the sexes as sinful, and in part by the influence of chivalry with its aesthetic 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 precieuses satirized by Moliere, 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