gebaererin in der Kunst,"
_Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, Bd. II, Heft 5, p. 203.)

In Iceland, Winkler stated in 1861 that he sometimes slept in the
same room as a whole family; "it is often the custom for ten or
more persons to use the same room for living in and sleeping,
young and old, master and servant, male and female, and from
motives of economy, all the clothes, without exception, are
removed." (G. Winkler, _Island; seine Bewohner_, etc., pp. 107,
110.)

"At Cork," saye Fynes Moryson, in 1617, "I have seen with these
eyes young maids stark naked grinding corn with certain stones to
make cakes thereof." (Moryson, _Itinerary_, Part 3, Book III,
Chapter V.)

"In the more remote parts of Ireland," Moryson elsewhere says,
where the English laws and manners are unknown, "the very chief
of the Irish, men as well as women, go naked in very winter-time,
only having their privy parts covered with a rag of linen, and
their bodies with a loose mantle. This I speak of my own
experience." He goes on to tell of a Bohemian baron, just come
from the North of Ireland, who "told me in great earnestness that
he, coming to the house of Ocane, a great lord among them, was
met at the door with sixteen women, all naked, excepting their
loose mantles; whereof eight or ten were very fair, and two
seemed very nymphs, with which strange sight, his eyes being
dazzled, they led him into the house, and then sitting down by
the fire with crossed legs, like tailors, and so low as could not
but offend chaste eyes, desired him to sit down with them. Soon
after, Ocane, the lord of the country, came in, all naked
excepting a loose mantle, and shoes, which he put off as soon as
he came in, and entertaining the baron after his best manner in
the Latin tongue, desired him to put off his apparel, which he
thought to be a burthen to him, and to sit naked by the fire with
this naked company. But the baron... for shame, durst not put off
his apparel." (Ib. Part 3, Book IV, Chapter II.)

Coryat, when traveling in Italy in the early part of the
seventeenth century, found that in Lombardy many of the women
and children wore only smocks, or shirts, in the hot weather. At
Venice and Padua, he found that wives, widows, and maids, walk
with naked breasts, many with backs also naked, almost to the
middle. (Coryat, _Crudities_, 1611. The fashion of _decollete_
garments, it may be remarked, only began in the fourteenth
century; previously, the women of Europe generally covered
themselves up to the neck.)

In Northern Italy, some years ago, a fire occurred at night in a
house in which two girls were sleeping, naked, according to the
custom. One threw herself out and was saved, the other returned
for a garment, and was burnt to death. The narrator of the
incident [a man] expressed strong approval of the more modest
girl's action. (Private communication.) It may be added that the
custom of sleeping naked is still preserved, also (according to
Lippert and Stratz), in Jutland, in Iceland, in some parts of
Norway, and sometimes even in Berlin.

Lady Mary Wortley Montague writes in 1717, of the Turkish ladies
at the baths at Sophia: "The first sofas were covered with
cushions and rich carpets, on which sat the ladies, and on the
second, their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of
rank in their dress, all being in a state of Nature; that is, in
plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect
concealed. Yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest
gesture among them. They walked and moved with the same majestic
grace which Milton describes of our general mother. I am here
convinced of the truth of a reflection I had often made, that if
it was the fashion to go naked, the face would be hardly
observed." (_Letters and Works_, 1866, vol. i, p. 285.)

At St. Petersburg, in 1774, Sir Nicholas Wraxall observed "the
promiscuous bathing of not less than two hundred persons, of both
sexes. There are several of these public bagnios," he adds, "in
Petersburg, and every one pays a few copecks for admittance.
There are, indeed, separate spaces for the men and women, but
they seem quite regardless of this distinction, and sit or bathe
in a state of absolute nudity among each other." (Sir N. Wraxall,
_A Tour Through Some of the Northern Parts of Europe_, 3d ed.,
1776, p. 248.) It is still usual for women in the country parts
of Russia to bathe naked in the streams.

In 1790, Wedgwood wrote to Flaxman: "The nude is so general in
the work of the ancients, that it will be very difficult to avoid
the introduction of naked figures. On the other hand, it is
absolutely necessary to do so, or to keep the pieces for our own
use; for none, either male or female, of the present generation
will take or apply them as furniture if the figures are naked."
(Meteyard, _Life of Wedgwood_, vol. ii, p. 589.)

Mary Wollstonecraft quotes (for reprobation and not for
approval) the following remarks: "The lady who asked the
question whether women may be instructed in the modern system of
botany, was accused of ridiculous prudery; nevertheless, if she
had proposed the question to me, I should certainly have
answered: 'They cannot!'" She further quotes from an educational
book: "It would be needless to caution you against putting your
hand, by chance, under your neck-handkerchief; for a modest woman
never did so." (Mary Wollstonecraft, _The Rights of Woman_, 1792,
pp. 277, 289.)

At the present time a knowledge of the physiology of plants is
not usually considered inconsistent with modesty, but a knowledge
of animal physiology is still so considered by many. Dr. H.R.
Hopkins, of New York, wrote in 1895, regarding the teaching of
physiology: "How can we teach growing girls the functions of the
various parts of the human body, and still leave them their
modesty? That is the practical question that has puzzled me for
years."

