CHAPTER XI

THE SOCIAL CODES

Specification of the subject.--Meaning of "immoral."--Natural

functions.--The current code and character.--Definitions of

chastity, decency, propriety, etc.--Chastity.--Pagan life

policy.--Modesty and shame.--The line of decency in dress.--

Present conventional limits of decency.--Decency and vanity.--

Modesty is the opposite of impudence.--Shame.--The first

attachments to the body.--The fear of sorcery.--What functions

should be concealed.--Restraint of expression within limits.--

Violation of rule.--The suspensorium.--The girdle and what it

conceals.--Modesty and decency not primitive.--What parts of

the body are tabooed?--Notion of decency lacking.--Dress and

decency.--Ornament and simplest dress.--The evolution of

dress.--Men dressed; women not.--Dress for other purposes than

decency; excessive modesty.--Contrasted standards of decency.--

Standards of decency as to natural functions, etc.--Bathing;

customs of nudity.--Bathing in rivers, springs, and public bath

houses.--Nudity.--Alleged motives of concealment taboo.--

Obscenity.--Obscene representations for magic.--Infibulation.--

Was the phallus offensive?--Phallus as amulet.--Symbols in

Asia.--The notion of obscenity is modern.--Propriety.--

Seclusion of women.--Customs of propriety.--Moslem rules of

propriety.--Hatless women.--Rules of propriety.--Hindoo ritual

of the toilet, etc.--Greek rules of propriety.--Erasmus's

rules.--Eating.--Kissing.--Politeness, etiquette, manners.--

Good manners.--Etiquette of salutation, etc.--Literature of

manners and etiquette.--Honor, seemliness, common sense,

conscience.--Seemliness.--Cases of unseemliness.--Greek

tragedies and notions of seemliness.--Greek conduct.--

Seemliness in the Middle Ages.--Unseemly debate.--Unseemliness

of lynching, torture, etc.--Good taste.--Whence good taste is

derived.--The great variety in the codes.--Morals and

deportment.--The relation of the social codes to morals and

religion.--Rudeck's conclusions.

+438. Specification of the subject.+ The ethnographers write of a tribe

that the "morality" in it, especially of the women, is low or high, etc.

This is the technical use of morality,--as a thing pertaining to the sex

relation only or especially, and the ethnographers make their

propositions by applying our standards of sex behavior, and our form of

the sex taboo, to judge the folkways of all people. All that they can

properly say is that they find a great range and variety of usages,

ideas, standards, and ideals, which differ greatly from ours. Some of

them are far stricter than ours. Those we do not consider nobler than

ours. We do not feel that we ought to adopt any ways because they are

more strict than our traditional ones. We consider many to be excessive,

silly, and harmful. A Roman senator was censured for impropriety because

he kissed his wife in the presence of his daughter.[1380]

+439. Meaning of "immoral."+ When, therefore, the ethnographers apply

condemnatory or depreciatory adjectives to the people whom they study,

they beg the most important question which we want to investigate; that

is, What are standards, codes, and ideas of chastity, decency,

propriety, modesty, etc., and whence do they arise? The ethnographical

facts contain the answer to this question, but in order to reach it we

want a colorless report of the facts. We shall find proof that "immoral"

never means anything but contrary to the mores of the time and place.

Therefore the mores and the morality may move together, and there is no

permanent or universal standard by which right and truth in regard to

these matters can be established and different folkways compared and

criticised. Only experience produces judgments of the expediency of some

usages. For instance, ancient peoples thought pederasty was harmless and

trivial. It has been well proved to be corrupting both to individual and

social vigor, and harmful to interests, both individual and collective.

Cannibalism, polygamy, incest, harlotry, and other primitive customs

have been discarded by a very wide and, in the case of some of them,

unanimous judgment that they are harmful. On the other hand, in the

_Avesta_ spermatorrhea is a crime punished by stripes.[1381] The most

civilized peoples also maintain, by virtue of their superior position in

the arts of life, that they have attained to higher and better judgments

and that they may judge the customs of others from their own standpoint.

For three or four centuries they have called their own customs

"Christian," and have thus claimed for them a religious authority and

sanction which they do not possess by any connection with the principles

of Christianity. Now, however, the adjective seems to be losing its

force. The Japanese regard nudity with indifference, but they use dress

to conceal the contour of the human form while we use it to enhance, in

many ways, the attraction. "Christian" mores have been enforced by the

best breechloaders and ironclads, but the Japanese now seem ready to

bring superiority in those matters to support their mores. It is now a

known and recognized fact that our missionaries have unintentionally and

unwittingly done great harm to nature people by inducing them to wear

clothes as one of the first details of civilized influence. In the

usages of nature peoples there is no correlation at all between dress

and sentiments of chastity, modesty, decency, and propriety.[1382]

+440. Natural functions.+ The fact that human beings have natural

functions the exercise of which is unavoidable but becomes harmful to

other human beings, in a rapidly advancing ratio, as greater and greater

numbers are collected within close neighborhood to each other, makes it

necessary that natural functions shall be regulated by rules and

conventions. The passionate nature of the sex appetite, by virtue of

which it tends to excess and vice, forces men to connect it with taboos

and regulations which also are conventional and institutional. The

taboos of chastity, decency, propriety, and modesty, and those on all

sex relations are therefore adjustments to facts of human nature and

conditions of human life. It is never correct to regard any one of the

taboos as an arbitrary invention or burden laid on society by tradition

without necessity. Very many of them are due originally to vanity,

superstition, or primitive magic, wholly or in part, but they have been

sifted for centuries by experience, and those which we have received and

accepted are such as experience has proved to be expedient.

+441. The current code and character.+ It follows that, in history and

ethnography, the mores and conduct in any group are independent of those

of any other group. Those of any group need to be consistent with each

other, for if they are not so the conduct will not be easily consistent

with the code, and it is when the conduct is not consistent with the

code which is current and professed that there is corruption, discord,

and decay of character. So long as the customs are simple, naïve, and

unconscious, they do not produce evil in character, no matter what they

are. If reflection is awakened and the mores cannot satisfy it, then

doubt arises; individual character will then be corrupted and the

society will degenerate.

+442. Definitions of chastity, decency, propriety, etc.+ Chastity,

modesty, and decency are entirely independent of each other. The

ethnographic proof of this is complete. Chastity means conformity to the

taboo on the sex relation, whatever its terms and limits may be in the

group at the time. Therefore, where polyandry is in the mores, women who

comply with it are not unchaste. Where there are no laws for the conduct

of unmarried women they are not unchaste. It is evidently an incorrect

use of language to describe the unmarried women of a tribe as unchaste,

unless there is a rule for them. It can only mean that they violate the

rule of some other society, and that can be said always about those in

any group. There are cases in which women wear nothing but are faithful

to a strict sex taboo, and there are cases where they go completely

covered but have no sex taboo. Decency has to do with the covering of

the body and with the concealment of bodily functions. Modesty is

reserve of behavior and sentiment. It is correlative to chastity and

decency, but covers a far wider field. It arrests acts, speech,

gestures, etc., and repels suggestions at the limit of propriety

wherever that may be set by the mores. Propriety is the sum of all the

prescriptions in the mores as to right and proper behavior, or as to the

limit of degree which prevents excess or vice. It is not dictated in

laws. It is a floating notion. From time to time, however, dictates of

propriety are enacted into police regulations. Propriety is guaranteed

by shame, which is the sense of pain due to incurring disapproval

because one has violated the usage which the mores command every one to

observe. It is narrated of Italian nuns who had been veiled even from

each other for half a lifetime that when turned out of their convents

they suffered from exposing their faces the same shame that other women

would suffer from far greater exposure. It could not be otherwise.

Mohammedan women, if surprised when bathing, cover first the face. They

are distinguished from non-Mohammedan women by the veil; therefore this

covering is to them most important. Chinese women, whose feet have been

compressed, consider it indecent to expose them. Within a generation the

public latrines in the cities of continental Europe have been made far

more secluded and private than they formerly were. Within ten years

there has been a great change of standard as to the propriety of

spitting. Beyond the domain of propriety lie the domains of politeness,

courtesy, good manners, seemliness, breeding, and good form. The

definition depends on where the line is drawn. That point is always

conventional. It is a matter of tradition and social contact to learn

where it lies. It never can be formulated. Habit must form a feeling or

taste by which new cases can be decided. There are persons and classes

who possess such social prestige that they can alter the line of

definition a small distance and get the change taken up into the mores,

but it is the mores which always contain and carry on the definitions

and standards. Therefore it is to the mores that we must look to find

the determining causes or motives, the field of origin, the corrective

or corrupting influences, and the educative operations, which account

for all the immense and contradictory variety of the folkways, under

chastity, decency, modesty, propriety, etc.

