MODESTY AND SHAME 307 



Finally, the widely accepted view that the sense of shame 

 is an innate characteristic human attribute is one which may 

 henceforth be rejected as entirely erroneous. Modesty is not 

 inborn in man but has been acquired in the process of culture- 

 development, and actually varies greatly in regard to different 

 parts of the body. From the fact that prehistoric hunters 

 have depicted man absolutely naked (the wife with the rein- 

 deer, the husband with the bison), we ought to conclude that 

 at that period he saw nothing improper in being naked, any 

 more than our own children, who as their intelligence grows 

 absorb the teaching of their parents and teachers. And are 

 there not still savage tribes who without a trace of shame go 

 about in Eden-like nudity? The races among whom both 

 sexes go naked were, in 1875, when Oskar Peschel wrote his 

 Volkerkunde, the Australian blacks, Andaman Islanders, 

 sundry tribes of the White Nile, the red negroes of the 

 Soudan, and the Bushmen. It would be totally untrue to 

 suppose that the sense of shame was developed earlier among 

 women than men. Humboldt found that on the Orinoco the 

 women were much less modest than the men ; among the 

 Obbo negroes (to the east of the outlet of Baker's great lakes 

 of the Nile) the covering of the women consisted of a bunch of 

 leaves while the men wore an apron of skins ; similarly, among 

 the Monbutton negroes, where the men are clad in an ox-hide 

 garment reaching to the knees, the women only wear a piece 

 of banana leaf, the size of a hand, attached to a waist-girdle. 



Moreover, it is by no means always the genital organs 

 which are covered ; on the contrary, the ideas of what con- 

 stitutes decency are widely different among races of lower, or 

 middle, civilisation. Among certain negro tribes propriety 

 requires the buttocks to be covered rather than the genitalia. 

 The Philippine Islanders and Samoans regard it as most 

 indecent for the navel to be exposed : every other part may 

 go uncovered. So, too, the Mohammedan women universally 

 endeavour to cover their faces ; the Arab women allow their 

 feet, legs and breast to be seen quite indifferently provided 

 only the back of the head is covered ; and in China a woman 

 is considered extraordinarily immodest who exposes her 

 artificially deformed feet to a strange man. 



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