In England, the use of drawers was almost unknown among women
half a century ago, and was considered immodest and unfeminine.
Tilt, a distinguished gynecologist of that period, advocated such
garments, made of fine calico, and not to descend below the knee,
on hygienic grounds. "Thus understood," he added, "the adoption
of drawers will doubtless become more general in this country,
as, being worn without the knowledge of the general observer,
they will be robbed of the prejudice usually attached to an
appendage deemed masculine." (Tilt, _Elements of Health_, 1852,
p. 193.) Drawers came into general use among women during the
third quarter of the nineteenth century.

Drawers are an Oriental garment, and seem to have reached Europe
through Venice, the great channel of communication with the East.
Like many other refinements of decency and cleanliness, they were
at first chiefly cultivated by prostitutes, and, on this account,
there was long a prejudice against them. Even at the present day,
it is said that in France, a young peasant girl will exclaim, if
asked whether she wears drawers: "I wear drawers, Madame? A
respectable girl!" Drawers, however, quickly became acclimatized
in France, and Dufour (op. cit., vol. vi, p. 28) even regards
them as essentially a French garment. They were introduced at the
Court towards the end of the fourteenth century, and in the
sixteenth century were rendered almost necessary by the new
fashion of the _vertugale_, or farthingale. In 1615, a lady's
_calecons_ are referred to as apparently an ordinary garment. It
is noteworthy that in London, in the middle of the same century,
young Mrs. Pepys, who was the daughter of French parents, usually
wore drawers, which were seemingly of the closed kind. (_Diary_
of S. Pepys, ed. Wheatley, May 15, 1663, vol. iii.) They were
probably not worn by Englishwomen, and even in France, with the
decay of the farthingale, they seem to have dropped out of use
during the seventeenth century. In a technical and very complete
book, _L'Art de la Lingerie_, published in 1771, women's drawers
are not even mentioned, and Mercier (_Tableau de Paris_, 1783,
vol. vii, p. 54) says that, except actresses, Parisian women do
not wear drawers. Even by ballet dancers and actresses on the
stage, they were not invariably worn. Camargo, the famous dancer,
who first shortened the skirt in dancing, early in the eighteenth
century, always observed great decorum, never showing the leg
above the knee; when appealed to as to whether she wore drawers,
she replied that she could not possibly appear without such a
"precaution." But they were not necessarily worn by dancers, and
in 1727 a young _ballerina_, having had her skirt accidentally
torn away by a piece of stage machinery, the police issued an
order that in future no actress or dancer should appear on the
stage without drawers; this regulation does not appear, however,
to have been long strictly maintained, though Schulz (_Ueber
Paris und die Pariser_, p. 145) refers to it as in force in 1791.
(The obscure origin and history of feminine drawers have been
discussed from time to time in the _Intermediaire des Chercheurs
et Curieux_, especially vols. xxv, lii, and liii.)

Prof. Irving Rosse, of Washington, refers to "New England
prudishness," and "the colossal modesty of some New York
policemen, who in certain cases want to give written, rather than
oral testimony." He adds: "I have known this sentiment carried to
such an extent in a Massachusetts small town, that a shop-keeper
was obliged to drape a small, but innocent, statuette displayed
in his window." (Irving Rosse, _Virginia Medical Monthly_,
October, 1892.) I am told that popular feeling in South Africa
would not permit the exhibition of the nude in the Art
Collections of Cape Town. Even in Italy, nude statues are
disfigured by the addition of tin fig-leaves, and sporadic
manifestations of horror at the presence of nude statues, even
when of most classic type, are liable to occur in all parts of
Europe, including France and Germany. (Examples of this are
recorded from time to time in _Sexual-reform_, published as an
appendix to _Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_.)

Some years ago, (1898), it was stated that the Philadelphia
_Ladies' Home Journal_ had decided to avoid, in future, all
reference to ladies' under-linen, because "the treatment of this
subject in print calls for _minutiae_ of detail which is extremely
and pardonably offensive to refined and sensitive women."

"A man, married twenty years, told me that he had never seen his
wife entirely nude. Such concealment of the external reproductive
organs, by married people, appears to be common. Judging from my
own inquiry, very few women care to look upon male nakedness, and
many women, though not wanting in esthetic feeling, find no
beauty in man's form. Some are positively repelled by the sight
of nakedness, even that of a husband or lover. On the contrary,
most men delight in gazing upon the uncovered figure of women.
It seems that only highly-cultivated and imaginative women enjoy
the spectacle of a finely-shaped nude man (especially after
attending art classes, and drawing from the nude, as I am told by
a lady artist). Or else the majority of women dissemble their
curiosity or admiration. A woman of seventy, mother of several
children, said to a young wife with whom I am acquainted: 'I have
never seen a naked man in my life.' This old lady's sister
confessed that she had never looked at _her own_ nakedness in the
whole course of her life. She said that it 'frightened' her. She
was the mother of three sons. A maiden woman of the same family
told her niece that women were 'disgusting, because they have
monthly discharges.' The niece suggested that women have no
choice in the matter, to which the aunt replied: 'I know that;
but it doesn't make them less disgusting,' I have heard of a girl
who died from haemorrhage of the womb, refusing, through shame, to
make the ailment known to her family. The misery suffered by some
women at the anticipation of a medical examination, appears to be
very acute. Husbands have told me of brides who sob and tremble
with fright on the wedding-night, the hysteria being sometimes
alarming. E, aged 25, refused her husband for six weeks after
marriage, exhibiting the greatest fear of his approach. Ignorance
of the nature of the sexual connection is often the cause of
exaggerated alarm. In Jersey, I used to hear of a bride who ran
to the window and screamed 'murder,' on the wedding-night."
(Private communication.)

