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STUDIES
IN THE
PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX
VOLUME I
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY
THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PERIODICITY
AUTO-EROTISM
BY
HAVELOCK ELLIS
THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED
1927
GENERAL PREFACE.
The origin of these Studies dates from many years back. As a youth I was faced, as others are, by the problem of sex. Living partly in an Australian city where the ways of life were plainly seen, partly in the solitude of the bush, I was free both to contemplate and to meditate many things. A resolve slowly grew up within me: one main part of my life-work should be to make clear the problems of sex.
That was more than twenty years ago. Since then I can honestly say that in all that I have done that resolve has never been very far from my thoughts. I have always been slowly working up to this central problem; and in a book published some three years ago—Man and Woman: a Study of Human Secondary Sexual Characters—I put forward what was, in my own eyes, an introduction to the study of the primary questions of sexual psychology.
Now that I have at length reached the time for beginning to publish my results, these results scarcely seem to me large. As a youth, I had hoped to settle problems for those who came after; now I am quietly content if I do little more than state them. For even that, I now think, is much; it is at least the half of knowledge. In this particular field the evil of ignorance is magnified by our efforts to suppress that which never can be suppressed, though in the effort of suppression it may become perverted. I have at least tried to find out what are the facts, among normal people as well as among abnormal people; for, while it seems to me that the physician's training is necessary in order to ascertain the facts, the physician for the most part only obtains the abnormal facts, which alone bring little light. I have tried to get at the facts, and, having got at the facts, to look them simply and squarely in the face. If I cannot perhaps turn the lock myself, I bring the key which can alone in the end rightly open the door: the key of sincerity. That is my one panacea: sincerity.
I know that many of my friends, people on whose side I, too, am to be found, retort with another word: reticence. It is a mistake, they say, to try to uncover these things; leave the sexual instincts alone, to grow up and develop in the shy solitude they love, and they will be sure to grow up and develop wholesomely. But, as a matter of fact, that is precisely what we can not and will not ever allow them to do. There are very few middle-aged men and women who can clearly recall the facts of their lives and tell you in all honesty that their sexual instincts have developed easily and wholesomely throughout. And it should not be difficult to see why this is so. Let my friends try to transfer their feelings and theories from the reproductive region to, let us say, the nutritive region, the only other which can be compared to it for importance. Suppose that eating and drinking was never spoken of openly, save in veiled or poetic language, and that no one ever ate food publicly, because it was considered immoral and immodest to reveal the mysteries of this natural function. We know what would occur. A considerable proportion of the community, more especially the more youthful members, possessed by an instinctive and legitimate curiosity, would concentrate their thoughts on the subject. They would have so many problems to puzzle over: How often ought I to eat? What ought I to eat? Is it wrong to eat fruit, which I like? Ought I to eat grass, which I don't like? Instinct notwithstanding, we may be quite sure that only a small minority would succeed in eating reasonably and wholesomely. The sexual secrecy of life is even more disastrous than such a nutritive secrecy would be; partly because we expend such a wealth of moral energy in directing or misdirecting it, partly because the sexual impulse normally develops at the same time as the intellectual impulse, not in the early years of life, when wholesome instinctive habits might be formed. And there is always some ignorant and foolish friend who is prepared still further to muddle things: Eat a meal every other day! Eat twelve meals a day! Never eat fruit! Always eat grass! The advice emphatically given in sexual matters is usually not less absurd than this. When, however, the matter is fully open, the problems of food are not indeed wholly solved, but everyone is enabled by the experience of his fellows to reach some sort of situation suited to his own case. And when the rigid secrecy is once swept away a sane and natural reticence becomes for the first time possible.
This secrecy has not always been maintained. When the Catholic Church was at the summit of its power and influence it fully realized the magnitude of sexual problems and took an active and inquiring interest in all the details of normal and abnormal sexuality. Even to the present time there are certain phenomena of the sexual life which have scarcely been accurately described except in ancient theological treatises. As the type of such treatises I will mention the great tome of Sanchez, De Matrimonio. Here you will find the whole sexual life of men and women analyzed in its relationships to sin. Everything is set forth, as clearly and as concisely as it can be—without morbid prudery on the one hand, or morbid sentimentality on the other—in the coldest scientific language; the right course of action is pointed out for all the cases that may occur, and we are told what is lawful, what a venial sin, what a mortal sin. Now I do not consider that sexual matters concern the theologian alone, and I deny altogether that he is competent to deal with them. In his hands, also, undoubtedly, they sometimes become prurient, as they can scarcely fail to become on the non-natural and unwholesome basis of asceticism, and as they with difficulty become in the open-air light of science. But we are bound to recognize the thoroughness with which the Catholic theologians dealt with these matters, and, from their own point of view, indeed, the entire reasonableness; we are bound to recognize the admirable spirit in which, successfully or not, they sought to approach them. We need to-day the same spirit and temper applied from a different standpoint. These things concern everyone; the study of these things concerns the physiologist, the psychologist, the moralist. We want to get into possession of the actual facts, and from the investigation of the facts we want to ascertain what is normal and what is abnormal, from the point of view of physiology and of psychology. We want to know what is naturally lawful under the various sexual chances that may befall man, not as the born child of sin, but as a naturally social animal. What is a venial sin against nature, what a mortal sin against nature? The answers are less easy to reach than the theologians' answers generally were, but we can at least put ourselves in the right attitude; we may succeed in asking that question which is sometimes even more than the half of knowledge.
It is perhaps a mistake to show so plainly at the outset that I approach what may seem only a psychological question not without moral fervour. But I do not wish any mistake to be made. I regard sex as the central problem of life. And now that the problem of religion has practically been settled, and that the problem of labor has at least been placed on a practical foundation, the question of sex—with the racial questions that rest on it—stands before the coming generations as the chief problem for solution. Sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to reverence life until we know how to understand sex.—So, at least, it seems to me.
Having said so much, I will try to present such results as I have to record in that cold and dry light through which alone the goal of knowledge may truly be seen.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.
July, 1897.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
The first edition of this volume was published in 1899, following "Sexual Inversion," which now forms Volume II. The second edition, issued by the present publishers and substantially identical with the first edition, appeared in the following year. Ten years have elapsed since then and this new edition will be found to reflect the course of that long interval. Not only is the volume greatly enlarged, but nearly every page has been partly rewritten. This is mainly due to three causes: Much new literature required to be taken into account; my own knowledge of the historical and ethnographic aspects of the sexual impulse has increased; many fresh illustrative cases of a valuable and instructive character have accumulated in my hands. It is to these three sources of improvement that the book owes its greatly revised and enlarged condition, and not to the need for modifying any of its essential conclusions. These, far from undergoing any change, have by the new material been greatly strengthened.
It may be added that the General Preface to the whole work, which was originally published in 1898 at the beginning of "Sexual Inversion," now finds its proper place at the outset of the present volume.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.
Carbis Bay,
Cornwall, Eng.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
The present volume contains three studies which seem to me to be necessary prolegomena to that analysis of the sexual instinct which must form the chief part of an investigation into the psychology of sex. The first sketches the main outlines of a complex emotional state which is of fundamental importance in sexual psychology; the second, by bringing together evidence from widely different regions, suggests a tentative explanation of facts that are still imperfectly known; the third attempts to show that even in fields where we assume our knowledge to be adequate a broader view of the phenomena teaches us to suspend judgment and to adopt a more cautious attitude. So far as they go, these studies are complete in themselves; their special use, as an introduction to a more comprehensive analysis of sexual phenomena, is that they bring before us, under varying aspects, a characteristic which, though often ignored, is of the first importance in obtaining a clear understanding of the facts: the tendency of the sexual impulse to appear in a spontaneous and to some extent periodic manner, affecting women differently from men. This is a tendency which, later, I hope to make still more apparent, for it has practical and social, as well as psychological, implications. Here—and more especially in the study of those spontaneous solitary manifestations which I call auto-erotic—I have attempted to clear the ground, and to indicate the main lines along which the progress of our knowledge in these fields may best be attained.
It may surprise many medical readers that in the third and longest study I have said little, save incidentally, either of treatment or prevention. The omission of such considerations at this stage is intentional. It may safely be said that in no other field of human activity is so vast an amount of strenuous didactic morality founded on so slender a basis of facts. In most other departments of life we at least make a pretence of learning before we presume to teach; in the field of sex we content ourselves with the smallest and vaguest minimum of information, often ostentatiously second-hand, usually unreliable. I wish to emphasize the fact that before we can safely talk either of curing or preventing these manifestations we must know a great deal more than we know at present regarding their distribution, etiology, and symptomatology; and we must exercise the same coolness and caution as—if our work is to be fruitful—we require in any other field of serious study. We must approach these facts as physicians, it is true, but also as psychologists, primarily concerned to find out the workings of such manifestations in fairly healthy and normal people. If we found a divorce-court judge writing a treatise on marriage we should smile. But it is equally absurd for the physician, so long as his knowledge is confined to disease, to write regarding sex at large; valuable as the facts he brings forward may be, he can never be in a position to generalize concerning them. And to me, at all events, it seems that we have had more than enough pictures of gross sexual perversity, whether furnished by the asylum or the brothel. They are only really instructive when they are seen in their proper perspective as the rare and ultimate extremes of a chain of phenomena which we may more profitably study nearer home.
Yet, although we are, on every hand, surrounded by the normal manifestations of sex, conscious or unconscious, these manifestations are extremely difficult to observe, and, in those cases in which we are best able to observe them, it frequently happens that we are unable to make any use of our knowledge. Moreover, even when we have obtained our data, the difficulties—at all events, for an English investigator—are by no means overcome. He may take for granted that any serious and precise study of the sexual instinct will not meet with general approval; his work will be misunderstood; his motives will be called in question; among those for whom he is chiefly working he will find indifference. Indeed, the pioneer in this field may well count himself happy if he meets with nothing worse than indifference. Hence it is that the present volume will not be published in England, but that, availing myself of the generous sympathy with which my work has been received in America, I have sought the wider medical and scientific audience of the United States. In matters of faith, "liberty of prophesying" was centuries since eloquently vindicated for Englishmen; the liberty of investigating facts is still called in question, under one pretence or another, and to seek out the most vital facts of life is still in England a perilous task.
I desire most heartily to thank the numerous friends and correspondents, some living in remote parts of the world, who have freely assisted me in my work with valuable information and personal histories. To Mr. F. H. Perry-Coste I owe an appendix which is by far the most elaborate attempt yet made to find evidence of periodicity in the spontaneous sexual manifestations of sleep; my debts to various medical and other correspondents are duly stated in the text. To many women friends and correspondents I may here express my gratitude for the manner in which they have furnished me with intimate personal records, and for the cross-examination to which they have allowed me to subject them. I may already say here, what I shall have occasion to say more emphatically in subsequent volumes, that without the assistance I have received from women of fine intelligence and high character my work would be impossible. I regret that I cannot make my thanks more specific.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.
CONTENTS.
[GENERAL PREFACE.]
[PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.]
[PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.]
[THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY.]
[I.]
The Definition of Modesty—The Significance of Modesty—Difficulties in the Way of Its Analysis—The Varying Phenomena of Modesty Among Different Peoples and in Different Ages.
[II.]
Modesty an Agglomeration of Fears—Children in Relation to Modesty—Modesty in Animals—The Attitude of the Medicean Venus—The Sexual Factor of Modesty Based on Sexual periodicity and on the Primitive Phenomena of Courtship—The Necessity of Seclusion in Primitive Sexual Intercourse—The Meaning of Coquetry—The Sexual Charm of Modesty—Modesty as an Expression of Feminine Erotic Impulse—The Fear of Causing Disgust as a Factor of Modesty—The Modesty of Savages in Regard to Eating in the Presence of Others—The Sacro-Pubic Region as a Focus of Disgust—The Idea of Ceremonial Uncleanliness—The Custom of Veiling the Face—Ornaments and Clothing—Modesty Becomes Concentrated in the Garment—The Economic Factor in Modesty—The Contribution of Civilization to Modesty—The Elaboration of Social Ritual.
[III.]
The Blush the Sanction of Modesty—The Phenomena of Blushing—Influences Which Modify the Aptitude to Blush—Darkness, Concealment of the Face, Etc.
[IV.]
Summary of the Factors of Modesty—The Future of Modesty—Modesty an Essential Element of Love.
[THE PHENOMENA OF SEXUAL PERIODICITY.]
[I.]
