and harmful, just as a bird loses its sexual plumage
when the pairing season is over.

Madame Celine Renooz, in an elaborate study of the psychological
sexual differences between men and women (_Psychologie Comparee
de l'Homme et de la Femme_, 1898, pp. 85-87), also believes that
modesty is not really a feminine characteristic. "Modesty," she
argues, "is masculine shame attributed to women for two reasons:
first, because man believes that woman is subject to the same
laws as himself; secondly, because the course of human evolution
has reversed the psychology of the sexes, attributing to women
the psychological results of masculine sexuality. This is the
origin of the conventional lies which by a sort of social
suggestion have intimidated women. They have, in appearance at
least, accepted the rule of shame imposed on them by men, but
only custom inspires the modesty for which they are praised; it
is really an outrage to their sex. This reversal of psychological
laws has, however, only been accepted by women with a struggle.
Primitive woman, proud of her womanhood, for a long time
defended her nakedness which ancient art has always represented.
And in the actual life of the young girl to-day there is a moment
when, by a secret atavism, she feels the pride of her sex, the
intuition of her moral superiority, and cannot understand why she
must hide its cause. At this moment, wavering between the laws of
Nature and social conventions, she scarcely knows if nakedness
should or should not affright her. A sort of confused atavistic
memory recalls to her a period before clothing was known, and
reveals to her as a paradisaical ideal the customs of that human
epoch."

In support of this view the authoress proceeds to point out that
the _decollete_ constantly reappears in feminine clothing, never
in male; that missionaries experience great difficulty in
persuading women to cover themselves; that, while women accept
with facility an examination by male doctors, men cannot force
themselves to accept examination by a woman doctor, etc. (These
and similar points had already been independently brought forward
by Sergi, _Archivio di Psichiatria_, vol. xiii, 1892.)

It cannot be said that Madame Renooz's arguments will all bear
examination, if only on the ground that nakedness by no means