At the present day it is not regarded as incompatible with
modesty to exhibit the lower part of the thigh when in swimming
costume, but it is immodest to exhibit the upper part of the
thigh. In swimming competitions, a minimum of clothing must be
combined with the demands of modesty. In England, the regulations
of the Swimming Clubs affiliated to the Amateur Swimming
Association, require that the male swimmer's costume shall extend
not less than eight inches from the bifurcation downward, and
that the female swimmer's costume shall extend to within not more
than three inches from the knee. (A prolonged discussion, we are
told, arose as to whether the costume should come to one, two, or
three inches from the knee, and the proposal of the youngest lady
swimmer present, that the costume ought to be very scanty, met
with little approval.) The modesty of women is thus seen to be
greater than that of men by, roughly speaking, about two inches.
The same difference may be seen in the sleeves; the male sleeve
must extend for two inches, the female sleeve four inches, down
the arm. (Daily Papers, September 26, 1898.)

"At ----, bathing in a state of Nature was _de rigueur_ for the
_elite_ of the bathers, while our Sunday visitors from the slums
frequently made a great point of wearing bathing costumes; it was
frequently noticed that those who were most anxious to avoid
exposing their persons were distinguished by the foulness of
their language. My impression was that their foul-mindedness
deprived them of the consciousness of safety from coarse jests.
If I were bathing alone among blackguards, I should probably feel
uncomfortable myself, if without costume." (Private
communication.)

A lady in a little city of the south of Italy, told Paola
Lombroso that young middle-class girls there are not allowed to
go out except to Mass, and cannot even show themselves at the
window except under their mother's eye; yet they do not think it
necessary to have a cabin when sea-bathing, and even dispense
with a bathing costume without consciousness of immodesty. (P.
Lombroso, _Archivio di Psichiatria_, 1901, p. 306.)

"A woman mentioned to me that a man came to her and told her in
confidence his distress of mind: he feared he had _corrupted_ his
wife because she got into a bath in his presence, with her baby,
and enjoyed his looking at her splashing about. He was deeply
distressed, thinking he must have done her harm, and destroyed
her modesty. The woman to whom this was said felt naturally
indignant, but also it gave her the feeling as if every man may
secretly despise a woman for the very things he teaches her, and
only meets her confiding delight with regret or dislike."
(Private communication.)

"Women will occasionally be found to hide diseases and symptoms
from a bashfulness and modesty so great and perverse as to be
hardly credible," writes Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, an experienced
coroner. "I have known several cases of female deaths, reported
as sudden, and of cause unknown, when the medical man called in
during the latter hours of life has been quite unaware that his
lady patient was dying of gangrene of a strangulated femoral
hernia, or was bleeding to death from the bowel, or from ruptured
varices of the vulva." (_British Medical Journal_, Feb. 29,
1908.)

The foregoing selection of facts might, of course, be
indefinitely enlarged, since I have not generally quoted from any
previous collection of facts bearing on the question of modesty.
Such collections may be found in Ploss and Max Bartels _Das
Weib_, a work that is constantly appearing in new and enlarged
editions; Herbert Spencer, _Descriptive Sociology_ (especially
under such headings as "Clothing," "Moral Sentiments," and
"AEsthetic Products"); W.G. Sumner, _Folkways_, Ch. XI;
Mantegazza, _Amori degli Uomini_, Chapter II; Westermarck,
_Marriage_, Chapter IX; Letourneau, _L'Evolution de la Morale_,
pp. 126 et seq.; G. Mortimer, _Chapters on Human Love_, Chapter
IV; and in the general anthropological works of Waitz-Gerland,
Peschel, Ratzel and others.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] The earliest theory I have met with is that of St. Augustine, who
states (_De Civitate Dei_, Bk. XIV, Ch. XVII) that erections of the penis
never occurred until after the Fall of Man. It was the occurrence of this
"shameless novelty" which made nakedness indecent. This theory fails to
account for modesty in women.

[2] Guyau, _L'Irreligion de l'Avenir_, Ch. VII.

[3] Timidity, as understood by Dugas, in his interesting essay on that
subject, is probably most remote. Dr. H. Campbell's "morbid shyness"
(_British Medical Journal_, September 26, 1896) is, in part, identical
with timidity, in part, with modesty. The matter is further complicated by