The Various Physiological and Psychological Rhythms—Menstruation—The Alleged Influence of the Moon—Frequent Suppression of Menstruation among Primitive Races—Mittelschmerz—Possible Tendency to a Future Intermenstrual Cycle—Menstruation among Animals—Menstruating Monkeys and Apes—What is Menstruation—Its Primary Cause Still Obscure—The Relation of Menstruation to Ovulation—The Occasional Absence of Menstruation in Health—The Relation of Menstruation to "Heat"—The Prohibition of Intercourse during Menstruation—The Predominance of Sexual Excitement at and around the Menstrual Period—Its Absence during the Period Frequently Apparent only.
[II.]
The Question of a Monthly Sexual Cycle in Men—The Earliest Suggestions of a General Physiological Cycle in Men—Periodicity in Disease—Insanity, Heart Disease, etc.—The Alleged Twenty-three Days' Cycle—The Physiological Periodicity of Seminal Emissions during Sleep—Original Observations—Fortnightly and Weekly Rhythms.
[III.]
The Annual Sexual Rhythm—In Animals—In Man—Tendency of the Sexual Impulse to become Heightened in Spring and Autumn—The Prevalence of Seasonal Erotic Festivals—The Feast of Fools—The Easter and Midsummer Bonfires—The Seasonal Variations in Birthrate—The Causes of those Variations—The Typical Conception-rate Curve for Europe—The Seasonal Periodicity of Seminal Emissions During Sleep—Original Observations—Spring and Autumn the Chief Periods of Involuntary Sexual Excitement—The Seasonal Periodicity of Rapes—Of Outbreaks among Prisoners—The Seasonal Curves of Insanity and Suicide—The Growth of Children According to Season—The Annual Curve of Bread-consumption in Prisons—Seasonal Periodicity of Scarlet Fever—The Underlying Causes of these Seasonal Phenomena.
[AUTO-EROTISM: A STUDY OF THE SPONTANEOUS MANIFESTATIONS OF THE SEXUAL IMPULSE]
[I.]
Definition of Auto-erotism—Masturbation only Covers a Small Portion of the Auto-erotic Field—The Importance of this Study, especially To-day—Auto-erotic Phenomena in Animals—Among Savage and Barbaric Races—The Japanese rin-no-tama and other Special Instruments for Obtaining Auto-erotic Gratification—Abuse of the Ordinary Implements and Objects of Daily Life—The Frequency of Hair-pin in the Bladder—The Influence of Horse-exercise and Railway Traveling—The Sewing-machine and the Bicycle—Spontaneous Passive Sexual Excitement—Delectatio Morosa—Day-dreaming—Pollutio—Sexual Excitement During Sleep—Erotic Dreams—The Analogy of Nocturnal Enuresis—Differences in the Erotic Dreams of Men and Women—The Auto-erotic Phenomena of Sleep in the Hysterical—Their Frequently Painful Character.
[II.]
Hysteria and the Question of Its Relation to the Sexual Emotions—The Early Greek Theories of its Nature and Causation—The Gradual Rise of Modern Views—Charcot—The Revolt Against Charcot's Too Absolute Conclusions—Fallacies Involved—Charcot's Attitude the Outcome of his Personal Temperament—Breuer and Freud—Their Views Supplement and Complete Charcot's—At the Same Time they Furnish a Justification for the Earlier Doctrine of Hysteria—But They Must Not be Regarded as Final—The Diffused Hysteroid Condition in Normal Persons—The Physiological Basis of Hysteria—True Pathological Hysteria is Linked on to almost Normal States, especially to Sex-hunger.
[III.]
The Prevalence of Masturbation—Its Occurrence in Infancy and Childhood—Is it More Frequent in Males or Females?—After Adolescence Apparently more Frequent in Women—Reasons for the Sexual Distribution of Masturbation—The Alleged Evils of Masturbation—Historical Sketch of the Views Held on This Point—The Symptoms and Results of Masturbation—Its Alleged Influence in Causing Eye Disorders—Its Relation to Insanity and Nervous Disorders—The Evil Effects of Masturbation Usually Occur on the Basis of a Congenitally Morbid Nervous System—Neurasthenia Probably the Commonest Accompaniment of Excessive Masturbation—Precocious Masturbation Tends to Produce Aversion to Coitus—Psychic Results of Habitual Masturbation—Masturbation in Men of Genius—Masturbation as a Nervous Sedative—Typical Cases—The Greek Attitude toward Masturbation—Attitude of the Catholic Theologians—The Mohammedan Attitude—The Modern Scientific Attitude—In What Sense is Masturbation Normal?—The Immense Part in Life Played by Transmuted Auto-erotic Phenomena.
[APPENDIX A.]
The Influence of Menstruation on the Position of Women.
[APPENDIX B.]
Sexual Periodicity in Men.
[APPENDIX C.]
The Auto-erotic Factor in Religion.
[INDEX OF AUTHORS.]
[INDEX OF SUBJECTS.]
[DIAGRAMS]
THE EVOLUTION OF MODESTY.
I.
The Definition of Modesty—The Significance of Modesty—Difficulties in the Way of Its Analysis—The Varying Phenomena of Modesty Among Different Peoples and in Different Ages.
Modesty, which may be provisionally defined as an almost instinctive fear prompting to concealment and usually centering around the sexual processes, while common to both sexes is more peculiarly feminine, so that it may almost be regarded as the chief secondary sexual character of women on the psychical side. The woman who is lacking in this kind of fear is lacking, also, in sexual attractiveness to the normal and average man. The apparent exceptions seem to prove the rule, for it will generally be found that the women who are, not immodest (for immodesty is more closely related to modesty than mere negative absence of the sense of modesty), but without that fear which implies the presence of a complex emotional feminine organization to defend, only make a strong sexual appeal to men who are themselves lacking in the complementary masculine qualities. As a psychical secondary sexual character of the first rank, it is necessary, before any psychology of sex can be arranged in order, to obtain a clear view of modesty.
The immense importance of feminine modesty in creating masculine passion must be fairly obvious. I may, however, quote the observations of two writers who have shown evidence of insight and knowledge regarding this matter.
Casanova describes how, when at Berne, he went to the baths, and was, according to custom, attended by a young girl, whom he selected from a group of bath attendants. She undressed him, proceeded to undress herself, and then entered the bath with him, and rubbed him thoroughly all over, the operation being performed in the most serious manner and without a word being spoken. When all was over, however, he perceived that the girl had expected him to make advances, and he proceeds to describe and discuss his own feelings of indifference under such circumstances. "Though without gazing on the girl's figure, I had seen enough to recognize that she had all that a man can desire to find in a woman: a beautiful face, lively and well-formed eyes, a beautiful mouth, with good teeth, a healthy complexion, well-developed breasts, and everything in harmony. It is true that I had felt that her hands could have been smoother, but I could only attribute this to hard work; moreover, my Swiss girl was only eighteen, and yet I remained entirely cold. What was the cause of this? That was the question that I asked myself."
"It is clear," wrote Stendhal, "that three parts of modesty are taught. This is, perhaps, the only law born of civilization which produces nothing but happiness. It has been observed that birds of prey hide themselves to drink, because, being obliged to plunge their heads in the water, they are at that moment defenceless. After having considered what passes at Otaheite, I can see no other natural foundation for modesty. Love is the miracle of civilization. Among savage and very barbarous races we find nothing but physical love of a gross character. It is modesty that gives to love the aid of imagination, and in so doing imparts life to it. Modesty is very early taught to little girls by their mothers, and with extreme jealousy, one might say, by esprit de corps. They are watching in advance over the happiness of the future lover. To a timid and tender woman there ought to be no greater torture than to allow herself in the presence of a man something which she thinks she ought to blush at. I am convinced that a proud woman would prefer a thousand deaths. A slight liberty taken on the tender side by the man she loves gives a woman a moment of keen pleasure, but if he has the air of blaming her for it, or only of not enjoying it with transport, an awful doubt must be left in her mind. For a woman above the vulgar level there is, then, everything to gain by very reserved manners. The play is not equal. She hazards against a slight pleasure, or against the advantage of appearing a little amiable, the danger of biting remorse, and a feeling of shame which must render even the lover less dear. An evening passed gaily and thoughtlessly, without thinking of what comes after, is dearly paid at this price. The sight of a lover with whom one fears that one has had this kind of wrong must become odious for several days. Can one be surprised at the force of a habit, the slightest infractions of which are punished with such atrocious shame? As to the utility of modesty, it is the mother of love. As to the mechanism of the feeling, nothing is simpler. The mind is absorbed in feeling shame instead of being occupied with desire. Desires are forbidden, and desires lead to actions. It is evident that every tender and proud woman—and these two things, being cause and effect, naturally go together—must contract habits of coldness which the people whom she disconcerts call prudery. The power of modesty is so great that a tender woman betrays herself with her lover rather by deeds than by words. The evil of modesty is that it constantly leads to falsehood." (Stendhal, De l'Amour, Chapter XXIV.)
It thus happens that, as Adler remarks (Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, p. 133), the sexual impulse in women is fettered by an inhibition which has to be conquered. A thin veil of reticence, shyness, and anxiety is constantly cast anew over a woman's love, and her wooer, in every act of courtship, has the enjoyment of conquering afresh an oft-won woman.
An interesting testimony to the part played by modesty in effecting the union of the sexes is furnished by the fact—to which attention has often been called—that the special modesty of women usually tends to diminish, though not to disappear, with the complete gratification of the sexual impulses. This may be noted among savage as well as among civilized women. The comparatively evanescent character of modesty has led to the argument (Venturi, Degenerazioni Psico-sessuali, pp. 92-93) that modesty (pudore) is possessed by women alone, men exhibiting, instead, a sense of decency which remains at about the same level of persistency throughout life. Viazzi ("Pudore nell 'uomo e nella donna," Rivista Mensile di Psichiatria Forense, 1898), on the contrary, following Sergi, argues that men are, throughout, more modest than women; but the points he brings forward, though often just, scarcely justify his conclusion. While the young virgin, however, is more modest and shy than the young man of the same age, the experienced married woman is usually less so than her husband, and in a woman who is a mother the shy reticences of virginal modesty would be rightly felt to be ridiculous. ("Les petites pudeurs n'existent pas pour les mères," remarks Goncourt, Journal des Goncourt, vol. iii, p. 5.) She has put off a sexual livery that has no longer any important part to play in life, and would, indeed, be inconvenient and harmful, just as a bird loses its sexual plumage when the pairing season is over.
Madame Céline Renooz, in an elaborate study of the psychological sexual differences between men and women (Psychologie Comparée de l'Homme et de la Femme, 1898, pp. 85-87), also believes that modesty is not really a feminine characteristic. "Modesty," she argues, "is masculine shame attributed to women for two reasons: first, because man believes that woman is subject to the same laws as himself; secondly, because the course of human evolution has reversed the psychology of the sexes, attributing to women the psychological results of masculine sexuality. This is the origin of the conventional lies which by a sort of social suggestion have intimidated women. They have, in appearance at least, accepted the rule of shame imposed on them by men, but only custom inspires the modesty for which they are praised; it is really an outrage to their sex. This reversal of psychological laws has, however, only been accepted by women with a struggle. Primitive woman, proud of her womanhood, for a long time defended her nakedness which ancient art has always represented. And in the actual life of the young girl to-day there is a moment when, by a secret atavism, she feels the pride of her sex, the intuition of her moral superiority, and cannot understand why she must hide its cause. At this moment, wavering between the laws of Nature and social conventions, she scarcely knows if nakedness should or should not affright her. A sort of confused atavistic memory recalls to her a period before clothing was known, and reveals to her as a paradisaical ideal the customs of that human epoch."
In support of this view the authoress proceeds to point out that the décolleté constantly reappears in feminine clothing, never in male; that missionaries experience great difficulty in persuading women to cover themselves; that, while women accept with facility an examination by male doctors, men cannot force themselves to accept examination by a woman doctor, etc. (These and similar points had already been independently brought forward by Sergi, Archivio di Psichiatria, vol. xiii, 1892.)
It cannot be said that Madame Renooz's arguments will all bear examination, if only on the ground that nakedness by no means involves absence of modesty, but the point of view which she expresses is one which usually fails to gain recognition, though it probably contains an important element of truth. It is quite true, as Stendhal said, that modesty is very largely taught; from the earliest years, a girl child is trained to show a modesty which she quickly begins really to feel. This fact cannot fail to strike any one who reads the histories of pseudo-hermaphroditic persons, really males, who have from infancy been brought up in the belief that they are girls, and who show, and feel, all the shrinking reticence and blushing modesty of their supposed sex. But when the error is discovered, and they are restored to their proper sex, this is quickly changed, and they exhibit all the boldness of masculinity. (See e.g., Neugebauer, "Beobachtungen aus dem Gebiete des Scheinzwittertumes," Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Jahrgang iv, 1902, esp. p. 92.) At the same time this is only one thread in the tangled skein with which we are here concerned. The mass of facts which meets us when we turn to the study of modesty in women cannot be dismissed as a group of artificially-imposed customs. They gain rather than lose in importance if we have to realize that the organic sexual demands of women, calling for coyness in courtship, lead to the temporary suppression of another feminine instinct of opposite, though doubtless allied, nature.
