no means only in the fear of causing disgust, but very largely in this
kind of ritual, and Crawley has shown how numerous and frequent among
primitive peoples are the religious implications of eating and
drinking.[41] So profound is this dread of the sacred mystery of sex, and
so widespread is the ritual based upon it, that some have imagined that
here alone we may find the complete explanation of modesty, and Salomon
Reinach declares that "at the origin of the emotion of modesty lies a
taboo."[42]

Durkheim ("La Prohibition de l'Inceste," _L'Annee Sociologique_,
1898, p. 50), arguing that whatever sense of repugnance women may
inspire must necessarily reach the highest point around the womb,
which is hence subjected to the most stringent taboo,
incidentally suggests that here is an origin of modesty. "The
sexual organs must be veiled at an early period, to prevent the
dangerous effluvia which they give off from reaching the
environment. The veil is often a method of intercepting magic
action. Once constituted, the practice would be maintained and
transformed."

It was doubtless as a secondary and derived significance that the
veil became, as Reinach ("Le Voile de l'Oblation," op. cit., pp.
299-311) shows it was, alike among the Romans and in the Catholic
Church, the sign of consecration to the gods.

At an early stage of culture, again, menstruation is regarded as a process
of purification, a dangerous expulsion of vitiated humors. Hence the term
_katharsis_ applied to it by the Greeks. Hence also the mediaeval view of
women: "_Mulier speciosa templum aedificatum super cloacam_," said
Boethius. The sacro-pubic region in women, because it includes the source
of menstruation, thus becomes a specially heightened seat of taboo.
According to the Mosiac law (Leviticus, Chapter XX, v. 18), if a man
uncovered a menstruating woman, both were to be cut off.

It is probable that the Mohammedan custom of veiling the face and head
really has its source solely in another aspect of this ritual factor of
modesty. It must be remembered that this custom is not Mohammedan in its
origin, since it existed long previously among the Arabians, and is
described by Tertullian.[43] In early Arabia very handsome men also veiled
their faces, in order to preserve themselves from the evil eye, and it has
been conjectured with much probability that the origin of the custom of
women veiling t