+443. Chastity.+ An Australian husband assumes that his wife has been

unfaithful to him if she has had opportunity. In most tribes women are

not allowed to converse or have any relations whatever with any men but

their husbands, even with their own grown-up brothers.[1383] Veth[1384]

thinks that the observance of the sex taboo by Dyak wives has been

exaggerated, but that, at least on the west coast, it is better than

that of the Malay women. The young unmarried women among the sea Dyaks

take great license, and the custom of lending daughters exists, but such

customs are unknown on the west coast. On the Andaman Islands there is

no sex taboo for the unmarried and they use license. The girls are

modest, and when married conform to the taboo of marriage. Their

husbands "do not fall far short of them." The women will not renew their

leaf aprons in the presence of each other.[1385] The Yakuts use leather

guarantees of their wives and daughters, similar to the mediæval

device,[1386] which always implies that the wife will make use of any

opportunity. The Yakut women wore garments even in bed.[1387] The Eskimo

of eastern Greenland do not disapprove of a husbandless mother but of a

childless wife.[1388] Bushmen women observe a stricter taboo than their

Kaffir neighbors. They refuse illicit relations with the latter,

although the Kaffirs are a superior race.[1389] The Zulu women observe a

strict taboo with noteworthy fidelity.[1390] Madame Pommerol[1391]

represents the Arab women of the nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes of

southern Algiers as destitute of moral training. They have no code of

morals or religion. [What she means is that they have no character by

education.] They shun men, but handle the veil in a coquettish manner

according to artificial and excessive usages. They act only between

impulses of desire and fear of fathers or husbands. Fidelity has no

sense, since they do not feel the loyalty either of duty or affection.

The Mayas of the lowest classes sent out their daughters to earn their

own marriage portions.[1392] On the Palau Islands mothers train their

daughters to make gain of themselves in the local shell money and bring

the same to their parents. The girls become _armengols_; that is, they

live in the clubhouses which are the residences of the young men, where

they do domestic work and win influence. An insult to such a woman is an

insult to the club. The origin of the custom was in war; the women were

captives. Some are now given in tribute. "The custom is not a pure

expression of sensuality." As there is no family life this is the

woman's chance to know men and influence them. It is rated as

education.[1393] Semper[1394] quotes native justification of the custom.

A man's young last-wedded wife complained to his older wife that he

made her serve the _armengols_. The older wife told her to remember that

she had herself enjoyed this life and had been served by the married

women. All girls liked to earn the money by which, when they came home,

they got husbands. It was ancient custom and must be obeyed. If the

married women refused to do their duty, the men would not be served, for

a married woman might never show the world that she was on intimate

terms with her husband. That would be _mugul_, and when once that word

lost its force the whole island would perish. A woman argued to Semper

that the custom was a good one because it gave the women a chance to see

the other islands, and because they learned to serve and obey the men.

It was, she said, their sacred duty. Any girl who did not go abroad as

an _armengol_ would get the reputation of being stupid and uncultivated,

and would get no husband.[1395] Cases in which husbands are indifferent

to the fidelity of wives to the marriage taboo occur, but they are

rare.[1396] In some Arabic tribes of Sahara, even those in which the

struggle for existence is not severe, fathers expect daughters to ransom

themselves from the expense of their rearing by prostitution. The notion

of sex honor has not yet overcome the sense of pecuniary loss or gain.

The more a woman gains, the more she is sought in marriage afterwards.

Tuareg married women enter into relations with men not their husbands

like those of women with their lovers in the woman cult of the twelfth

and thirteenth centuries in central Europe. These women have decent and

becoming manners, with much care for etiquette.[1397] A

thirteenth-century writer says of the Mongol women that they are

"chaste, and nothing is heard amongst them of lewdness, but some of the

expressions they use in joking are very shameful and coarse." The same

is true now.[1398] An Arab author is cited as stating that at Mirbat

women went outside the city at night to sport with strange men. Their

own husbands and male relatives passed them by to seek other

women.[1399] Amongst the Gowane people in Kordofan (who seem now to be

Moslems)[1400] a girl cannot marry without her brother's consent. To get

this she must give to her brother an infant. She finds the father where

she can.[1401]

+444. Pagan life policy.+ Very naturally the pagan inference or

generalization from the above customs was that a husband must be under

continual anxiety about his wife, or he must divorce her, or he must

cultivate a high spirit of resignation and indifference. The last was

the highest flight of Stoic philosophy about marriage. Plutarch says:

"How can you call anything a misfortune which does not damage either

your soul or your body, as for example, the low origin of your father,

the adultery of your wife, the loss of a crown or seat of honor, none of

which affect a man's chances of the highest condition of body and

mind."[1402]

+445. Modesty. Shame.+ Aristotle[1403] hardly rated shame as a virtue.

He said that it is only a passing emotion, "an apprehension of

dishonor." In his view virtues were habits trained in by education. He

deduced them from philosophy and sought to bring them to act on life. He

did not regard them as products of life actions. Wundt[1404] says that

shame is a specific human sentiment, because men alone of animals wear a

concealing dress on one part of the body when they wear nothing else. He

thinks that men began to cover the body in obedience to the sentiment of

decency. The facts here alleged are all incorrect. There are many people

who wear something on the body but do not cover the parts referred to

(sec. 447). It is certain that pet animals manifest shame when caught

doing what they have been taught not to do,--just like children. As to

dress, it would be an interesting experiment to let pet dogs play

together for a month, dressed in coats and blankets, and then to bring

one of them to the meeting without his dress while the others wore

theirs. Would he not show shame at not being like the others? A lady

made a red jacket for a Javanese ape. He was greatly pleased, buttoned

and unbuttoned the jacket, and showed displeasure when it was taken

off. He showed that it aroused his vanity.[1405] People who deal with

high-bred horses say that they show shame and dissatisfaction if they

are in any way inferior to others. It was recently reported in the

newspapers that the employés in a menagerie threw some of the beasts

into great irritation by laughing in chorus near their cages in such a

way that the beasts thought that they were being laughed at. Shame is a

product of wounded vanity. It is due to a consciousness, or a fear, of

disapproval. It is not limited to exposure of the body, but may be due

to disapproval for any reason whatever.

+446. The line of decency in dress.+ The line of decency, for instance

in dress, is always paradoxical. No matter where it may be drawn,

decency is close to it on one side and indecency on the other. A Moslem

woman on the street looks like a bundle of bedclothes. Where all women

so look one woman who left off her mantle would seem indecent, and the

comparative display of the outlines of the figure would seem shameless.

Where low-necked dresses are commonly worn they are not indecent, but

they may become so at a point which varies according to custom from

place to place and from class to class. The women in modern Jerusalem

regard it as very indecent to show themselves _décolletées_. They sit,

however, in postures which leave their legs uncovered.[1406] A peasant

woman could not wear the dress of a lady of fashion. Where men or women

wear only a string around the waist, their dress is decent, but it is

indecent to leave off the string. The suggestive effect of putting on

ornaments and dress at one stage is the same as that of leaving them off

at another stage. Barbarians put on dress for festivals, dances, and

solemn occasions. Civilized people do the same when they wear robes of

office or ceremony. When Hera wanted to stimulate the love of Zeus she

made an elaborate toilet and put on extra garments, including a

veil.[1407] Then taking off the veil was a stimulus. On the other hand,

the extremest and most conventional dress looks elegant and stylish to

those who are accustomed to it, as is now the case with ourselves and

the current dress, which makes both sexes present an appearance far

removed from the natural outline of human beings. Then, at the limit,

that is at to-day's fashions, coquetry can be employed again, and a

sense stimulus can be exerted again, by simply making variations on the

existing fashions at the limit. It is impossible to eliminate the sense

stimulus, or to establish a system of societal usage in which indecency

shall be impossible. The dresses of Moslem women, nuns, and Quakeresses

were invented in order to get rid of any possible question of decency.

The attempt fails entirely. A Moslem woman with her veil, a Spanish

woman with her mantilla or fan, a Quakeress with her neckerchief, can be

as indecent as a barbarian woman with her petticoat of dried grass.

+447. Present conventional limits.+ In our own society decency as to

dress, words, gestures, etc., is a constant preoccupation. That is not

the case with naked savages or half-naked barbarians. The savages put on

ornament to be admired and to exert attraction or produce effect. The

same effect is won by words, gestures, dress, etc. Our æsthetic arts all

exert the same influence. We expel all these things from our artificial

environment down to a limit, in order to restrain and control the

stimulus. Then we think that we are decent. That is because we rest at

peace in a status which is conventional and accustomed. Variation from

it one way is fastidious; the other way is indecent, just as it would be

at any other limit whatever. It is the comparison of the mores of

different times and peoples which shows the arbitrariness and

conventionality. It would be difficult to mention anything in Oriental

mores which we regard with such horror as Orientals feel for low-necked

dresses and round dances. Orientals use dress to conceal the contour of

the form. The waist of a woman is made to disappear by a girdle. To an

Oriental a corset, which increases the waist line and the plasticity of

the figure, is the extreme of indecency--far worse than nudity. It seems

like an application of the art of the courtesan to appeal to

sensuality.[1408] Perhaps the most instructive case of all is that of

the Tuareg men, who keep the mouth always covered. The cloth has a

utilitarian purpose,--to prevent thirst by retarding evaporation from

the air passages. "They never remove the veil, on a journey, or in

repose, not even to eat, much less to sleep." "A Tuareg would think that

he committed an impropriety if he should remove his veil, unless it was

in extreme intimacy or for a medical investigation." "At Paris I strove

in vain to induce three Tuaregs to remove their veils for the purpose of

being photographed."[1409] No superstitious reason for this veil is

known. Madame Pommerol[1410] reports that a Tuareg man told her that men

keep the mouth covered lest the play of it should expose their feelings

to another man. Women, he said, had no such need, since enemies never

approach them. Evidently we have here a case of an ancient fact that men

are never seen with the mouth uncovered, which has produced a feeling

that a man _ought_ never to be seen with it uncovered, and rational and

utilitarian reasons or explanations have been invented later. Those who

paint the body are ashamed to be seen unpainted. In the tribes which are

tattooed one would be ashamed who was not tattooed.