But these somewhat conflicting, though not really contradictory, statements serve to bring out the fact that a woman's modesty is often an incalculable element. The woman who, under some circumstances and at some times, is extreme in her reticences, under other circumstances or at other times, may be extreme in her abandonment. Not that her modesty is an artificial garment, which she throws off or on at will. It is organic, but like the snail's shell, it sometimes forms an impenetrable covering, and sometimes glides off almost altogether. A man's modesty is more rigid, with little tendency to deviate toward either extreme. Thus it is, that, when uninstructed, a man is apt to be impatient with a woman's reticences, and yet shocked at her abandonments.
The significance of our inquiry becomes greater when we reflect that to the reticences of sexual modesty, in their progression, expansion, and complication, we largely owe, not only the refinement and development of the sexual emotions,—"la pudeur" as Guyau remarked, "a civilisé l'amour"—but the subtle and pervading part which the sexual instinct has played in the evolution of all human culture.
"It is certain that very much of what is best in religion, art, and life," remark Stanley Hall and Allin, "owes its charm to the progressively-widening irradiation of sexual feeling. Perhaps the reluctance of the female first long-circuited the exquisite sensations connected with sexual organs and acts to the antics of animal and human courtship, while restraint had the physiological function of developing the colors, plumes, excessive activity, and exuberant life of the pairing season. To keep certain parts of the body covered, irradiated the sense of beauty to eyes, hair, face, complexion, dress, form, etc., while many savage dances, costumes and postures are irradiations of the sexual act. Thus reticence, concealment, and restraint are among the prime conditions of religion and human culture." (Stanley Hall and Allin, "The Psychology of Tickling," American Journal of Psychology, 1897, p. 31.)
Groos attributes the deepening of the conjugal relation among birds to the circumstance that the male seeks to overcome the reticence of the female by the display of his charms and abilities. "And in the human world," he continues, "it is the same; without the modest reserve of the woman that must, in most cases, be overcome by lovable qualities, the sexual relationship would with difficulty find a singer who would extol in love the highest movements of the human soul." (Groos, Spiele der Menschen, p. 341.)
I have not, however, been, able to find that the subject of modesty has been treated in any comprehensive way by psychologists. Though valuable facts and suggestions bearing on the sexual emotions, on disgust, the origins of tatooing, on ornament and clothing, have been, brought forward by physiologists, psychologists, and ethnographists, few or no attempts appear to have been made to reach a general synthetic statement of these facts and suggestions. It is true that a great many unreliable, slight, or fragmentary efforts have been made to ascertain the constitution or basis of this emotion.[[1]] Many psychologists have regarded modesty simply as the result of clothing. This view is overturned by the well-ascertained fact that many races which go absolutely naked possess a highly-developed sense of modesty. These writers have not realized that physiological modesty is earlier in appearance, and more fundamental, than anatomical modesty. A partial contribution to the analysis of modesty has been made by Professor James, who, with his usual insight and lucidity, has set forth certain of its characteristics, especially the element due to "the application to ourselves of judgments primarily passed upon our mates." Guyau, in a very brief discussion of modesty, realized its great significance and touched on most of its chief elements.[[2]] Westermarck, again, followed by Grosse, has very ably and convincingly set forth certain factors in the origin of ornament and clothing, a subject which many writers imagine to cover the whole field of modesty. More recently Ribot, in his work on the emotions, has vaguely outlined most of the factors of modesty, but has not developed a coherent view of their origins and relationships.
Since the present Study first appeared, Hohenemser, who considers that my analysis of modesty is unsatisfactory, has made a notable attempt to define the psychological mechanism of shame. ("Versuch einer Analyse der Scham," Archiv für die Gesamte Psychologie, Bd. II, Heft 2-3, 1903.) He regards shame as a general psycho-physical phenomenon, "a definite tension of the whole soul," with an emotion superadded. "The state of shame consists in a certain psychic lameness or inhibition," sometimes accompanied by physical phenomena of paralysis, such as sinking of the head and inability to meet the eye. It is a special case of Lipps's psychic stasis or damming up (psychische Stauung), always produced when the psychic activities are at the same time drawn in two or more different directions. In shame there is always something present in consciousness which conflicts with the rest of the personality, and cannot be brought into harmony with it, which cannot be brought, that is, into moral (not logical) relationship with it. A young man in love with a girl is ashamed when told that he is in love, because his reverence for one whom he regards as a higher being cannot be brought into relationship with his own lower personality. A child in the same way feels shame in approaching a big, grown-up person, who seems a higher sort of being. Sometimes, likewise, we feel shame in approaching a stranger, for a new person tends to seem higher and more interesting than ourselves. It is not so in approaching a new natural phenomenon, because we do not compare it with ourselves. Another kind of shame is seen when this mental contest is lower than our personality, and on this account in conflict with it, as when we are ashamed of sexual thoughts. Sexual ideas tend to evoke shame, Hohenemser remarks, because they so easily tend to pass into sexual feelings; when they do not so pass (as in scientific discussions) they do not evoke shame.
It will be seen that this discussion of modesty is highly generalized and abstracted; it deals simply with the formal mechanism of the process. Hohenemser admits that fear is a form of psychic stasis, and I have sought to show that modesty is a complexus of fears. We may very well accept the conception of psychic stasis at the outset. The analysis of modesty has still to be carried very much further.
The discussion of modesty is complicated by the difficulty, and even impossibility, of excluding closely-allied emotions—shame, shyness, bashfulness, timidity, etc.—all of which, indeed, however defined, adjoin or overlap modesty.[[3]] It is not, however, impossible to isolate the main body of the emotion of modesty, on account of its special connection, on the whole, with the consciousness of sex. I here attempt, however imperfectly, to sketch out a fairly-complete analysis of its constitution and to trace its development.
In entering upon this investigation a few facts with regard to the various manifestations of modesty may be helpful to us. I have selected these from scattered original sources, and have sought to bring out the variety and complexity of the problems with which we are here concerned.
The New Georgians of the Solomon Islands, so low a race that they are ignorant both of pottery and weaving, and wear only a loin cloth, "have the same ideas of what is decent with regard to certain acts and exposures that we ourselves have;" so that it is difficult to observe whether they practice circumcision. (Somerville, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1897, p. 394.)
In the New Hebrides "the closest secrecy is adopted with regard to the penis, not at all from a sense of decency, but to avoid Narak, the sight even of that of another man being considered most dangerous. The natives of this savage island, accordingly, wrap the penis around with many yards of calico, and other like materials, winding and folding them until a preposterous bundle 18 inches, or 2 feet long, and 2 inches or more in diameter is formed, which is then supported upward by means of a belt, in the extremity decorated with flowering grasses, etc. The testicles are left naked." There is no other body covering. (Somerville, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1894, p. 368.)
In the Pelew Islands, says Kubary, as quoted by Bastian, it is said that when the God Irakaderugel and his wife were creating man and woman (he forming man and she forming woman), and were at work on the sexual organs, the god wished to see his consort's handiwork. She, however, was cross, and persisted in concealing what she had made. Ever since then women wear an apron of pandanus-leaves and men go naked. (A. Bastian, Inselgruppen in Oceanien, p. 112.)
In the Pelew Islands, Semper tells us that when approaching a large water-hole he was surprised to hear an affrighted, long-drawn cry from his native friends. "A girl's voice answered out of the bushes, and my people held us back, for there were women bathing there who would not allow us to pass. When I remarked that they were only women, of whom they need not be afraid, they replied that it was not so, that women had an unbounded right to punish men who passed them when bathing without their permission, and could inflict fines or even death. On this account, the women's bathing place is a safe and favorite spot for a secret rendezvous. Fortunately a lady's toilet lasts but a short time in this island." (Carl Semper, Die Palau-Inseln, 1873, p. 68.)
Among the Western Tribes of Torres Strait, Haddon states, "the men were formerly nude, and the women wore only a leaf petticoat, but I gather that they were a decent people; now both sexes are prudish. A man would never go nude before me. The women would never voluntarily expose their breasts to white men's gaze; this applies to quite young girls, less so to old women. Amongst themselves they are, of course, much less particular, but I believe they are becoming more so.... Formerly, I imagine, there was no restraint in speech; now there is a great deal of prudery; for instance, the men were always much ashamed when I asked for the name of the sexual parts of a woman." (A. C. Haddon, "Ethnography of the Western Tribes of Torres Straits," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1890, p. 336.) After a subsequent expedition to the same region, the author reiterates his observations as to the "ridiculously prudish manner" of the men, attributable to missionary influence during the past thirty years, and notes that even the children are affected by it. "At Mabuiag, some small children were paddling in the water, and a boy of about ten years of age reprimanded a little girl of five or six years because she held up her dress too high." (Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. v, p. 272.)
"Although the women of New Guinea," Vahness says, "are very slightly clothed, they are by no means lacking in a well-developed sense of decorum. If they notice, for instance, that any one is paying special attention to their nakedness, they become ashamed and turn round." When a woman had to climb the fence to enter the wild-pig enclosure, she would never do it in Vahness's presence. (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Verhdlgen., 1900, Heft 5, p. 415.)
In Australia "the feeling of decency is decidedly less prevalent among males than females;" the clothed females retire out of sight to bathe. (Curr, Australian Race.)
"Except for waist-bands, forehead-bands, necklets, and armlets, and a conventional pubic tassel, shell, or, in the case of the women, a small apron, the Central Australian native is naked. The pubic tassel is a diminutive structure, about the size of a five-shilling piece, made of a few short strands of fur-strings flattened out into a fan-shape and attached to the pubic hair. As the string, especially at corrobboree times, is covered with white kaolin or gypsum, it serves as a decoration rather than a covering. Among the Arunta and Luritcha the women usually wear nothing, but further north, a small apron is made and worn." (Baldwin Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 572.)
Of the Central Australians Stirling says: "No sense of shame of exposure was exhibited by the men on removal of the diminutive articles worn as conventional coverings; they were taken off coram populo, and bartered without hesitation. On the other hand, some little persuasion was necessary to allow inspection of the effect of [urethral] sub-incision, assent being given only after dismissal to a distance of the women and young children. As to the women, it was nearly always observed that when in camp without clothing they, especially the younger ones, exhibited by their attitude a keen sense of modesty, if, indeed, a consciousness of their nakedness can be thus considered. When we desired to take a photograph of a group of young women, they were very coy at the proposal to remove their scanty garments, and retired behind a wall to do so; but once in a state of nudity they made no objection to exposure to the camera." (Report of the Horn Scientific Expedition, 1896, vol. iv, p. 37.)
In Northern Queensland "phallocrypts," or "penis-concealers," only used by the males at corrobborees and other public rejoicings, are either formed of pearl-shell or opossum-string. The koom-pa-ra, or opossum-string form of phallocrypt, forms a kind of tassel, and is colored red; it is hung from the waist-belt in the middle line. In both sexes the privates are only covered on special public occasions, or when in close proximity to white settlements. (W. Roth, Ethnological Studies among the Northwest-Central-Queensland Aborigines, 1897, pp. 114-115.)
"The principle of chastity," said Forster, of his experiences in the South Sea Islands in their unspoilt state, "we found in many families exceedingly well understood. I have seen many fine women who, with a modesty mixed with politeness, refuse the greatest and most tempting offers made them by our forward youths; often they excuse themselves with a simple tirra-tano, 'I am married,' and at other times they smiled and declined it with epia, 'no.' ... Virtuous women hear a joke without emotion, which, amongst us, might put some men to the blush. Neither austerity and anger, nor joy and ecstasy is the consequence, but sometimes a modest, dignified, serene smile spreads itself over their face, and seems gently to rebuke the uncouth jester." (J. R. Forster, Observations made During a Voyage Round the World, 1728, p. 392.)
Captain Cook, at Tahiti, in 1769, after performing Divine service on Sunday, witnessed "Vespers of a very different kind. A young man, near six feet high, performed the rites of Venus with a little girl about eleven or twelve years of age, before several of our people and a great number of the natives, without the least sense of its being indecent or improper, but, as it appeared, in perfect conformity to the custom of the place. Among the spectators were several women of superior rank, who may properly be said to have assisted at the ceremony; for they gave instructions to the girl how to perform her part, which, young as she was, she did not seem much to stand in need of." (J. Hawkesworth, Account of the Voyages, etc., 1775, vol. i, p. 469.)
