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.

We have found among the factors of modesty: (1) the primitive animal
gesture of sexual refusal on the part of the female when she is not at
that moment of her generative life at which she desires the male's
advances; (2) the fear of arousing disgust, a fear primarily due to the
close proximity of the sexual centre to the points of exit of those
excretions which are useless and unpleasant, even in many cases to
animals; (3) the fear of the magic influence of sexual phenomena, and the
ceremonial and ritual practices primarily based on this fear, and
ultimately passing into simple rules of decorum which are signs and
guardians of modesty; (4) the development of ornament and clothing,
concomitantly fostering alike the modesty which represses male sexual
desire and the coquetry which seeks to allure it; (5) the conception of
women as property, imparting a new and powerful sanction to an emotion
already based on more natural and primitive facts.

It must always be remembered that these factors do not usually occur
separately. Very often they are all of them implied in a single impulse of
modesty. We unravel the cord in order to investigate its construction, but
in real life the strands are more or less indistinguishably twisted
together.

It may still be asked fin