people, of whom a good example may be found in old country people
of the middle class in England, it is indecent to be seen with
the head unclothed; such a woman is terrified at the chance of
being seen In that condition, and if intruded on at that time,
she shrieks with terror, and flies to conceal herself." (A.
Walker, _Beauty_, p. 15.) This fear of being seen with the head
uncovered exists still, M. Van Gennep informs me, in some regions
of France, as in Brittany.

So far it has only been necessary to refer incidentally to the connection
of modesty with clothing. I have sought to emphasize the unquestionable,
but often forgotten, fact that modesty is in its origin independent of
clothing, that physiological modesty takes precedence of anatomical
modesty, and that the primary factors of modesty were certainly developed
long before the discovery of either ornament or garments. The rise of
clothing probably had its first psychical basis on an emotion of modesty
already compositely formed of the elements we have traced. Both the main
elementary factors, it must be noted, must naturally tend to develop and
unite in a more complex, though--it may well be--much less intense,
emotion. The impulse which leads the female animal, as it leads some
African women when found without their girdles, to squat firmly down on
the earth, becomes a more refined and extended play of gesture and
ornament and garment. A very notable advance, I may remark, is made when
this primary attitude of defence against the action of the male becomes a
defence against his eyes. We may thus explain the spread of modesty to
various parts of the body, even when we exclude the more special influence
of the evil eye. The breasts very early become a focus of modesty in
women; this may be observed among many naked, or nearly naked, negro
races; the tendency of the nates to become the chief seat of modesty in
many parts of Africa may probably be, in large part, thus explained, since
the full development of the gluteal regions is often the greatest
attraction an African woman can possess.[47] The same cause contributes,
doubtless, to the face becoming, in some races, the centre of modesty. We
see the influence of this defence against strange eyes in the special
precautions in gesture or clothing taken by the women in various parts of
the world, against the more offensive eyes of civilized Europeans.

But in thus becoming directed only against sight, and not against action,
the gestures of modesty are at once free to become merely those of
coquetry. When there is no real danger of offensive action, there is no
need for more than playful defence, and no serious anxiety should that
defence be taken as a disguised invitation. Thus the road is at once fully
open toward the most civilized manifestations of the comedy of courtship.

In the same way the social fear of arousing disgust combines easily and
perfectly with any new development in the invention of ornament or
clothing as sexual lures. Even among the most civilized races it has often
been noted that the fashion of feminine garments (as also sometimes the
use of scents) has the double object of concealing and attracting. It is
so with the little apron of the young savage belle. The heightening of the
attraction is, indeed, a logical outcome of the fear of evoking disgust.

It is possible, as some ethnographists have observed,[48] that intercrural
cords and other primitive garments have a physical ground, inasmuch as
they protect the most sensitive and unprotected part of the body,
especially in women. We may note in this connection the significant
remarks of K. von den Steinen, who argues that among Brazilian tribes the
object of the _uluri_, etc., is to obtain a maximum of protection for the
mucous membrane with a minimum of concealment. Among the Eskimo, as Nansen
noted, the corresponding intercrural cord is so thin as to be often
practically invisible; this may be noted, I may add, in the excellent
photographs of Eskimo women given by Holm.

But it is evident that, in the beginning, protection is to little or no
extent the motive for attaching foreign substances to the body. Thus the
tribes of Central Australia wear no clothes, although they often suffer
from the cold. But, in addition to armlets, neck-bands and head-bands,
they have string or hair girdles, with, for the women, a very small apron
and, for the men, a pubic tassel. The latter does not conceal the organs,
being no larger than a coin, and often brilliantly coated with white
pipeclay, especially during the progress of _corrobborees_, when a large
number of men and women meet together; it serves the purpose of drawing
attention to the organs.[49] When Forster visited the unspoilt islanders
of the Pacific early in the eighteenth century, he tells us that, though
they wore no clothes, they found it necessary to cover themselves with
various ornaments, especially on, the sexual parts. "But though their
males," he remarks, "were to all appearances equally anxious in this
respect with their females, this part of their dress served only to make
that more conspicuous which it intended to hide."[50] He adds the
significant remark that "these ideas of decency and modesty are only
observed at the age of sexual maturity," just as in Central Australia
women may only wear aprons after the initiation of puberty.

"There are certain things," said Montaigne, "which are hidden in order to
be shown;" and there can be no doubt that the contention of Westermarck
and others, that ornament and clothing were, in the first place, intended,
not to conceal or even to protect the body, but, in large part, to render
it sexually attractive, is fully proved.[51] We cannot, in the light of
all that has gone before, regard ornaments and clothing as the sole cause
of modesty, but the feelings that are thus gathered around the garment
constitute a highly important factor of modesty.