At Tahiti, according to Cook, it was customary to "gratify every appetite and passion before witnesses," and it is added, "in the conversation of these people, that which is the principal source of their pleasure is always the principal topic; everything is mentioned without any restraint or emotion, and in the most direct terms, by both sexes." (Hawkesworth, op. cit., vol ii, p. 45.)
"I have observed," Captain Cook wrote, "that our friends in the South Seas have not even the idea of indecency, with respect to any object or any action, but this was by no means the case with the inhabitants of New Zealand, in whose carriage and conversation there was as much modest reserve and decorum with respect to actions, which yet in their opinion were not criminal, as are to be found among the politest people in Europe. The women were not impregnable; but the terms and manner of compliance were as decent as those in marriage among us, and according to their notions, the agreement was as innocent. When any of our people made an overture to any of their young women, he was given to understand that the consent of her friends was necessary, and by the influence of a proper present it was generally obtained; but when these preliminaries were settled, it was also necessary to treat the wife for a night with the same delicacy that is here required by the wife for life, and the lover who presumed to take any liberties by which this was violated, was sure to be disappointed." (Hawkesworth, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 254.)
Cook found that the people of New Zealand "bring the prepuce over the gland, and to prevent it from being drawn back by contraction of the part, they tie the string which hangs from the girdle round the end of it. The glans, indeed, seemed to be the only part of their body which they were solicitous to conceal, for they frequently threw off all their dress but the belt and string, with the most careless indifference, but showed manifest signs of confusion when, to gratify our curiosity, they were requested to untie the string, and never consented but with the utmost reluctance and shame.... The women's lower garment was always bound fast round them, except when they went into the water to catch lobsters, and then they took great care not to be seen by the men. We surprised several of them at this employment, and the chaste Diana, with her nymphs, could not have discovered more confusion and distress at the sight of Actæon, than these women expressed upon our approach. Some of them hid themselves among the rocks, and the rest crouched down in the sea till they had made themselves a girdle and apron of such weeds as they could find, and when they came out, even with this veil, we could see that their modesty suffered much pain by our presence." (Hawkesworth, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 257-258.)
In Rotuma, in Polynesia, where the women enjoy much freedom, but where, at all events in old days, married people were, as a rule, faithful to each other, "the language is not chaste according to our ideas, and there is a great deal of freedom in speaking of immoral vices. In this connection a man and his wife will speak freely to one another before their friends. I am informed, though, by European traders well conversant with the language, that there are grades of language, and that certain coarse phrases would never be used to any decent woman; so that probably, in their way, they have much modesty, only we cannot appreciate it." (J. Stanley Gardiner, "The Natives of Rotuma," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, May, 1898, p. 481.)
The men of Rotuma, says the same writer, are very clean, the women also, bathing twice a day in the sea; but "bathing in public without the kukuluga, or sulu [loin-cloth, which is the ordinary dress], around the waist is absolutely unheard of, and would be much looked down upon." (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1898, p. 410.)
In ancient Samoa the only necessary garment for either man or woman was an apron of leaves, but they possessed so "delicate a sense of propriety" that even "while bathing they have a girdle of leaves or some other covering around the waist." (Turner, Samoa a Hundred Years Ago, p. 121.)
After babyhood the Indians of Guiana are never seen naked. When they change their single garment they retire. The women wear a little apron, now generally made of European beads, but the Warraus still make it of the inner bark of a tree, and some of seeds. (Everard im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, 1883.)
The Mandurucu women of Brazil, according to Tocantins (quoted by Mantegazza), are completely naked, but they are careful to avoid any postures which might be considered indecorous, and they do this so skilfully that it is impossible to tell when they have their menstrual periods. (Mantegazza, Fisiologia della Donna, cap 9.)
The Indians of Central Brazil have no "private parts." In men the little girdle, or string, surrounding the lower part of the abdomen, hides nothing; it is worn after puberty, the penis being often raised and placed beneath it to lengthen the prepuce. The women also use a little strip of bast that goes down the groin and passes between the thighs. Among some tribes (Karibs, Tupis, Nu-Arwaks) a little, triangular, coquettishly-made piece of bark-bast comes just below the mons veneris; it is only a few centimetres in width, and is called the uluri. In both sexes concealment of the sexual mucous membrane is attained. These articles cannot be called clothing. "The red thread of the Trumai, the elegant uluri, and the variegated flag of the Bororó attract attention, like ornaments, instead of drawing attention away." Von den Steinen thinks this proceeding a necessary protection against the attacks of insects, which are often serious in Brazil. He does think, however, that there is more than this, and that the people are ashamed to show the glans penis. (Karl von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, 1894, pp. 190 et seq.)
Other travelers mention that on the Amazon among some tribes the women are clothed and the men naked; among others the women naked, and the men clothed. Thus, among the Guaycurus the men are quite naked, while the women wear a short petticoat; among the Uaupás the men always wear a loin-cloth, while the women are quite naked.
"The feeling of modesty is very developed among the Fuegians, who are accustomed to live naked. They manifest it in their bearing and in the ease with which they show themselves in a state of nudity, compared with the awkwardness, blushing, and shame which both men and women exhibit if one gazes at certain parts of their bodies. Among themselves this is never done even between husband and wife. There is no Fuegian word for modesty, perhaps because the feeling is universal among them." The women wear a minute triangular garment of skin suspended between the thighs and never removed, being merely raised during conjugal relations. (Hyades and Deniker, Mission Scientifique du Cap Horn, vol. vii, pp. 239, 307, and 347.)
Among the Crow Indians of Montana, writes Dr. Holder, who has lived with them for several years, "a sense of modesty forbids the attendance upon the female in labor of any male, white man or Indian, physician or layman. This antipathy to receiving assistance at the hands of the physician is overcome as the tribes progress toward civilization, and it is especially noticeable that half-breeds almost constantly seek the physician's aid." Dr. Holder mentions the case of a young woman who, although brought near the verge of death in a very difficult first confinement, repeatedly refused to allow him to examine her; at last she consented; "her modest preparation was to take bits of quilt and cover thighs and lips of vulva, leaving only the aperture exposed.... Their modesty would not be so striking were it not that, almost to a woman, the females of this tribe are prostitutes, and for a consideration will admit the connection of any man." (A. B. Holder, American Journal of Obstetrics, vol. xxv, No. 6, 1892.)
"In every North American tribe, from the most northern to the most southern, the skirt of the woman is longer than that of the men. In Esquimau land the parka of deerskin and sealskin reaches to the knees. Throughout Central North America the buckskin dress of the women reached quite to the ankles. The West-Coast women, from Oregon to the Gulf of California, wore a petticoat of shredded bark, of plaited grass, or of strings, upon which were strung hundreds of seeds. Even in the most tropical areas the rule was universal, as anyone can see from the codices or in pictures of the natives." (Otis T. Mason, Woman's Share in Primitive Culture, p. 237.)
Describing the loin-cloth worn by Nicobarese men, Man says: "From the clumsy mode in which this garment is worn by the Shom Pen—necessitating frequent readjustment of the folds—one is led to infer that its use is not de rigueur, but reserved for special occasions, as when receiving or visiting strangers." (E. H. Man, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1886, p. 442.)
The semi-nude natives of the island of Nias in the Indian Ocean are "modest by nature," paying no attention to their own nudity or that of others, and much scandalized by any attempt to go beyond the limits ordained by custom. When they pass near places where women are bathing they raise their voices in order to warn them of their presence, and even although any bold youth addressed the women, and the latter replied, no attempt would be made to approach them; any such attempt would be severely punished by the head man of the village. (Modigliani, Un Viaggio a Nias, p. 460.)
Man says that the Andamanese in modesty and self-respect compare favorably with many classes among civilized peoples. "Women are so modest that they will not renew their leaf-aprons in the presence of one another, but retire to a secluded spot for this purpose; even when parting with one of their bod appendages [tails of leaves suspended from back of girdle] to a female friend, the delicacy they manifest for the feelings of the bystanders in their mode of removing it amounts to prudishness; yet they wear no clothing in the ordinary sense." (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1883, pp. 94 and 331.)
Of the Garo women of Bengal Dalton says: "Their sole garment is a piece of cloth less than a foot in width that just meets around the loins, and in order that it may not restrain the limbs it is only fastened where it meets under the hip at the upper corners. The girls are thus greatly restricted in the positions they may modestly assume, but decorum is, in their opinion, sufficiently preserved if they only keep their legs well together when they sit or kneel." (E. T. Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, 1872, p. 66.)
Of the Naga women of Assam it is said: "Of clothing there was not much to see; but in spite of this I doubt whether we could excel them in true decency and modesty. Ibn Muhammed Wali had already remarked in his history of the conquest of Assam (1662-63), that the Naga women only cover their breasts. They declare that it is absurd to cover those parts of the body which everyone has been able to see from their births, but that it is different with the breasts, which appeared later, and are, therefore, to be covered. Dalton (Journal of the Asiatic Society, Bengal, 41, 1, 84) adds that in the presence of strangers Naga women simply cross their arms over their breasts, without caring much what other charms they may reveal to the observer. As regards some clans of the naked Nagas, to whom the Banpara belong, this may still hold good." (K. Klemm, "Peal's Ausflug nach Banpara," Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1898, Heft 5, p. 334.)
"In Ceylon, a woman always bathes in public streams, but she never removes all her clothes. She washes under the cloth, bit by bit, and then slips on the dry, new cloth, and pulls out the wet one from underneath (much in the same sliding way as servant girls and young women in England). This is the common custom in India and the Malay States. The breasts are always bare in their own houses, but in the public roads are covered whenever a European passes. The vulva is never exposed. They say that a devil, imagined as a white and hairy being, might have intercourse with them." (Private communication.)
In Borneo, "the sirat, called chawal by the Malays, is a strip of cloth a yard wide, worn round the loins and in between the thighs, so as to cover the pudenda and perinæum; it is generally six yards or so in length, but the younger men of the present generation use as much as twelve or fourteen yards (sometimes even more), which they twist and coil with great precision round and round their body, until the waist and stomach are fully enveloped in its folds." (H. Ling Roth, "Low's Natives of Borneo," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1892, p. 36.)
"In their own houses in the depths of the forest the Dwarfs are said to neglect coverings for decency in the men as in the women, but certainly when they emerge from the forest into the villages of the agricultural Negroes, they are always observed to be wearing some small piece of bark-cloth or skin, or a bunch of leaves over the pudenda. Elsewhere in all the regions of Africa visited by the writer, or described by other observers, a neglect of decency in the male has only been recorded among the Efik people of Old Calabar. The nudity of women is another question. In parts of West Africa, between the Niger and the Gaboon (especially on the Cameroon River, at Old Calabar, and in the Niger Delta), it is, or was, customary for young women to go about completely nude before they were married. In Swaziland, until quite recently, unmarried women and very often matrons went stark naked. Even amongst the prudish Baganda, who made it a punishable offense for a man to expose any part of his leg above the knee, the wives of the King would attend at his Court perfectly naked. Among the Kavirondo, all unmarried girls are completely nude, and although women who have become mothers are supposed to wear a tiny covering before and behind, they very often completely neglect to do so when in their own villages. Yet, as a general rule, among the Nile Negroes, and still more markedly among the Hamites and people of Masai stock, the women are particular about concealing the pudenda, whereas the men are ostentatiously naked. The Baganda hold nudity in the male to be such an abhorrent thing that for centuries they have referred with scorn and disgust to the Nile Negroes as the 'naked people.' Male nudity extends northwest to within some 200 miles of Khartum, or, in fact, wherever the Nile Negroes of the Dinka-Acholi stock inhabit the country." (Sir H. H. Johnston, Uganda Protectorate, vol. ii, pp. 669-672.)
Among the Nilotic Ja-luo, Johnston states that "unmarried men go naked. Married men who have children wear a small piece of goat skin, which, though quite inadequate for purposes of decency, is, nevertheless, a very important thing in etiquette, for a married man with a child must on no account call on his mother-in-law without wearing this piece of goat's skin. To call on her in a state of absolute nudity would be regarded as a serious insult, only to be atoned for by the payment of goats. Even if under the new dispensation he wears European trousers, he must have a piece of goat's skin underneath. Married women wear a tail of strings behind." It is very bad manners for a woman to serve food to her husband without putting on this tail. (Sir H. H. Johnston, Uganda Protectorate, vol. ii, p. 781.)
Mrs. French-Sheldon remarks that the Masai and other East African tribes, with regard to menstruation, "observe the greatest delicacy, and are more than modest." (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1894, p. 383.)