+448. Decency and vanity.+ It is another case of shame or offended

modesty if the taboo in the mores on acts, words, postures, etc., is

broken in one's presence. It is a breach of the respect which one

expects, that is, it wounds vanity.

We are ashamed to go barefoot, probably because it is an ordinary

evidence of poverty. Von den Steinen has well suggested that some day it

may be said that shoes were invented on account of "innate" shame at

exposing the feet.[1411] In recent years fashion has allowed young

people to leave off all head-covering. It could permit them to go

barefooted if the whim should take that turn. There is now a "cure" in

which men and women walk barefoot in the grass. The cost to their

modesty is probably very slight.

+449. Modesty the opposite of impudence.+ Another sense of modesty is

the opposite of impudence, shrinking from making demands or otherwise

putting one's self forward in a way which bystanders might think in

excess of one's social position or ability. In these cases vanity

becomes its own punishment. The Kajans of the Mandalam refrain from

injuring private or group interests from fear of public opinion. "Such a

sentiment can exist only amongst those who have a feeling of shame

strongly developed. Such is the case amongst these people, not only as

to punishable offenses, but also in connection with their notions of

propriety."[1412] "Modesty was an unknown virtue to the bards of Vedic

India. They bragged and begged without shame."[1413] The same might be

said of the troubadours of the Middle Ages.

+450. Shame.+ Shame is felt when one is inferior, or is conscious of

being, or of being liable to be, unfavorably regarded. Modesty is the

reserve which keeps one from coming into judgment. One of the greatest

reasons for covering the body is the conviction that it would not be

admired if seen. One of us is ashamed if he is in excellent morning

dress when the others wear evening dress, or ungloved when all the rest

are gloved. A woman is ashamed to be without a crinoline or a bustle

when all the rest wear them. A man, when men wore wigs, could not appear

before a lady without his wig. An elderly lady says that when the

present queen of England brought in, at her marriage, the fashion of

brushing up the hair so as to uncover the ears, which had long been

covered, it seemed indecent. No woman now is ashamed to be a woman, but

in the first Christian centuries what they heard about their sex might

well have made them so. A woman is not ashamed to be a widow in the

Occident, but she may well be so in India. A woman may be ashamed to be

an old maid, or that she has no children, or has only girls. It depends

on the view current in the mores, and on the sensitiveness of the person

to unfavorable judgments. "Shame, for Arabs, occupies the place which we

ascribe to conscience. 'The tree lives only so long as its bark lives;

and the man only so long as he feels shame.' Arabs, however, are not

ashamed _in abstracto_, but before father and mother, before relatives,

and before common talk. 'Be ashamed before Allah, as an honorable man is

ashamed before his own people,' said Mohammed to a new convert, in

order to make clear to him the unknown from the known, and to enlarge

the morals of the village to that of the world."[1414]

+451. The first attachments on the body.+ Ethnographical studies have

established the fact that things were first hung on the body as amulets

or trophies, that is, for superstition or vanity, and that the body was

painted or tattooed for superstition or in play. The notion of ornament

followed. The skull and body have been deformed and mutilated, and the

hair has been dressed or removed, in order to vary it and produce

effect. Savages lie in ashes, dust, clay, sand, or mud, for warmth, or

coolness, or indolence, and they could easily find out the advantage of

a coating on the skin to protect them from insects or the sun. Three

things resulted which had never been foreseen or intended. (1) It was

found that there was great utility in certain attachments to the body

which protected it when sitting on the ground or standing in the water.

Play seized upon the markings, and the men of a group at last came to

use the same markings, from which resulted a group sign. The marks came

to be regarded as ornamental. Some attachments had great utility for

males in fishing, hunting, fighting, running, and some kinds of work.

(2) Goblinism seized upon the custom and gave it new and powerful

motives. The group mark became hereditary and maintained group unity

with goblinistic sanctions. Some hanging objects were thought to ward

off the evil eye. Others were amulets and prevented sorcery. (3) The

objects hung on the body might be trophies taken from animals or

enemies. These things consciously, and the others unconsciously, acted

on vanity. When all wore things attached to the body a man or woman did

not look dressed, or "right" without such attachments. He or she looked

bare or naked. They were ashamed. This is the shame of nakedness. The

connection of dress with warmth and modesty is derived and remote.

+452. The fear of sorcery.+ The reason for retiring to perform bodily

functions was the fear of sorcery, if an enemy should get possession of

anything which ever was a part of the body. Hence the best plan was to

go to running water. Once more, important but unanticipated and even

unperceived consequences followed. The customs played the part of

sanitary regulations. When it became the custom to retire it became

indecent not to retire. Then it became a tradition from ancestors that

one always must retire, and the ghosts would be angry if this rule was

not observed. It was disrespectful to them, and would offend them to

expose the body or not to retire. The Greeks said that it offended the

gods. In the books of Moses the sanction for all the rules of decency

is, "For it is an abomination unto the Lord." That is only an expression

of the disapproval in the mores which God also was supposed to feel.

+453. What functions should be concealed?+ What is the limit of the

bodily functions to be concealed? A member of the Jewish sect of the

Essenes, who were all celibate men, always wore an apron, even when

alone in the bath. The genitals were impure and must not be uncovered to

the eye of God. The same sect had elaborate rules like those in Deut.

xxiii. 12 ff. When the Medes elected Deioces king he made a rule that no

one should laugh or spit in his presence.[1415] The Zulu king Chaka

punished with death sneezing or clearing the throat in his

presence.[1416] At Bagdad, in the tenth century, the court of the

caliphs had become luxurious, and a very severe and minute etiquette had

been introduced. It was forbidden to spit, clear the throat or nose,

gape, or sneeze in the presence of the sovereign. The nobles imitated

this etiquette and adopted rules to regulate salutations, entrance into

company, reception of visitors, table manners, and approach to one's

wife. "If any one refused to conform to this etiquette, he exposed

himself to universal blame as an eccentric person, or even as an enemy

of Islam."[1417] In the Italian novel _Niccolo dei Lapi_ it is said in

honor of the heroine that she never saw herself nude. It was a custom

observed by many to wear a garment which covered the whole body even

when alone in the bath. Erasmus gives the reason for this. The angels

would be shocked at nakedness. He made it a rule for men. One should

never, he says, bare the body more than necessary, even when alone. The

angels are everywhere and they like to see decency as the adjunct of

modesty.[1418] The angels are here evidently the Christian

representatives of the ghosts of earlier times. In 1 Cor. xi. 10 it is

said: The woman was created for the man. "For this cause ought the woman

to have a sign of authority on her head, because of the angels." It

seems to be believed that the angels might be led into sin by seeing the

women. For this idea there is abundant antecedent in the _Book of

Henoch_ and the _Book of Jubilees_.

+454. Restraint of expression within limits.+ It is the rule of good

breeding everywhere to restrict all bodily functions and to conceal

them, such as gaping, sneezing, coughing, clearing the throat and nose,

and to restrain all exuberant expressions of joy, pain, triumph, regret,

etc., but the limits cannot be defined. They lie in the current practice

of the society in which one lives. They are not rational. At the same

time they are logical. They are correctly deduced from a broad view of

policy. Orientals cover their heads to show respect; Occidentals bare

the head for the same purpose. Each custom has its philosophy of

respect. We think it disrespectful to turn the back on any one.

Orientals generally think it respectful to pretend not to be able to

look another in the face. If ladies are thought to have the right to

decide whether to continue acquaintances or not, they salute first. If

it is thought unbecoming for them to salute first, then men do it. Which

of the great premises is correct it would be impossible to say. The

notion of correctness fails, because it implies the existence of a

standard outside of and above usage, and no such standard exists. There

is an assumed principle which serves as a basis for the usage, and the

usage refers back to the principle, but the two are afloat together.

+455. Violation of rule.+ It results from the study of the cases that

nakedness is never shameful when it is unconscious.[1419] The same is

true of everything under the head of decency. It is consciousness of a

difference between fact and the rule set by the mores which makes

indecency and produces harm, for that difference, if disregarded, is

immorality.

