Folkways / A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals

CHAPTER XI

THE SOCIAL CODES

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 Veth1384 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 Pommerol1391 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 Semper1394 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. Aristotle1403 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. Wundt1404 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 Pommerol1410 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. Peschel1437 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. Thomson1438 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 reserve1442 [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 Athenæus1446 can be taken as real, they would have to be classed amongst the people who had no notions of decency. Curr says of the Australians1447 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 Felkin1448 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 Nachtigal1456 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