g, grown-up person, who seems
a higher sort of being. Sometimes, likewise, we feel shame in
approaching a stranger, for a new person tends to seem higher and
more interesting than ourselves. It is not so in approaching a
new natural phenomenon, because we do not compare it with
ourselves. Another kind of shame is seen when this mental contest
is lower than our personality, and on this account in conflict
with it, as when we are ashamed of sexual thoughts. Sexual ideas
tend to evoke shame, Hohenemser remarks, because they so easily
tend to pass into sexual feelings; when they do not so pass (as
in scientific discussions) they do not evoke shame.

It will be seen that this discussion of modesty is highly
generalized and abstracted; it deals simply with the formal
mechanism of the process. Hohenemser admits that fear is a form
of psychic stasis, and I have sought to show that modesty is a
complexus of fears. We may very well accept the conception of
psychic stasis at the outset. The analysis of modesty has still
to be carried very much further.

The discussion of modesty is complicated by the difficulty, and even
impossibility, of excluding closely-allied emotions--shame, shyness,
bashfulness, timidity, etc.--all of which, indeed, however defined, adjoin
or overlap modesty.[3] It is not, however, impossible to isolate the main
body of the emotion of modesty, on account of its special connection, on
the whole, with the consciousness of sex. I here attempt, however
imperfectly, to sketch out a fairly-complete analysis of its constitution
and to trace its development.

In entering upon this investigation a few facts with regard to
the various manifestations of modesty may be helpful to us. I
have selected these from scattered original sources, and have
sought to bring out the variety and complexity of the problems
with which we are here concerned.

The New Georgians of the Solomon Islands, so low a race that they
are ignorant both of pottery and weaving, and wear only a loin
cloth, "have the same ideas of what is decent with regard to
certain acts and exposures that we ourselves have;" so that it is
difficult to observe whether they practice circumcision.
(Somerville, _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, 1897, p.
394.)

In the New Hebrides "the closest secrecy is adopted with regard
to the