Among some Australian tribes it is said that the sexual organs
are only covered during their erotic dances; and it is further
said that in some parts of the world only prostitutes are
clothed. "The scanty covering," as Westermarck observes, "was
found to act as the most powerful obtainable sexual stimulus." It
is undoubtedly true that this statement may be made not merely of
the savage, but of the most civilized world. All observers agree
that the complete nudity of savages, unlike the civilized
_décolleté_ or _détroussé_, has no suggestion of sexual
allurement. (Westermarck quotes numerous testimonies on this
point, op. cit., pp. 192 et seq.) Dr. R.W. Felkin remarks
concerning Central Africa, that he has never met more indecency
than in Uganda, where the penalty of death is inflicted on an
adult found naked in the street. (_Edinburgh Medical Journal_,
April, 1884.) A study of pictures or statuary will alone serve to
demonstrate that nakedness is always chaster in its effects than
partial clothing. As a well-known artist, Du Maurier, has
remarked (in _Trilby_), it is "a fact well known to all painters
and sculptors who have used the nude model (except a few shady
pretenders, whose purity, not being of the right sort, has gone
rank from too much watching) that nothing is so chaste as nudity.
Venus herself, as she drops her garments and steps on to the
model-throne, leaves behind her on the floor every weapon in her
armory by which she can pierce to the grosser passions of men."
Burton, in the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ (Part III, Sect. II,
Subsect. 3), deals at length with the "Allurements of Love," and
concludes that "the greatest provocations of lust are from our
apparel." The artist's model, as one informs me, is much less
exposed to liberties from men when nude than when she is
partially clothed, and it may be noted that in Paris studios the
model who poses naked undresses behind a screen.

An admirable poetic rendering of this element in the philosophy
of clothing has been given by Herrick, that master of erotic
psychology, in "A Lily in Crystal," where he argues that a lily
in crystal, and amber in a stream, and strawberries in cream,
gain an added delight from semi-concealment; and so, he
concludes, we obtain

"A rule, how far, to teach,
Your nakedness must reach."

In this connection, also, it is worth noting that Stanley Hall,
in a report based on returns from nearly a thousand persons,
mostly teachers, ("The Early Sense of Self," _American Journal of
Psychology_, 1898, p. 366), finds that of the three functions of
clothes--protection, ornament, and Lotzean "self-feeling"--the
second is by far the most conspicuous in childhood. The attitude
of children is testimony to the primitive attitude toward
clothing.

It cannot, however, be said that the use of clothing for the sake
of showing the natural forms of the body has everywhere been
developed. In Japan, where nakedness is accepted without shame,
clothes are worn to cover and conceal, and not to reveal, the
body. It is so, also, in China. A distinguished Chinese
gentleman, who had long resided in Europe, once told Baelz that
he had gradually learnt to grasp the European point of view, but
that it would be impossible to persuade his fellow-countrymen
that a woman who used her clothes to show off her figure could
possibly possess the least trace of modesty. (Baelz, _Zeitschrift
für Ethnologie_, 1901, Heft 2, p. 179.)

The great artistic elaboration often displayed by articles of ornament or
clothing, even when very small, and the fact--as shown by Karl von den
Steinen regarding the Brazilian _uluri_--that they may serve as common
motives in general decoration, sufficiently prove that such objects
attract rather than avoid attention. And while there is an invincible
repugnance among some peoples to remove these articles, such repugnance
being often strongest when the adornment is most minute, others have no
such repugnance or are quite indifferent whether or not their aprons are
accurately adjusted. The mere presence or possession of the article gives
the required sense of self-respect, of human dignity, of sexual
desirability. Thus it is that to unclothe a person, is to humiliate him;
this was so even in Homeric times, for we may recall the threat of
Ulysses to strip Thyestes.[52]