At the same time the Masai, among whom the penis is of enormous size, consider it disreputable to conceal that member, and in the highest degree reputable to display it, even ostentatiously. (Sir H. H. Johnston, Kilima-njaro Expedition, p. 413.)
Among the African Dinka, who are scrupulously clean and delicate (smearing themselves with burnt cows' dung, and washing themselves daily with cows' urine), and are exquisite cooks, reaching in many respects a higher stage of civilization, in Schweinfurth's opinion, than is elsewhere attained in Africa, only the women wear aprons. The neighboring tribes of the red soil—Bongo, Mittoo, Niam-Niam, etc.—are called "women" by the Dinka, because among these tribes the men wear an apron, while the women obstinately refuse to wear any clothes whatsoever of skin or stuff, going into the woods every day, however, to get a supple bough for a girdle, with, perhaps, a bundle of fine grass. (Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa, vol. i, pp. 152, etc.)
Lombroso and Carrara, examining some Dinka negroes brought from the White Nile, remark: "As to their psychology, what struck us first was the exaggeration of their modesty; not in a single case would the men allow us to examine their genital organs or the women their breasts; we examined the tattoo-marks on the chest of one of the women, and she remained sad and irritable for two days afterward." They add that in sexual and all other respects these people are highly moral. (Lombroso and Carrara, Archivio di Psichiatria, 1896, vol. xvii, fasc. 4.)
"The negro is very rarely knowingly indecent or addicted to lubricity," says Sir H. H. Johnston. "In this land of nudity, which I have known for seven years, I do not remember once having seen an indecent gesture on the part of either man or woman, and only very rarely (and that not among unspoiled savages) in the case of that most shameless member of the community—the little boy." He adds that the native dances are only an apparent exception, being serious in character, though indecent to our eyes, almost constituting a religious ceremony. The only really indecent dance indigenous to Central Africa "is one which originally represented the act of coition, but it is so altered to a stereotyped formula that its exact purport is not obvious until explained somewhat shyly by the natives.... It may safely be asserted that the negro race in Central Africa is much more truly modest, is much more free from real vice, than are most European nations. Neither boys nor girls wear clothing (unless they are the children of chiefs) until nearing the age of puberty. Among the Wankonda, practically no covering is worn by the men except a ring of brass wire around the stomach. The Wankonda women are likewise almost entirely naked, but generally cover the pudenda with a tiny bead-work apron, often a piece of very beautiful workmanship, and exactly resembling the same article worn by Kaffir women. A like degree of nudity prevails among many of the Awemba, among the A-lungu, the Batumbuka, and the Angoni. Most of the Angoni men, however, adopt the Zulu fashion of covering the glans penis with a small wooden case or the outer shell of a fruit. The Wa-Yao have a strong sense of decency in matters of this kind, which is the more curious since they are more given to obscenity in their rites, ceremonies, and dances than any other tribe. Not only is it extremely rare to see any Yao uncovered, but both men and women have the strongest dislike to exposing their persons even to the inspection of a doctor. The Atonga and many of the A-nyanga people, and all the tribes west of Nyassa (with the exception possibly of the A-lunda) have not the Yao regard for decency, and, although they can seldom or ever be accused of a deliberate intention to expose themselves, the men are relatively indifferent as to whether their nakedness is or is not concealed, though the women are modest and careful in this respect." (H. H. Johnston, British Central Africa, 1897, pp. 408-419.)
In Azimba land, Central Africa, H. Crawford Angus, who has spent many years in this part of Africa, writes: "It has been my experience that the more naked the people, and the more to us obscene and shameless their manners and customs, the more moral and strict they are in the matter of sexual intercourse." He proceeds to give a description of the chensamwali, or initiation ceremony of girls at puberty, a season of rejoicing when the girl is initiated into all the secrets of marriage, amid songs and dances referring to the act of coition. "The whole matter is looked upon as a matter of course, and not as a thing to be ashamed of or to hide, and, being thus openly treated of and no secrecy made about it, you find in this tribe that the women are very virtuous. They know from the first all that is to be known, and cannot see any reason for secrecy concerning natural laws or the powers and senses that have been given them from birth." (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1898, Heft 6, p. 479.)
Of the Monbuttu of Central Africa, another observer says: "It is surprising how a Monbuttu woman of birth can, without the aid of dress, impress others with her dignity and modesty." (British Medical Journal. June 14, 1890.)
"The women at Upoto wear no clothes whatever, and came up to us in the most unreserved manner. An interesting gradation in the arrangement of the female costume has been observed by us: as we ascended the Congo, the higher up the river we found ourselves, the higher the dress reached, till it has now, at last, culminated in absolute nudity." (T. H. Parke, My Personal Experiences in Equatorial Africa, 1891, p. 61.)
"There exists throughout the Congo population a marked appreciation of the sentiment of decency and shame as applied to private actions," says Mr. Herbert Ward. In explanation of the nudity of the women at Upoto, a chief remarked to Ward that "concealment is food for the inquisitive." (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1895, p. 293.)
In the Gold Coast and surrounding countries complete nudity is extremely rare, except when circumstances make it desirable; on occasion clothing is abandoned with unconcern. "I have on several occasions," says Dr. Freeman, "seen women at Accra walk from the beach, where they have been bathing, across the road to their houses, where they would proceed to dry themselves, and resume their garments; and women may not infrequently be seen bathing in pools by the wayside, conversing quite unconstrainedly with their male acquaintances, who are seated on the bank. The mere unclothed body conveys to their minds no idea of indecency. Immodesty and indelicacy of manner are practically unknown." He adds that the excessive zeal of missionaries in urging their converts to adopt European dress—which they are only too ready to do—is much to be regretted, since the close-fitting, thin garments are really less modest than the loose clothes they replace, besides being much less cleanly. (R. A. Freeman, Travels and Life in Ashanti and Jaman, 1898, p. 379.)
At Loango, says Pechuel-Loesche, "the well-bred negress likes to cover her bosom, and is sensitive to critical male eyes; if she meets a European when without her overgarment, she instinctively, though not without coquetry, takes the attitude of the Medicean Venus." Men and women bathe separately, and hide themselves from each other when naked. The women also exhibit shame when discovered suckling their babies. (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1878, pp. 27-31.)
The Koran (Sura XXIV) forbids showing the pudenda, as well as the face, yet a veiled Mohammedan woman, Stern remarks, even in the streets of Constantinople, will stand still and pull up her clothes to scratch her private parts, and in Beyrout, he saw Turkish prostitutes, still veiled, place themselves in the position for coitus. (B. Stern, Medizin, etc., in der Türkei, vol. ii, p. 162.)
"An Englishman surprised a woman while bathing in the Euphrates; she held her hands over her face, without troubling as to what else the stranger might see. In Egypt, I have myself seen quite naked young peasant girls, who hastened to see us, after covering their faces." (C. Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien, 1774, vol. i, p. 165.)
When Helfer was taken to visit the ladies in the palace of the Imam of Muskat, at Buscheir, he found that their faces were covered with black masks, though the rest of the body might be clothed in a transparent sort of crape; to look at a naked face was very painful to the ladies themselves; even a mother never lifts the mask from the face of her daughter after the age of twelve; that is reserved for her lord and husband. "I observed that the ladies looked at me with a certain confusion, and after they had glanced into my face, lowered their eyes, ashamed. On making inquiries, I found that my uncovered face was indecent, as a naked person would be to us. They begged me to assume a mask, and when a waiting-woman had bound a splendidly decorated one round my head, they all exclaimed: 'Tahip! tahip!'—beautiful, beautiful." (J. W. Helfer, Reisen in Vorderasian und Indien, vol. ii, p. 12.)
In Algeria—in the provinces of Constantine, in Biskra, even Aures,—"among the women especially, not one is restrained by any modesty in unfastening her girdle to any comer" (when a search was being made for tattoo-marks on the lower extremities). "In spite of the great licentiousness of the manners," the same writer continues, "the Arab and the Kabyle possess great personal modesty, and with difficulty are persuaded to exhibit the body nude; is it the result of real modesty, or of their inveterate habits of active pederasty? Whatever the cause, they always hide the sexual organs with their hands or their handkerchiefs, and are disagreeably affected even by the slightest touch of the doctor." (Batut, Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, January 15, 1893.)
"Moslem modesty," remarks Wellhausen, "was carried to great lengths, insufficient clothing being forbidden. It was marked even among the heathen Arabs, as among Semites and old civilizations generally; we must not be deceived by the occasional examples of immodesty in individual cases. The Sunna prescribes that a man shall not uncover himself even to himself, and shall not wash naked—from fear of God and of spirits; Job did so, and atoned for it heavily. When in Arab antiquity grown-up persons showed themselves naked, it was only under extraordinary circumstances, and to attain unusual ends.... Women when mourning uncovered not only the face and bosom, but also tore all their garments. The messenger who brought bad news tore his garments. A mother desiring to bring pressure to bear on her son took off her clothes. A man to whom vengeance is forbidden showed his despair and disapproval by uncovering his posterior and strewing earth on his head, or by raising his garment behind and covering his head with it. This was done also in fulfilling natural necessities." (Wellhausen, Reste Arabischen Heidentums, 1897, pp. 173, 195-196.)
Mantegazza mentions that a Lapland woman refused even for the sum of 150 francs to allow him to photograph her naked, though the men placed themselves before the camera in the costume of Adam for a much smaller sum. In the same book Mantegazza remarks that in the eighteenth century, travelers found it extremely difficult to persuade Samoyed women to show themselves naked. Among the same people, he says, the newly-married wife must conceal her face from her husband for two months after marriage, and only then yield to his embraces. (Mantegazza, La Donna, cap. IV.)
"The beauty of a Chinese woman," says Dr. Matignon, "resides largely in her foot. 'A foot which is not deformed is a dishonor,' says a poet. For the husband the foot is more interesting than the face. Only the husband may see his wife's foot naked. A Chinese woman is as reticent in showing her feet to a man as a European woman her breasts. I have often had to treat Chinese women with ridiculously small feet for wounds and excoriations, the result of tight-bandaging. They exhibited the prudishness of school-girls, blushed, turned their backs to unfasten the bandages, and then concealed the foot in a cloth, leaving only the affected part uncovered. Modesty is a question of convention; Chinese have it for their feet," (J. Matignon, "A propos d'un Pied de Chinoise," Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, 1898, p. 445.)
Among the Yakuts of Northeast Siberia, "there was a well-known custom according to which a bride should avoid showing herself or her uncovered body to her father-in-law. In ancient times, they say, a bride concealed herself for seven years from her father-in-law, and from the brothers and other masculine relations of her husband.... The men also tried not to meet her, saying, 'The poor child will be ashamed.' If a meeting could not be avoided the young woman put a mask on her face.... Nowadays, the young wives only avoid showing to their male relatives-in-law the uncovered body. Amongst the rich they avoid going about in the presence of these in the chemise alone. In some places, they lay especial emphasis on the fact that it is a shame for young wives to show their uncovered hair and feet to the male relatives of their husbands. On the other side, the male relatives of the husband ought to avoid showing to the young wife the body uncovered above the elbow or the sole of the foot, and they ought to avoid indecent expressions and vulgar vituperations in her presence.... That these observances are not the result of a specially delicate modesty, is proved by the fact that even young girls constantly twist thread upon the naked thigh, unembarrassed by the presence of men who do not belong to the household; nor do they show any embarrassment if a strange man comes upon them when uncovered to the waist. The one thing which they do not like, and at which they show anger, is that such persons look carefully at their uncovered feet.... The former simplicity, with lack of shame in uncovering the body, is disappearing." (Sieroshevski, "The Yakuts," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, Jan.-June, 1901, p. 93.)
"In Japan (Captain —— tells me), the bathing-place of the women was perfectly open (the shampooing, indeed, was done by a man), and Englishmen were offered no obstacle, nor excited the least repugnance; indeed, girls after their bath would freely pass, sometimes as if holding out their hair for innocent admiration, and this continued until countrymen of ours, by vile laughter and jests, made them guard themselves from insult by secrecy. So corruption spreads, and heathenism is blacker by our contact." (Private communication.)
"Speaking once with a Japanese gentleman, I observed that we 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 æsthetic 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 æsthetic 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 für 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 causâ." (L. Stieda, "Anatomisch-archäologische 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 Lacedæmonians, 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 Mycenæans 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 Lacedæmonians, 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, Timæus, 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." (Athenæus, Deipnosophists, Yonge's translation, vol. iii, p. 829.)
Dennis throws doubt on the foregoing statement of Athenæus 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 Persæus dancing at banquets naked, or with a very scanty covering (apud Athenæus, xiii, c. 86). The maidens of Chios wrestled naked with the youths in the gymnasium, which Athenæus (xiii, 20) pronounces to be 'a beautiful sight.' And at the marriage feast of Caranus, the Macedonian women tumblers performed naked before the guests (Athenæus, 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. Balneæ.)
