involves absence of modesty, but the point of view which she
expresses is one which usually fails to gain recognition, though
it probably contains an important element of truth. It is quite
true, as Stendhal said, that modesty is very largely taught; from
the earliest years, a girl child is trained to show a modesty
which she quickly begins really to feel. This fact cannot fail to
strike any one who reads the histories of pseudo-hermaphroditic
persons, really males, who have from infancy been brought up in
the belief that they are girls, and who show, and feel, all the
shrinking reticence and blushing modesty of their supposed sex.
But when the error is discovered, and they are restored to their
proper sex, this is quickly changed, and they exhibit all the
boldness of masculinity. (See e.g., Neugebauer, "Beobachtungen
aus dem Gebiete des Scheinzwittertumes," _Jahrbuch fuer Sexuelle
Zwischenstufen_, Jahrgang iv, 1902, esp. p. 92.) At the same time
this is only one thread in the tangled skein with which we are
here concerned. The mass of facts which meets us when we turn to
the study of modesty in women cannot be dismissed as a group of
artificially-imposed customs. They gain rather than lose in
importance if we have to realize that the organic sexual demands
of women, calling for coyness in courtship, lead to the temporary
suppression of another feminine instinct of opposite, though
doubtless allied, nature.

But these somewhat conflicting, though not really contradictory,
statements serve to bring out the fact that a woman's modesty is
often an incalculable element. The woman who, under some
circumstances and at some times, is extreme in her reticences,
under other circumstances or at other times, may be extreme in
her abandonment. Not that her modesty is an artificial garment,
which she throws off or on at will. It is organic, but like the
snail's shell, it sometimes forms an impenetrable covering, and
sometimes glides off almost altogether. A man's modesty is more
rigid, with little tendency to deviate toward either extreme.
Thus it is, that, when uninstructed, a man is apt to be impatient
with a woman's reticences, and yet shocked at her abandonments.

The significance of our inquiry becomes greater when we reflect that to
the reticences of sexual modesty, in their progression,