[67] “I am acquainted with the case of a shy man,” writes Dr. Harry Campbell, in his interesting study of “Morbid Shyness” (British Medical Journal, September 26, 1896), “who will make himself quite at home in the house of a blind person, and help himself to wine with the utmost confidence, whereas if a member of the family, who can see, comes into the room, all his old shyness returns, and he wishes himself far away.”

[68] Stanley Hall ("Showing Off and Bashfulness,” Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1903), quotes Dr. Anagnos, of the Perkins Institute for the Blind, to this effect.

[69] Thus, Sonnini, in the eighteenth century, noted that the country women in Egypt only wore a single garment, open from the armpits to the knees on each side, so that it revealed the body at every movement; “but this troubles the women little, provided the face is not exposed.” (Voyage dans la Haute et Basse Egypte, 1779, vol. i, p, 289.) When Casanova was at Constantinople, the Comte de Bonneval, a convert to Islam, assured him that he was mistaken in trying to see a woman’s face when he might easily obtain greater favors from her.  “The most reserved of Turkish women,” the Comte assured him, “only carries her modesty in her face, and as soon as her veil is on she is sure that she will never blush at anything.” (Memoires, vol. i, p. 429.)

[70] It is worth noting that this impulse is rooted in the natural instinctive acts and ideas of childhood.  Stanley Hall, dealing with the “Early Sense of Self,” in the report already mentioned, refers to the eyes as perhaps even more than the hands, feet, and mouth, “the centres of that kind of self-consciousness which is always mindful of how the self appears to others,” and proceeds to mention “the very common impression of young children that if the eyes are covered or closed they cannot be seen.  Some think the entire body thus vanishes from sight of others; some, that the head also ceases to be visible; and a still higher form of this curious psychosis is that, when they are closed, the soul cannot be seen.” (American Journal of Psychology, vol. ix, No. 3, 1898.) The instinctive and unreasoned character of this act is further shown by its occurrence in idiots.  Naecke mentions that he once had occasion to examine the abdomen of an idiot, who, thereupon, attempted to draw down his shirt with the left hand, while with the right he covered his eyes.

[71] Cf.  Stanley Hall and T. Smith, “Showing Off and Bashfulness,” American Journal of Psychology, June, 1903.

IV.

Summary of the Factors of Modesty—­The Future of Modesty—­Modesty an Essential Element of Love.

We have seen that the factors of modesty are numerous.  To attempt to explain modesty by dismissing it as merely an example of psychic paralysis, of Stauung, is to elude the problem by the statement of what is little more than a truism.  Modesty is a complexus of emotions with their concomitant ideas which we must unravel to comprehend.