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 Aretæus, 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, Pædagogus, Book III, Chapter V. For elucidations of this passage, see Migne's Patrologiæ 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 öffentlichen 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." (Pædagogus, 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 mediæval 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 Æneas, 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 Höfische Leben zur Zeit der Minnesänger, 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 öffentlichen 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 Dürer, as he told his friend, Melancthon. (B. Ritter, "Nuditäten im Mittelalter," Jahrbücher für 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 Divinités Génératrices, 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, Denkwürdigkeiten, 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 Gebärerin 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 décolleté 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 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 caleçons 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 Intermédiaire 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 minutiæ 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 hæmorrhage 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 élite 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 "Æsthetic 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. 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. Guyau, L'Irreligion de l'Avenir, Ch. VII. 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 the fact that modesty itself has in English (like virtue) two distinct meanings. In its original form it has no special connection with sex or women, but may rather be considered as a masculine virtue. Cicero regards "modestia" as the equivalent of the Greek σωφροσύνη. This is the "modesty" which Mary Wollstonecraft eulogized in the last century, the outcome of knowledge and reflection, "soberness of mind," "the graceful calm virtue of maturity." In French, it is possible to avoid the confusion, and modestie is entirely distinct from pudeur. It is, of course, mainly with pudeur that I am here concerned. Modesty an Agglomeration of Fears—Children in Relation to Modesty—Modesty in Animals—The Attitude of the Medicean Venus—The Sexual Factor of Modesty Based on Sexual Periodicity and on the Primitive Phenomena of Courtship—The Necessity of Seclusion in Primitive Sexual Intercourse—The Meaning of Coquetry—The Sexual Charm of Modesty—Modesty as an Expression of Feminine Erotic Impulse—The Fear of Causing Disgust as a Factor of Modesty—The Modesty of Savages in Regard to Eating in the Presence of Others—The Sacro-Pubic Region as a Focus of Disgust—The Idea of Ceremonial Uncleanliness—The Custom of Veiling the Face—Ornaments and Clothing—Modesty Becomes Concentrated in the Garment—The Economic Factor in Modesty—The Contribution of Civilization to Modesty—The Elaboration of Social Ritual. That modesty—like all the closely-allied emotions—is based on fear, one of the most primitive of the emotions, seems to be fairly evident.[[4]] The association of modesty and fear is even a very ancient observation, and is found in the fragments of Epicharmus, while according to one of the most recent definitions, "modesty is the timidity of the body." Modesty is, indeed, an agglomeration of fears, especially, as I hope to show, of two important and distinct fears: one of much earlier than human origin, and supplied solely by the female; the other of more distinctly human character, and of social, rather than sexual, origin. A child left to itself, though very bashful, is wholly devoid of modesty.[[5]] Everyone is familiar with the shocking inconvenances of children in speech and act, with the charming ways in which they innocently disregard the conventions of modesty their elders thrust upon them, or, even when anxious to carry them out, wholly miss the point at issue: as when a child thinks that to put a little garment round the neck satisfies the demands of modesty. Julius Moses states that modesty in the uncovering of the sexual parts begins about the age of four. But in cases when this occurs it is difficult to exclude teaching and example. Under civilized conditions the convention of modesty long precedes its real development. Bell has found that in love affairs before the age of nine the girl is more aggressive than the boy and that at that age she begins to be modest.[[6]] It may fairly be said that complete development of modesty only takes place at the advent of puberty.[[7]] We may admit, with Perez, one of the very few writers who touch on the evolution of this emotion, that modesty may appear at a very early age if sexual desire appears early.[[8]] We should not, however, be justified in asserting that on this account modesty is a purely sexual phenomenon. The social impulses also develop about puberty, and to that coincidence the compound nature of the emotion of modesty may well be largely due. The sexual factor is, however, the simplest and most primitive element of modesty, and may, therefore, be mentioned first. Anyone who watches a bitch, not in heat, when approached by a dog with tail wagging gallantly, may see the beginnings of modesty. When the dog's attentions become a little too marked, the bitch squats firmly down on the front legs and hind quarters though when the period of œstrus comes her modesty may be flung to the air and she eagerly turns her hind quarters to her admirer's nose and elevates her tail high in the air. Her attitude of refusal is equivalent, that is to say, to that which in the human race is typified by the classical example of womanly modesty in the Medicean Venus, who withdraws the pelvis, at the same time holding one hand to guard the pubes, the other to guard the breasts.[[9]] The essential expression in each case is that of defence of the sexual centers against the undesired advances of the male.[[10]] Stratz, who criticizes the above statement, argues (with photographs of nude women in illustration) that the normal type of European surprised modesty is shown by an attitude in which the arms are crossed over the breast, the most sexually attractive region, while the thighs are pressed together, one being placed before the other, the shoulder raised and the back slightly curved; occasionally, he adds, the hands may be used to cover the face, and then the crossed arms conceal the breasts. The Medicean Venus, he remarks, is only a pretty woman coquetting with her body. Canova's Venus in the Pitti (who has drapery in front of her, and presses her arms across her breast) being a more accurate rendering of the attitude of modesty. But Stratz admits that when a surprised woman is gazed at for some time, she turns her head away, sinks or closes her eyes, and covers her pubes (or any other part she thinks is being gazed at) with one hand, while with the other she hides her breast or face. This he terms the secondary expression of modesty. (Stratz, Die Frauenkleidung, third ed., p. 23.) It is certainly true that the Medicean Venus merely represents an artistic convention, a generalized tradition, not founded on exact and precise observation of the gestures of modesty, and it is equally true that all the instinctive movements noted by Stratz are commonly resorted to by a woman whose nakedness is surprised. But in the absence of any series of carefully recorded observations, one may doubt whether the distinction drawn by Stratz between the primary and the secondary expression of modesty can be upheld as the general rule, while it is most certainly not true for every case. When a young woman is surprised in a state of nakedness by a person of the opposite, or even of the same, sex, it is her instinct to conceal the primary centers of sexual function and attractiveness, in the first place, the pubes, in the second place the breasts. The exact attitude and the particular gestures of the hands in achieving the desired end vary with the individual, and with the circumstances. The hand may not be used at all as a veil, and, indeed, the instinct of modesty itself may inhibit the use of the hand for the protection of modesty (to turn the back towards the beholder is often the chief impulse of blushing modesty, even when clothed), but the application of the hand to this end is primitive and natural. The lowly Fuegian woman, depicted by Hyades and Deniker, who holds her hand to her pubes while being photographed, is one at this point with the Roman Venus described by Ovid (Ars Amatoria, Book II):— "Ipsa Venus pubem, quoties velamnia ponit, It may be added that young men of the lower social classes, at all events in England, when bathing at the seaside in complete nudity, commonly grasp the sexual organs with one hand, for concealment, as they walk up from the sea. The sexual modesty of the female animal is rooted in the sexual periodicity of the female, and is an involuntary expression of the organic fact that the time for love is not now. Inasmuch as this fact is true of the greater part of the lives of all female animals below man, the expression itself becomes so habitual that it even intrudes at those moments when it has ceased to be in place. We may see this again illustrated in the bitch, who, when in heat, herself runs after the male, and again turns to flee, perhaps only submitting with much persuasion to his embrace. Thus, modesty becomes something more than a mere refusal of the male; it becomes an invitation to the male, and is mixed up with his ideas of what is sexually desirable in the female. This would alone serve to account for the existence of modesty as a psychical secondary sexual character. In this sense, and in this sense only, we may say, with Colin Scott, that "the feeling of shame is made to be overcome," and is thus correlated with its physical representative, the hymen, in the rupture of which, as Groos remarks, there is, in some degree, a disruption also of modesty. The sexual modesty of the female is thus an inevitable by-product of the naturally aggressive attitude of the male in sexual relationships, and the naturally defensive attitude of the female, this again being founded on the fact that, while—in man and the species allied to him—the sexual function in the female is periodic, and during most of life a function to be guarded from the opposite sex, in the male it rarely or never needs to be so guarded.[[11]] Both male and female, however, need to guard themselves during the exercise of their sexual activities from jealous rivals, as well as from enemies who might take advantage of their position to attack them. It is highly probable that this is one important sexual factor in the constitution of modesty, and it helps to explain how the male, not less than the female, cultivates modesty, and shuns publicity, in the exercise of sexual functions. Northcote has especially emphasized this element in modesty, as originating in the fear of rivals. "That from this seeking after secrecy from motives of fear should arise an instinctive feeling that the sexual act must always be hidden, is a natural enough sequence. And since it is not a long step between thinking of an act as needing concealment and thinking of it as wrong, it is easily conceivable that sexual intercourse comes to be regarded as a stolen and therefore, in some degree, a sinful pleasure."[[12]] Animals in a state of nature usually appear to seek seclusion for sexual intercourse, although this instinct is lost under domestication. Even the lowest savages, also, if uncorrupted by civilized influences, seek the solitude of the forest or the protection of their huts for the same purpose; the rare cases in which coitus is public seem usually to involve a ceremonial or social observance, rather than mere personal gratification. At Loango, for instance, it would be highly improper to have intercourse in an exposed spot; it must only be performed inside the hut, with closed doors, at night, when no one is present.[[13]] It is on the sexual factor of modesty, existing in a well-marked form even among animals, that coquetry is founded. I am glad to find myself on this point in agreement with Professor Groos, who, in his elaborate study of the play-instinct, has reached the same conclusion. So far from being the mere heartless play by which a woman shows her power over a man, Groos points out that coquetry possesses "high biological and psychological significance," being rooted in the antagonism between the sexual instinct and inborn modesty. He refers to the roe, who runs away from the stag—but in a circle. (Groos, Die Spiele der Menschen, 1899, p. 339; also the same author's Die Spiele der Thiere, pp. 288 et seq.) Another example of coquetry is furnished by the female kingfisher (Alcedo ispida), which will spend all the morning in teasing and flying away from the male, but is careful constantly to look back, and never to let him out of her sight. (Many examples are given by Büchner, in Liebe und Liebesleben in der Tierwelt.) Robert Müller (Sexualbiologie, p. 302) emphasizes the importance of coquetry as a lure to the male. "It is quite true," a lady writes to me in a private letter, "that 'coquetry is a poor thing,' and that every milkmaid can assume it, but a woman uses it principally in self-defence, while she is finding out what the man himself is like." This is in accordance with the remark of Marro, that modesty enables a woman "to put lovers to the test, in order to select him who is best able to serve the natural ends of love." It is doubtless the necessity for this probationary period, as a test of masculine qualities, which usually leads a woman to repel instinctively a too hasty and impatient suitor, for, as Arthur Macdonald remarks, "It seems to be instinctive in young women to reject the impetuous lover, without the least consideration of his character, ability, and fitness." This essential element in courtship, this fundamental attitude of pursuer and pursued, is clearly to be seen even in animals and savages; it is equally pronounced in the most civilized men and women, manifesting itself in crude and subtle ways alike. Shakespeare's Angelo, whose virtue had always resisted the temptations of vice, discovered at last that "modesty may more betray our sense "What," asked the wise Montaigne, "is the object of that virginal shame, that sedate coldness, that severe countenance, that pretence of not knowing things which they understand better than we who teach them, except to increase in us the desire to conquer and curb, to trample under our appetite, all that ceremony and those obstacles? For there is not only matter for pleasure, but for pride also, in ruffling and debauching that soft sweetness and infantine modesty."[[14]] The masculine attitude in the face of feminine coyness may easily pass into a kind of sadism, but is nevertheless in its origin an innocent and instinctive impulse. Restif de la Bretonne, describing his own shame and timidity as a pretty boy whom the girls would run after and kiss, adds: "It is surprising that at the same time I would imagine the pleasure I should have in embracing a girl who resisted, in inspiring her with timidity, in making her flee and in pursuing her; that was a part which I burned to play."[[15]] It is the instinct of the sophisticated and the unsophisticated alike. The Arabs have developed an erotic ideal of sensuality, but they emphasize the importance of feminine modesty, and declare that the best woman is "she who sees not men and whom they see not."[[16]] This deep-rooted modesty of women towards men in courtship is intimately interwoven with the marriage customs and magic rites of even the most primitive peoples, and has survived in many civilized practices to-day.