o 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 Senancour 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
conflict"--believes that, since humanity is imperfect, modesty
possesses a high and, indeed, symptomatic value, for "its
presence shows that according to the measure of a man's ideal
personality, his valuations are established."

Dugas goes further, and asserts that the ideals of modesty
develop with human development, and forever take on new and finer
forms. "There is," he declares, "a very close relationship
between naturalness, or sincerity, and modesty, for in love,
naturalness is the ideal attained, and modesty is only the fear
of coming short of that ideal. Naturalness is the sign and the
test of