expansion, and
complication, we largely owe, not only the refinement and development of
the sexual emotions,--"_la pudeur_" as Guyau remarked, "_a civilise
l'amour_"--but the subtle and pervading part which the sexual instinct has
played in the evolution of all human culture.

"It is certain that very much of what is best in religion, art,
and life," remark Stanley Hall and Allin, "owes its charm to the
progressively-widening irradiation of sexual feeling. Perhaps the
reluctance of the female first long-circuited the exquisite
sensations connected with sexual organs and acts to the antics of
animal and human courtship, while restraint had the physiological
function of developing the colors, plumes, excessive activity,
and exuberant life of the pairing season. To keep certain parts
of the body covered, irradiated the sense of beauty to eyes,
hair, face, complexion, dress, form, etc., while many savage
dances, costumes and postures are irradiations of the sexual act.
Thus reticence, concealment, and restraint are among the prime
conditions of religion and human culture." (Stanley Hall and
Allin, "The Psychology of Tickling," _American Journal of
Psychology_, 1897, p. 31.)

Groos attributes the deepening of the conjugal relation among
birds to the circumstance that the male seeks to overcome the
reticence of the female by the display of his charms and
abilities. "And in the human world," he continues, "it is the
same; without the modest reserve of the woman that must, in most
cases, be overcome by lovable qualities, the sexual relationship
would with difficulty find a singer who would extol in love the
highest movements of the human soul." (Groos, _Spiele der
Menschen_, p. 341.)

I have not, however, been, able to find that the subject of modesty has
been treated in any comprehensive way by psychologists. Though valuable
facts and suggestions bearing on the sexual emotions, on disgust, the
origins of tatooing, on ornament and clothing, have been, brought forward
by physiologists, psychologists, and ethnographists, few or no attempts
appear to have been made to reach a general synthetic statement of these
facts and suggestions. It is true that a great many unreliable, slight, or
fragmentary efforts have been made to ascertain the constitution or basis
of this emotion.[1] Many psychologists have regarded modesty simply as the