+456. The suspensorium.+ The device known as the suspensorium,

represented by von den Steinen,[1420] is obviously invented solely for

the convenience of males in activity. It is not planned for concealment

and does not conceal. By a development of the device it becomes a case,

made of leaf, wood, bone, clay, shell, leather, bamboo, cloth, gourd,

metal, or reed. It is met with all over the world.[1421] Perhaps its

existence in ancient Egypt is proved.[1422] In almost every case, but

not always, there is great disinclination to remove it, or part with it,

or to be seen without it. The sentiment attaches only to the part which

is covered by the apparatus. To be seen without it would do harm to the

man. Women wear a pubic shield, held in place by a string. The

conjecture immediately suggests itself that the girdle or string about

the loins was anterior to any covering for the genitals. This conjecture

is confirmed by the cases in which the girdle is used to cover the

umbilicus, while nothing else is covered, for which there is a reason on

account of the connection of the umbilicus with birth, life, and

ancestry.[1423] The primitive notion about the genitals is that they are

the seat of involuntary phenomena which are to be referred to superior

agents. Hence, more than any other part of the body, they are daimonic

and sacred (mystery, passion, reproduction). This notion is an

independent cause of rules about the organs, and of superstitious ways

in reference to them, including concealment.[1424] Waitz recognized in

this idea the reason for covering the organ, or the part of it which was

believed to be efficient. "Perhaps," he says, "we stand here at the

first stage of human clothing,"--a suggestion which deserves more

attention than it has received.[1425]

+457. The girdle and what it conceals.+ Very many cases can be cited in

which a girdle is worn, but nothing for concealment, unless it be of the

umbilicus. In the Louvre (S. 962) may be seen a statue of a deformed

primitive god of the Egyptians, Bes, who wears a string around the waist

and nothing else. A girdle is often used as a pocket, without any

reference to decency.[1426] Convenience would then lead to the

suspensorium arrangement or the pubic shell. Also from the girdle was

hung any swinging glittering object to avert the evil eye from the

genitals. There was no concealment and could be no motive of modesty.

The aborigines of Queensland never cover the genitals except on special

public occasions, or when near white settlements. The men wear the case

only at corroborees and other public festivals.[1427] On Tanna (New

Hebrides) it is thought dangerous for a man to see another without any

concealment.[1428] The Indians on the Shingu show that such covering as

they wear has no purpose of concealment, for it conceals nothing.[1429]

The device of the East Greenland Eskimo is also evidently for utility,

not for modesty.[1430] In order to escape flies, Brunache and his

companions took refuge under a tree which is shunned by flies. It is

from this tree that the women pluck the bunches of leaves which they

wear dangling before and behind.[1431]

+458. Modesty and decency not primitive.+ At the earliest stage of the

treatment of the body we find motives of utility and ornament mixed with

superstition and vanity and quickly developing connections with magic,

kin notions, and goblinism. Modesty and decency are very much later

derivatives.

+459. What parts of the body are tabooed?+ Cases may be adduced to prove

that the taboo of concealment does not always attach to the parts of the

body to which it attaches in our traditions. Hottentot women wear a head

cloth of gay European stuff. They will not take this off. The Herero

"think it a great cause of shame if a married woman removes this

national head covering in the presence of strangers." They wear very

little else. A woman who stood for her photograph "would more readily

have uncovered all the rest of her body than her head."[1432] The

Guanches thought it immodest for a woman to show her breasts or

feet.[1433] Yakut women roll cord on the naked thigh in the presence of

men who do not belong to the house, and allow themselves to be seen

uncovered to the waist, but they are angry if a man stares at their

naked feet. In some places the Yakuts attach great importance to the

rule that young wives should not let their husband's male relatives see

their hair or their feet.[1434] In mediæval Germany a respectable woman

thought it a great disgrace if a man saw her naked feet.[1435] The

Indian woman of those tribes of the northwestern coast of North America

which wear the labret are as much embarrassed to be seen without it as a

white woman would be if very incompletely dressed.[1436] The back and

navel are sometimes under a special taboo of concealment, especially the

navel, which is sacred, as above noticed, on account of its connection

with birth. Peschel[1437] quotes private information that a woman in the

Philippine Islands put a shirt on a boy in order to cover the navel and

nothing more. In her view nothing more needed to be covered. Many

peoples regard the navel as of erotic interest. Instances occur in the

_Arabian Nights_. It is very improper for a Chinese woman who has

compressed feet to show them. Thomson[1438] gives a picture which shows

the feet of a woman, but it was very difficult, he says, to persuade the

woman to pose in that way. Chinese people would consider the picture

obscene. No European would find the slightest suggestion of that kind in

it. An Arab woman, in Egypt, cares more to cover her face than any other

part of her body, and she is more careful to cover the top or back of

her head than her face.[1439] It appears that if any part of the body is

put under a concealment taboo for any reason whatever, a consequence is

that the opinion grows up that it never ought to be exposed. Then

interest may attach to it more than to exposed parts, and erotic

suggestion may be connected with it. The tradition in which we are

educated is one which has a long history, and which has embraced the

Aryan race. To us it seems "natural" and "true in itself." It includes

some primitive and universal ideas of magic and goblinism which have

been held far beyond the Aryan race. Shame and modesty are sentiments

which are consequences produced in the minds of men and women by

unbroken habits of fact, association, and suggestion in connection with

dress and natural functions. It does not seem "decent" to break the

habits, or, decency consists in conforming to the habits. However, the

whole notion of decency is held within boundaries of habit. Orientals

and Moslems now have such different habits from Occidentals that

latrines are very differently constructed for them and for Occidentals.

+460. Notion of decency lacking.+ There are cases of groups in which no

notions of decency can be found. It is reported of the Kubus of Sumatra

that they have acquired a sense of shame within very recent times.

"Formerly they knew none and were the derision of the villagers into

whose neighborhood they might come."[1440] Stevens never saw an

Orang-hutan girl blush. Those girls have no feeling about their

nakedness which could cause a blush.[1441] The Bakairi show no sense of

shame as to any part of the body. They are innocent in respect to any

reserve[1442] [i.e. no taboo of concealment exists amongst them]. A few

cases are reported in which the awakening of shame has been observed. A

bystander threw a cloth over a nearly naked man on the Chittagong hills.

"He was seen to blush, for it was the first time in his life that he

realized that he was committing a breach of decency in appearing

unclothed."[1443] No doubt the more correct explanation is that he felt

that in some way he was not approved by the English visitors. Semon

tells how he posed a Papuan girl for her photograph, in the midst of a

native crowd. She was "proud of the distinction and attention." Suddenly

she was convulsed with shame and abandoned the pose, blushing and

refusing.[1444] This explanation may not be correct. The feeling of one

accustomed to be naked, if his attention is called to it, cannot be

paralleled with that of one accustomed to be clothed, if he finds

himself unclothed. The Nile negroes and the Masai manifest a "complete

absence of any conventional ideas of decency." The men, at least, have

no feeling of shame in connection with the pudenda. Complete nudity of

males, where it occurs in Africa, seems almost always traceable to

Hamitic influence.[1445]

+461. Dress and decency.+ If the description of the Tyrrhenians given by

Athenæus[1446] can be taken as real, they would have to be classed

amongst the people who had no notions of decency. Curr says of the

Australians[1447] that the tribes who wear clothing are more decent than

those who are naked. The women of the former retire to bathe and the men

respect their privacy. Evidently the dress makes the decency. If there

was no dress, there would be no need to retire and no privacy. Wilson

and Felkin[1448] say of the negroes that their "morals" are inversely as

their dress. The Australians practice no indecent dances.[1449] The

central Australians hold a man in contempt if he shows excessive

amorousness.[1450] The natives of New Britain are naked, but modest and

chaste. "Nudity rather checks than stimulates." The same is observed in

English New Guinea. The men wear a bandage which does not conceal, but

they attach to this all the importance which we attach to complete

dress, and they speak of others who do not wear it as "naked wild

men."[1451] In the Palau Islands women may punish summarily, even with

death, a man who approaches their bathing place, but that place is,

therefore, the safest for secret meetings.[1452] The Dyaks, except the

hill tribes, conceal the body with care, but they do not observe a

careful sex taboo.[1453] We are told of the Congo tribes, some of whom

wear nothing, that there exists "a marked appreciation of the sentiment

of decency and shame as applied to private actions."[1454] Some of the

women repelled the advances of men in Brunache's expedition.[1455]

Nachtigal[1456] found the Somrai in Baghirmi modest and reserved. They

proved "the well-known fact that decorum and chastity are independent of

dress." On the Uganda railroad, near Lake Victoria, coal-black people

are to be seen, of whom both sexes are entirely naked, except ornaments.

They are "the most moral people in Uganda." The Nile negroes and Masai

are naked. In the midst of them live the Baganda who wear much clothing.

