MODESTY
Modesty is one of the psychical phenomena the physiological study of
which is more difficult because that phenomenon is very indistinct and
vague, although prepotent and most exacting in some of its forms;
because it is very variable in the different races; and because, though
a part of the energies which develop in the reciprocal approaching of
the sexes, it seems to keep them apart, and, born of love, seems to have
a tendency to frustrate its supreme end.
I, too,--I must admit it,--through the various periods of life, have
changed the idea I first had of modesty. At first it seemed to me a
sentiment that rises within us in childhood and during adolescence, as
spontaneous as egotism, self-esteem and love; but, later, I became
convinced that modesty is taught first and learned afterward; therefore,
it is one of those sentiments which I term _acquired_ or _secondary_.
Modesty is an _extra-current_ of love, and has its principal source in
those powerful energies which, through a battle or a choice, must
relight the torch of life. Animals demonstrate to us some rudimentary
forms originating from modesty. Many of them conceal themselves when
offering a sacrifice to voluptuousness; very many females, sought by the
male, begin by fleeing, resisting, hiding that which they desire to
concede. And this is probably an irreflective, automatic act; it is,
perhaps, a form of fear which rises before the aggressive demands of the
male; but the aim of these resistances, of these pretenses of modesty is
to excite the male as much as the female and to make the ground better
fitted for fecundation. It is possible that animals conceal their loves
from our sight to protect themselves from danger, knowing that in those
supreme moments they are exposed to every attack; but until the
psychology of brutes is so limited we will be allowed to assume that
among them also the first light of modesty has penetrated. If this be
so, then we will find justification in the fact that, in superior
animals also, this sentiment appears first in the female, for whom the
anatomy of the organs and the defensive mission in the battles of love
make the actions of modesty more spontaneous and natural. And to the
human female, too, nature has assigned the same mission, making her
characteristically a hundred times more modest than the male.
The first hand brought by woman to cover parts which the male wished to
see gave origin to the first energies of the sentiment of modesty, which
arose, therefore, at the same time as the first forms of coquetry. Man
and woman, then living together in the family or in the tribe, were
naturally forced to become, independently of their greater psychical
development, the most modest animals, because woman is subject to
repulsive periodical infirmities and man shows other genital phenomena
which, if not concealed, would attract too much attention from all and
excite perturbation in males and in females. It is therefore natural
that almost all, not to say all, races of the earth present some form of
modesty, and that also in the human race the female should be more
modest than the male, because the aggressive mission, which is reserved
to him by nature, makes modesty dangerous and almost impossible, at
least in the last battles.
Modesty, born in this way, is taught, together with many other things,
by men to children, as the latter cannot, until they reach puberty,
distinguish the special importance of copulative organs, or the
aggressive mission of the male, or the thousand offensive and defensive
vicissitudes of love. Modesty, however, is perhaps born spontaneously,
or, to use a better expression, by heredity in the more perfect and
elevated natures. Hence modesty is taught to those who, of themselves,
would not know it, and we determine its limits in such a way as to
circumscribe it within the purely genital field or to widen it beyond
the amorous boundaries. The Sherihat prescribes that Turkish women
should cover the back of the hand, but permits them to expose the palm.
The Armenian women of the population of southern India cover their
mouths wherever they happen to be, even in their own homes, and when
they go out they wrap themselves in a white cloth. The married women
live in strict seclusion, and for many years they cannot see their male
relatives, hiding their faces even from the father-in-law and the
mother-in-law. And these two examples, selected from a thousand that
might be quoted, should be sufficient to persuade us that accessory and
conventional elements often accompany true modesty, to which,
physiologically, they do not belong. We, ourselves, in our own
countries, find that the boundaries of modesty are, in many places,
marked by the various fashions of dress, and that they stop from the
knees down or from the breast up and not according to the national mode
of dress. He who mistook these conventional elements for modesty could
write the great psychological heresy, that this sentiment had its origin
in the custom of covering the body.
We must not confound with true modesty those other esthetic needs which
compel us to conceal some repulsive actions of our animal life. The true
sentiment of modesty defends from profane eyes the organs and the
mysteries of love and those parts of the body that are directly or
indirectly related to it. We behold almost all races conceal first the
genitals, afterward the sides, the breast, the legs, the arms, then the
entire trunk, and finally the head; but here modesty yields the place to
the requirements of social intercourse or of jealousy.
The sentiment of modesty is among the most changeable in form and
degree. Its ethnical history is written in the volume which I have
dedicated to the ethnology of love. It will suffice here to point out
that I divide the nations into immodest, semi-modest and modest,
according to the traces of modesty and the greater or less development
of this sentiment. Modesty is unlike intelligence, or the sentiment of
the beautiful, or other psychical phenomena, which show an ascending
and regular progress as we gradually proceed from the lowest races to
the highest; therefore, it cannot be considered alone as a dynamometer
of progress. The Tehuelches of South America bathe very often, generally
before dawn: but the men go into the water separately from the women;
they are very modest people who never, in any case, take off their
_chirípas_. And the Japanese, with a civilization a hundred times
superior to that of the Tehuelches, are much inferior to them in the
matter of modesty. The Malaysians are very modest, but the Greeks and
the Romans were none too much so. Without leaving our own race and
times, we have women who would die rather than subject themselves to an
examination with the speculum, while men of great intelligence and lofty
passions admit that they hardly feel a shadow of modesty.
