Studies in the Psychology of Sex (Vol. 1-6). Havelock Ellis

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

      [13] Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1878, p. 26.

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

[15] Monsieur Nicolas, vol. i, p. 89.

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

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

[18] Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Bd. II, Heft 8, p. 358.

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

[20] Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III, Sect. III. Mem. IV. Subs. I.

[21] N. Venette, La Génération de l'Homme, Part II, Ch. X.

[22] Monsieur Nicolas, vol. i, p. 94.

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

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

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

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

[27] Hawkesworth, An Account of the Voyages, etc., 1775, vol. ii, p. 52.

[28] Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. vi, p. 173.

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

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

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

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

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

      "He sayde, a woman cast hir shame away,

       When she cast of hir smok."

      I need not point out that the analysis of modesty offered above robs this venerable saying of any sting it may have possessed as a slur