The women are covered from the waist to the ankles; the men from the

neck to the ankles, except porters and men working in the fields. They

provide decent latrines and have good sanitary usages as to the

surroundings of their houses. They are very polite and courteous. This

character and their dress are accounted for by their long subjection to

tyranny. They are "profoundly immoral," have indecent dances, and are

dying out on account of the "exhaustion of men and women by premature

debauchery."[1457] The Kavirondo are naked, but are, "for negroes, a

moral race, disliking real indecency and only giving way to lewd actions

in their ceremonial dances, where indeed the intention is not immodest,

as the pantomime is a kind of ritual."[1458]

+462. Ornament and simplest dress.+ The notion of ornament is

extremely vague. Things were attached to the body as amulets or

trophies. Then the bodies which had nothing of this kind on them

seemed bare and naked. Next objects were worn in order to comply

with a type, without the character of amulets or trophies. These

were ornaments. Hagen[1459] noticed, in his own experience, that

ornament did away with the appearance of nakedness. The same

effect of tattooing may be noticed, even in pictures. The oldest

Chinese tradition asserts that dress was originally for

ornament.[1460] "To the grass-land negroes of North Kamerun dress

of any kind is only ornament or protection against severe

weather." Their conversation on certain subjects is gross,

perhaps because they are entirely unclothed.[1461] The Doko women

wear a few strings of beads hanging from a girdle, and the girls

of the Dime wear one, two, or three ivory cylinders hanging from

the waist, but nothing more.[1462] The Xosa wear an ornamented

girdle, but no apron.[1463] The unmarried women in the Temu

districts of Togo wear strings of beads but no dress. The Moslem

women make triangular aprons, worn by men over the suspensorium.

The women meet suitors with grace and coquetry, in spite of the

lack of clothing.[1464] The Mashukalumbe wear no dress, but the

women wear little iron bells on a strap around the waist.[1465]

The women of the Longos near Foweira wear anklets, waistbands,

and bracelets of beads, but nothing else.[1466] The Herero have a

horror of the nudity of adults.[1467] The Tasmanians wore no

dress but decorated themselves with feathers, flowers, etc.[1468]

Papuans on the Fly River fasten things through the nose and hang

objects around the neck. Some wear a pubic shell, but most have

not even that.[1469] On the island of New Britain both sexes are

unclothed, although tapa cloth in very beautiful patterns is made

on the island for other purposes.[1470] On the Banks Islands the

men wear nothing, although they formerly made very beautiful

dresses which were worn in the dance.[1471] Some of the Indians

on the Shingu wear necklaces and ear pendants, but nothing

else.[1472]

+463. The evolution of dress.+ The above-mentioned girdle with

objects hanging from it turned from an ornament into a garment

when it became a kilt of fringed grass or leather. Arab women

wore the girdle of thongs with lappets until it was superseded by

a kilt of leather cut into a fringe. The primitive apron of the

ancient Egyptians was continued underneath the later more

elaborate dress. The ancient primitive dress got a sacred

character and was worn by everybody, whatever else he wore. It

was worn by girls, by women monthly, and also, "it is said, by

worshipers at the Caaba." Then the ancient thongs and lappets got

the character of amulets.[1473] In some Papuan tribes those who

had learned all the religious secrets were allowed to wear the

girdle as a sign of honor and dignity.[1474] Sometimes a skin or

mat is worn hanging from the waist behind. It really is worn to

be sat upon, upon occasion. Nothing else is worn.[1475] In this

case, and in some of those mentioned above from Central Africa, a

consciousness is sometimes manifested that there is something to

conceal, and a posture or mode of walking is adopted which

accomplishes the concealment. Amongst the Ja-luo (northeast

corner of Lake Victoria) both sexes when unmarried go naked. A

man, when he is a father, wears a cape of goatskin "inadequate

for decency." Married women wear only a "tail of strings

behind."[1476] The Nandi wear clothing "only for warmth or

adornment, not for purposes of decency."[1477] The Acholi, in

Uganda, think it beneath masculine dignity to wear

anything.[1478] The Vanyoro men are generally clothed in skins.

The women, until marriage, wear nothing; after marriage, bark

cloth. The Bari men never wear anything. They think it womanish

to do so. The unmarried women wear a pendant of fringe behind and

five or six iron bars six inches long, the whole three and a half

inches broad, in front. Married women wear a fringe in front and

a leather apron behind.[1479]

+464. Men dressed. Women not.+ Cases are very numerous in which

men wear dress, while women do not.[1480] Such is the prevailing

fact amongst the Indians of the Upper Amazon[1481] and in Central

Africa.[1482] The women of the Apaporis (0° N., 70° W.) are said

to wear nothing, but the men wear long aprons of fine bark

string, broad bast girdles, and ornamental strings of teeth and

seeds; also ornaments in the nose and lips, and some tribes below

the lower lip.[1483] When women wear clothing and men do not the

men think it womanish and beneath them to do so.[1484] When

Livingston remonstrated with a negro for nakedness the latter

"laughed with surprise at the thought of being at all indecent.

He evidently considered himself above such weak superstition."

All thought it a joke when told to wear something when

Livingston's family should come.[1485]

+465. Dress for other purposes than decency. Excessive modesty.+

The Dyaks wear only a loin cloth of a greater or less number of

folds to keep the abdomen warm, "a precaution which all travelers

in the tropics must imitate day and night with flannel for fear

of dysentery."[1486] "The women [of the western side of Torres

Straits] frequently wear a kind of full chemise. They do not wear

it for the sake of decency, but from luxury and pride, for I

often saw a woman take off her garment and content herself with a

tuft of grass before and behind."[1487] Some Papuan women are

mentioned, who wear a petticoat on festival occasions, but they

leave the right side of it open to show the tattooing on the

hip.[1488] Since cotton cloth has become cheap in the Horn of

Africa the natives wear a great deal of it out of luxury and

ostentation, and also because it is a capital at all times easily

realizable.[1489] The Rodias, an outcast people on Ceylon, were

once compelled by the Kandyan kings to leave the upper part of

the body uncovered; both sexes. The English have tried to reverse

the rule, which has become a fixed habit. The Rodia women now

wear a neckerchief, the ends of which cover the breast, when

they meet English people, but they have not yet acquired the

feeling that it is unseemly to uncover the breast.[1490]

Mantegazza met women on the Nilgherri hills who covered the

breast on meeting him, but did not do so before men of their own

race.[1491] It is the current idea on the Malabar coast that no

respectable woman should cover the breast. Lately, those who have

traveled and have learned that other people hold the contrary to

be the proper rule feel some shame at the old custom.[1492] The

Ainos are rated as displaced and outcast aborigines amongst the

Japanese. An Aino woman refused to wash in order to be treated

for a skin disease, because to wash was against Aino usage.[1493]

An Aino girl in a mission school who had a curved spine and was

lame refused to allow a European physician to examine her with a

view to diagnosis and treatment.

+466. Contrasted standards of decency.+ The Japanese do not

consider nudity indecent. A Japanese woman pays no heed to the

absence of clothing on workmen. European women in Japan are

shocked at it, but themselves wear dinner and evening dress which

greatly shock Orientals.[1494] Schallmeyer[1495] saw Japanese

policemen note for punishment watermen who approached nearer to

the wharf than the law allowed before covering the upper part of

the body. The authorities are, therefore, trying to modify the

usage. The Japanese regard daily hot baths as a necessity for

everybody. Therefore bathing is unavoidable, and is put under the

same conventionalization as that which surrounded latrines in the

cities of Europe fifty years ago. Every one is expected to ignore

what no one can help. Formerly, at least, the sexes were not

separated and bathers might walk to and from the bath in a state

of complete preparation for it.[1496] Before the "reformation"

people of the better classes in Japan went to the theater not at

all, or secretly. The plays were coarse and outspoken. Japanese

education permitted "both sexes indifferently to speak of

everything without the slightest periphrasis, or any respect for

persons, even children." Hence situations were described and

presented on the stage which we should consider too licentious

for toleration, although there were no actresses on the stage.

This was not due to laxity of morals, but to the fact that they

had no taboos on reality. Yet "nothing appears more immoral to

the Japanese than our drama." "They permit no intrigue [on the

stage] by which the character of a married woman is

compromised."[1497] The Europeans and Japanese, in contact with

each other, find that it is not possible to infer each other's

character from each other's folkways. Hearn says: "The ideas of

this people are not our ideas; their sentiments are not our

sentiments; their ethical life represents for us regions of

thought and emotion yet unexplored, or perhaps long

forgotten."[1498] The two cases in contrast, however, show the

power of the folkways and their tremendous control. We know as

to our own women that there is no conscious or unconscious

purpose to stimulate sensuality. They wear what has been and is

customary in their society. The Japanese get their customs in the

same way and attribute to them the same authority. Neither has

any reason to be amazed at or despise the other. Baelz quotes

Mrs. Bishop, who after spending twenty years traveling in the

East said, "I know now that one can be naked, yet behave like a

lady." The above story of the crippled Aino girl gives

credibility to Becke's story[1499] of a Polynesian woman, wife of

a European, who died after child bearing rather than submit to

treatment by a physician which would be attended by exposure of

her person.