In the higher races, however, if we neglect a few exceptions and take
human groups in great masses, we may say that modesty, like all
psychical phenomena of a high order, grows, refines and presents more
delicate forms proportionately to the growth of the moral and
intellectual importance of a people. The nations which are the most
advanced in civilization and morality are also the most modest. Modesty
is one of the most elect forms of the seductions and the reticences of
love; an extra-current of the great fundamental phenomena of generation;
a physical self-respect; one of the psychical phenomena of the highest
order. Faithful companion of love, it is a sentiment which in superior
natures possesses infinite mysteries, ineffable delicacies, gestures
deserving a virtue prize, glances which are a paradise, words and sighs
which deserve to be immortalized by the pen of an artist. He who
possesses the immodest or semi-modest nature of the Fuegian or the
Japanese loses more than half of the treasures of love, and is like a
man who, deprived of the olfactory sense, admires the flowers of a
garden.
Woman is the vestal of modesty, the queen of its most elect forms, and,
when a virgin and as pure as crystal, she possesses intact the entire
treasure of the most exquisite chastity. Wandering through the garden of
love, she loses some of its gems, and she loses more if her companion
helps her to disperse the treasure. It very rarely happens, however,
that a woman, even in the exciting and wearing races of a thousand
loves, loses all the wealth of modesty with which nature has enriched
her. Even in the most gay and libertine life, even in the filth of
libertinism, we see with infinite wonder some diamonds flash, which the
fire of lust was incapable of destroying and the mud of amorous simony
could not soil. We remain astonished and moved at such a power of
resistance in a sentiment that seems so fragile and delicate. And as
long as a corner of sacred earth remains to woman upon which a humble
flower of modesty grows, virtue is not all dead and resurrection is
still possible. Bow your head before this flower, you, jeering deniers
of every feminine virtue! you, insatiable tormentors of lust. Respect
that clod of sacred earth; do not pluck that humble and last flower of a
garden, which you so brutally have stripped of all leaves and reduced to
desolation!
Modesty is never excessive when it is sincere; it is never too exacting
when it rises spontaneously from the heart of a lofty nature; it is a
sentiment that can inspire only noble things and prepare us for sublime
joys. Modesty has such power that it can elevate ignorance and
simplicity to the highest spheres and encircle with a halo the most
common loves as well as the most exalted; it is possessed of such
esthetic energies as to smother with flowers the most bestial roar of
the most brazen man and hide with an impenetrable veil the most immodest
secrets of the animal man. Without any need of cloth or garments, this
sublime wizard will cover a nude body with a mantle that will make it
invisible and impenetrable to lust. Guardian and priest of love, it
follows it at every step and defends it from the mire and from the fire,
and, causing it to direct its eyes upward, elevates and sanctifies it.
Parsimonious trainer of the forces of love, it preserves them always
fresh and always young; and when the first kiss causes the first virgin
flower to fall from the brow of a woman, modesty brings forth new and
ever virgin flowers before the steps of the two lovers. Texture that
conceals, glass that covers, balsam that stops every putrescence,
modesty is the most powerful preserver of the affections; and, perhaps,
more loves are killed by immodesty than by infidelity.
If the sentiment of modesty were not a great virtue, it would be the
most faithful companion of voluptuousness, the greatest generator of
exquisite joys. An ardent thirst and an inebriating cup! What joy, but
what danger of satiety! Now the cup is full, foaming with lust; the lips
are burning and half open to the most voluptuous kisses of the sweet
liquor; but the cup is held by the hands of modesty, who with the
suavest art satisfies the thirst and renews it, so that the lips
eternally remain half open and thirsty, and in the chalice the liquor
will last forever. Admirable prodigy of an immense wealth, which finds
in itself the sources of renovation and perpetuation; stupendous
spectacle of the most gigantic of forces confided to the hands of a
child who guides and governs it!
We should teach modesty to our children, and above all to our little
girls, as clearly as possible, and refine it, so that it may be all
sincerity and delicacy, and not a conventional hypocrisy.
We may be chastely nude, and we may be cynically immodest with the body
as fully covered as an onion. We teach our young girls to lower their
eyes before the glance of him who seeks and desires them, and then we
take them to the theater, where the ballet-dancers are more than nude
from the waist down and the ladies are nude from the waist up; so that,
adding together the two immodest halves of the two very different
classes of women, we may easily have one woman, all nude and all
immodest. We teach our daughters to conceal even the foot from the eager
eyes of man, and then we trust them to the hands of the dressmaker, that
she may perfect with her sartorial art the too modest curves allotted by
nature, and mould in an alluring way the contours which innocent youth
still left chaste and modest. True Tartufes on a reduced scale, with one
hand we hide our face, while with the other we go on exploring
lasciviousness. As long as this profound hypocrisy continues to
penetrate into the marrow of our modern society, modesty, too, will not
be very sincere or will be able to exercise only the weakest influence
toward elevating and refining our loves; nor do I know whether, with all
the unchaste chastity that forms our distinction, we are entitled to
class ourselves proudly among the modest nations. If it be true that
hypocrisy is a homage paid to virtue, let us wait until the epoch of
transition is past, and we shall then feel that we really are as
virtuous as we pretend to be.