ys glad to make a point against
women, and I have met with it in Cyprian's _De Habitu Feminarum_. It also
occurs in Jerome's treatise against Jovinian. Jerome, with more scholarly
instinct, rightly presents the remark as a quotation: "_Scribit Herodotus
quod mulier cum veste deponat et verecundiam_." In Herodotus the saying is
attributed to Gyges (Book I, Chapter VIII). We may thus trace very far
back into antiquity an observation which in English has received its
classical expression from Chaucer, who, in his "Wife of Bath's Prologue,"
has:--

"He sayde, a woman cast hir shame away,
When she cast of hir smok."

I need not point out that the analysis of modesty offered above robs this
venerable saying of any sting it may have possessed as a slur upon women.
In such a case, modesty is largely a doubt as to the spectator's attitude,
and necessarily disappears when that doubt is satisfactorily resolved. As
we have seen, the Central Australian maidens were very modest with regard
to the removal of their single garment, but when that removal was
accomplished and accepted, they were fearless.

[34] The same result occurs more markedly under the deadening influence of
insanity. Grimaldi (_Il Manicomio Moderno_, 1888) found that modesty is
lacking in 50 per cent, of the insane.

[35] For some facts bearing on this point, see Houssay, _Industries of
Animals_, Chapter VII. "The Defence and Sanitation of Dwellings;" also P.
Ballion, _De l'Instinct de Proprete chez les Animaux_.

[36] Thus, Stevens mentions (_Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_, p. 182, 1897)
that the Dyaks of Malacca always wash the sexual organs, even after
urination, and are careful to use the left hand in doing so. The left hand
is also reserved for such uses among the Jekris of the Niger coast
(_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, p. 122, 1898).

[37] Lombroso and Ferrero--who adopt the derivation of _pudor_ from
_putere_; i.e., from the repugnance caused by the decomposition of the
vaginal secretions--consider that the fear of causing disgust to men is
the sole origin of modesty among savage women, as also it remains the sole
form of modesty among some prostitutes to-day. (_La Donna Delinquente_, p.
540.) Important as this factor is in the constitution of the emotion of
modesty, I need scarcely add that I regard so exclusive a theory as
altogether untenable.

[38] _Das Weib_, Ch. VI.

[39] For references as to a similar feeling among other sa