Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 by Havelock Ellis

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as perhaps even more than the hands, feet, and mouth, "the centres of that
kind of self-consciousness which is always mindful of how the self appears
to others," and proceeds to mention "the very common impression of young
children that if the eyes are covered or closed they cannot be seen. Some
think the entire body thus vanishes from sight of others; some, that the
head also ceases to be visible; and a still higher form of this curious
psychosis is that, when they are closed, the soul cannot be seen."
(_American Journal of Psychology_, vol. ix, No. 3, 1898.) The instinctive
and unreasoned character of this act is further shown by its occurrence in
idiots. N�cke mentions that he once had occasion to examine the abdomen of
an idiot, who, thereupon, attempted to draw down his shirt with the left
hand, while with the right he covered his eyes.
[71] Cf. Stanley Hall and T. Smith, "Showing Off and Bashfulness,"
_American Journal of Psychology_, June, 1903.
IV.
Summary of the Factors of Modesty--The Future of Modesty--Modesty an
Essential Element of Love.
We have seen that the factors of modesty are numerous. To attempt to
explain modesty by dismissing it as merely an example of psychic
paralysis, of _Stauung_, is to elude the problem by the statement of what
is little more than a truism. Modesty is a complexus of emotions with
their concomitant ideas which we must unravel to comprehend.
We have found among the factors of modesty: (1) the primitive animal
gesture of sexual refusal on the part of the female when she is not at
that moment of her generative life at which she desires the male's
advances; (2) the fear of arousing disgust, a fear primarily due to the
close proximity of the sexual centre to the points of exit of those
excretions which are useless and unpleasant, even in many cases to
animals; (3) the fear of the magic influence of sexual phenomena, and the
ceremonial and ritual practices primarily based on this fear, and
ultimately passing into simple rules of decorum which are signs and
guardians of modesty; (4) the development of ornament and clothing,
concomitantly fostering alike the modesty which represses male sexual
desire and the coquetry which seeks to allure it; (5) the conception of
women as property, imparting a new and powerful sanction to an emotion
already based on more natural and primitive facts.
It must always be remembered that these factors do not usually occur
separately. Very often they are all of them implied in a single impulse of
modesty. We unravel the cord in order to investigate its construction, but
in real life the strands are more or less indistinguishably twisted
together.
It may still be asked finally whether, on the whole, modesty really
becomes a more prominent emotion as civilization advances. I do not think
this position can be maintained. It is a great mistake, as we have seen,
to suppose that in becoming extended modesty also becomes intensified. On
the contrary, this very extension is a sign of weakness. Among savages,
modesty is far more radical and invincible than among the civilized. Of
the Araucanian women of Chile, Treutler has remarked that they are
distinctly more modest than the Christian white population, and such
observations might be indefinitely extended. It is, as we have already
noted, in a new and crude civilization, eager to mark its separation from
a barbarism it has yet scarcely escaped, that we find an extravagant and
fantastic anxiety to extend the limits of modesty in life, and art, and
literature. In older and more mature civilizations--in classical
antiquity, in old Japan, in France--modesty, while still a very real
influence, becomes a much less predominant and all-pervading influence. In
life it becomes subservient to human use, in art to beauty, in literature
to expression.
Among ourselves we may note that modesty is a much more invincible motive
among the lower social classes than among the more cultivated classes.
This is so even when we should expect the influence of occupation to
induce familiarity. Thus I have been told of a ballet-girl who thinks it
immodest to bathe in the fashion customary at the seaside, and cannot make
up her mind to do so, but she appears on the stage every night in tights
as a matter of course; while Fanny Kemble, in her _Reminiscences_, tells
of an actress, accustomed to appear in tights, who died a martyr to
modesty rather than allow a surgeon to see her inflamed knee. Modesty is,
indeed, a part of self-respect, but in the fully-developed human being
self-respect itself holds in check any excessive modesty.[72]
We must remember, moreover, that there are more definite grounds for the
subordination of modesty with the development of civilization. We have
seen that the factors of modesty are many, and that most of them are based
on emotions which make little urgent appeal save to races in a savage or
barbarous condition. Thus, disgust, as Richet has truly pointed out,
necessarily decreases as knowledge increases.[73] As we analyze and
understand our experiences better, so they cause us less disgust. A rotten
egg is disgusting, but the chemist feels no disgust toward sulphuretted
hydrogen; while a solution of propylamin does not produce the disgusting
impression of that human physical uncleanliness of which it is an odorous
constituent. As disgust becomes analyzed, and as self-respect tends to
increased physical purity, so the factor of disgust in modesty is
minimized. The factor of ceremonial uncleanness, again, which plays so
urgent a part in modesty at certain stages of culture, is to-day without
influence except in so far as it survives in etiquette. In the same way
the social-economic factor of modesty, based on the conception of women as
property, belongs to a stage of human development which is wholly alien to
an advanced civilization. Even the most fundamental impulse of all, the
gesture of sexual refusal, is normally only imperative among animals and
savages. Thus civilization tends to subordinate, if not to minimize,
modesty, to render it a grace of life rather than a fundamental social law
of life. But an essential grace of life it still remains, and whatever
delicate variations it may assume we can scarcely conceive of its
disappearance.
In the art of love, however, it is more than a grace; it must always be
fundamental. Modesty is not indeed the last word of love, but it is the
necessary foundation for all love's most exquisite audacities, the
foundation which alone gives worth and sweetness to what S�nancour calls
its "delicious impudence."[74] Without modesty we could not have, nor
rightly value at its true worth, that bold and pure candor which is at
once the final revelation of love and the seal of its sincerity.
Even Hohenemser--who argues that for the perfect man there could
be no shame, because shame rests on an inner conflict in one's
own personality, and "the perfect man knows no inner [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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