to class. The women in modern Jerusalem
regard it as very indecent to show themselves _decolletees_. They sit,
however, in postures which leave their legs uncovered.[1406] A peasant
woman could not wear the dress of a lady of fashion. Where men or women
wear only a string around the waist, their dress is decent, but it is
indecent to leave off the string. The suggestive effect of putting on
ornaments and dress at one stage is the same as that of leaving them off
at another stage. Barbarians put on dress for festivals, dances, and
solemn occasions. Civilized people do the same when they wear robes of
office or ceremony. When Hera wanted to stimulate the love of Zeus she
made an elaborate toilet and put on extra garments, including a
veil.[1407] Then taking off the veil was a stimulus. On the other hand,
the extremest and most conventional dress looks elegant and stylish to
those who are accustomed to it, as is now the case with ourselves and
the current dress, which makes both sexes present an appearance far
removed from the natural outline of human beings. Then, at the limit,
that is at to-day's fashions, coquetry can be employed again, and a
sense stimulus can be exerted again, by simply making variations on the
existing fashions at the limit. It is impossible to eliminate the sense
stimulus, or to establish a system of societal usage in which indecency
shall be impossible. The dresses of Moslem women, nuns, and Quakeresses
were invented in order to get rid of any possible question of decency.
The attempt fails entirely. A Moslem woman with her veil, a Spanish
woman with her mantilla or fan, a Quakeress with her neckerchief, can be
as indecent as a barbarian woman with her petticoat of dried grass.

+447. Present conventional limits.+ In our own society decency as to
dress, words, gestures, etc., is a constant preoccupation. That is not
the case with naked savages or half-naked barbarians. The savages put on
ornament to be admired and to exert attraction or produce effect. The
same effect is won by words, gestures, dress, etc. Our aesthetic arts all
exert the same influence. We expel all these things from our artificial
environment down to a limit, in order to restrain and control the
stimulus. Then we think that we are decent. That is because we rest at
peace in a status which is conventional and accustomed. Variation from
it one way is fastidious; the other way is indecent, just as it would be
at any other limit what