It is curious to note that short-sightedness, naturally, though
illogically, tends to exert the same influence as darkness in this
respect; I am assured by short-sighted persons of both sexes that they are
much more liable to the emotions of shyness and modesty with their glasses
than without them; such persons with difficulty realize that they are not
so dim to others as others are to them. To be in the company of a blind
person seems also to be a protection against shyness.[67] It is
interesting to learn that congenitally blind children are as sensitive to
appearances as normal children, and blush as readily.[68] This would seem
to be due to the fact that the habitually blind have permanently adjusted
their mental focus to that of normal persons, and react in the same manner
as normal persons; blindness is not for them, as it is for the
short-sighted without their glasses, a temporary and relative, almost
unconscious refuge from clear vision.
It is, of course, not as the mere cloak of a possible blush that darkness
gives courage; it is because it lulls detailed self-realization, such
conscious self-realization being always a source of fears, and the blush
their definite symbol and visible climax. It is to the blush that we must
attribute a curious complementary relationship between the face and the
sacro-pubic region as centres of anatomical modesty. The women of some
African tribes who go naked, Emin Bey remarked, cover the face with the
hand under the influence of modesty.
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