Cela va dans l'exces." Half a century
later, in England, Mandeville, in the Remarks appended to his _Fable of
the Bees_, refers to the almost prudish modesty inculcated on children
from their earliest years.
[58] In one of its civilized developments, this ritualized modesty becomes
prudery, which is defined by Forel (_Die Sexuelle Frage_, Fifth ed., p.
125) as "codified sexual morality." Prudery is fossilized modesty, and no
longer reacts vitally. True modesty, in an intelligent civilized person,
is instinctively affected by motives and circumstances, responding
sensitively to its relationships.
[59] _Memoires de Madame d'Epinay_, Part I, Ch. V. Thirty years earlier,
Mandeville had written, in England, that "the modesty of women is the
result of custom and education."
[60] Goncourt, _Histoire de la Societe Francaise pendant le Directoire_,
p. 422. Clothes became so gauze-like, and receded to such an extent from
the limbs, that for a time the chemise was discarded as an awkward and
antiquated garment.
[61] _Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_, 1901, Heft 2, p. 179.
[62] In the rural districts of Hanover, Pastor Grashoff states, "even when
natural necessities are performed with the greatest possible freedom,
there is no offence to modesty, in rural opinion." But he makes a
statement which is both contradictory and false, when he adds that
"modesty is, to the country man in general, a foreign idea.
Pages:
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158