When clothing is once established, another element, this time a
social-economic element, often comes in to emphasize its importance and
increase the anatomical modesty of women. I mean the growth of the
conception of women as property. Waitz, followed by Schurtz and
Letourneau, has insisted that the jealousy of husbands is the primary
origin of clothing, and, indirectly, of modesty. Diderot in the eighteenth
century had already given clear expression to the same view. It is
undoubtedly true that only married women are among some peoples clothed,
the unmarried women, though full grown, remaining naked. In many parts of
the world, also, as Mantegazza and others have shown, where the men are
naked and the women covered, clothing is regarded as a sort of disgrace,
and men can only with difficulty be persuaded to adopt it. Before marriage
a woman was often free, and not bound to chastity, and at the same time
was often naked; after marriage she was clothed, and no longer free. To
the husband's mind, the garment appears--illogically, though naturally--a
moral and physical protection against any attack on his property.[53] Thus
a new motive was furnished, this time somewhat artificially, for making
nakedness, in women at all events, disgraceful. As the conception of
property also extended to the father's right over his daughters, and the
appreciation of female chastity developed, this motive spread to unmarried
as well as married women. A woman on the west coast of Africa must always
be chaste because she is first the property of her parents and afterwards
of her husband,[54] and even in the seventeenth century of Christendom so
able a thinker as Bishop Burnet furnished precisely the same reason for
feminine chastity.[55] This conception probably constituted the chief and
most persistent element furnished to the complex emotion of modesty by the
barbarous stages of human civilization.

This economic factor necessarily involved the introduction of a new moral
element into modesty. If a woman's chastity is the property of another
person, it is essential that she shall be modest in order that men may not
be tempted to incur the penalties involved by the infringement of property
rights. Thus modesty is strictly inculcated on women in order that men may
be safeguarded from temptation. The fact was overlooked that modesty is
itself a temptation. Immodesty being, on this ground, disapproved by men,
a new motive for modesty is furnished to women. In the book which the
Knight of the Tower, Landry, wrote in the fourteenth century, for the
instruction of his daughters, this factor of modesty is naïvely revealed.
He tells his daughters of the trouble that David got into through the
thoughtlessness of Bathsheba, and warns them that "every woman ought
religiously to conceal herself when dressing and washing, and neither out
of vanity nor yet to attract attention show either her hair, or her neck,
or her breast, or any part which ought to be covered." Hinton went so far
as to regard what he termed "body modesty," as entirely a custom imposed
upon women by men with the object of preserving their own virtue. While
this motive is far from being the sole source of modesty, it must
certainly be borne in mind as an inevitable outcome of the economic factor
of modesty.

In Europe it seems probable that the generally accepted conceptions of
mediæval chivalry were not without influence in constituting the forms in
which modesty shows itself among us. In the early middle ages there seems
to have been a much greater degree of physical familiarity between the
sexes than is commonly found among barbarians elsewhere. There was
certainly considerable promiscuity in bathing and indifference to
nakedness. It seems probable, as Durkheim points out,[56] that this state
of things was modified in part by the growing force of the dictates of
Christian morality, which regarded all intimate approaches between the
sexes as sinful, and in part by the influence of chivalry with its
æsthetic and moral ideals of women, as the representative of all the
delicacies and elegancies of civilization. This ideal was regarded as
incompatible with the familiarities of the existing social relationships
between the sexes, and thus a separation, which at first existed only in
art and literature, began by a curious reaction to exert an influence on
real life.

The chief new feature--it is scarcely a new element--added to modesty when
an advanced civilization slowly emerges from barbarism is the elaboration
of its social ritual.[57] Civilization expands the range of modesty, and
renders it, at the same time, more changeable. The French seventeenth
century, and the English eighteenth, represent early stages of modern
European civilization, and they both devoted special attention to the
elaboration of the minute details of modesty. The frequenters of the Hotel
Rambouillet, the _précieuses_ satirized by Molière, were not only engaged
in refining the language; they were refining feelings and ideas and
enlarging the boundaries of modesty.[58] In England such famous and
popular authors as Swift and Sterne bear witness to a new ardor of modesty
in the sudden reticences, the dashes, and the asterisks, which are found
throughout their works. The altogether new quality of literary prurience,
of which Sterne is still the classical example, could only have arisen on
the basis of the new modesty which was then overspreading society and
literature. Idle people, mostly, no doubt, the women in _salons_ and
drawing-rooms, people more familiar with books than with the realities of
life, now laid down the rules of modesty, and were ever enlarging it, ever
inventing new subtleties of gesture and speech, which it would be immodest
to neglect, and which are ever being rendered vulgar by use and ever
changing.

