The best study of the phenomena of disgust known to me is, without doubt,
Professor Richet's.[25] Richet concludes that it is the _dangerous_ and
the _useless_ which evoke disgust. The digestive and sexual excretions and
secretions, being either useless or, in accordance with widespread
primitive ideas, highly dangerous, the genito-anal region became a
concentrated focus of disgust.[26] It is largely for this reason, no
doubt, that savage men exhibit modesty, not only toward women, but toward
their own sex, and that so many of the lowest savages take great
precautions in obtaining seclusion for the fulfillment of natural
functions. The statement, now so often made, that the primary object of
clothes is to accentuate, rather than to conceal, has in it--as I shall
point out later--a large element of truth, but it is by no means a
complete account of the matter. It seems difficult not to admit that,
alongside the impulse to accentuate sexual differences, there is also in
both men and women a genuine impulse to concealment among the most
primitive peoples, and the invincible repugnance often felt by savages to
remove the girdle or apron, is scarcely accounted for by the theory that
it is solely a sexual lure.
In this connection it seems to me instructive to consider a special form
of modesty very strongly marked among savages in some parts of the world.
I refer to the feeling of immodesty in eating.
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