p. 366), finds that of the three functions of
clothes--protection, ornament, and Lotzean "self-feeling"--the
second is by far the most conspicuous in childhood. The attitude
of children is testimony to the primitive attitude toward
clothing.

It cannot, however, be said that the use of clothing for the sake
of showing the natural forms of the body has everywhere been
developed. In Japan, where nakedness is accepted without shame,
clothes are worn to cover and conceal, and not to reveal, the
body. It is so, also, in China. A distinguished Chinese
gentleman, who had long resided in Europe, once told Baelz that
he had gradually learnt to grasp the European point of view, but
that it would be impossible to persuade his fellow-countrymen
that a woman who used her clothes to show off her figure could
possibly possess the least trace of modesty. (Baelz, _Zeitschrift
fuer Ethnologie_, 1901, Heft 2, p. 179.)

The great artistic elaboration often displayed by articles of ornament or
clothing, even when very small, and the fact--as shown by Karl von den
Steinen regarding the Brazilian _uluri_--that they may serve as common
motives in general decoration, sufficiently prove that such objects
attract rather than avoid attention. And while there is an invincible
repugnance among some peoples to remove these articles, such repugnance
being often strongest when the adornment is most minute, others have no
such repugnance or are quite indifferent whether or not their aprons are
accurately adjusted. The mere presence or possession of the article gives
the required sense of self-respect, of human dignity, of sexual
desirability. Thus it is that to unclothe a person, is to humiliate him;
this was so even in Homeric times, for we may recall the threat of
Ulysses to strip Thyestes.[52]

When clothing is once established, another element, this time a
social-economic element, often comes in to emphasize its importance and
increase the anatomical modesty of women. I mean the growth of the
conception of women as property. Waitz, followed by Schurtz and
Letourneau, has insisted that the jealousy of husbands is the primary
origin of clothing, and, indirectly, of modesty. Diderot in the eighteenth
century had already given clear expression to the same view. It is
undoubtedly true that only married women are among some peoples clothed,
the unmarried women, though full grown, remaining nak