It was at this time, probably, that the custom of inventing an
arbitrary private vocabulary of words and phrases for the purpose
of disguising references to functions and parts of the body
regarded as immodest and indecent, first began to become common.
Such private slang, growing up independently in families, and
especially among women, as well as between lovers, is now almost
universal. It is not confined to any European country, and has
been studied in Italy by Niceforo (_Il Gergo_, 1897, cap. 1 and
2), who regards it as a weapon of social defence against an
inquisitive or hostile environment, since it enables things to be
said with a meaning which is unintelligible to all but the
initiated person. While it is quite true that the custom is
supported by the consciousness of its practical advantages, it
has another source in a desire to avoid what is felt to be the
vulgar immodesty of direct speech. This is sufficiently shown by
the fact that such slang is mostly concerned with the sacro-pubic
sphere. It is one of the chief contributions to the phenomena of
modesty furnished by civilization. The claims of modesty having
effected the clothing of the body, the impulse of modesty finds a
further sphere of activity--half-playful, yet wholly
imperative--in the clothing of language.

Modesty of speech has, however, a deep and primitive basis,
although in modern Europe it only became conspicuous at the
beginning of the eighteenth century. "All over the world," as
Dufour put it, "to do is good, to say is bad." Reticences of
speech are not adequately accounted for by the statement that
modesty tends to irradiate from the action to the words
describing the action, for there is a tendency for modesty to be
more deeply rooted in the words than in the actions. "Modest
women," as Kleinpaul truly remarks, "have a much greater horror
of saying immodest things than of doing them; they believe that
fig-leaves were especially made for the mouth." (Kleinpaul,
_Sprache ohne Worte_, p. 309.) It is a tendency which is linked
on to the religious and ritual feeling which we have already
found to be a factor of modesty, and which, even when applied to
language, appears to have an almost or quite instinctive basis,
for it is found among the most primitive savages, who very
frequently regard a name as too sacred or dangerous to utter.
Among the tribes of Central Australia, in addition to his
ordinary name, each individual has his sacred or secret name,
only known to the older and fully initiated members of his own
totemic group; among the Warramunga, it is not permitted to women
to utter even a man's ordinary name, though she knows it.
(Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p.
581.) In the mysterious region of sex, this feeling easily takes
root. In many parts of the world, men use among themselves, and
women use among themselves, words and even languages which they
may not use without impropriety in speaking to persons of the
opposite sex, and it has been shown that exogamy, or the fact
that the wife belongs to a different tribe, will not always
account for this phenomenon. (Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_, p. 46.)
A special vocabulary for the generative organs and functions is
very widespread. Thus, in northwest Central Queensland, there is
both a decent and an indecent vocabulary for the sexual parts; in
Mitakoodi language, for instance, _me-ne_ may be used for the
vulva in the best aboriginal society, but _koon-ja_ and _pukkil_,
which are names for the same parts, are the most blackguardly
words known to the natives. (W. Roth, _Ethnological Studies Among
the Queensland Aborigines_, p. 184.) Among the Malays, _puki_ is
also a name for the vulva which it is very indecent to utter, and
it is only used in public by people under the influence of an
obsessive nervous disorder. (W. Gilman Ellis, "Latah," _Journal
of Mental Science_, Jan., 1897.) The Swahili women of Africa have
a private metaphorical language of their own, referring to sexual
matters (Zache, _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1899, Heft 2-3, pp.
70 et seq.), and in Samoa, again, young girls have a euphemistic
name for the penis, _aualuma_, which is not that in common use
(_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1899, Heft 1, p. 31); exactly the
same thing is found in Europe, to-day, and is sometimes more
marked among young peasant women than among those of better
social class, who often avoid, under all circumstances, the
necessity for using any definite name.

Singular as it may seem, the Romans, who in their literature
impress us by their vigorous and naked grip of the most private
facts of life, showed in familiar intercourse a dread of obscene
language--a dread ultimately founded, it is evident, on religious
grounds--far exceeding that which prevails among ourselves to-day
in civilization. "It is remarkable," Dufour observes, "that the
prostitutes of ancient Rome would have blushed to say an indecent
word in public. The little tender words used between lovers and
their mistresses were not less correct and innocent when the
mistress was a courtesan and the lover an erotic poet. He called
her his rose, his queen, his goddess, his dove, his light, his
star, and she replied by calling him her jewel, her honey, her
bird, her ambrosia, the apple of her eye, and never with any
licentious interjection, but only 'I will love!' (_Amabo_), a
frequent exclamation, summing up a whole life and vocation. When
intimate relations began, they treated each other as 'brother'
and 'sister.' These appellations were common among the humblest
and the proudest courtesans alike." (Dufour, _Histoire de la
Prostitution_, vol. ii, p. 78.) So excessive was the Roman horror
of obscenity that even physicians were compelled to use a
euphemism for _urina_, and though the _urinal_ or _vas urinarium_
was openly used at the dining-table (following a custom
introduced by the Sybarites, according to Athenæus, Book XII,
cap. 17), the decorous guest could not ask for it by name, but
only by a snap of the fingers (Dufour, op. cit., vol. ii, p.
174).

