exclaims Dugas, “in the privacies of love!  The results may be disillusion, disgust, the consciousness of physical imperfection, of brutality or coldness, of aesthetic 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 aesthetic 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 Maennerbuende, 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 aesthetic 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.