by exposing his posterior and strewing earth on his head (Wellhausen, Rests Arabischen Heidentums, 1897, p. 195).  It is in Europe and in mediaeval and later times that this emphatic gesture seems to have flourished as a violent method of expressing contempt.  It was by no means confined to the lower classes, and Kleinpaul, in discussing this form of “speech without words,” quotes examples of various noble persons, even princesses, who are recorded thus to have expressed their feelings. (Kleinpaul, Sprache ohne Worte, pp. 271-273.) In more recent times the gesture has become merely a rare and extreme expression of unrestrained feeling in coarse-grained peasants.  Zola, in the figure of Mouquette in Germinal, may be said to have given a kind of classic expression to the gesture.  In the more remote parts of Europe it appears to be still not altogether uncommon.  This seems to be notably the case among the South Slavs, and Krauss states that “when a South Slav woman wishes to express her deepest contempt for anyone she bends forward, with left hand raising her skirts, and with the right slapping her posterior, at the same time exclaiming:  ‘This for you!’” (Kryptadia, vol. vi, p. 200.)

A verbal survival of this gesture, consisting in the contemptuous invitation to kiss this region, still exists among us in remote parts of the country, especially as an insult offered by an angry woman who forgets herself.  It is said to be commonly used in Wales. ("Welsh AEdoelogy,” Kryptadia, vol. ii, pp. 358, et seq.) In Cornwall, when addressed by a woman to a man it is sometimes regarded as a deadly insult, even if the woman is young and attractive, and may cause a life-long enmity between related families.  From this point of view the nates are a symbol of contempt, and any sexual significance is excluded. (The distinction is brought out by Diderot in Le Neveu de Rameau: “Lui:—­Il y a d’autres jours ou il ne m’en couterait rien pour etre vil tant qu’on voudrait; ces jours-la, pour un liard, je baiserais le cul a la petite Hus. Moi:—­Eh! mais, l’ami, elle est blanche, jolie, douce, potelee, et c’est un acte d’humilite auquel un plus delicat que vous pourrait quelquefois s’abaisser. Lui:—­Entendons-nous; c’est qu’il y a baiser le cul au simple, et baiser le cul au figure.”)

It must be added that a sexual form of exhibitionism of the nates must still be recognized.  It occurs in masochism and expresses the desire for passive flagellation.  Rousseau, whose emotional life was profoundly affected by the castigations which as a child he received from Mlle Lambercier, has in his Confessions told us how, when a youth, he would sometimes expose himself in this way in the presence of young women.  Such masochistic exhibitionism seems, however, to be rare.

While the manifestations of exhibitionism are substantially the same in all cases, there are many degrees and