In modern Europe, as seems fairly evident from the early
realistic dramatic literature of various countries, no special
horror of speaking plainly regarding the sacro-pubic regions and
their functions existed among the general population until the
seventeenth century. There is, however, one marked exception.
Such a feeling clearly existed as regards menstruation. It is not
difficult to see why it should have begun at this function. We
have here not only a function confined to one sex and, therefore,
easily lending itself to a vocabulary confined to one sex; but,
what is even of more importance, the belief which existed among
the Romans, as elsewhere throughout the world, concerning the
specially dangerous and mysterious properties of menstruation,
survived throughout mediæval times. (See e.g., Ploss and Bartels,
_Das Weib_, Bd. I, XIV; also Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_,
fourth ed. Ch. XI.) The very name, _menses_ ("monthlies"), is a
euphemism, and most of the old scientific names for this function
are similarly vague. As regards popular feminine terminology
previous to the eighteenth century, Schurig gives us fairly ample
information (_Parthenologia_, 1729, pp. 27 et seq.). He remarks
that both in Latin and Germanic countries, menstruation was
commonly designated by some term equivalent to "flowers,"
because, he says, it is a blossoming that indicates the
possibility of fruit. German peasant women, he tells us, called
it the rose-wreath (Rosenkrantz). Among the other current
feminine names for menstruation which he gives, some are purely
fanciful; thus, the Italian women dignified the function with the
title of "marchese magnifico;" German ladies, again, would use
the locution, "I have had a letter," or would say that their
cousin or aunt had arrived. These are closely similar to the
euphemisms still used by women.

It should be added that euphemisms for menstruation are not
confined to Europe, and are found among savages. According to
Hill Tout (_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, 1904, p.
320; and 1905, p. 137), one of these euphemisms was "putting on
the moccasin," and in another branch of the same people, "putting
the knees together," "going outside" (in allusion to the
customary seclusion at this period in a solitary hut), and so on.

It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that this process is an
intensification of modesty. It is, on the contrary, an attenuation of it.
The observances of modesty become merely a part of a vast body of rules of
social etiquette, though a somewhat stringent part on account of the vague
sense still persisting of a deep-lying natural basis. It is a significant
coincidence that the eighteenth century, which was marked by this new
extension of the social ritual of modesty, also saw the first appearance
of a new philosophic impulse not merely to analyze, but to dissolve the
conception of modesty. This took place more especially in France.

The swift rise to supremacy, during the seventeenth century, of logical
and rational methods of thinking, in conjunction with the new development
of geometrical and mathematical science, led in the eighteenth century to
a widespread belief in France that human customs and human society ought
to be founded on a strictly logical and rational basis. It was a belief
which ignored those legitimate claims of the emotional nature which the
nineteenth century afterwards investigated and developed, but it was of
immense service to mankind in clearing away useless prejudices and
superstitions, and it culminated in the reforms of the great Revolution
which most other nations have since been painfully struggling to attain.
Modesty offered a tempting field for the eighteenth century philosophic
spirit to explore.

The manner in which the most distinguished and adventurous minds of the
century approached it, can scarcely be better illustrated than by a
conversation, reported by Madame d'Epinay, which took place in 1750 at the
table of Mlle. Quinault, the eminent actress. "A fine virtue," Duclos
remarked, "which one fastens on in the morning with pins." He proceeded to
argue that "a moral law must hold good always and everywhere, which
modesty does not." Saint-Lambert, the poet, observed that "it must be
acknowledged that one can say nothing good about innocence without being a
little corrupted," and Duclos added "or of modesty without being
impudent." Saint-Lambert finally held forth with much poetic enthusiasm
concerning the desirability of consummating marriages in public.[59] This
view of modesty, combined with the introduction of Greek fashions, gained
ground to such an extent that towards the end of the century women, to the
detriment of their health, were sometimes content to dress in transparent
gauze, and even to walk abroad in the Champs Elysées without any clothing;
that, however, was too much for the public.[60] The final outcome of the
eighteenth century spirit in this direction was, as we know, by no means
the dissolution of modesty. But it led to a clearer realization of what is
permanent in its organic foundations and what is merely temporary in its
shifting manifestations. That is a realization which is no mean task to
achieve, and is difficult for many, even yet. So intelligent a traveler as
Mrs. Bishop (Miss Bird), on her first visit to Japan came to the
conclusion that Japanese women had no modesty, because they had no
objection to being seen naked when bathing. Twenty years later she
admitted to Dr. Baelz that she had made a mistake, and that "a woman may
be naked and yet behave like a lady."[61] In civilized countries the
observances of modesty differ in different regions, and in different
social classes, but, however various the forms may be, the impulse itself
remains persistent.[62]

