milar to that which a European
woman might experience who was surprised without her
usual drapery."

Another paradox remains to be noted. Anthropologists have now proved
beyond all possibility of doubt that modesty, far from having led to
the use of clothing, was itself merely a secondary consequence of the
gradual adoption of apparel as a protection. They have also shown[10]
that the earliest forms of dress were extremely scanty, and were
intended not to cover certain parts of the body, but actually and
wantonly to call attention to them, while in other cases the only
parts of the body habitually covered were such as we should consider
it no special impropriety to leave uncovered. But enough has been said
to demonstrate what we started out to prove: that the strong sentiment
of modesty in our community--so strong that many insist it must be
part and parcel of human nature (like love!)--has, like all the other
sentiments here discussed, grown up slowly from microscopic
beginnings.

INDIFFERENCE TO CHASTITY

Closely connected with modesty, and yet entirely distinct from it, is
another and still stronger sentiment--the regard for chastity. Many an
American officer whose brave wife accompanied him in a frontier war
has been asked by her to promise that he would shoot her with his own
revolver rather than let her fall into the clutches of licentious
Indians. Though deliberate murder is punishable by death, no American
jury has ever convicted a man for slaying the seducer of his wife,
daughter, or sister. Modern law punishes rape with death, and its
victim is held to have suffered a fate worse than death. The brightest
of all jewels in a bride's crown of virtues is chastity--a jewel
without which all the others lose their value. Yet this jewel of
jewels formerly had no more value than a pebble in a brook-bed. The
sentiment in behalf of chastity had no existence for ages, and for a
long time after it came into existence chastity was known not as a
virtue but only as a necessity, inculcated by fear of punishment or
loss of worldly advantages.

In support of this statement a whole volume might be written; but as
abundant evidence will be given in later chapters relating to the
lower races in Africa, Australia, Polynesia, America, and Asia, only a
few instances need be cited here. In his recent work on the _Origin
and Growth of the Moral Sense_ (1898), Alexander Sutherland, an
Australian author, writes (I., 180