[[17]] The prostitute must be able to simulate the modesty she may often be far from feeling, and the immense erotic advantage of the innocent over the vicious woman lies largely in the fact that in her the exquisite reactions of modesty are fresh and vigorous. "I cannot imagine anything that is more sexually exciting," remarks Hans Menjago, "than to observe a person of the opposite sex, who, by some external or internal force, is compelled to fight against her physical modesty. The more modest she is the more sexually exciting is the picture she presents."[[18]] It is notable that even in abnormal, as well as in normal, erotic passion the desire is for innocent and not for vicious women, and, in association with this, the desired favor to be keenly relished must often be gained by sudden surprise and not by mutual agreement. A foot fetichist writes to me: "It is the stolen glimpse of a pretty foot or ankle which produces the greatest effect on me." A urolagnic symbolist was chiefly excited by the act of urination when he caught a young woman unawares in the act. A fetichistic admirer of the nates only desired to see this region in innocent girls, not in prostitutes. The exhibitionist, almost invariably, only exposes himself to apparently respectable girls. A Russian correspondent, who feels this charm of women in a particularly strong degree, is inclined to think that there is an element of perversity in it. "In the erotic action of the idea of feminine enjoyment," he writes, "I think there are traces of a certain perversity. In fact, owing to the impressions of early youth, woman (even if we feel contempt for her in theory) is placed above us, on a certain pedestal, as an almost sacred being, and the more so because mysterious. Now sensuality and sexual desire are considered as rather vulgar, and a little dirty, even ridiculous and degrading, not to say bestial. The woman who enjoys it, is, therefore, rather like a profaned altar, or, at least, like a divinity who has descended on to the earth. To give enjoyment to a woman is, therefore, like perpetrating a sacrilege, or at least like taking a liberty with a god. The feelings bequeathed to us by a long social civilization maintain themselves in spite of our rational and deliberate opinions. Reason tells us that there is nothing evil in sexual enjoyment, whether in man or woman, but an unconscious feeling directs our emotions, and this feeling (having a germ that was placed in modern men by Christianity, and perhaps by still older religions) says that woman ought to be an absolutely pure being, with ethereal sensations, and that in her sexual enjoyment is out of place, improper, scandalous. To arouse sexual emotions in a woman, if not to profane a sacred host, is, at all events, the staining of an immaculate peplos; if not sacrilege, it is, at least, irreverence or impertinence. For all men, the chaster a woman is, the more agreeable it is to bring her to the orgasm. That is felt as a triumph of the body over the soul, of sin over virtue, of earth over heaven. There is something diabolic in such pleasure, especially when it is felt by a man intoxicated with love, and full of religious respect for the virgin of his election. This feeling is, from a rational point of view, absurd, and in its tendencies, immoral; but it is delicious in its sacredly voluptuous subtlety. Defloration thus has its powerful fascination in the respect consciously or unconsciously felt for woman's chastity. In marriage, the feeling is yet more complicated: in deflowering his bride, the Christian (that is, any man brought up in a Christian civilization) has the feeling of committing a sort of sin (for the 'flesh' is, for him, always connected with sin) which, by a special privilege, has for him become legitimate. He has received a special permit to corrupt innocence. Hence, the peculiar prestige for civilized Christians, of the wedding night, sung by Shelley, in ecstatic verses:— "'Oh, joy! Oh, fear! What will be done This feeling has, however, its normal range, and is not, per se, a perversity, though it may doubtless become so when unduly heightened by Christian sentiment, and especially if it leads, as to some extent it has led in my Russian correspondent, to an abnormal feeling of the sexual attraction of girls who have only or scarcely reached the age of puberty. The sexual charm of this period of girlhood is well illustrated in many of the poems of Thomas Ashe, and it is worthy of note, as perhaps supporting the contention that this attraction is based on Christian feeling, that Ashe had been a clergyman. An attentiveness to the woman's pleasure remains, in itself, very far from a perversion, but increases, as Colin Scott has pointed out, with civilization, while its absence—the indifference to the partner's pleasure—is a perversion of the most degraded kind. There is no such instinctive demand on the woman's part for innocence in the man.[[19]] In the nature of things that could not be. Such emotion is required for properly playing the part of the pursued; it is by no means an added attraction on the part of the pursuer. There is, however, an allied and corresponding desire which is very often clearly or latently present in the woman: a longing for pleasure that is stolen or forbidden. It is a mistake to suppose that this is an indication of viciousness or perversity. It appears to be an impulse that occurs quite naturally in altogether innocent women. The exciting charm of the risky and dangerous naturally arises on a background of feminine shyness and timidity. We may trace its recognition at a very early stage of history in the story of Eve and the forbidden fruit that has so often been the symbol of the masculine organs of sex. It is on this ground that many have argued the folly of laying external restrictions on women in matters of love. Thus in quoting the great Italian writer who afterwards became Pope Pius II, Robert Burton remarked: "I am of Æneas Sylvius' mind, 'Those jealous Italians do very ill to lock up their wives; for women are of such a disposition they will mostly covet that which is denied most, and offend least when they have free liberty to trespass.'"[[20]] It is the spontaneous and natural instinct of the lover to desire modesty in his mistress, and by no means any calculated opinion on his part that modesty is the sign of sexual emotion. It remains true, however, that modesty is an expression of feminine erotic impulse. We have here one of the instances, of which there, are so many, of that curious and instinctive harmony by which Nature has sought the more effectively to bring about the ends of courtship. As to the fact itself there can be little doubt. It constantly forces itself on the notice of careful observers, and has long been decided in the affirmative by those who have discussed the matter. Venette, one of the earliest writers on the psychology of sex, after discussing the question at length, decided that the timid woman is a more ardent lover than the bold woman.[[21]] "It is the most pudent girl," remarked Restif de la Bretonne whose experience of women was so extensive, "the girl who blushes most, who is most disposed to the pleasures of love," he adds that, in girls and boys alike, shyness is a premature consciousness of sex.[[22]] This observation has even become embodied in popular proverbs. "Do as the lasses do—say no, but take it," is a Scotch saying, to which corresponds the Welsh saying, "The more prudish the more unchaste."[[23]] It is not, at first, quite clear why an excessively shy and modest woman should be the most apt for intimate relationships with a man, and in such a case the woman is often charged with hypocrisy. There is, however, no hypocrisy in the matter. The shy and reserved woman holds herself aloof from intimacy in ordinary friendship, because she is acutely sensitive to the judgments of others, and fears that any seemingly immodest action may make an unfavorable opinion. With a lover, however, in whose eyes she feels assured that her actions can not be viewed unfavorably, these barriers of modesty fall down, and the resulting intimacy becomes all the more fascinating to the woman because of its contrast with the extreme reserve she is impelled to maintain in other relationships. It thus happens that many modest women who, in non-sexual relationships with their own sex, are not able to act with the physical unreserve not uncommon with women among themselves, yet feel no such reserve with a man, when they are once confident of his good opinion. Much the same is true of modest and sensitive men in their relations with women. This fundamental animal factor of modesty, rooted in the natural facts of the sexual life of the higher mammals, and especially man, obviously will not explain all the phenomena of modesty. We must turn to the other great primary element of modesty, the social factor. We cannot doubt that one of the most primitive and universal of the social characteristics of man is an aptitude for disgust, founded, as it is, on a yet more primitive and animal aptitude for disgust, which has little or no social significance. In nearly all races, even the most savage, we seem to find distinct traces of this aptitude for disgust in the presence of certain actions of others, an emotion naturally reflected in the individual's own actions, and hence a guide to conduct. Notwithstanding our gastric community of disgust with lower animals, it is only in man that this disgust seems to become transformed and developed, to possess a distinctly social character, and to serve as a guide to social conduct.[[24]] The objects of disgust vary infinitely according to the circumstances and habits of particular races, but the reaction of disgust is fundamental throughout. The best study of the phenomena of disgust known to me is, without doubt, Professor Richet's.[[25]] Richet concludes that it is the dangerous and the useless which evoke disgust. The digestive and sexual excretions and secretions, being either useless or, in accordance with widespread primitive ideas, highly dangerous, the genito-anal region became a concentrated focus of disgust.[[26]] It is largely for this reason, no doubt, that savage men exhibit modesty, not only toward women, but toward their own sex, and that so many of the lowest savages take great precautions in obtaining seclusion for the fulfillment of natural functions. The statement, now so often made, that the primary object of clothes is to accentuate, rather than to conceal, has in it—as I shall point out later—a large element of truth, but it is by no means a complete account of the matter. It seems difficult not to admit that, alongside the impulse to accentuate sexual differences, there is also in both men and women a genuine impulse to concealment among the most primitive peoples, and the invincible repugnance often felt by savages to remove the girdle or apron, is scarcely accounted for by the theory that it is solely a sexual lure. In this connection it seems to me instructive to consider a special form of modesty very strongly marked among savages in some parts of the world. I refer to the feeling of immodesty in eating. Where this feeling exists, modesty is offended when one eats in public; the modest man retires to eat. Indecency, said Cook, was utterly unknown among the Tahitians; but they would not eat together; even brothers and sisters had their separate baskets of provisions, and generally sat some yards apart, with their backs to each other, when they ate.[[27]] The Warrua of Central Africa, Cameron found, when offered a drink, put up a cloth before their faces while they swallowed it, and would not allow anyone to see them eat or drink; so that every man or woman must have his own fire and cook for himself.[[28]] Karl von den Steinen remarks, in his interesting book on Brazil, that though the Bakairi of Central Brazil have no feeling of shame about nakedness, they are ashamed to eat in public; they retire to eat, and hung their heads in shame-faced confusion when they saw him innocently eat in public. Hrolf Vaughan Stevens found that, when he gave an Orang Laut (Malay) woman anything to eat, she not only would not eat it if her husband were present, but if any man were present she would go outside before eating or giving her children to eat.[[29]] Thus among these peoples the act of eating in public produces the same feelings as among ourselves the indecent exposure of the body in public.[[30]] It is quite easy to understand how this arises. Whenever there is any pressure on the means of subsistence, as among savages at some time or another there nearly always is, it must necessarily arouse a profound and mixed emotion of desire and disgust to see another person putting into his stomach what one might just as well have put into one's own.[[31]] The special secrecy sometimes observed by women is probably due to the fact that women would be less able to resist the emotions that the act of eating would arouse in onlookers. As social feeling develops, a man desires not only to eat in safety, but also to avoid being an object of disgust, and to spare his friends all unpleasant emotions. Hence it becomes a requirement of ordinary decency to eat in private. A man who eats in public becomes—like the man who in our cities exposes his person in public—an object of disgust and contempt. Long ago, when a hospital student on midwifery duty in London slums, I had occasion to observe that among the women of the poor, and more especially in those who had lost the first bloom of youth, modesty consisted chiefly in the fear of being disgusting. There was an almost pathetic anxiety, in the face of pain and discomfort, not to be disgusting in the doctor's eyes. This anxiety expressed itself in the ordinary symptoms of modesty. But, as soon as the woman realized that I found nothing disgusting in whatever was proper and necessary to be done under the circumstances, it almost invariably happened that every sign of modesty at once disappeared.[[32]] In the special and elementary conditions of parturition, modesty is reduced to this one fear of causing disgust; so that, when that is negated, the emotion is non-existent, and the subject becomes, without effort, as direct and natural as a little child. A fellow-student on similar duty, who also discovered for himself the same character of modesty—that if he was careful to guard her modesty the woman was careful also, and that if he was not the woman was not—remarked on it to me with sadness; it seemed to him derogatory to womanhood that what he had been accustomed to consider its supreme grace should be so superficial that he could at will set limits to it.[[33]] I thought then, as I think still, that that was rather a perversion of the matter, and that nothing becomes degrading because we happen to have learned something about its operations. But I am more convinced than ever that the fear of causing disgust—a fear quite distinct from that of losing a sexual lure or breaking a rule of social etiquette—plays a very large part in the modesty of the more modest sex, and in modesty generally. Our Venuses, as Lucretius long since remarked and Montaigne after him, are careful to conceal from their lovers the vita postscenia, and that fantastic fate which placed so near together the supreme foci of physical attraction and physical repugnance, has immensely contributed to build up all the subtlest coquetries of courtship. Whatever stimulates self-confidence and lulls the fear of evoking disgust—whether it is the presence of a beloved person in whose good opinion complete confidence is felt, or whether it is merely the grosser narcotizing influence of a slight degree of intoxication—always automatically lulls the emotion of modesty.[[34]] Together with the animal factor of sexual refusal, this social fear of evoking disgust seems to me the most fundamental element in modesty. It is, of course, impossible to argue that the fact of the sacro-pubic region of the body being the chief focus of concealment proves the importance of this factor of modesty. But it may fairly be argued that it owes this position not merely to being the sexual centre, but also as being the excretory centre. Even among many lower mammals, as well as among birds and insects, there is a well-marked horror of dirt, somewhat disguised by the varying ways in which an animal may be said to define "dirt." Many animals spend more time and energy in the duties of cleanliness than human beings, and they often show well-marked anxiety to remove their own excrement, or to keep away from it.