+467. Standards of decency as to natural functions, etc.+ The

natives of New Georgia (Solomon Islands) "have the same ideas of

what is decent with regard to certain acts and exposures that we

ourselves have." They build retiring places over the water, "but

their language is quite unlicensed."[1500] In Micronesia reserve

as to natural functions is lacking.[1501] Amongst central African

negroes the king alone had a hut for retirement. "The heathen

negroes are generally more observant of decorum in this respect

than any Mohammedan."[1502] In Lhasa, Tibet, there are no

latrines either public or private. The street is used.[1503] The

Andamanese women are modest and very careful about decency of

dress and conversation. For the unmarried there is complete

license.[1504] When Middendorf asked a Tungus girl to sing, she

sang a song which was so indecent that he could not translate

it.[1505] Children of the Eskimo on the eastern coast of

Greenland go naked in the house until they are sixteen years old.

Then they put on the _natit_, a simple band around the loins, and

that is the only thing worn in the house by adults. It is the

custom of wearing fur next the skin which compels them to go

naked in the house. They are very unwilling, under any

circumstances, to lay aside the _natit_. Their songs and games

are exceedingly licentious, and their myths are obscene. They do

not keep these from the children. A great number live crowded in

a little house, as an insurance against accidents or lack of

food. This mode of life makes decency impossible and lowers the

standard of propriety. Children are married at four or five years

of age, but the relationship does not become established until a

child is born. In summer, in tent life, two men exchange wives

and some property. If one of them wants to keep the other's

property, he must keep the wife, too.[1506] The Fuegians observe

great decorum as to subjects of conversation.[1507] The Seminoles

of Florida observe a high sex taboo. The women are virtuous and

modest, and no half-breeds with whites exist. The mother of a

half-breed would be put to death.[1508] The Tehuelches of

Patagonia pay great attention to decency. They do not like to see

children naked.[1509] The Indians of northern Nicaragua think

that whites do not bathe enough. They always retire to running

water, and are disgusted with whites for not taking that

care.[1510]

+468. Bathing. Customs of nudity.+ The natives of Rotuma never bathe

without the loin cloth. To do so is thought low conduct.[1511] The

people of Ponape rise early and bathe, the sexes always separating

unless married.[1512] Bock[1513] says that the Dyaks, without

hesitation, threw off their garments and bathed in the presence of

himself and Malays, the sexes together. The sexes of the Yuroks in

California bathe apart and the women never go into the sea without some

garment.[1514] The women of the Mandans had a bathing place. Armed

sentinels were set to prevent men from approaching it.[1515] In

Hindostan the sexes now bathe together at certain times and places with

very little clothing. Wilkins[1516] says, "I have never seen the

slightest impropriety of gesture on these occasions." Although at an

earlier period some clothing was worn in bed, in the fourteenth and

fifteenth centuries, in Europe, both sexes slept nude. Better beds and

separate bed clothes led to this custom, because it was such a relief to

take off woolen and fur worn in the daytime. Then nudity became

familiar, and the concealment taboo was broken down.[1517] The cities

were soon compelled to pass ordinances forbidding any one to appear on

the streets nude.[1518] In Denmark the historian tells us that people

slept naked because linen was dear, and that the custom lasted into the

seventeenth century. In the sixteenth century nobles began to wear

nightshirts.[1519] Upon the entry of kings into cities, until the

sixteenth century, mythological subjects were represented in the streets

by nude women.[1520] From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries it

was the custom that girls served knights in the bath.[1521] Through the

Middle Ages the sexes bathed together, and not innocently.[1522] The

Germans were very fond of bathing and every village had its public bath

house. The utility and pleasure of bathing were so great that bathing

was forbidden as an ecclesiastical penance.[1523] "A practice of men and

women bathing together was condemned by Hadrian, and afterwards by

Alexander Severus, but was only finally suppressed by Constantine."[1524]

The Council of Trullanum in 692 forbade the sexes to bathe together.[1525]

Other councils repeated the prohibition. This shows that Constantine did

not suppress the custom, nor did any other civil or ecclesiastical

authority do so. The ecclesiastics in Germany, from the eighth century,

condemned the custom of the sexes bathing together, but never could

control it.[1526] Christian men and women bathed together at Tyre in the

time of the crusades.[1527] All the authorities, beginning with Erasmus

(in the Colloquy, _Diversoria_), agree that bathing at a common bath

house was abandoned on account of syphilis. Leprosy, which was brought

from the East by the crusaders, had had less effect in the same

direction. In the sixteenth century there were other epidemics, and wood

became dear.[1528] The use of body linen and bed linen which could be

washed made bathing less essential to comfort and health.[1529] The

habit of seeing nudity was broken, and as it became unusual it became

offensive. Thus a concealment taboo grew up again. Rudeck[1530] is

convinced by these facts that "it was not modesty which made dress and

public decency, but that dress and the decay of objectionable customs

made modesty." He seems to be astonished at this conclusion and a little

afraid of it. It is undoubtedly correct. The whole history of dress

depends on it.

+469. Bathing in rivers, springs, and public bath houses.+ In the

fifteenth century it became the custom to bathe in rivers or at mineral

springs. Wealth, luxury, fashion, and new forms of vice attended this

change.[1531] The convents of the fifteenth century are described as

places of debauch.[1532] An English globe trotter of the beginning of

the seventeenth century describes the baths of Baden near Zurich, where

the old custom of the sexes bathing together had been modified somewhat,

but only for married women.[1533] If the custom of bathing together does

not still exist throughout Northern Europe, it must have been abolished

within a few years. Retzius[1534] describes it as existing in Finland in

1878, and many travelers have described the village bath houses of

Northern Russia and Scandinavia. Retzius says that the bath house is a

kind of sanctuary. Any misdemeanor committed there is considered far

more wicked than the same fault elsewhere. Here we see the mores raising

a special conventionalization to protect a custom which is expedient,

but which transgresses the usual taboo. The fact is that the complete

taboo on nudity in Central Europe is not over two centuries old. By

itself, nudity was not regarded as shameful or indecent. Therefore in

the bath, where it was in order, it was disregarded, just as now a

workmen's dress, an athlete's dress, or a bathing dress is disregarded.

During the centuries when the ecclesiastical authorities endeavored in

vain to stop the sexes from bathing together, it must be that public

opinion did not recognize in that usage any serious evil which called

for repression. The English now express surprise that the sexes at

American watering places go into the sea together, to which Americans

attach no importance at all. If Americans bathed in English bathing

dresses the sexes would speedily separate.

+470. Nudity.+ In early Christian drama Christ was represented by a

naked youth. Then he was represented by a youth who wore a breech cloth

only. In the sixteenth century, at Naples, in a representation of the

creation of Adam and Eve, the actors had only the privates covered. The

stage fell and many were hurt, which was held to show God's displeasure

at the show. The flagellants in the theater, in France, were represented

naked, as penitents.[1535]

+471. Alleged motives of concealment taboo.+ Herodotus says of the

Lydians and almost all barbarians that they considered it shameful for

one man to be seen by another naked.[1536] The Jewish sect, the Essenes,

concealed part of the body from the sun, as the "all-seeing eye of God,"

even in the bath. The Jew might not uncover the body in the face of the

temple. The rules of the Essenes for bodily necessities were such that

those necessities could not be satisfied on the Sabbath.[1537] At Rome

"_oppedere_, _mingere_, _cacare_ towards persons or statues belonged to

the grossest marks of contempt, and were so employed more than we

think."[1538] Patursson[1539] bathed with aborigines near the mouth of

the Ob. They would not bare the body below the waist and were shocked at

his immodesty because he was not so scrupulous.

+472. Obscenity.+ Another topic in this group of subjects, obscenity, is

still harder to treat within the limits set by our mores. It offers

still more astounding proofs that the folkways can make anything

"right," and that our strongest sentiments of approval or abhorrence are

given to us by the age and group in which we live. The tabooed parts of

the body are not to be seen. It is obscenity when they are exposed to

sight. We have already noticed, under the head of decency, a great range

of conventions in regard to things and acts which are set aside from all

the common activities of life. We have seen that there is no ultimate

and rational definition of the things to be tabooed, no universal

agreement as to what they are, no philosophical principle by which they

are selected; that the customs have had no uniformity or consistency,

and that those usages which we might suppose to be referable to a taboo

of obscenity have an entirely different motive, while the notion of

obscenity does not exist. There is no "natural" and universal instinct,

by collision with which some things are recognized as obscene. We shall

find that the things which we regard as obscene either were not, in

other times and places, so regarded, any more than we so regard bared

face and hands, or else that, from ancient usage, the exhibition was

covered by a convention in protection of what is archaic or holy, or

dramatic, or comical. In primitive times goblinism and magic covered

especially the things which later became obscene. Facts were accepted

with complete naïveté. The fashion of thinking was extremely realistic.

The Japanese now cannot understand how facts can be made shameful. They

have very exact and authoritative conventions which every one must obey,

but the conventions are practical and realistic. They serve purposes;

they do not create an unreal world of convention.[1540] This is the

extreme view of realism and nature. As has been shown above, however, so

soon as objects were attached to the body for any purpose whatever, the

conventional view that bodies so distinguished were alone right and

beautiful was started, and all the rest of the convention of ornament

and dress followed.