Modesty has thus come to have the force of a tradition, a vague but
massive force, bearing with special power on those who cannot reason, and
yet having its root in the instincts of all people of all classes.[63] It
has become mainly transformed into the allied emotion of decency, which
has been described as "modesty fossilized into social customs." The
emotion yields more readily than in its primitive state to any
sufficiently-strong motive. Even fashion in the more civilized countries
can easily inhibit anatomical modesty, and rapidly exhibit or accentuate,
in turn, almost any part of the body, while the savage Indian woman of
America, the barbarous woman of some Mohammedan countries, can scarcely
sacrifice her modesty in the pangs of childbirth. Even when, among
uncivilized races, the focus of modesty may be said to be eccentric and
arbitrary, it still remains very rigid. In such savage and barbarous
countries modesty possesses the strength of a genuine and irresistible
instinct. In civilized countries, however, anyone who places
considerations of modesty before the claims of some real human need
excites ridicule and contempt.


FOOTNOTES:

[4] Fliess (_Die Beziehungen zwischen Nase und weiblichen
Geschlechts-Organen_, p. 194) remarks on the fact that, in the Bible
narrative of Eden, shame and fear are represented as being brought into
the world together: Adam feared God because he was naked. Melinaud
("Psychologie de la Pudeur," _La Revue_, Nov. 15, 1901) remarks that shame
differs from modesty in being, not a fear, but a kind of grief; this
position seems untenable.

[5] Bashfulness in children has been dealt with by Professor Baldwin; see
especially his _Mental Development in the Child and the Race_, Chapter VI,
pp. 146 et seq., and _Social Interpretations in Mental Development_,
Chapter VI.

[6] Bell, "A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love Between the Sexes,"
_American Journal Psychology_, July, 1902.

[7] Professor Starbuck (_Psychology of Religion_, Chapter XXX) refers to
unpublished investigations showing that recognition of the rights of
others also exhibits a sudden increment at the age of puberty.

[8] Perez, _L'Enfant de Trois à Sept Ans_, 1886, pp. 267-277.

[9] It must be remembered that the Medicean Venus is merely a
comparatively recent and familiar embodiment of a natural attitude which
is very ancient, and had impressed sculptors at a far earlier period.
Reinach, indeed, believes ("La Sculpture en Europe," _L'Anthropologie_,
No. 5, 1895) that the hand was first brought to the breast to press out
the milk, and expresses the idea of exuberance, and that the attitude of
the Venus of Medici as a symbol of modesty came later; he remarks that, as
regards both hands, this attitude may be found in a figurine of Cyprus,
2,000 years before Christ. This is, no doubt, correct, and I may add that
Babylonian figurines of Ishtar, the goddess of fertility, represent her as
clasping her hands to her breasts or her womb.

[10] When there is no sexual fear the impulse of modesty may be entirely
inhibited. French ladies under the old Régime (as A. Franklin points out
in his _Vie Privée d'Autrefois_) sometimes showed no modesty towards their
valets, not admitting the possibility of any sexual advance, and a lady
would, for example, stand up in her bath while a valet added hot water by
pouring it between her separated feet.

[11] I do not hereby mean to deny a certain degree of normal periodicity
even to the human male; but such periodicity scarcely involves any element
of sexual fear or attitude of sexual defence, in man because it is too
slight to involve complete latency of the sexual functions, in other
species because latency of sexual function in the male is always
accompanied by corresponding latency in the female.

[12] H. Northcote, _Christianity and the Sex Problem_, p. 8. Crawley had
previously argued (_The Mystic Rose_, pp. 134, 180) that this same
necessity for solitude during the performance of nutritive, sexual, and
excretory functions, is a factor in investing such functions with a
potential sacredness, so that the concealment of them became a religious
duty.

[13] _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1878, p. 26.

[14] _Essais_, livre ii, Ch. XV.

[15] _Monsieur Nicolas_, vol. i, p. 89.

[16] Lane, _Arabian Society_, p. 228. The Arab insistence on the value of
virginal modesty is well brought out in one of the most charming stories
of the _Arabian Nights_, "The History of the Mirror of Virginity."