[[35]] Thus this element of modesty also may be said to have an animal basis. It is on this animal basis that the human and social fear of arousing disgust has developed. Its probably wide extension is indicated not only by the strong feeling attached to the constant presence of clothing on this part of the body,—such constant presence being quite uncalled for if the garment or ornament is merely a sort of sexual war-paint,—but by the repugnance felt by many savages very low down in the scale to the public satisfaction of natural needs, and to their more than civilized cleanliness in this connection;[[36]] it is further of interest to note that in some parts of the world the covering is not in front, but behind; though of this fact there are probably other explanations. Among civilized people, also, it may be added, the final and invincible seat of modesty is sometimes not around the pubes, but the anus; that is to say, that in such cases the fear of arousing disgust is the ultimate and most fundamental element of modesty.[[37]] The concentration of modesty around the anus is sometimes very marked. Many women feel so high a degree of shame and reserve with regard to this region, that they are comparatively indifferent to an anterior examination of the sexual organs. A similar feeling is not seldom found in men. "I would permit of an examination of my genitals by a medical man, without any feeling of discomfort," a correspondent writes, "but I think I would rather die than submit to any rectal examination." Even physicians have been known to endure painful rectal disorders for years, rather than undergo examination. "Among ordinary English girls," a medical correspondent writes, "I have often noticed that the dislike and shame of allowing a man to have sexual intercourse with them, when newly married, is simply due to the fact that the sexual aperture is so closely apposed to the anus and bladder. If the vulva and vagina were situated between a woman's shoulder blades, and a man had a separate instrument for coitus, not used for any excretory purpose, I do not think women would feel about intercourse as they sometimes do. Again, in their ignorance of anatomy, women often look upon the vagina and womb as part of the bowel and its exit of discharge, and sometimes say, for instance, 'inflammation of the bowel', when they mean womb. Again, many, perhaps most, women believe that they pass water through the vagina, and are ignorant of the existence of the separate urethral orifice. Again, women associate the vulva with the anus, and so feel ashamed of it; even when speaking to their husbands, or to a doctor, or among themselves; they have absolutely no name for the vulva (I mean among the upper classes, and people of gentle birth), but speak of it as 'down below,' 'low down,' etc." Even though this feeling is largely based on wrong and ignorant ideas, it must still be recognized that it is to some extent natural and inevitable. "How much is risked," exclaims Dugas, "in the privacies of love! The results may be disillusion, disgust, the consciousness of physical imperfection, of brutality or coldness, of æsthetic disenchantment, of a sentimental shock, seen or divined. To be without modesty, that is to say, to have no fear of the ordeals of love, one must be sure of one's self, of one's grace, of one's physical emotions, of one's feelings, and be sure, moreover, of the effect of all these on the nerves, the imagination, and the heart of another person. Let us suppose modesty reduced to æsthetic discomfort, to a woman's fear of displeasing, or of not seeming beautiful enough. Even thus defined, how can modesty avoid being always awake and restless? What woman could repeat, without risk, the tranquil action of Phryne? And even in that action, who knows how much may not have been due to mere professional insolence!" (Dugas, "La Pudeur," Revue Philosophique, November, 1903.) "Men and Women," Schurtz points out (Altersklassen und Männerbünde, pp. 41-51), "have certainly the capacity mutually to supplement and enrich each other; but when this completion fails, or is not sought, the difference may easily become a strong antipathy;" and he proceeds to develop the wide-reaching significance of this psychic fact. I have emphasized the proximity of the excretory centres to the sexual focus in discussing this important factor of modesty, because, in analyzing so complex and elusive an emotion as modesty it is desirable to keep as near as possible to the essential and fundamental facts on which it is based. It is scarcely necessary to point out that, in ordinary civilized society, these fundamental facts are not usually present at the surface of consciousness and may even be absent altogether; on the foundation of them may arise all sorts of idealized fears, of delicate reserves, of æsthetic refinements, as the emotions of love become more complex and more subtle, and the crude simplicity of the basis on which they finally rest becomes inevitably concealed. Another factor of modesty, which reaches a high development in savagery, is the ritual element, especially the idea of ceremonial uncleanness, based on a dread of the supernatural influences which the sexual organs and functions are supposed to exert. It may be to some extent rooted in the elements already referred to, and it leads us into a much wider field than that of modesty, so that it is only necessary to touch slightly on it here; it has been exhaustively studied by Frazer and by Crawley. Offences against the ritual rendered necessary by this mysterious dread, though more serious than offences against sexual reticence or the fear of causing disgust, are so obviously allied that they all reinforce one another and cannot easily be disentangled. Nearly everywhere all over the world at a primitive stage of thought, and even to some extent in the highest civilization, the sight of the sexual organs or of the sexual act, the image or even the names of the sexual parts of either man or woman, are believed to have a curiously potent influence, sometimes beneficent, but quite as often maleficent. The two kinds of influence may even be combined, and Riedel, quoted by Ploss and Bartels,[[38]] states that the Ambon islanders carve a schematic representation of the vulva on their fruit trees, in part to promote the productiveness of the trees, and in part to scare any unauthorized person who might be tempted to steal the fruit. The precautions prescribed as regards coitus at Loango[[39]] are evidently associated with religious fears. In Ceylon, again (as a medical correspondent there informs me), where the penis is worshipped and held sacred, a native never allows it to be seen, except under compulsion, by a doctor, and even a wife must neither see it nor touch it nor ask for coitus, though she must grant as much as the husband desires. All savage and barbarous peoples who have attained any high degree of ceremonialism have included the functions not only of sex, but also of excretion, more or less stringently within the bounds of that ceremonialism.[[40]] It is only necessary to refer to the Jewish ritual books of the Old Testament, to Hesiod, and to the customs prevalent among Mohammedan peoples. Modesty in eating, also, has its roots by no means only in the fear of causing disgust, but very largely in this kind of ritual, and Crawley has shown how numerous and frequent among primitive peoples are the religious implications of eating and drinking.[[41]] So profound is this dread of the sacred mystery of sex, and so widespread is the ritual based upon it, that some have imagined that here alone we may find the complete explanation of modesty, and Salomon Reinach declares that "at the origin of the emotion of modesty lies a taboo."[[42]] Durkheim ("La Prohibition de l'Inceste," L'Année Sociologique, 1898, p. 50), arguing that whatever sense of repugnance women may inspire must necessarily reach the highest point around the womb, which is hence subjected to the most stringent taboo, incidentally suggests that here is an origin of modesty. "The sexual organs must be veiled at an early period, to prevent the dangerous effluvia which they give off from reaching the environment. The veil is often a method of intercepting magic action. Once constituted, the practice would be maintained and transformed." It was doubtless as a secondary and derived significance that the veil became, as Reinach ("Le Voile de l'Oblation," op. cit., pp. 299-311) shows it was, alike among the Romans and in the Catholic Church, the sign of consecration to the gods. At an early stage of culture, again, menstruation is regarded as a process of purification, a dangerous expulsion of vitiated humors. Hence the term katharsis applied to it by the Greeks. Hence also the mediæval view of women: "Mulier speciosa templum ædificatum super cloacam," said Boethius. The sacro-pubic region in women, because it includes the source of menstruation, thus becomes a specially heightened seat of taboo. According to the Mosiac law (Leviticus, Chapter XX, v. 18), if a man uncovered a menstruating woman, both were to be cut off. It is probable that the Mohammedan custom of veiling the face and head really has its source solely in another aspect of this ritual factor of modesty. It must be remembered that this custom is not Mohammedan in its origin, since it existed long previously among the Arabians, and is described by Tertullian.[[43]] In early Arabia very handsome men also veiled their faces, in order to preserve themselves from the evil eye, and it has been conjectured with much probability that the origin of the custom of women veiling their faces may be traced to this magico-religious precaution.[[44]] Among the Jews of the same period, according to Büchler,[[45]] the women had their heads covered and never cut their hair; to appear in the streets without such covering would be like a prostitute and was adequate ground for divorce; adulterous women were punished by uncovering their heads and cutting their hair. It is possible, though not certain, that St. Paul's obscure injunction to women to cover their heads "because of the angels," may really be based on the ancient reason, that when uncovered they would be exposed to the wanton assaults of spirits (1 Corinthians, Ch. XI, vv. 5-6),[[46]] exactly as Singhalese women believe that they must keep the vulva covered lest demons should have intercourse with them. Even at the present day St. Paul's injunction is still observed by Christendom, which is, however, far from accepting, or even perhaps understanding, the folk-lore ground on which are based such injunctions. Crawley thus summarizes some of the evidence concerning the significance of the veil:— "Sexual shyness, not only in woman, but in man, is intensified at marriage, and forms a chief feature of the dangerous sexual properties mutually feared. When fully ceremonial, the idea takes on the meaning that satisfaction of these feelings will lead to their neutralization, as, in fact, it does. The bridegroom in ancient Sparta supped on the wedding night at the men's mess, and then visited his bride, leaving her before daybreak. This practice was continued, and sometimes children were born before the pair had ever seen each other's faces by day. At weddings in the Babar Islands, the bridegroom has to hunt for his bride in a darkened room. This lasts a good while if she is shy. In South Africa, the bridegroom may not see his bride till the whole of the marriage ceremonies have been performed. In Persia, a husband never sees his wife till he has consummated the marriage. At marriages in South Arabia, the bride and bridegroom have to sit immovable in the same position from noon till midnight, fasting, in separate rooms. The bride is attended by ladies, and the groom by men. They may not see each other till the night of the fourth day. In Egypt, the groom cannot see the face of his bride, even by a surreptitious glance, till she is in his absolute possession. Then comes the ceremony, which he performs, of uncovering her face. In Egypt, of course, this has been accentuated by the seclusion and veiling of women. In Morocco, at the feast before the marriage, the bride and groom sit together on a sort of throne; all the time, the poor bride's eyes are firmly closed, and she sits amidst the revelry as immovable as a statue. On the next day is the marriage. She is conducted after dark to her future home, accompanied by a crowd with lanterns and candles. She is led with closed eyes along the street by two relatives, each holding one of her hands. The bride's head is held in its proper position by a female relative, who walks behind her. She wears a veil, and is not allowed to open her eyes until she is set on the bridal bed, with a girl friend beside her. Amongst the Zulus, the bridal party proceeds to the house of the groom, having the bride hidden amongst them. They stand facing the groom, while the bride sings a song. Her companions then suddenly break away, and she is discovered standing in the middle, with a fringe of beads covering her face. Amongst the people of Kumaun, the husband sees his wife first after the joining of hands. Amongst the Bedui of North East Africa, the bride is brought on the evening of the wedding-day by her girl friends, to the groom's house. She is closely muffled up. Amongst the Jews of Jerusalem, the bride, at the marriage ceremony, stands under the nuptial canopy, her eyes being closed, that she may not behold the face of her future husband before she reaches the bridal chamber. In Melanesia, the bride is carried to her new home on some one's back, wrapped in many mats, with palm-fans held about her face, because she is supposed to be modest and shy. Among the Damaras, the groom cannot see his bride for four days after marriage. When a Damara woman is asked in marriage, she covers her face for a time with the flap of a headdress made for this purpose. At the Thlinkeet marriage ceremony, the bride must look down, and keep her head bowed all the time; during the wedding-day, she remains hiding in a corner of the house, and the groom is forbidden to enter. At a Yezedee marriage, the bride is covered from head to foot with a thick veil, and when arrived at her new home, she retires behind a curtain in the corner of a darkened room, where she remains for three days before her husband is permitted to see her. In Corea, the bride has to cover her face with her long sleeves, when meeting the bridegroom at the wedding. The Manchurian bride uncovers her face for the first time when she descends from the nuptial couch. It is dangerous even to see dangerous persons. Sight is a method of contagion in primitive science, and the idea coincides with the psychological aversion to see dangerous things, and with sexual shyness and timidity. In the customs noticed, we can distinguish the feeling that it is dangerous to the bride for her husband's eyes to be upon her, and the feeling of bashfulness in her which induces her neither to see him nor to be seen by him. These ideas explain the origin of the bridal veil and similar concealments. The bridal veil is used, to take a few instances, in China, Burmah, Corea, Russia, Bulgaria, Manchuria, and Persia, and in all these cases it conceals the face entirely." (E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose, pp. 328 et seq.) Alexander Walker, writing in 1846, remarks: "Among old-fashioned 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, 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.
II.
Protegitur læva semireducta manus."
Than woman's lightness."
In the absence of the sun!'"
Your nakedness must reach."