+473. Obscene representations for magic.+ The Indians on the Shingu

river, Brazil, wear little or no clothing.[1541] They have full suits

for dancing, but the tabooed organs are represented on the outside of

these artificially and of exaggerated size. Evidently it was not the

purpose of the dress to conceal organs the sight of which was

tabooed.[1542] In Central Borneo, in order to drive off evil spirits,

rough figures of human beings are cut in wood, the tabooed organs being

exaggerated. Those organs are the real amulets which exorcise demons,

for they are often cut on the timbers of the houses without the rest of

the figure. Then, by further derivation, such representations became

purely ornamental on houses, weapons, etc.[1543] The Egyptians used

representations of what were later tabooed organs as hieroglyphics, and

in their conversation admitted no taboo. Pictures in the tombs of the

Twentieth Dynasty (1180-1050 B.C.) show the lack of any taboo, and there

are inscriptions by them which show an absence of any restriction on

realism.[1544] This is evidently the naïve realism of children who have

not yet learned any conventions. Reproduction and growth have direct

connection with food supply, and abundance of reproduction means joy of

life and merriment, with good cheer for men. Consequently the most

matter-of-fact interest of man was intertwined with all the reproductive

energies in nature. The popular and comic _mimus_ of the Greeks is

traced back to ritual acts of magic, in which the corn demons or growth

demons are represented at work, making the reproduction and growth of

the crops. The ritual was sympathetic magic, and it was securing the

food supply. What was desired was success in agriculture, and the

husbandman in his choice of rites, symbols, and emblems was entirely

realistic. The growth demons, when they appear in art, are vulgar

figures of an exaggerated sensual type. They were meant to suggest

reproductive vigor, exuberance, and abundance. The tabooed organs are

represented in various ways, but always obtrusively and with

exaggeration. The demons wear an artificial phallus outside the dress,

which fits the figure tightly.[1545] The ritual developed into the

Dionysiac rites and orgies, the main idea of which was to rejoice with

the reproductive agencies of nature, to present them dramatically to the

mind, and to stimulate hope and industry. In Greece these primitive

rites of sympathetic magic in agriculture developed into the comic

drama, and the demons became stereotyped figures of comedy, always

recognizable by their masks (faces of a vulgar type), exaggerated hips,

and above all by the phallus. The demon turned into the clown or

buffoon, but the phallus was kept as an emblem of his rôle, like the

later cap and bells of the fool, until the fifth century of the

Christian era in the West, and until the fall of the Byzantine empire.

In the Hellenistic period the clown took the rôle of the Olympic god,

and wore the phallus. The Phlyakes in lower Italy had the same emblem

and it was worn in the atellan plays of the Romans.[1546] In the early

Christian centuries the Christian martyr wore the emblem in the comedy,

since that rôle was always represented by the simpleton or clown.

Ecclesiastical persons also were represented with it, since the buffoon

always wore it, whatever his rôle. It also passed to the _karagoz_

(shadow play) of the Turks and to the _pantin_ puppets of the Javans. In

the comedy of Hindostan the phallus disappeared.[1547] In Egypt, at

least as late as the first half of the nineteenth century, a masked

figure marched at the head of the bride's procession at a wedding with

the same symbol and indecent gestures.[1548]

+474. Infibulation.+ It appears that athletes in Greece bound the organ

and tied it up to the girdle in a manner closely resembling the

primitive suspensorium. The comedians wore a leathern apron with a large

false organ of red leather on the outside. It became a sign of the trade

of boxers, athletes, gymnasts, and comedians to bind the organ and tie

it up, whereby it was twisted into a horn shape. The purpose was to

protect it from injury, and it furnishes suggestion as to the purpose of

the primitive suspensorium. The concealment was very imperfect and the

notion grew up that the part concealed ought to be concealed, but no

more. The Romans thought it indecent to lack the foreskin, and the Jews

endeavored to conceal this lack. Infibulation was practiced in two

ways,--by a ring through the prepuce or by a bandage around it. It was

thought to prevent vice and preserve the voice of prophets, singers,

etc. A seventeenth-century traveler, Walter Schultze of Haarlem, is

quoted, who describes an ascetic sect in Persia who renounced wine,

lived on gifts, and foreswore marriage. They were infibulated with a

ring.[1549]

+475. Was the phallus offensive?+ For more than two thousand years the

most obscene figure we know was used by the clown in popular farce and

by athletes as an emblem of their profession. It raised a laugh, but was

not otherwise noticed. An interesting question arises whether there ever

was any protest against it, or any evidence that anybody thought it

offensive. The passage in Aristophanes' _Clouds_ (530) has been so

interpreted. It appears, however, that in that passage the author is

comparing his comedy with that of others. He has admitted, he says, no

low tricks appealing to vulgar tastes, no phallus which would make the

boys laugh, no lascivious dance, no scurrilous stories, and no

"knock-down business." This is not a criticism of the phallus on grounds

of obscenity, but on grounds of buffoonery. In the _Acharnians_ (243 and

259) are matter-of-fact references to the phallus worn by the actor, as

he might have referred to his mantle. Other cases occur which are not so

outspoken. In the _Lysistrata_ the mention of the phallus in connection

with the motive of the play is of the last degree of vulgarity. We

cannot find that any Greeks, Romans, or Byzantines protested against

these exhibitions of the phallus, which to us are so obscene. The

_mimus_ was the lowest and most popular kind of theatrical exhibition,

and it was in it that the use of the phallus was most constant. Even

Christian preachers who denounced the _mimus_ as demoralizing, and who

specified in detail what they found objectionable in it, never mention

the display of obscene things. All people were accustomed to the phallus

as the archaic symbol of the servants of Dionysus.[1550] Christian

preachers would have made no allowance for it on that account,--rather

the contrary,--and they would not have refrained from objecting to it on

account of the archaic, or artistic, or traditional element, if they had

disapproved of it. It must be that everybody was indifferent to it.

The twin pillars which were common in front of Semitic temples and which

stood before the temple at Jerusalem are interpreted as phalli.[1551]

+476. Phallus as amulet.+ At Rome the phallus was an amulet and was worn

by all children. The figure, therefore, cannot have been an obscene one.

In the Roman gardens also were ithyphallic figures which appear to bear

witness to a survival of the growth-demon idea, or to usages which

originated in the growth-demon idea, and were perpetuated traditionally

without knowledge of the original meaning. On mediæval churches figures

were often carved, as an expression of naïve ideas and faiths, and in

pure realism, which were frankly obscene. Paintings and stained glass

often represented similar objects. In the second half of the sixteenth

century such objects were removed, or covered, or modified. It may be

that the notion of obscenity developed sooner in respect to literature

than in respect to art. Susemihl[1552] suggests that the lost tales of

Miletus may have been obscene, and also the tales of Paxamos, and that

their disappearance may be due to a war on them on this account.

Literature would furnish food to the mind. It would not deal with fact.

The popular judgment seems long to have refused to admit that facts of

structure and function which were universally human could be put under a

taboo and made improper to be known and seen. What is familiar tends to

remain in our overconsciousness only. The same is true of what offends

one's taste and from which one averts attention, although it cannot be

caused to cease, like profane language. The cases of toleration of what

would now be considered obscene are to be explained in this way.

+477. Symbols in Asia.+ "In ancient times obscene symbols were used

without offense to denote sex."[1553] Such symbols were very common in

western Asia. They are very common now in India. A Chinese woman's foot,

an Arab woman's face, a Tuareg man's mouth, is obscene to persons

educated in any one of those taboos, because it always is, and ought to

be, concealed. It is not obscene to us. On the other hand, the lingam in

India is obscene to us, but not to Hindoos who have never learned any

taboo in regard to it. An egg or a seed might have been made obscene in

some group on account of its connection with reproduction, if that

connection had been developed in dogma and usage. An Englishman would

never think of the garter as unseemly, but non-English men and women

have thought it such. The crucifix shows us how conventionalization and

familiarization set aside all the suggestion which an artifact really

carries. The figure of a naked man dying in torture is purely horrible

and repulsive. No one could get edification from an artistic

representation of a man hanging on the gallows. Many people overlook so

much of the crucifix and add so much in imagination that they get great

edification from it. The language used in the communion about eating the

body and drinking the blood of Christ refers to nothing in our mores,

and appeals to nothing in our experience. It comes down from very remote

ages, very possibly from cannibalism.[1554] If we heard that the Chinese

or Mohammedans had a religious custom in which they used currently the

figure of eating the body and drinking the blood of a man (or god), and

if we had no such figure of speech in our own use, we should consider it

shocking and abominable.

+478. The notion of obscenity is modern.+ It is evident that the notion

of obscenity is very modern. It is due to the modern development of the

arts of life and the mode of life under steam and machinery. The

cheapening and popularization of luxury have made houses larger,

plumbing cheaper, and all the apparatus of careful living more

accessible to all classes. The consequence is that all the operations

and necessities of life can be carried on with greater privacy and more

observation of conventional order and decorum. Then the usages and

notions grow more strict and refined. It is only in poverty that

exposures and collisions occur which violate decency and involve

obscenity. Therefore the standards and codes of all classes have risen,

and the care about dressing, bathing, and private functions, for the

sexes and for children, has been intensified. Out of this has come the

notion of what is obscene, as the extreme of indecency and impropriety.

