they had no
objection to being seen naked when bathing. Twenty years later she
admitted to Dr. Baelz that she had made a mistake, and that "a woman may
be naked and yet behave like a lady."[61] In civilized countries the
observances of modesty differ in different regions, and in different
social classes, but, however various the forms may be, the impulse itself
remains persistent.[62]

Modesty has thus come to have the force of a tradition, a vague but
massive force, bearing with special power on those who cannot reason, and
yet having its root in the instincts of all people of all classes.[63] It
has become mainly transformed into the allied emotion of decency, which
has been described as "modesty fossilized into social customs." The
emotion yields more readily than in its primitive state to any
sufficiently-strong motive. Even fashion in the more civilized countries
can easily inhibit anatomical modesty, and rapidly exhibit or accentuate,
in turn, almost any part of the body, while the savage Indian woman of
America, the barbarous woman of some Mohammedan countries, can scarcely
sacrifice her modesty in the pangs of childbirth. Even when, among
uncivilized races, the focus of modesty may be said to be eccentric and
arbitrary, it still remains very rigid. In such savage and barbarous
countries modesty possesses the strength of a genuine and irresistible
instinct. In civilized countries, however, anyone who places
considerations of modesty before the claims of some real human need
excites ridicule and contempt.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Fliess (_Die Beziehungen zwischen Nase und weiblichen
Geschlechts-Organen_, p. 194) remarks on the fact that, in the Bible
narrative of Eden, shame and fear are represented as being brought into
the world together: Adam feared God because he was naked. Melinaud
("Psychologie de la Pudeur," _La Revue_, Nov. 15, 1901) remarks that shame
differs from modesty in being, not a fear, but a kind of grief; this
position seems untenable.

[5] Bashfulness in children has been dealt with by Professor Baldwin; see
especially his _Mental Development in the Child and the Race_, Chapter VI,
pp. 146 et seq., and _Social Interpretations in Mental Development_,
Chapter VI.

[6] Bell, "A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love Between the Sexes,"
_American Journal Psychology_, July, 1902.

[7] Professor Starbuck (_Psychology of Religion_, Chapter XXX) refers to
unpublished investigations showing that rec