“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 decollete or detrousse, has no suggestion of sexual allurement. (Westermarck quotes numerous testimonies on this point, op. cit., pp. 192 et seq.) Dr. R.W.  Felkin remarks concerning Central Africa, that he has never met more indecency than in Uganda, where the penalty of death is inflicted on an adult found naked in the street. (Edinburgh Medical Journal, April, 1884.) A study of pictures or statuary will alone serve to demonstrate that nakedness is always chaster in its effects than partial clothing.  As a well-known artist, Du Maurier, has remarked (in Trilby), it is “a fact well known to all painters and sculptors who have used the nude model (except a few shady pretenders, whose purity, not being of the right sort, has gone rank from too much watching) that nothing is so chaste as nudity.  Venus herself, as she drops her garments and steps on to the model-throne, leaves behind her on the floor every weapon in her armory by which she can pierce to the grosser passions of men.”  Burton, in the Anatomy of Melancholy (Part III, Sect.  II, Subsect. 3), deals at length with the “Allurements of Love,” and concludes that “the greatest provocations of lust are from our apparel.”  The artist’s model, as one informs me, is much less exposed to liberties from men when nude than when she is partially clothed, and it may be noted that in Paris studios the model who poses naked undresses behind a screen.

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

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