[17] This has especially been emphasized by Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_,
pp. 181, 324 et seq., 353.

[18] _Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, Bd. II, Heft 8, p. 358.

[19] This, however, is not always or altogether true of experienced women.
Thus, the Russian correspondent already referred to, who as a youth was
accustomed, partly out of shyness, to feign complete ignorance of sexual
matters, informs me that it repeatedly happened to him at this time that
young married women took pleasure in imposing on themselves, not without
shyness but with evident pleasure, the task of initiating him, though they
always hastened to tell him that it was for his good, to preserve him from
bad women and masturbation. Prostitutes, also, often take pleasure in
innocent men, and Hans Ostwald tells (_Sexual-Probleme_, June, 1908, p.
357) of a prostitute who fell violently in love with a youth who had never
known a woman before; she had never met an innocent man before, and it
excited her greatly. And I have been told of an Italian prostitute who
spoke of the exciting pleasure which an unspoilt youth gave her by his
freshness, _tutta questa freschezza_.

[20] _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part III, Sect. III. Mem. IV. Subs. I.

[21] N. Venette, _La Génération de l'Homme_, Part II, Ch. X.

[22] _Monsieur Nicolas_, vol. i, p. 94.

[23] Kryptadia, vol. ii, p. 26, 31. Ib. vol. iii, p. 162.

[24] "Modesty is, at first," said Renouvier, "a fear which we have of
displeasing others, and of blushing at our own natural imperfections."
(Renouvier and Prat, _La Nouvelle Monadologie_, p. 221.)

[25] C. Richet, "Les Causes du Dégoût," _L'Homme et l'Intelligence_, 1884.
This eminent physiologist's elaborate study of disgust was not written as
a contribution to the psychology of modesty, but it forms an admirable
introduction to the investigation of the social factor of modesty.

[26] It is interesting to note that where, as among the Eskimo, urine, for
instance, is preserved as a highly-valuable commodity, the act of
urination, even at table, is not regarded as in the slightest degree
disgusting or immodest (Bourke, _Scatologic Rites_, p. 202).

[27] Hawkesworth, _An Account of the Voyages_, etc., 1775, vol. ii, p. 52.

[28] _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, vol. vi, p. 173.

[29] Stevens, "Mittheilungen aus dem Frauenleben der Orang Belendas,"
_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, Heft 4, p. 167, 1896. Crawley, (_Mystic
Rose_, Ch. VIII, p. 439) gives numerous other instances, even in Europe,
with, however, special reference to sexual taboo. I may remark that
English people of lower class, especially women, are often modest about
eating in the presence of people of higher class. This feeling is, no
doubt, due, in part, to the consciousness of defective etiquette, but that
very consciousness is, in part, a development of the fear of causing
disgust, which is a component of modesty.

[30] Shame in regard to eating, it may be added, occasionally appears as a
neurasthenic obsession in civilization, and has been studied as a form of
psychasthenia by Janet. See e.g., (Raymond and Janet, _Les Obsessions et
la Psychasthénie_, vol. ii, p. 386) the case of a young girl of 24, who,
from the age of 12 or 13 (the epoch of puberty) had been ashamed to eat in
public, thinking it nasty and ugly to do so, and arguing that it ought
only to be done in private, like urination.

[31] "Desire and disgust are curiously blended," remarks Crawley (_The
Mystic Rose_, p. 139), "when, with one's own desire unsatisfied, one sees
the satisfaction of another; and here we may see the altruistic stage
beginning; this has two sides, the fear of causing desire in others, and
the fear of causing disgust; in each case, personal isolation is the
psychological result."

[32] Hohenemser argues that the fear of causing disgust cannot be a part
of shame. But he also argues that shame is simply psychic stasis, and it
is quite easy to see, as in the above case, that the fear of causing
disgust is simply a manifestation of psychic stasis. There is a conflict
in the woman's mind between the idea of herself which she has already
given, and the more degraded idea of herself which she fears she is likely
to give, and this conflict is settled when she is made to feel that the
first idea may still be maintained under the new circumstances.