What we call obscene was, in ancient times, either a matter of

superstition or a free field for jest. The conventionalization in favor

of what is amusing must always be recognized. It has always entered into

comedy in the theater. A jest will not cover as much now as it once

would, but it still goes far. The ancient mythology long covered

obscenity in drama. When Hephæstus caught Ares and Aphrodite in his net

the gods all enjoyed the joke. The goddesses did not come to see the

sight.[1555] The difference between the masculine and feminine judgment

as to whether a thing is funny or shameful is well drawn. Hera insisted

to Zeus that their conjugal familiarity should not be seen.[1556] The

young women served the men in the bath, but Odysseus feared to anger

Nausikaa if he exposed himself to her (although it is not certain that

this was on account of his nakedness), and when she walked through the

town with him she knew well what would shame her.[1557] Odysseus also

asked the women to withdraw while he bathed.[1558] The mores were in

flux and were contradictory. The interpretation of the text is not

beyond question. It may not have been nakedness which caused shame, but

the dirt and disorder of person produced by shipwreck. Various

philosophies claim to have brought in the greater care and refinement of

more recent times, but not one of them can show the documentary proof

that the men of a time, at that time, showed revolt against the mores of

that time in regard to this matter. What has happened is that, in modern

times, steam and machinery, with the increase of capital and of power

over nature which they have produced, have given social power to the

lower middle class, as the representatives of the masses. This has

brought into control the mores of those classes, which were simple,

unluxurious, philistine, and comparatively pure, because those classes

were forced to be frugal, domestic, careful of their children,

self-denying, and relatively virtuous, on account of their limited

means. The arts of life never can be the same for the poor and the rich.

Wealth is often charged with introducing luxury and vice, but that

tendency is offset by its giving command over the conditions of life,

which makes refined usages possible.

+479. Propriety.+ The rules of propriety apply to all the acts of life,

but especially to those which take place in the presence or neighborhood

of others; still more especially to those which affect others. A large

section of such rules deals with the ordinary intercourse of persons of

the two sexes, and regulates details of the sex taboo which are less

important. Crawley gives a list of cases[1559] in which brother and

sister, father and daughter, are separated by the sex taboo. A woman of

the Omaha tribe, whether married or not, if she walked or rode alone

would ruin her reputation as a virtuous woman. She may ride or walk only

with her husband or near kinsman. In other cases she gets another woman

to go with her. Young men are forbidden to speak to girls, if they meet

two or more on the road, unless they are akin.[1560] A chief never ate

with his guests amongst the tribes on the upper Missouri. He sat by and

served them, meanwhile preparing the pipe to be smoked afterwards.[1561]

Junker[1562] was warned that, in passing a princess in Buganda, he must

not touch her robe of oxhide, for that would be an insult to her. If a

woman of the Mongbottu gives coloring matter to a man, that is undue

familiarity and will occasion the wrath of an offended husband.[1563] An

Andaman Islander, if he has occasion to speak to a married woman older

than himself, must do it through a third person. He must not touch his

younger brother's or cousin's wife, or his wife's sister. Women are

restricted in the same way as to the husband's elder brother, or male

cousin, or his brother-in-law.[1564] The relations of relatives in law

are a chapter in propriety.

+480. Seclusion of women.+ In modern Korea women are secluded. It is not

proper to ask for them. Women have been put to death by fathers or

husbands, or are reported to have committed suicide, when strange men,

by accident or design, have touched their hands. A servant woman gave as

a reason for not saving her mistress from a fire in the house that she

had been touched by a man, in the confusion, and was not worth

saving.[1565] In China, if a foreigner asks about the ladies, he is

taken to refer to the mother, not the wife, of the Chinaman.[1566] A

young wife is not allowed, amongst the southern Slavs, to address

comrades in the great-family house by their names, "out of modesty." She

gives them special names, adopted for her intercourse with them. She is

guilty of great impropriety if she chats with her husband in the

presence of her parents-in-law.[1567]

+481. Customs of propriety.+ A native of the Naga Hills told an

Englishman that it was not the correct thing to use a poisoned

arrow except to shoot it at a woman.[1568] On the Palau Islands,

and amongst all Moslems,[1569] it is an insult to a man to ask

him about the health of his wife, and any man may strike with a

stick or a stone, not with a cutting weapon, any one who utters

the former's wife's name. Women are treated with extreme

formality. A man who surprises one bathing is fined. This occurs

very rarely, since the men utter cries of warning when

approaching the place.[1570] In German Melanesia a visitor is at

once presented with betel and food, but he immediately gives some

of it back to the inmates of the house as security against

poison.[1571] The Indians of Central America are shocked at the

quick actions and loud talking habitual to Europeans, and think

them signs of a lack of breeding and of the low level of European

culture. Some tribes allow no singing, which they consider a sign

of drunkenness.[1572] An Ossetin (Caucasus) will never take his

child on his arm or caress it in the presence of another,

especially of an older person, or his own father or mother. If he

did do so, no one would shake hands with him, and any one might

with impunity spit in his face. Propriety forbids the Tushins (of

the same region) to manifest tenderness, even when old, towards

husband or wife, parent or child, in the presence of others;

especially is it improper to show tenderness towards sons.[1573]

An Ossetin man may see his betrothed only in secret and

incidentally, or in the house of one of his own relatives. It is

a gross insult to ask him about her health, or when the wedding

will be. A married woman may not address her husband or male

relatives by their names. If she does so, the other women will

ridicule her. Other people in the same region have similar

excessive rules. An Armenian woman, after marriage, is veiled.

She must not talk with any one but her husband, sisters, or

little children. She answers her parents-in-law by signs. Her

husband ought not to call her by her name before others. A

Cherkess wife may talk with her husband only at night. His

presence in her room by day is thought improper, and it is

improper for man and wife to be seen together outside the house,

or to be seen talking together. A newly married woman, among the

Grusians, must not speak to her husband's father, mother, or

brothers until she has borne a child. A childless wife is not

treated with respect by her husband, or his family, or even by

outsiders.[1574] Darinsky explains that the community used to buy

the wives, who were costly, and not equal in number to the men.

Now, if a man gets a wife and children of his own, he commits a

crime against the old order. He must be well off, and he leaves

his poorer brethren in the lurch. They envy and annoy him. To

escape this he conceals or ignores his relation to his wife and

children.

+482. Moslem rules of propriety.+ To a great extent the legislation of

Mohammed consisted in accomplishing reforms and innovations for which

the Arabs were almost ready. When he tried to introduce ideas of his

own, changing the mores, he failed. He tried many times to put a stop to

the usages of mourning which were violent and excessive,--loud outcries,

destruction of clothes and furniture, blackening the walls of the house

and one's face, and shearing the beard. He did not succeed. These were

ancient and popular customs and they were maintained.[1575] It is

improper for any Moslem, male or female, to uncover the head.[1576] They

uncover the feet to show respect. This was Semitic and is

Oriental.[1577] Robertson Smith[1578] thinks that the reason was that

the shoes could not be washed, unless they were mere linen socks, such

as were used in the Phoenician sacred dress. By Moslem rules strangers

should never see or hear a man's wives. Physicians may see only the

affected parts of a woman. A traveler returning home may not enter his

own house at night. Two persons of the same sex must never bare the body

between the waist and the knee in presence of each other. The

Koran[1579] contains elaborate rules for women as to the concealment of

parts of the body, and as to movements of the body and gestures as

limited by propriety. Neatness, care, and order are religious duties;

also devices to preserve and enhance beauty.[1580] To an Arab, a blow on

the back of the neck is more insulting than one on the face.[1581] It is

not proper for a man to look any Moslem woman in the face. When Vambery,

talking to a lady, raised his eyes to her face she sternly told him to

behave with propriety.[1582]

+483. Hatless women.+ In contrast with the Moslem rule not to uncover

the head is the Christian rule that men should uncover the head in

church but that women should cover it. In 1905 Cranstock church in

Newquay, Cornwall, England, was closed on account of the "irreverence of

numbers of women, who, walking uncovered, presume to enter God's house

with no sign of reverence or modesty upon their heads." A rule was

adopted at Canterbury, in the same year, that no hatless women should be

allowed in the cathedral. A reason or authority for this rule is said to

be found in 1 Cor. xi. 4-7. An American church paper said that such a

rule would half empty some American churches in the warmer

latitudes.[1583] A rector at Asbury Park, August 17, 1905, rebuked women

for coming to church without hats, and said that the bishop of the

diocese had asked the clergy to enforce the rule that "women should not

enter the consecrated building with uncovered heads." Russian Jewish

women at Jerusalem, being forbidden to wear veils, wear wigs, lest they

may "dishonor" their heads by uncovering them.[1584]