[33] We neither of us knew that we had merely made afresh a very ancient
discovery. Casanova, more than a century ago, quoted the remark of a
friend of his, that the easiest way to overcome the modesty of a woman is
to suppose it non-existent; and he adds a saying, which he attributes to
Clement of Alexandria, that modesty, which seems so deeply rooted in
women, only resides in the linen that covers them, and vanishes when it
vanishes. The passage to which Casanova referred occurs in the
_Pædagogus_, and has already been quoted. The observation seems to have
appealed strongly to the Fathers, always glad to make a point against
women, and I have met with it in Cyprian's _De Habitu Feminarum_. It also
occurs in Jerome's treatise against Jovinian. Jerome, with more scholarly
instinct, rightly presents the remark as a quotation: "_Scribit Herodotus
quod mulier cum veste deponat et verecundiam_." In Herodotus the saying is
attributed to Gyges (Book I, Chapter VIII). We may thus trace very far
back into antiquity an observation which in English has received its
classical expression from Chaucer, who, in his "Wife of Bath's Prologue,"
has:--

"He sayde, a woman cast hir shame away,
When she cast of hir smok."

I need not point out that the analysis of modesty offered above robs this
venerable saying of any sting it may have possessed as a slur upon women.
In such a case, modesty is largely a doubt as to the spectator's attitude,
and necessarily disappears when that doubt is satisfactorily resolved. As
we have seen, the Central Australian maidens were very modest with regard
to the removal of their single garment, but when that removal was
accomplished and accepted, they were fearless.

[34] The same result occurs more markedly under the deadening influence of
insanity. Grimaldi (_Il Manicomio Moderno_, 1888) found that modesty is
lacking in 50 per cent, of the insane.

[35] For some facts bearing on this point, see Houssay, _Industries of
Animals_, Chapter VII. "The Defence and Sanitation of Dwellings;" also P.
Ballion, _De l'Instinct de Propreté chez les Animaux_.

[36] Thus, Stevens mentions (_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, p. 182, 1897)
that the Dyaks of Malacca always wash the sexual organs, even after
urination, and are careful to use the left hand in doing so. The left hand
is also reserved for such uses among the Jekris of the Niger coast
(_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, p. 122, 1898).

[37] Lombroso and Ferrero--who adopt the derivation of _pudor_ from
_putere_; i.e., from the repugnance caused by the decomposition of the
vaginal secretions--consider that the fear of causing disgust to men is
the sole origin of modesty among savage women, as also it remains the sole
form of modesty among some prostitutes to-day. (_La Donna Delinquente_, p.
540.) Important as this factor is in the constitution of the emotion of
modesty, I need scarcely add that I regard so exclusive a theory as
altogether untenable.

[38] _Das Weib_, Ch. VI.

[39] For references as to a similar feeling among other savages, see
Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, p. 152.

[40] See e.g., Bourke, _Scatologic Rites_, pp. 141, 145, etc.

[41] Crawley, op. cit., Ch. VII.

[42] S, Reinach, _Cultes, Mythes et Religions_, p. 172.

[43] Tertullian, _De Virginibus Velandis_, cap. 17. Hottentot women, also
(Fritsch, _Eingeborene Südafrika's_, p. 311), cover their head with a
cloth, and will not be persuaded to remove it.

[44] Wellhausen, _Reste Arabischen Heidentums_, p. 196. The same custom is
found among Tuareg men though it is not imperative for the women
(Duveyrier, _Les Touaregs du Nord_, p. 291).

[45] Quoted in _Zentralblatt für Anthropologie_, 1906, Heft I, p. 21.

[46] Or rather, perhaps, because the sight of their nakedness might lead
the angels into sin. See W.G. Sumner, _Folkways_, p. 431.

[47] In Moruland, Emin Bey remarked that women are mostly naked, but some
wear a girdle, with a few leaves hanging behind. The women of some negro
tribes, who thus cover themselves behind, if deprived of this sole
covering, immediately throw themselves on the ground on their backs, in
order to hide their nakedness.

[48] E.g., Letourneau, _L'Evolution de la Morale_, p. 146.

[49] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 683.

[50] J.R. Forster, _Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World_,
1728, p. 395.

[51] Westermarck (_History of Human Marriage_, Ch. IX) ably sets forth
this argument, with his usual wealth of illustration. Crawley (_Mystic
Rose_, p. 135) seeks to qualify this conclusion by arguing that tattooing,
etc., of the sex organs is not for ornament but for the purpose of
magically insulating the organs, and is practically a permanent amulet or
charm.

[52] _Iliad_, II, 262. Waitz gives instances (_Anthropology_, p. 301)
showing that nakedness is sometimes a mark of submission.

[53] The Celtic races, in their days of developed barbarism, seem to have
been relatively free from the idea of proprietorship in women, and it was
probably among the Irish (as we learn from the seventeenth century
_Itinerary_ of Fynes Moryson) that the habit of nakedness was longest
preserved among the upper social class women of Western Europe.